At 32, former Brisbane Roar, Wellington Phoenix and NQ Fury player Karl Dodd is committed to sharing his experience with others.
He played a season in the Romanian Premier League before moving for two seasons to the Scottish Premier League, where he played for Falkirk. In 2011 he commenced his return home, stopping off in Hong Kong to play two seasons in the BMA Premier League before returning to Brisbane.
On Saturday night he joined his former Roar teammate Royce Brownlie and 20 members of the newly formed Brisbane APL club Moreton Bay United in a ‘friendly’ pre-season clash against a Stanthorpe representative side.
Brownlie will captain the recently formed Moreton Bay Jets in the inaugural year of the Australia Premier League competition. He too has an outstanding football pedigree; a member of the inaugural Brisbane Roar side, he then travelled to the UK and signed with Swindon Town.
He returned to Australia and joined Dodd at the Wellington Phoenix to finish his A League career.
The visiting squad travelled to Stanthorpe last Saturday in dreadful conditions but had no qualms about taking the field. Unfortunately the scheduled earlier games against Toowoomba sides had to be abandoned as the players were stranded by the rising floodwaters.
With the afternoon of soccer reduced to only one game, organisers were pleased that such a good crowd turned out to show their support for the local players.
The Jets took an early lead but the local lads slotted an equaliser past the visiting goalkeeper to level the score midway through the first half. The excitement was short-lived as the Jets scored twice in quick succession, to hold a 3-1 lead at half-time.
After sitting out the first half, Dodd and Brownlie made their presence felt when they were injected into the game as they directed their players across the paddock.
Stanthorpe were persistent but had trouble controlling possession. Goalkeeper Aaron Oudman played an outstanding game, saving raid after raid from the visitors.
The fitter, quicker Jets players dominated the latter portion of the second half and ran out 5-1 winners.
Assistant coach Steve McEvoy said after the game he was pleased with the performance of the Stanthorpe players who he said would benefit greatly from the experience and the challenge of playing a far more experienced group..
Dodd and Brownlie are both dedicated to nurturing the next generation of football stars, developing professionalis and commitment and they were impressed with the quality of their opposition and also the pitch at Inter Club.
Karl Dodd is a trained sports scientist and is a technical coach at the Bravo Football Academy at Albany Creek.
Both spent a great deal of time with the many youngsters at the ground and were impressed with the concept and had nothing but praise for the organisers of the game, which they would like to see become an annual event … providing we can improve the weather conditions.
