G'day Aussie managers, my name is Deano and I've been your Australian National Team manager since Season 51. It has been a great honour to have the community back me in to take this job and it's something I take seriously, putting many hours into scouting players and communicating with managers.
The Aussie side is coming off a World Cup appearance that saw us finish the season ranked 9th in the World, an awesome achievement by us given the size of some of the European communities in this game. While the end result of Season 58 might not have been what we were aiming for we can take some pride in having knocked over one of the finalists and having to play in a pool that featured both eventual finalists.
What is exciting about our team is it is relatively young and should only get better over the next two seasons. If re-elected I'm keen to push to get us to back to back World Cup appearances.
Since taking on the position and in a number of seasons before I have worked hard with U21 manager Whitewind, one of the legends of the Aussie landscape, in scouting players and opposition teams and helping to grow the Aussie National Team. I've made a point since taking up this spot of trying to help new players to the game to work out how to train their players and build their teams. I do this because I want more Aussie managers to enjoy the game and for the competition in our Aussie leagues to get stronger. Firstly because it makes the game more interesting and fun for us all but secondly because in order for us to compete with the biggest of teams internationally we need a bigger base to draw from.
Another way I've worked on this is maintaining a thread in the forums tracking the complete stats of all former and current Australian National players. I figure there's probably a reasonable proportion of people who play this game that are stat nerds like myself so I want people to be able to see where their player sits compared to all of the players who have ever pulled on the virtual uniform. Make no mistake, training and managing a guy into the National Team is no easy task and if you get one game out of your star you should be proud.
I've tried to work with managers as much as possible rather than tell them exactly what to do. I understand it is a balancing act for managers to keep their own sides afloat AND produce quality National level players.
We find ourselves in a great spot right now where guys who 8-10 seasons ago might have been walk up starters in the team are now on the fringe of the squad.
I hope managers will feel enough faith in the job I'm doing to give me another run at this so we can chase Asian Cup success this season and hopefully look to improve on our World Cup showing in Season 60.
Vote 1 Deano!