With a total of 89 Australian appearances for 36 goals Attila Abonyi has done it all for his country. Credited as the only Australian to come close to scoring in the '74 World Cup finals by hitting the woodwork against East Germany, Atti gave his all for his country in a wonderful career spanning ten years. After three World Cup campaigns and three championship medals with St George, Atti's career has been one of outstanding achievement and one that few if any could ever hope to equal.

Atti has left the hustle and bustle of soccer life in the city of Sydney for the easygoing lifestyle of a beachside retreat on the north coast of New South Wales but he still hasn't lost his enthusiasm and love for the game of soccer. In a recent interview Atti was generous enough to share his time and thoughts on his wonderful career with a sincere honesty that leaves no doubt that he is one of the true champions of Australian soccer.

GS : Members of the 1974 World Cup side made a lap of honour of the M.C.G. at the final World Cup qualifier against Iran. In front of 85,000 how did that feel?
AA : "It was an enormous buzz. I'd never imagined it to be so great. Just to come out and see 90,000 people acknowledging what we achieved. And of course that was the first time since '74 so 24 years had gone by without much notice and then all of a sudden this recognition was a tremendous buzz."

GS : Do you feel its a bit ordinary that every four years the Australian media all of a sudden get interested in the 1974 team and bring you together but between times they forget about you all a bit?
AA : "This was the first time in twenty four years that they've actually bought us together. Its an unfortunate thing I suppose but as far as I am concerned this was one of the best weekends of my life. To be able to see these guys again was tremendous on behalf of the Australian Soccer Federation. It was more than appreciated. But like you said I wish it was more often, but thats the way it goes."

GS : You were born in Hungary.
AA : "Thats right, yes"

GS : And you came to Australia as a ten year old.
AA : "Ten and a half in '56. We left Hungary after the revolution."

GS : Did you play much in Hungary as a kid?
AA : "No I couldn't because back in the 50's you couldn't play junior football competitively until the age of twelve. I started playing at the age of eleven for a little club called St Kilda in the under 12's. And from there I moved to a club called Melbourne Hungaria. I went there at the age of fourteen and played in the under sixteens. Next year I was fifteen and I started playing in the under eighteens and a month before my sixteenth birthday which was July of 1962, I made the senior side. That was in '62."

GS : You didn't make your Socceroo debut until 1967. Did you play many representative matches for Victoria leading up to that?
AA : "Oh yeah, '63 was the first one."

GS : You would have only been sixteen.
AA : "Nearly seventeen, put it that way. The first one I played was in Adelaide against South Australia. And in '64 (it) was my first time ever against an Italian club called Roma. That was in '64, Roma in Melbourne. And probably in the same year in '64, a Russian team by the name of Torpedo. They came out and I played in that too. And from then on it just went on."

GS : At the end of 1967 you went on the Asian tour in the Socceroos squad.
AA : "Yeah we went to Vietnam."

GS : How did you find that trip considering Vietnam was in the middle of civil war.
AA : "Well it was, you're right, it was smack bang in the middle of it. When you look back now we often talk about it, even now with Johnny Warren and guys like that. We just can't believe that it actually took place. We went in October of '67 and the tour was organised months and months before then but because of the war everybody thought it would be called off. I mean how crazy. We heard bombs go off in the background and things like that. I mean here we are in the middle of Saigon playing in a ten nation tournament. Just looking back on it its so strange."

GS : So it must have been extremely difficult to concentrate on the football.
AA : "Well again, you must remember that this particular team was a brand new team. I mean after the games against North Korea in the '66 qualifiers eighty percent of that particular team dropped out completely. Now this new team of '67, the average age was around 21. So basically it was a brand new team (with) guys like Billy Vojtek, Tommy McColl, Alan Westwater and myself, apart from Johnny Warren, Johnny Watkiss, Ray Baartz in fact nobody really played for Australia before then."

GS : You also went on the 1970 Asian tour which included Vietnam. Was that the same experiance with bombs going off, etc.
AA : "Oh no, it was nowhere as bad. But you know it was still Vietnam and somewhere that you didn't feel very comfortable in. I mean as I said we were there to play football and nothing else. I suppose you never thought about those kind of things but now looking back on it you say, Christ, how crazy."

GS : On those sorts of tours what was the training regime on tour like. Was it pretty casual or all very serious.
AA : "Well your now talking thirty years ago and the facilities were absolutely terrible. I mean we had training grounds in Vietnam for arguments sake that now you wouldn't even send a bunch of schoolkids onto train. It was just absolutely pathetic. But again, to play for Australia we would have trained anywhere regardless and we did. I mean we trained on top of a building for example in Vietnam. There was no training facility and we stayed at a place called the golden building which was the name of the hotel we stayed in. It was probably a twenty story building or whatever, ten story building whatever. A great big roof on top and that's where we trained a couple of times because they just could not provide us with a proper training ground."

GS : Who was the Australian coach at the time.
AA : "Uncle Joe Vlasits. He had the team from '67 right up to the end of '69 and Rale Rasic took over in 1970 up till the end of '74."

GS : At the end of 1969 you dropped out a bit from the Socceroos side due to business commitments.
AA : "Well it's a bit of a long story, but I moved to Sydney in '69 and my first child was born in May of '69 and I was just settling into Sydney, new job, etc. And they went away on this particular trip in 1970 and I think they went away for something like six weeks. At this stage I had already had so much time off from work and so forth. I mean back in those days everybody had a fulltime job and virtually part time soccer players, so you couldn't really have so much time off.

GS : But you were back shortly after.
AA : "Oh yeah it was never meant to be a retirement. I explained to Rale at the time that with my first child, the business, settling into Sydney because it was a hell of a move for me as you can appreciate I was still only young. I was only twenty two and I made a move from Melbourne, and geez it was like living in a different world. I was finding my feet, new job and so there were a lot of things I had to attend to, so that was it."

GS : So how did your move to St George Budapest come about?
AA : "It was straight forward. In '67 when I got into this final squad to go to Vietnam we assembled in Sydney and I happened to have Johnny Warren as my room mate. And he of course was captain of St George and one thing led to another and I just mentioned to him one day that I'd love to make a move to Sydney and try my luck at St George. As a kid I used to follow St George and it was such a great club. And the next minute I knew I was talking to the St George committee. But I was still contracted to Melbourne.

Actually I was going to go virtually straight after the '67 tour when we came back from Vietnam but the club in Melbourne wouldn't release me, they wouldn't give me a clearance because again we won the championship, we won the Australia Cup and they wanted to hold the team together. So they really put the brakes on it for a year.

Look, everyone’s ambition back in those days was to play in Sydney because the standard was much higher than what it was in Melbourne and I thought I'd try for two years and it turned out to be twenty years. It was such a great club it was just unbelievable."

GS : St George assembled one of the best club sides ever.
AA : "Actually we were talking about it down there in Melbourne. We had six or seven boys from St George at the reunion so there was always members who were Australian representatives. I mean people like Manfred Schaefer, Johnny Warren, Jimmy Fraser, Harry Williams, myself, Adrian Alston, Bobby Hogg, so we always had quite a few internationals."

GS : And I also hear that at some Australian games at the Sydney Sportsground the crowd would chant St George.
AA : "Yeah! One in particular I'll never forget we played against a team (that had) Yashin the goalkeeper, the great Lev Yashin that played for Russia for so many years and probably regarded as the best goalkeeper ever. Dynamo Moscow came out here I think it was in 1969, in fact my first year in Sydney and Frank Arok's first year in Sydney as well, and he had the New South Wales team and we had nine St George players playing that night. The two exceptions were Ray Baartz and John Watkiss and that was a case of come on St George (laughing) not New South Wales."

GS : How did you find Frank Arok as a coach?
AA : " Brilliant".

GS : People often say he was a few years before his time in that early period in Australia.
AA : "He was. And you must remember that he was only thirty six when he came out here in '69. He was full of aggression, a lot of ambition, he had a lot of European experience behind him even though he was only young and he brought a breath of fresh air to Australian soccer. And he was by far the best ever. Put it this way, I mean he has had his knocks and I know a lot of people don't like him, but players who have played under him and know him I'm sure they will have the same opinion. Frank was Frank. He was a total professional and he wanted the best. The time that he had St George we always won something."

GS : The 1973 World Cup campaign, how did you find that? You struggled a little bit to gain a regular starting spot....
AA : "Well, I did, but that's something I really can't answer.

GS : Was it your form?
AA : "No, I don't think so. You've got to respect that Rale was the coach and he picks the team and its entirely up to him. If he doesn't pick you, of course you don't like it but there's nothing you can do about it. Now whether he saw there was something wrong or he preferred somebody else I just had to accept it and get on with it."

GS : By the end of the '73 qualifying series you had managed to hold down a regular starting spot.
AA :"I came back fully for the game against Indonesia. I think it was six nil and I scored two goals and I had a fairly good game. The only way to answer Rale is to sort of prove him wrong. It was a brilliant team and it wasn't easy getting into the team as a permanent player. You weren't always guaranteed a place in the team. It was a very good squad."

GS : But you were in the team for the final three qualifiers against Korea that got us to the world cup.
AA : "Yes and two against Iran."

GS : Now where were you when Jimmy Mackay put the goal away that got us to the World Cup finals? I guess you remember it fairly well.
AA : "I'll never forget that goal. There it comes, boom thirty yards. He just whacked the ball and it ended in the top corner."

GS : The best goal in Australia's rich soccer history.
AA : "Its funny because I played with Jimmy for a number of years and as much as I admire him I never ever remember him scoring a goal, not even in training sessions.

I don't even remember Jimmy or Manfred Schaefer ever scoring a goal during hundreds and hundreds of practise sessions (laughing)".

GS : Was it a dead ball situation?
AA : "No, actually I think it was a free kick that Jimmy Rooney played to him and he just hit it first time. He got a pass from Jim Rooney he virtually caught it on the half drop volley."

GS : I bet the celebration would have memorable that night.
AA : "Oh you've got no idea. You can't describe it. I mean to know that you actually made it to the World Cup and we went through hell as you can appreciate, again you got all the records. The number of games in the number of countries that we had to go through and to play the best in Asia. I mean we had to play THE best, not the fourth, or not the third, not the second but we had to play everybody. Japan, Korea, Iran we had to finish on top to qualify.

Now I'm not knocking the present team but they had to finish fourth to get into France. In comparison they virtually had to finish fourth to qualify. Whereas we had to finish first so again it was extremely hard and I often think I honestly don't know how we made it. Remember all these guys are now full-time professionals. There is not one player in the Australian team playing now who is a part timer. A lot of people don't even talk about or mention that we all had jobs. Manfred Schaefer was a milkman for arguments sake, Peter Wilson was working in a coalmine, I worked as a painter, everybody had a fulltime job and we just played soccer purely on a part time basis.

So we were the first and only virtually part time team who ever made it to a World Cup finals where there was only sixteen teams not thirty two or twenty four".

And there goes the half-time whistle, but in SU30 Atti talks about the lead up to the finals, including the infamous Ray Baartz incident, the finals themselves of course, Leo Baumgartner, Melita, Yugal, Croatia and the day he lined up for Manchester United!

Note: Greg Stock and SU would like to thank Kylie Tomislav and John Punshon for their assistance in compiling this article.