Johnny Warren display opens at National Museum

As Australia gears up to compete at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the National Museum of Australia is looking back on Australia’s football past. ‘I told you so’. Johnny Warren and Football in Australia is a free exhibition opening at the National Museum in Canberra on 15 May.

Johnny Warren was a captain, coach, commentator and champion of football in Australia. Warren was in the team that took Australia to its first FIFA World Cup in 1974. In the 50 years that Warren was associated with the game, it evolved into a mainstream, international sport. Ross Warren, Johnny’s older brother, will launch the exhibition on Saturday 15 May and said: “When we started playing football in the 1940s, it was derided as a game for ‘sheilas, wogs and poofters’. However it was English immigrants who first promoted the game in Australia from around 1880.”

Many other things have changed in football today. The introduction of the A-league competition has brought a new professionalism and organisation to the game in Australia. Football is returning to its roots and taking to the streets with homeless people playing street soccer. Women’s football is one the fastest growing sports in the world and Indigenous kids are developing a love for the sport. Thanks to a generous donation by the Warren family, the National Museum is the proud custodian, for all Australians, of the Johnny Warren Collection, which includes the FIFA Centennial Order of Merit awarded to Johnny Warren just months before his death in 2004. The display includes the shirt worn at the 1974 FIFA World Cup by Harry Williams, the first Indigenous person to represent Australia in football. Football is now part of Australia’s national sporting identity.

As Johnny Warren once said: “I told you so.” ‘I told you so’. Johnny Warren and Football in Australia is on display from 15 May – 9 August 2010.