Australian Ron Reconnects with his Hong Kong roots
Image: Anita Milas
There are few things as great as seeing a friendly face after a longhaul flight, when you emerge bleary eyed from the plane and make passage into an unfamiliar country.
It was serendipitous and much welcome, then, that the first friendly team faces, Ron from the Australian team encountered at the 2024 Homeless World Cup were from Hong Kong.
Ron’s family emigrated to Australia while in he was in primary school. The Canberra-based player came to street soccer in 2017 after being connected by a social worker while he grappled with some mental health challenges.
As a dual citizen, Ron had been curious about whether a team from his first home might be attending the 2024 Homeless World Cup. He’d been intending to reach out to them at the tournament. That connection occurred even sooner than he could have hoped. ‘We were told there was a team waiting for us to get on the bus to travel to the hotel together. When we hopped on the bus, it was Hong Kong.’ Cue instant catch-up. ‘They were interested in how I ended up in Australia,’ Ron explains.
The Hong Kong team joked that they had an extra jersey and were happy for Ron to switch allegiances and play for them. Ron politely declined it, though, and avoided an international incident. The teams played a friendly a few days into the tournament, and the Hong Kong team encouraged Ron to go easy on them in goals if he could. He said he’d see what he could do—not that the Hong Kong team needed it; they’d inadvertently been preparing for this tournament for more than a year.
Ron had actually initially been selected for the 2023 Sacramento tournament, but had been unable to attend due to another commitment. As it turns out, his timing was ideal because the Hong Kong team had missed that tournament too. Founded in 2005 by the now-83-year-old Alex Chan, the Hong Kong-based street soccer association has missed the tournament just twice since its inception: 2010 in Brazil, and 2023 in Sacramento. The latter came about because just three of 13 player visas for which the team applied were approved.
The team, which comprises players who have experienced gambling and/or drug and alcohol addiction, ultimately sees the upside to that visa denial: with only three approved visas, participating in the tournament was impossible—you need four players to make a full team on the pitch. Had four visas been approved, the team would have faced a conundrum: a week of playing football in baking heat without any substitutes would have been too taxing, but deciding whether to nevertheless attempt it would have been a difficult decision. With three, the decision was taken out of their hands. The association elected to select the 2023 players for the 2024 tournament, so they, like Ron, are getting a second chance at participating.
In many ways, the teams’ and players’ 2024 tournament experiences have also unfolded in parallel. Both teams entered the tournament with goals they wished to achieve. Australia were aiming to win a FIFPRO Fair Play Award, which they impressively managed to do on Day 1. For their part, Hong Kong set out to score at least one goal daily. It took them a match or two to achieve it, but they too were able to check off the list.
Ron hasn’t been back to Hong Kong since he moved to Australia, but connecting with the Hong Kong team has perhaps been representative of the Homeless World Cup experience: players’ experiences often span more than one country, and the tournament helps them bridge that distance.
Words: Fred Crawford
Image: Anita Milas