Brian MacNicol: The NSL veteran mentoring the next generation of footballers

Avatar

Brian MacNicol has had a career in Australian football that has spanned many decades.

The 53-year-old had strong ambitions to play football professionally ever since he was a youngster in Queensland, but growing up in the sunshine state forced him to make difficult decisions to pursue that dream.

“Back in those days when I was going through the ranks, the two big clubs in Queensland, Brisbane Lions and Brisbane City weren’t in the NSL,” he told Soccerscene.

“So, to progress your football career in Australia you had to either move to Sydney, Adelaide or Melbourne.”

MacNicol would ultimately choose to move to Melbourne, with a few clubs interested in the 21-year-old at the time.

He would eventually trial and sign for Brunswick Juventus, who was coached by Robert Vieri at the time (the father of Italian superstar Christian Vieri).

MacNicol would spend two seasons at the club before moving to Heidelberg United, where he would launch his career in the NSL – eventually playing for other clubs including the Gippsland Falcons.

“Compared to the A-League – the standard in the NSL was probably not as good technically, I think,” he said.

“But I believe there was better players going around in the NSL days; you had your Viduka’s, your Okon’s, your Zelic’s, they were playing at 19-20 years of age in the competition before going overseas, they were unbelievable players.

After his playing career ended, which also included a stint in Hong Kong where he played in the Asian Champions League, MacNicol would focus his attention on becoming a coach.

The former NSL midfielder worked under some great coaches and motivators in his time, which helped this transition.

“I’ve had some really good coaches in my playing career, MacNicol said.

“Obviously, I had Frank Arok, Stuart Munro, as well as Gary Cole for a short period of time.

“I had Stuart and Frank for a much longer time, I think they were great man managers and I really enjoyed their sessions during my playing career.”

MacNicol would go on to work, amongst other roles, as an assistant coach for Dandenong Thunder, under 21’s coach at Oakleigh Cannons (which he has been doing for the past 3 years) and under 20’s coach at South Melbourne.

Speaking about his time at South Melbourne, MacNicol said: “South Melbourne is a big club, back in the old NSL days they were one of the biggest clubs in Australia.

“The facilities there and everything else made for a good environment. At the time when I was there, they had some very good youth teams – so it was a good experience.”

Since moving into coaching, MacNicol has been heavily involved in the youth development at these NPL clubs.

He explained the system overall for young players is much more advanced than what it was when he was going through the ranks in his youth.

“It’s unbelievable the setup these days,” he said.

“Back in our day we didn’t really have many pathways, there wasn’t anywhere near the programs they have today, no Miniroos or NTC.

“They did have the NSL Youth League and the VIS I believe, but that was about it.

“The kids these days are so lucky, with the pathways they have. It’s not only that, when I was growing up, I don’t think we had the coaches with the knowledge that the kids today do.

“Even when you look at community football it was just a dad coaching back then, it wasn’t someone who was qualified or a past player who could give you a bit more knowledge.

Despite the increase of standards in the system, MacNicol believes a youngster’s desire to progress in some cases has dropped off in comparison to past eras.

“I believe youth development wise the kids are technically very good, but some of them lack a bit of heart, which I think is missing from the old days.

“You didn’t complain back then, you just did it – if the coach yelled at you, you moved on. I know it’s an old school mentality and things have changed, but I think that is the key bit of difference,” he concluded.

Previous ArticleNext Article

Mizuno’s Australian gamble: can a 120-year-old brand break through?

Avatar
Image Credit: Mizuno

When Mizuno unveiled a mural of Socceroos captain Harry Souttar on a Richmond wall during the 2026 World Cup, the company’s name did not appear on the artwork. The artist, Rory Ledge, painted Souttar as the “Minister of Defence” behind a brick wall. Channel 7 and Channel 9 turned up. The Herald Sun ran it in their Saturday edition. Mizuno’s brand director called it “mainstream awareness” without paid media.

The mural sat within a broader push by the Osaka-based company to expand in Oceania. For the fiscal year ending March 2026, Mizuno reported sales of ¥259 billion, up 7.8 per cent year-on-year, with net income of ¥18.4 billion representing 20.5 per cent growth . Operating profit rose to ¥22.6 billion. The Asia and Oceania segment is central to the company’s medium-term plan, which targets net sales of ¥290 billion by fiscal 2027.

The growth imperative

Australian football has not historically been kind to specialist boot brands. Nike, Adidas and Puma dominate retail shelves. A-Leagues collective bargaining agreements and club deals have locked in incumbents. For a brand without the marketing budgets of its competitors, the path to relevance runs through the players.

Mizuno has grown its Australian ambassador base from one athlete to around 20 across the A-Leagues in recent seasons. Melbourne City’s Tolgay Arslan, who played in the Bundesliga and Serie A before arriving in Australia, told Front Page Football: “If I discovered these boots ten years ago, I would wear these boots overseas in my career.” Western United midfielder Angus Thurgate called them “the comfiest boots I’ve ever worn”.

The mural moment

Richmond was chosen for the mural because of its location. The suburb sits at the centre of Melbourne’s sporting precinct, five minutes’ walk from the MCG and AAMI Park. It is already home to murals of AFL players. Rowena Corner Store owner Con, who agreed to host the artwork, had previously welcomed murals of Dusty Martin and an AFLW player.

“We didn’t have access to Harry because he was in the US competing,” brand director Rishi said. “We couldn’t do a photoshoot. So we had to be clever. The best ideas come from real time, aligned with what the public discourse looks like. Once we saw his Wikipedia page updated to refer to him as the Minister of Defence, we knew we could play into this.”

Ledge incorporated an existing window into the design to create a net behind Souttar’s figure. The mural appeared the morning of the Paraguay match, when Australia’s clean sheet sent them into the knockout phase.

The World Cup provided a massive backdrop. The Socceroos’ run captivated the nation: 4.84 million Australians tuned in to the Paraguay match, making it the most-watched World Cup match in SBS history at the time, with an average audience of 3.086 million . The final reached 5.26 million viewers, and cumulative tournament reach hit 18.04 million— 64 per cent of Australia’s population. SBS director of sport Ken Shipp said: “We’ve never seen engagement at this level.” Mizuno spent comparatively little and had Channel 7 and Channel 9 on site.

The commercial question

For a brand with limited marketing firepower, organic PR coverage is the prize. The question for the company’s Oceania division, still in growth mode, is whether a mural and a handful of player endorsements can convert into sustained commercial traction. Retail partnerships with Ultra Football, which has created a dedicated Mizuno space at its Melbourne store, suggest the company is thinking beyond campaigns.

Mizuno’s European expansion has taken a different path. The company signed a five-year deal to become AS Monaco’s technical equipment partner from the 2025-26 season, its first entry into Ligue 1. It already has a presence in Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A. In Australia, institutional partnerships are harder to secure. The approach has been slower: build through athletes, then through community, then through culture.

The Queensland government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mizuno in March 2026 to explore the Japan-Australia Sports & Health Innovation Exchange (JASHIE), a two-year partnership focused on sport and health innovation . The agreement supports Queensland’s preparations for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The mural campaign reflected a broader trend in sporting brand marketing, where IP restrictions and athlete availability increasingly demand creative solutions. “I love what Levi’s did because they were able to lean into their brand codes and tell what I believe to be the most memorable advertising story from the World Cup,” Rishi said. “This is a different page out of fundamentally the same playbook.”

Mizuno’s boots are not cheap. The Made-in-Japan models retail well above competitors’ offerings. The brand’s pitch rests on quality and heritage, not price or volume. That is a harder sell in a country where discounting dominates and cost-of-living pressures are squeezing households.

The Souttar mural will eventually fade or be painted over. Mizuno is betting that by the time it does, enough Australian football fans will have noticed the three stripes’ quieter rival.

Football NSW workshop offers clubs rare insight into elite talent pathway as development gap comes under scrutiny

Avatar
Image Credit: Football NSW

Football NSW has delivered a Club Capability Building Workshop designed to give community club coaches direct exposure to the methodology underpinning the state’s elite Talent Support Program, in an initiative that addresses one of the more persistent structural problems in Australian football development.

The workshop, led by Player Development Managers Phil Myall and Nadine Sheils, who oversee the technical direction of the Boys and Girls Talent Support Programs, combined classroom presentation with pitch-side observation of live TSP fixtures. Coaches from clubs including Rydalmere FC attended sessions covering talent identification processes, player development models, coaching methodology, Individual Development Plans and player profiling based on technical traits and competencies.

The structure of the day, moving coaches from theory into a live competitive environment, reflects an attempt to close a gap that has long shaped the relationship between community clubs and elite talent pathways in Australian football. Club coaches typically operate with limited visibility into how state-level development programs actually function in practice, relying on secondhand information, accreditation course material or assumptions about what elite environments look like. The workshop replaced that distance with direct access.

Why the gap matters

Talent Support Programs exist to identify and accelerate the state’s most promising young players, but the players who enter those programs come from community clubs first. If the coaching methodology and development philosophy applied within elite pathways is poorly understood at the community level, the two systems risk operating with misaligned expectations of what good development actually looks like.

This means a player developed in a club environment that does not share the technical language or coaching priorities of the elite pathway may find the transition into a Talent Support Program more difficult than it needs to be, not because of any deficiency in the player but because the systems around them were not speaking to each other.

Football NSW’s decision to bring club coaches into direct contact with TSP methodology, including observation of live matches rather than theoretical instruction alone, represents an attempt to narrow that gap at the level where it matters most. Rydalmere FC’s Head of MJDL, Michael Canale, said the experience offered a clear reference point for his own club’s program.

“It was great to see how the FNSW Talent Support Program operates and the level of alignment from the methodology and match environment,” Canale said. “For us at Rydalmere FC, I took away ideas that we can look to build into our own programme. It provided a really clear reference point and an opportunity to reflect on how we can continue to strengthen our environment moving forward.”

A model for industry-wide capability

The workshop also points to a broader question facing football governing bodies as participation continues to climb nationally. As more players enter community football and the demand for genuine development pathways grows, the capability of community coaches becomes a determining factor in whether that growth translates into improved player outcomes or simply more players moving through under-resourced environments.

Football NSW’s approach, embedding observation and direct engagement with technical staff alongside structured presentation, offers a model that other state federations grappling with similar capability gaps may look to replicate. The collaborative element of the day, where coaches from different clubs compared notes and aligned their understanding of TSP application, also suggests an organisation attempting to build a shared development language across its club network rather than treating elite pathway knowledge as something that remains internal to Football NSW staff.

Whether that shared language translates into measurable improvement in player outcomes at community level will depend on how consistently workshops like this one are delivered, and whether the ideas coaches take away are genuinely implemented rather than simply observed. For now, the initiative represents a concrete step toward addressing a gap that has shaped Australian football development for years, the distance between what elite pathways do and what community clubs understand about how and why they do it.

Most Popular Topics

Editor Picks

Send this to a friend