When the Fury folded, it crushed dreams and ended careers overnight. Now, on the 15-year anniversary of the club’s demise, we reveal how local teenagers drive hours just to stay on the radar.
Twice a week, a group of 12 teenagers pile into cars in Ingham for a tough round trip down the Bruce Highway to Townsville.
They aren’t doing it for fun; they are doing it because in the sprawling landscape of North Queensland, chasing a professional football dream requires relentless sacrifice and big petrol bills.
Fifteen years after the North Queensland Fury folded, the region’s geographical isolation continues to heavily tax its brightest young talents.
And with the A-League currently contracting – with Western United out of the top flight and the Mariners Academy going bust – the pathway for regional kids is narrower than ever.
For the local coaches fighting to keep these kids on the radar, the absence of a northern A-League team isn’t just a missed opportunity, it is a systemic failure forcing families to completely uproot their lives or abandon dreams entirely.
A LOST GENERATION
Former New Zealand international striker and the veteran of more than 100 games in the A-League, Jeremy Brockie believes the lack of a professional club in North Queensland has created a lost generation of footballers.
Brockie reignited a flagging professional career under Ian Ferguson in the Fury’s inaugural season and has since forged a life after football through his JB Football Academy.
Brockie has watched countless young athletes come through the junior system in regional Queensland and emerge into a black hole of options.
With the Brisbane Roar the only professional outfit servicing the entire Sunshine State, it leaves families of young footballers with little option other than to relocate to chase a dream.
Brockie knows for many in the regions, it just isn’t possible.
“The commitment and talent and quality (in this region) is there for everybody to see,” Brockie said.
“Unfortunately for someone like myself who also grew up in a small regional town, it’s hard to get those opportunities now. Unless you’re under the eyes of the big people down in the big cities, it’s difficult and it’s up to people like myself to try and push them toward opportunities down south.
“It’s not easy from a family point of view when you’ve got other siblings to think about.
“I feel like it would be nice to be able to get the opportunity to bring a professional club here again and set some proper foundations and then give the people of the north real opportunity.”
The loss of the Fury was a bitter blow for the local players still on the roster in 2011.
Former Fury goalkeeper Matt Ham went from cashing in on his dreams to a career crash out inside 12 months because of the Fury folding.
After spending years as understudy to some of the game’s top glovemen and under the eye of legendary coaches in Frank Farina and Ange Postecoglou, Ham was floored when his hometown club offered him his first full-time contract.
A year later the then-Football Federation of Australia (FFA) had pulled its funding, the Fury was wound up, and coming off an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, Ham was left out in the cold.
“I was a fringe player and a goalkeeper. You know I was f---ed either way,” Ham said.
“I couldn’t play overseas because I didn’t have any passport … the fact that I was never gonna get that chance again, unless I went to that state system, I was out.
“That year was pretty hard for me because I went from one of the highest of the highs to one of the lowest of the lows.”
PRIDE BEFORE THE FALL
The North Queensland Fury lasted two years.
The Fury, like many clubs across the A-League, felt the pinch of sole ownership and a crushing financial strain.
When owner Don Matheson burned through his back pocket by the end of year one, he was bailed out by the FFA, who didn’t have the financial means to prop up a club with diminishing crowd numbers and rising overheads.
Skeptics argue the FFA only propped up the club to boost its doomed 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, but when that was awarded to a controversial Qatar bid, the writing was on the wall.
While the truth is likely found somewhere in between, Brockie believed a different approach was needed.
“I think trying to come into a very dominated rugby league town and city, I felt like at the very top, we were probably trying to compete with the Cowboys rather than maybe trying to lean on them,” Brockie said.
“(We needed to) get some experience on how to set up a proper environment and fan base and all those types of things.
“The club probably didn’t put as much thought process into that, which led to us running out of money and losing the club.
“I think (Matheson) was probably looking at it as this is his baby that he wants to be successful while the money is pouring out of his back pocket … sometimes maybe you’ve got that much money that you think you’re a little bit invincible or you can’t ask for help.”
REDISCOVERING THE RAGE
Brockie and Ham both agree that a professional football team belongs in North Queensland.
But rebuilding from the ashes 15 years later won’t be easy.
The tangible links to the professional level have been eradicated with Football Queensland North handing in its own state league license more than seven years ago, instead redirecting its funding into the junior levels.
Ham believed the region could sustain supporting a new football team outside of the North Queensland Cowboys, but any fresh organisation needed to take a lesson from the NRL community powerhouse.
“(You need) 10 years of just support to build up a foundation and then engage into junior soccer. Get the kids to see that there’s a pathway to here and then that brings your parents in,” Ham said.
“To expect to do that in two years time, to fill up the stadium in two years, is hard up here even in football country.
“I feel like you just need to have time to build up a fan base sometimes. It was hard to be a Fury fan because there was no certainty, you don’t know if you’re gonna be there next year.
“I just think if you’re gonna be in a football town, you just need time to establish yourselves. You need heroes, you need finals appearances, you need some really good home games.
I just don’t think we had enough opportunities to do that.”
“The region definitely needs it,” Brockie said.
“I think if you set it up properly, it would just provide so many more opportunities for players and families up here. I think we’ve still got the facilities and … the stadium location now. I think it would make it even more of a success.”
