Jet hoping to be on the plane to Beijing

THE NORTHERN DAILY LEADER

By Geoff Newling

TROY Hearfield is dreaming of a Beijing Olympics.
The 20-year-old former Tamworth junior has just won an A-League premiership medal with his Newcastle Jets without kicking a ball but was down kicking around with some eager young Tamworth South Public School students, Ronald McDonald, a few local football stars and some Northern NSW Football coaches yesterday.

It was all part of the launch of the 2008 McDonald’s Northern NSW Football School Development Clinics.

NNSW marketing and coaching manager David Cromarty was on hand along with NNSW Development Clinic coach Peter Haines.

“We’re doing about 200 schools across Northern NSW,” Cromarty said.

“That’s about 20,000 students and we’re giving them the opportunity to play and learn new skills.”

He said since the World Cup and A-League, crowds and interest in football had increased enormously.

Also the A-League success of the Newcastle Jets had swelled interest in the region.

“Particularly interest in women’s football has increased,” he said.

“We now have more than 50,000 players registered and we expect to be above that when we take our next census.”

For Hearfield, yesterday’s bit of fun – kicking around with the students and running skills-based games – was a return to his roots.

“It’s good to come back and see the young ones enjoying it,” Hearfield said.

While he played this season with the Newcastle Jets and had a good time, he was decidedly disappointed about missing out on the grand final game.

“I was not happy about it,” he said.

“It was great after the game, the feeling amongst the boys was great.”

He also savoured the memory of scoring a goal for the Olyroos in their Olympic qualifier against Mexico in San Francisco.

“That was in front of 47,000 people,” he recalled.

“I scored the goal. You could have heard a pin drop.”

He’s trying to get in the final 18-man squad for the Beijing Olympics.

It’s currently a squad of 30 with the chance three over age (23) players could also be drafted into the team.

He shrugged and moved away to continue the skills session while South Armidale’s Mark Wright came into view.

He’s going to be running the Armidale McDonald’s clinics and is looking forward to that after being part of coaching courses at the UNE and in Armidale in recent years.

He’s also turning out with his South Armidale Scorpions in the Northern Inland Premier League again this year.

“We’ve got a good team, a really good team,” Wright said.

“We should win it. But I will be going around all the schools and running camps in the holidays.”

Mark’s uncle, Craig Wright, is coaching the Scorpion first grade side while Craig Stevens has the second grade and goalkeeping guru Andy Lennon is running all the “technical stuff”.

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