Young gun has what it takes
Football icon helps O’Keeffe get promising career off to Roaring start
FORMER Socceroos star and leading Australian football analyst Craig Foster says the sky’s the limit for Cairns rising star Tara O’Keeffe as she prepares to enter the W-League.
The 17-year-old heads to Brisbane to join the 2017-18 premiership-winning club next week after impressing Roar coach Mel Andreatta in a week of trials last year.
Foster said O’Keeffe had talent that had to be explored, leading to his recommendation the Roar consider the Southside Comets star for the W-League program.
The football icon trained the Caravella Football Academy student for a week in his Football NSW Under-17 National Centre squad in Sydney in September and was blown away by her technical ability, game sense and competitiveness within “the highest quality female youth squad in the country”.
“Immediately that tells me she has the ability to go somewhere in the game and she certainly has the desire,” Foster said. “That type of player with both those qualities deserves an opportunity, particularly being from a regional area.
“If she’s already reached this level in a regional area then she should be able to accelerate when she gets into a professional environment.
“She’s obviously a fast learner and you don’t know where she could end up.”
Foster, originally from Lismore in NSW, said being from a regional area himself, he sympathised with O’Keeffe, an example of Australia’s underutilised regional talent.
“We aren’t making the best use of regional football,” he said. “The number of regional players representing national teams has gone down in recent decades, but the talent certainly hasn’t gone down, so the opportunity has got less.
“I was happy to open the door and give her the chance. Now it’s up to her.
“Her ambition has to be to play for the Matildas, not just the Roar.”
O’Keeffe said it was “crazy” to think someone of Foster’s stature had given her such big wraps and was keen to excel in a professional environment.
“I’m feeling pretty nervous but really keen to experience a more professional level,” she said. “I was a bit nervous to start off with when I was training with him but after a few sessions I got into it.
“It was really good to show what I could do and get a reward out of it.”
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