John Michael Crawley (born 5 March 1972) is an Australian former

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

player who played as a

goalkeeper In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...

. Since retiring as a player he has worked as a goalkeeping coach he is the currently goalkeeper coach of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Playing career

South America

Crawley first travelled to South America on a NSW Schoolboys tour in 1990. This eventually led to his signing with Chilean club

Colo-Colo Club Social y Deportivo Colo-Colo () is a Chilean professional football club based in Macul, Santiago. Founded in 1925 by David Arellano they play in the Chilean Primera División, from which they have never been relegated. The team has played ...

. Crawley spent the next five years at Colo-Colo, including some loan spells to clubs including

Lota Schwager Lota Schwager is a Chilean professional team based in Coronel that currently play in Tercera A (fourth-tier). History Following the merger between Federico Schwager and Minas Lota (teams that competed in Campeonato Regional de Concepción ...

and Magallanes. Crawley acted as a

liaison officer A Liaison officer is a person who liaises between two or more organizations to communicate and coordinate their activities on a matter of mutual concern. Generally, liaison officers are used for achieving the best utilization of resources, or empl ...

when the Australian national team stayed in Chile in preparation for the 1994 FIFA World Cup qualification play-off against

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

in November 1993. He made his first team debut for Colo-Colo in a draw against

Atacama The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the w ...

in the last game of the 1994 Primera División of Chile. Crawley remained second choice at Colo-Colo, behind Chilean international goalkeeper Marcelo Ramírez, and in 1995 was forced to decide between adopting Chilean citizenship or retaining his Australian passport.

Return to New South Wales

Crawley returned to Australia in 1995. He spent the next decade moving between several clubs, largely in the New South Wales state league, with the exception of a brief spell in the

National Soccer League The National Soccer League (NSL) was the top-level soccer league in Australia, run by Soccer Australia and later the Australian Soccer Association. The NSL, the A-League's predecessor, spanned 28 seasons from its inception in 1977 until its d ...

with

Sydney United Sydney United 58 Football Club is a semi-professional soccer club and current NSW NPL Champions based in Edensor Park, Sydney, New South Wales Australia. The club was formed as Sydney Croatia in 1958, by Croatian Australians in the area, but it ...

. Crawley was signed by

Central Coast Mariners Central Coast Mariners Football Club is an Australian professional soccer club based in Gosford, on the Central Coast of New South Wales. It competes in the A-League Men, under licence from the Australian Professional Leagues (APL). The Ma ...

in December 2004 ahead of the inaugural A-League season. By the start of the season, Crawley had shown good form and established himself as the Mariners first-choice 'keeper. However, a hip injury in the early rounds of the season saw Crawley miss most of the season, his place in the side taken by young goalkeeper

Danny Vukovic Daniel Vukovic ( ; born 27 March 1985) is an Australian professional soccer player who plays as a goalkeeper for Central Coast Mariners in the A-League and the Australia national team. Vukovic is the holder of several A-League records: he has ...

, who Crawley had coached for several years.

Coaching career

Before his retirement as a player, Crawley had taken up a role as goalkeeping coach at the Mariners, and continued in that role for over a decade, also taking on other coaching duties including video analysis. His role in the development of Mariners goalkeepers

and

Mathew Ryan Mathew David Ryan (born 8 April 1992) is an Australian professional Association football, footballer who plays as a Goalkeeper (association football), goalkeeper for Danish club F.C. Copenhagen and captains the Australia men's national soccer t ...

from young ages to becoming established professionals was particularly notable. Crawley took up a position with the Australia under-23s in 2015, in the lead-up to the

2016 AFC U-23 Championship The 2016 AFC U-23 Championship (also known as the 2016 AFC U-23 Asian Cup) was the second edition of the AFC U-23 Championship, the biennial international age-restricted football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) fo ...

. In 2015, Crawley joined

Sydney FC Sydney Football Club is an Australian professional soccer club based in Sydney, New South Wales. It competes in the country's premier men's competition, A-League Men, under licence from Australian Professional Leagues (APL). The club was fo ...

as their goalkeeping coach, following former Mariners head coach

Graham Arnold Graham James Arnold (born 3 August 1963) is an Australian soccer manager and former player. Arnold was appointed to work as an assistant coach of the Australian national soccer team in 2000. After head coach Frank Farina was sacked in 2005, Ar ...

. Over his years of coaching, he takes heavy influence off the goalkeeping styles of South America, many of which he picked up himself during his time at Colo-Colo. He states that he is often preached for his coaching in one-on-one situations and most notably the side volley, which helped develop his former Mariners goalkeepers.https://www.facebook.com/Socceroos/videos/10155508547122028/

Honours

Club

;

A-League Pre-Season Challenge Cup The A-League Pre-Season Challenge Cup competition was an annual soccer tournament held for all A-League clubs in July and August in the lead up to the start of the A-League season. The competition featured a group stage and a knockout stage. Co ...

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

References

External links

OzFootball Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crawley, John 1972 births Living people Sportsmen from New South Wales Australian expatriate men's soccer players A-League Men players National Soccer League (Australia) players Blacktown City FC players Central Coast Mariners FC players Expatriate men's footballers in Chile Men's association football goalkeepers Colo-Colo footballers Sydney United 58 FC players Central Coast Mariners FC non-playing staff Soccer players from Sydney Australian men's soccer players Association football goalkeeping coaches