Saturday November 7, 2009
GOLD COAST (Australia): Robbie Fowler has found a place in the sun, one where he can still be a star on the field yet be anonymous off it.
The ex-Liverpool striker, nicknamed “God” by his fans at the Kop when he was at the height of his goal-scoring powers in the English Premier League, has reinvented himself as a football missionary in a two-season deal with new Australian A-League club the North Queensland Fury.
After an important goal to earn the Fury its first home win in Round 12, he moved to second place in the league’s scoring list with a double in last weekend’s 2-0 win over Gold Coast United.
Three goals in two matches have lifted his tally to eight at the midway point of Australia’s season. And it has dragged the club off the bottom of the table after it opened with three losses.
Not that Fowler thinks it’s because he’s only now finding his range.
“I think I settled in straight away. From the minute I touched down in Townsville, I’ve been made to feel like one of the lads,” he said after his two-goal performance on the Gold Coast. “I’ve said right from the start, it’s not about scoring goals. The most important thing is getting three points. If I’m scoring, or somebody else is scoring, it doesn’t really matter.”
There were plenty of questions asked about his motives when the 34-year-old former England international chose not to pursue another Premier League deal and, instead, relocated his wife and four children to the transport and agricultural hub of 160,000 people in tropical north Queensland.
It’s hot all year and usually humid, even in the monsoonal downpours, and it’s about as far away from the premiership as he could have got in the English-speaking world.
There was speculation he would quit even before he started. After all, he’d reportedly turned his back on an earlier offer from the more glamorous Sydney FC — the same club where ex-Manchester United striker Dwight Yorke spent his time in the A-League.
Critics said Fowler was overweight and supposed he only wanted to holiday on the Great Barrier Reef, or was only in it for the cash.
While he’s made himself at home in Australia, from where he controls his vast English property portfolio remotely, Fowler is being careful not to get too comfortable.
“I’ve been told that back home they reckon I consider myself Aussie these days,” Fowler wrote in a newspaper column.
“I posed for a photo to help out Australia’s 2018 football World Cup bid, agreeing to hold up a green and gold scarf. When I came over here, from the start I have said I will do anything that can help promote the sport in this country and I have kept my word.
“Of course England are a rival to host that year, so it hasn’t gone down well back home.”
So he wanted to set the record straight.
“Obviously, being English, and with it being in 2018, I’ll probably be back home then, so I would like to see the World Cup there,” he said. “But if England don’t get it I think Australia would deserve it.”
IFury coach Ian Ferguson has no doubt Fowler will leave his legacy in Australia.
“He’s genuine in what he’s doing here,” Ferguson says. “You only need to see the impact he has on the other lads to know that.” — AP
