This week’s episode of A-Leagues All Access centres on Adelaide United goalkeeper Joe Gauci. Watch the full episode below.
They just kept saying “no” to Joe Gauci, and somehow a would-be footballer who’d stumbled into goalkeeping almost by accident found the self-belief to keep proving them wrong.
State teams, the AIS, even an A-League team all turned him away at various points, but each time Gauci was determined that his journey wouldn’t end.
Even three and a half years ago the chance of a professional career in football was so in the balance that Gauci applied for a job in a shoe shop “because I had to earn some money somehow”. Just 30 months later he was training with the Socceroos, and a year after that has his first cap.
There are definite shades of Mat Ryan in Gauci’s trajectory, in coming late to goalkeeping and apparently exploding onto the A-League scene at a particularly tender age.
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But it all starts to make sense when you hear Gauci talking now at 22 about the self-improvement he demands of himself, and about his ability to understand how to turn both opportunities and knockbacks into progression.
There have been plenty of both since the point aged around eight or nine that he was at a football camp at school in New Zealand, and instinctively saved a powerful shot sent in his direction by a fellow student several years older.
A startled coach suggested he go in goal but even then he took years to fully commit: half a game upfront and half in goal for a year, then half a game at centreback and so on. “I was dreadful to start with,” Gauci cheerfully admits now. “It was definitely not a position that came naturally to me whatsoever. And it wasn’t until I moved back to Australia (aged 11) that I guess I fell in love with it and started to really work at it.”
Clearly he hasn’t stopped since. Playing for Cumberland United in Adelaide, Gauci was put forward for the state talent ID tournament, but came away from it with just a polite “no thanks”.
“I thought my career was over, I thought that was it, you know – I’m not good enough,” he recalls. “But my dad just said, If you want to make it next year then you’ve got to work hard at it. So that’s what I did.”
A year later he was duly selected, and became part of the conversation around serious recognition – a possible place at the AIS program in Canberra and even from there the national U17 squad.
It wasn’t a conversation that went anywhere. “I wasn’t good enough at the time to make that and you know, that was another point in my junior career where I thought it was over,” he says. “I didn’t make it to the AIS, so (felt) I wasn’t going to make it to the A-League. I just came back and started playing NPL.”
Gauci needed a break. The Mariners provided it. “It all sort of happened so quickly, I was just playing locally in year 12, focused on my schoolwork, and I heard the Mariners wanted to give me a trial. Within the space of a couple of months, I was ditching year 12 to move out of home at 17 years old.
“I was very fortunate that my parents were fully supportive of me. I was a relatively good student, I quite enjoyed school – though I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if I stayed for the exams.
“But this was an opportunity to go and be a professional, work with professional players in a professional environment and get better. I was like, let’s go, let’s take it.
“Once I got over there, and I learned how expensive it is to live out of home, it became a little bit more difficult (living on) a scholarship deal at 17. Financially, it was a bit of a struggle at times, but the learning experiences that I took from that (were) on and off the field – learning how to be an adult really, and support myself.
“Making sure there’s enough food in the cupboard, that the fridge was full, all those little things that I suppose you don’t learn, if you’re living at home.
“Habits that I built there through the coaches have stuck with me. Matthew Nash, the goalkeeper coach, was instrumental in taking me from a raw goalkeeper from the NPL and developing my technical ability.
“(Current head coach) Nick Montgomery was the assistant at the time and he really drove the work ethic, doing extras and working hard and being first one in, last one out.”
It’s revealing that Gauci recognises the discipline instilled in him there, because his scholarship contract wasn’t renewed at the end of that year. His gamble in leaving school was looking like an increasingly long-odds bet.
“Not many people really know but I came back to Adelaide and played NPL in between A-League seasons,” he says. “I had a trial at Melbourne City but I didn’t hear anything for six weeks.
“The NPL season ended so I went to have a job interview at Foot Locker because I had to earn money somehow. And I actually came back from the job interview and my agent at the time rang me and said, Melbourne City have offered you a scholarship. I said, yes please!
“I had to ring back Foot Locker and say, I’m really sorry but I’m no longer interested in this position.
“That year (at Melbourne City) was fantastic. To be able to work with Socceroos and really high caliber players in facilities that were world class, I was really made to feel like a proper professional footballer.”
Gauci jokes that it was nice finally not to have to trial again at the end of that year, fielding offers from both City and Adelaide. “I think at that time, it was what’s best for my football, where am I going to get the opportunity to play more.
“When Adelaide came calling, at the time they really had no solidified number one. And it just so happened that the best place for me and my football was also the club I’d grown up supporting and could be back with my family. Though I don’t think anyone really pictured it going as well as it has.”
Perhaps not, but when Gauci talks about being called into the Socceroos camp a year ago, at 21, initially as a train-on player, it’s revealing as to how he has been able to establish himself as the undisputed first choice at a club with serious aspirations of winning the league, and now win his first cap for his country.
“I knew (the Socceroos coaches) weren’t just bringing me in for numbers, it was also bringing me in to have a look at me and and see how I went at that level,” he says. “But it was such an eye opener and I think that really drove my my training and my mindset, seeing how far off the level I really was.
“It didn’t really surprise me but working with (Andrew) Redmayne and (Danny) Vukovic, seeing how clean they were with their handling and how fast they move across the goal and all these things, was unbelievable.
“With the quality of players (in the squad), to face their shots for those couple of days was amazing. Really it just made me hungry to try and get back there. And luckily enough, I’ve been able to.”
Produced by KEEPUP Studios and JAMTV, each new episode of the docuseries will debut on Thursday at 7:30pm AEDT on 10 Play, KEEPUP.COM.AU, the KEEPUP app. It will be available on Australia’s fastest growing streaming service, Paramount+, and will then be broadcast on 10 Bold at 2:00pm AEDT on Sunday afternoons as an appetiser for the evening’s Isuzu UTE A-League Men game on the same channel.
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