Craig Johnston's Legacy Isn't Over With His Plan To Kick Off Big Bash Of Soccer

Sitting on a warm, sun-drenched beachside balcony, on most days it would have been easy to doze off. Not on this day.

I was about to be in the company of my childhood hero. Someone who shares the same loves I do. Soccer, the Liverpool Football Club and the city of Newcastle.

The difference between myself and this person? He went on to become etch a place in Australian soccer royalty- where I didn't make it out of reserve grade at my local club.

"Will the light be OK"? I hear his unmistakable voice from one of the adjoining rooms.

As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the world, I've taken steps. No cameraman. It was just myself and Johnston from a safe distance.

Fortunately, he knows his stuff when it comes to filming and photography and has all the equipment needed, so I was leaving it with him to set up his own interview.

"Why do Skype? It looks terrible on the screen. I know what I'm doing. I created that tv game show "The Main Event." We picked Larry Emdur as host. He's had a good career since."

At that stage of life, Craig Johnston was, (taking a term from the smash hit movie "The Castle"), "an ideas man"

After hanging up his boots he was best known for inventing adidas's Predator football boot.

At the time, the world sporting apparel brand was on the brink of bankruptcy. Johnston's genius turned the company around and to this day the boot remains a best seller.

He also invented software to enable hotels to charge items from the minibar to guests' bills automatically, a system called "The Butler".

"I was an inventor before being a footballer. To make a career you sometimes have to navigate a very different path."

Looking down from his apartment which has sweeping views of Newcastle's port and Nobbys Head sits a renovated building that are now units, what used to be the old Newcastle Royal Hospital.

"Isn't it amazing. I'm sitting here and having flashbacks. I was in there (pointing to the building) as a six-year-old and the nurse came in with the amputation forms for my leg for my mum to sign.

They thought I had polio but it was an American specialist who wanted another look and we found out I'd contracted osteomyelitis. It's like I've literally turned a full circle and I'm now back at the starting point where this crazy life nearly didn't happen."

Coming back to his old haunts has reason. Johnston wants to leave a legacy. A footballing legacy.

For Australian football, in particular the A-League, it could quite be the tonic it needs.

The Covid-19 crisis has seen the competition suspended until further notice but even before this, it was teetering. As interest waned in recent seasons due to poor crowds and low television audiences, somehow the game needed a shot in the arm.

This is the perfect time for the A-League to reset. The answer is simple. You know the Big Bash of cricket. We need the Big Bash of soccer.

"I'm already talking to the FFA (Football Federation Australia) about it. We need to re-engage people's interest in the game," he said.

Incredibly, it's an idea he's already piloted to Football's governing body FIFA over 20 years ago.

In 1998, well before The Big Bash of cricket concept got up and running, the World Soccer 6ix's at Amsterdam Arena demonstrated Johnston's ability to create a new, made for modern television product.

Conveniently played in a January winter break, Liverpool, AC Milan, Glasgow Rangers and Ajax of Amsterdam, with all their stars, played out a mini-tournament in front of a packed arena.

I spent loads of money putting it together. The best players in the world, smaller pitch, six-a-side, entertainment, dancers, singers, like a half time break at the Super Bowl that doesn't stop.

If you think this sounds like "pie in the sky" when it comes to delivering this in Australia, then guess again.

The wheels have already been in motion, the project pilot already shot in Newcastle last year and now Johnston's in the FFA's ear on how to roll it out.

He even has a production company making a documentary on how he's doing it.

"If it works it'll be a good doco and if it fails, it'll still be a good doco," Johnston laughed.

His pitch incorporates Johnston's SUPA skills system. A system based on the methods he taught himself to become a better player as a teenager in the Middlesbrough Football Club's car park.

And while most ex-sports stars usually like displaying their achievements for all to see. Like it's their badges of honour- -- but in Johnston's unit there's none of this.

Instead, the walls are aligned with his own snapshots he's taken throughout the decades.

After purchasing his first camera as a 16-year-old, he's taken pictures nearly every day since.

Originally sending photos back to his parents instead of having to write letters was in his own his way saying, "images spoke louder than words".

His work got noticed as he opened his first exhibition in London in 2009.

"It's the only thing that I have ever done that comes naturally, everything else has been a fight. When I am taking photographs it’s like time stands still and it makes me feel good.

It takes your full concentration and it is always usually against the clock especially in sports. Given all the intangibles, it happens very rarely but when you take the perfect shot, you feel that joy," he said.

He now has an Aussie soccer big bash firmly in focus, and plans to give it his best shot.

Contact the author mcain@networkten.com.au