Andy Harper pleas for greater goalkeeping education as shortages amass
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Fox Sports Football analyst Andy Harper has called on for greater goalkeeping education as Football Australia face a mass shortage of goalkeepers in the A-League. Dominic Bossi from the Sydney Morning Herald revealed the damaging nature of Australia's shortage as A-League clubs have been asked by Football Australia to not sign anymore foreign goalkeepers, and Harper told Piggy, Levy and Jimmy that this points to a greater problem in the country. “At the start of the season I sat on a panel with one of the greatest, Mark Bosnich and asked why are so many A-League clubs importing goal keepers?” Harper said. “But, no one has got an answer except to say that the development system has failed badly and there’s been not enough focus on goalkeeping in the much flawed curriculum.” “I was speaking with Jimmy Fraser, a former Socceroos goalkeeper and coach, and he’s been screaming for years about the neglect of goalkeeping coaching in the system. And now these chickens are coming home to roost.” Harper, one of Australia's sharpest Football minds, said it was staggering that a country like Australia, who has produced the likes of Mark Bosnich, Mark Schwarzer and Matt Ryan are now in this position and has called  on for Football Australia to find some sort of solution before we lost our country's goalkeepers altogether. “Football Australia need to go into their own backyard and work out what the hell has been going on and ask the great guys, like Jim Fraser, what’s been going wrong," Harper said. “The one thing we have always produced, going back to Ronnie Lord in the 1950's, is great goalkeepers. And I said this to Bozza, but what’s happening in the A-League now that a crucial visa spot is having to go to foreign goal keepers? We used to have millions of them." “I’m glad Dominic has raised it more publicly, but there’s got to be a solution. And part of that solution is sitting down with the likes of Ronnie Cole and particularly Jimmy Fraser, the great coaches of yesteryear, and ask them what’s not going on now that used to happen?”