Southampton FC Academy Physiotherapist Tass Amiridis: “Our reputation is world-renowned”

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Tass Amiridis

Making the decision to move countries in order to chase your dreams is one that befalls plenty of Australian footballers. However, such a contemplation also ensues for coaches, physiotherapists and sports scientists wishing to be challenged at the highest level of the game.

For Tass Amiridis, it was this exact decision to head overseas in pursuit of a fresh challenge that led him to first taking on a role at historic English side Crewe Alexandra FC, and now as a PDP Academy Physiotherapist for Southampton FC’s B Team.

Having honed his skills as a physiotherapist in the Victorian NPL with the likes of Heidelberg United and Pascoe Vale – and in the A-League with Western United – Tass is part of the impressive legion of Australian physios and sports scientists who are based in football clubs around the world.

Tass sat down with Soccerscene to chat through his experiences in England with Crewe and Southampton, his self-belief in acquiring his dream job overseas, the differences in sports science between Australia and the UK, and what life is like at a Premier League club.

You’ve had an extensive career as a physiotherapist in the Victorian NPL, A-League and now as the Academy Physiotherapist at Southampton FC. Can you tell us a bit about your journey to this point?

Tass Amiridis: My background is also as a chiropractor, so I had worked for NPL teams with that. And then I embarked on becoming a physiotherapist because I wanted to work full-time in football in the Premier League – and this is something that I’ve always wanted to do.

When I went through university initially, I thought I’d maybe be able to do it as a chiropractor but as time went on, I realised that wasn’t the case especially when teams advertise for a physiotherapist. They’re looking for a physio as opposed to a chiro, even though the two fields are similar.

I then went and studied physiotherapy as a mature age graduate, and while I was doing that, I was also working at NPL. I graduated in December of 2019 and started in January with Western United’s first team as one of the physios there. I worked up with them until August when I left in 2020 and came over to England.

In that January to August period, I also worked with Heidelberg United and Pascoe Vale in the NPL, and did some consultancy work for North Sunshine Eagles as well, so I was quite busy during that eight-month period. But I was doing what I wanted to do so it was great.

I also worked in a clinic and had that as a back-up. But because I hadn’t worked in sports with a club for a period of time when I started – even though I was seeing a lot of athletes in the clinic – I just wanted to get my hands on as many players and get across as many things as possible in a short space of time. I felt like I wanted to make up for lost time.

When an opportunity arose, I felt like I could do it and was able to. It also gave me the ability to help other students and physios wanting to come through in similar roles, and give them opportunities to work, and assist, and cover for when I physically couldn’t be there. I felt like I was able to give back to people wanting to come through, and having been where they were, I knew how hard it would be to get a foot in the door, even at the NPL level.

Amiridis

Why was it always an aspiration of yours to conduct your work at a high level in football?

Tass Amiridis: It was wanting to work with sportspeople, having played football myself up until first team level from the academy system, and wanting to work in a full-time environment – you look at the Premier League and it’s the best league in the world. ‘Challenge yourself, strive for your best and see how far you go’ is the way that I’ve always looked at things.

Wanting to work at that top level is not so much for the status of it, but about challenging yourself against the best. Networking with other practitioners, connecting with people and helping athletes at the top level it where I always wanted to be.

I suppose that’s how I carried myself even when I worked in the NPL. My motto has always been whether I’m seeing a nine-year-old in the academy or a first team player, they get the same level of care. All too often I did see, that because they were nine or 10, they were thought about with the mentality of ‘they’re kids, they’ll get back, they’ll be fine, they don’t need anything’. But that’s not the way I see things. That’s why I always had the mentality of treating them like they’re elite players and that’s the standard you set for yourself, and for them as an athlete and as a person.

What was the transition like from the Victorian NPL to the A-League and then to English football?

Tass Amiridis: It was harder than I thought to get work as there’s a few things that you need to do to get qualified over here. Not only registered as a physiotherapist but then also advanced medical training that you need to do to work in the academies and football clubs over here. That process takes time, and I came over in the year of COVID. I didn’t have a job lined up but I knew that I would find work. I was never worried about that in that sense – I was prepared to do anything even if it wasn’t physio work.

I started applying for jobs literally when I was still working in Australia once I had formalised everything and booked flights. I applied for about 40 jobs and got three interviews. I had two of those interviews via zoom when in Cyprus on holiday before heading to the UK and did a second interview face-to-face with Crewe. It all happened relatively quickly once I got the interview but just getting it was tough.

Crewe

What was it like transitioning from Crewe Alexandra to Southampton? How did that come about?

Tass Amiridis: Southampton advertised the role and I applied for it – I know that sounds pretty daft and pretty simple but sometimes roles do get advertised but they’re filled already because they’ve selected someone that they know. It was a three-stage interview process, with a zoom interview, and then a practical interview, and finally a HR zoom interview to finish. I felt good after each interview and felt like I was going to progress. I felt I was what they were looking for and that they were what I was looking for – I was very impressed with the whole process.

The big differences going from one to the other were obviously the facilities. You’ve gone from a category 2 club to a category 1 and obviously Premier League, so the step up was massive. And it’s essentially what I thought it would be. It’s like when you tour other clubs’ facilities and you see that it’s exactly what you thought it would be.

Obviously, the biggest changes were also resources and staff, but the ability to be accountable and be challenged was the big thing. I felt like at Crewe I had lost that towards the end, like I wasn’t getting challenged enough and that the environment wasn’t challenging enough for me. It was just time to move on.

I’m forever indebted to Crewe and they’re a great club and great people to work for, and I’ve still got a lot of close friends and people that I speak to from over there. They’ve had a tough year being relegated but they’ll get back for sure.

At Southampton, what does your day-to-day involve?

Tass Amiridis: Day-to-day we start with a morning meeting and that’s usually with the first team, and we relay our information and updates to them.  We then have our B Team meeting to plan the day and see if any players need any modifications or changes. You have your breakfast and then you’re getting players ready for training and rehab.

When the training session starts, we also have players in the background who are undergoing rehab starting their day. From there your day just bounces around – you could be with your rehab players, running a pitch session and we’re always on radio in case something happens on pitch. It can vary because there’s lots of different moving parts, particularly with the B Team. But the days go super quick and you feel like you’ve done what you need to, but it’s always like ‘wow that flew fast’.

After lunch sometimes the guys will have a second session or a gym session. Typically rehabs will go all day depending on how you’ve periodised it for the week. At the end of the day, you’re planning for the next day and reviewing how things went.

Southampton Academy

How modern are football’s physiotherapy standards when compared to other sports? Do you feel football is a leader in this space?

Tass Amiridis: I think in some instances we are leading and in some instances we’re not. I think sports that are field sports have similar injury profiles of players – hamstring, groin and knee injuries. But it seems to almost go in waves where you have more hamstring injuries and then you might have more groin injuries, or more knee injuries. So it does vary over time.

There’s a lot of good people doing good things in football and they’re world leaders in their field. I think collectively as a group of practitioners and professionals there’s good collaboration between sports, so you’ll often see people from football going over to the States to study and learn from them and vice-versa. I know they do it with AFL sometimes as well.

As physiotherapists from Australia our reputation is world-renowned, and so are sports scientists from Australia. I feel in football generally you probably find your strength and conditioning and your sports science isn’t as big as your other codes, but they do play a significant and important part in the game – especially with the speed of the game, tactics and data measurement changing. I wouldn’t say that we are leaders in everything, but we all learn off each other.

What do you think are the key differences in approaches to physiotherapy and sports science between the Premier League and the A-League?

Tass Amiridis: I was lucky at Western United as I had a fantastic team around me – my line manager Shane Carr was phenomenal as a boss and a person. Daniel Hanna and the sports science guys were all great and we had really good collaboration as a team.

Facilities wise is probably one thing, Western United had not bad facilities considering they were sharing space with Caroline Springs. You had everything you needed essentially and they made use of a gym locally which worked quite well.

The biggest thing I would say – and I wasn’t there long enough to know if things had changed – but during my time there you often didn’t get other companies wanting to give you some CPD around particular products and technology that they might have. Obviously being Premier League, companies want to be affiliated with that, so the exposure to various bits of technology and rehab equipment that you’ve never seen before – because it’s only over here and it’s not a massive market in Australia – is a big difference I’ve noticed.

Sometimes they’re the things that give you that 1-2% difference, because we’re all doing the same thing. Everyone’s squatting and everyone’s deadlifting effectively in the gym but other technologies to improve your hand-eye coordination and your reactive speed is where the cutting-edge stuff comes in. And that’s probably the Premier League level where they just have that in abundance.

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Sydney Derby viewership revealed as Network 10 back football on primary channel

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Image Credits: A-League

Friday night’s opening fixture of the 2026/27 A-League Men’s season reached reached an audience of 434,000 people nationally across the free-to-air 10 Network. Less than a week on from the 207,000 that watched the Australia Cup final, it represents further reason to be cautiously optimistic about the season ahead.

Network 10 broadcast the Sydney Derby on it’s primary station, as opposed to last season’s airing on 10 Drama. The shift gives the opening match of the season a more prominent place on free-to-air television; whether the network continues to select choice matches to enjoy this status remains to be seen.

The figures show a positive trend in comparison to January’s meeting of the same sides, which attracted total broadcast audience of 114,000 and a national reach of 258,000 on Channel 10. Both matches faced fierce TV competition with January’s match rivalling the Australian Open on Nine and the 2026/2027 opener with the 2026 Men’s & Women’s Rugby League World Cup airing matches across the Seven Network on the same night.

The opening-round figure offers an early indication of the audience the competition can attract. Future rounds will show whether the A-League can maintain that reach across the season. The league will also look to convert that television exposure into sustained interest in its clubs and matches. Strong viewing figures can help strengthen the case for football in the Australian sporting market.

For now, the 434,000 national audience alongside strong attendance at the Australia Cup final provides a positive starting point for the 2026/27 campaign. The next challenge is to build on that audience as the season progresses.

‘We’re on our own’: Malvern City’s fight for a fair go

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Image Credit: Malvern City FC

At Malvern City Football Club, the problem isn’t finding girls who want to play football.

It is finding appropriate facilities for their growing cohort of young girls to play at.

The club now has close to 100 girls in its female program, built up over the past six years. But at Sir Zelman Cowen Park, which Malvern City has called home for decades, there are no dedicated female change rooms or toilets.

Instead, there are shared facilities, public toilets and, according to club President John Hatzis, situations in which parents, coaches and team managers have had to effectively stand guard so girls can use the toilets without others entering.

“The problem we’ve got is that the public toilets are often locked, or they’re just not accessible,” Hatzis told Soccerscene

The result, he says, is a bizarre and frankly uncomfortable workaround: adults physically blocking the toilets so girls can use them.

That is the human face of what has become a much bigger argument about sporting infrastructure in the City of Stonnington.

It is the sort of arrangement that might have been observed decades ago.

Not something we see in 2026.

Malvern City isn’t a small club asking ratepayers to build it a palace.

It has more than 800 registered players. Its female program is approaching 100 participants. Its junior high-performance program is thriving, while its senior men’s side just earned promotion to VPL1.

And yet its president says the club has spent years being told, essentially, to wait.

“We’re doing everything right as a club,” Hatzis says.

“But every year around this time, we get teams of girls, we get teams of boys coming over to us and we’re saying, ‘We can’t help you. We just don’t have the facilities.’”

That should concern more than just football people.

Where Stonnington chooses to spend

Stonnington is not a municipality that pinches its pennies on sport – far from it.

The council recently completed the Stonnington Sports Centre at Percy Treyvaud Reserve, a $49.9 million project described by council as its largest-ever investment in community sport. The project delivered new facilities for tennis, lawn bowls, cricket, lacrosse, netball and basketball, as well as four indoor courts and more than 200 undercover car spaces. A project where the council contributed $45.9 million.

There are also millions more in the current and forward capital programs.

The 2026-27 budget includes $600,000 for maintenance and renewal works at Malvern Valley Golf Course. Sports-ground asset renewal and oval reconstruction programs amount to about $13.5 million over the forward program to be carried over the next decade. Pavilion renewal is worth roughly $7.3 million over the same period, while outdoor tennis facilities have a forward renewal program of about $3.3 million.

There is a roughly $10.4 million forward program attached to Central Park Pavilion and about $7 million for Waverley Oval Pavilion.

None of this means football is entitled to an equal slice of every dollar.

Many of these facilities are shared between sports. A cricket oval can also be an AFL ground. A sportsground renewal program can benefit soccer as well as football. Money allocated to floodlights or pavilions cannot simply be stamped with one sport’s logo.

A $66 million gap — and a question of priorities

There is no doubt Stonnington, too, has a legitimate argument on the other side.

Council has identified an enormous backlog of sporting infrastructure needs. Its own figures suggest about $124 million in required investment, with only about $58 million currently funded over the coming decade.

That leaves a gap of roughly $66 million.

The council cannot fix everything at once.

But that is precisely why the argument over Malvern City is worth having.

Hatzis does not dispute there are competing demands. In fact, one of the more revealing parts of our conversation was his admission that football itself bears some responsibility.

For years, he says, football clubs have simply found a way to survive.

“The squeaky wheel receives the oil,” he said.

“Obviously, we haven’t been squeaking enough over many decades and we’ve just made do with what we’ve got.”

That is a remarkably candid admission from a club president trying to make a case against his local council.

But Hatzis believes patience has run out.

A decade of planning, but no clear timeline

Malvern City has been at Zelman Cowen for almost half a century. The club says the pavilion dates back to the late 1980s, and despite repeated approaches to council, there is still no funded redevelopment of the facility in the current budget.

The council is now undertaking a 10-year Sport and Recreation Plan for Zelman Cowen, following consultation with more than 400 community members. The park contains five sports fields covering roughly 47,500 square metres and caters for football, Australian rules football, baseball, cricket, athletics and ultimate frisbee.

Council acknowledges that the precinct is under increasing pressure and that its future planning needs to consider accessibility, safety, gender equity and universal design.

But planning is not building.

And a plan without funding is a very long way from a toilet that actually works.

That is Hatzis’ frustration.

“We’re being constantly told that there’s a plan to redevelop Zelman Cowen,” he says.

“But the problem is that there is no funding.”

His estimate is that Malvern City could be seven-to-ten years away from seeing meaningful redevelopment.

Fair Access in policy, barriers in practice

That is where the council’s own rhetoric around women’s sport becomes important.

Stonnington’s sports infrastructure planning recognises that many older sporting facilities were not designed for equitable participation by women and girls.

That is not an abstract policy problem at Zelman Cowen.

There are girls standing outside a toilet.

There are parents being asked to intervene.

And there are young players who, he fears, could eventually decide that the inconvenience isn’t worth it.

“If they’re not willing to fund it, then how long can clubs fund it?” he asks.

That is the question Stonnington needs to answer.

Not because Malvern City should automatically jump to the front of the queue, but because the council needs to be able to explain why it has placed this particular queue in the order it has.

The comparison with other sporting facilities is inevitably going to be uncomfortable.

Hatzis points to the state-of-the-art facilities available to some AFL and cricket clubs. He points to major investment at Toorak Park and the new Stonnington Sports Centre.

His argument is that Malvern City would be prepared to meet council halfway.

Malvern City is willing to meet council halfway

The club would lobby state and federal governments. It would seek private funding. It would even ask its own support base to contribute.

“We’d be happy to go and lobby the state and federal government to help us with the funding,” Hatzis says.

“And even creating some private funding. I’d be happy to get our support base to help with that also.”

That matters, because this isn’t simply a demand that ratepayers write Malvern City’s club a cheque.

It is a demand for a pathway. Give us a plan. Give us a timeframe. Give us something to work towards.

Instead, Hatzis says, the message from council has become increasingly difficult to accept.

“The communication coming down the line that we don’t have any funding is absolutely wearing thin.”

Football’s missing support

One of the more damning parts of our conversation wasn’t even about the council.

Hatzis says he has repeatedly contacted Football Victoria seeking support. He says he has been told someone would contact him to begin an engagement process and that Malvern City is an important part of the fabric of Victorian football.

That call is yet to come, which raises an uncomfortable possibility: perhaps Malvern City’s problem isn’t just that it has failed to convince Stonnington; perhaps it’s that football itself has historically been too willing to accept second-best facilities and making do.

Football has grown enormously in the past 25 years, while girl’s and women’s football in particular has exploded across the past decade. Clubs are increasingly expected to provide pathways from junior participation to elite competition.

Yet the infrastructure beneath that growth has not kept pace.

A story bigger than one club

That is where Stonnington’s own Fair Access Policy becomes particularly difficult to reconcile with what is happening at Zelman Cowen.

The council says the policy is designed to address “known barriers” experienced by women and girls in accessing community sport facilities, before acknowledging in its budget that implementing Fair Access will require “significant new funding”.

It is a remarkable admission: the council recognises the barriers, recognises that its sporting infrastructure needs to change, yet the girls at Malvern City are still being asked to wait for the money to make that change happen.

Malvern City’s story is therefore bigger than one pavilion.

It is about what happens when a sport grows faster than the facilities designed to accommodate it.

And it is about whether councils can continue to promote female participation while asking girls to accept facilities that would be considered unacceptable in other parts of community life.

Stonnington says it has limited resources.

That is undoubtedly true.

But scarcity does not remove the responsibility to explain the choices being made.

If there is $600,000 available for one year’s renewal and maintenance at a golf course, if millions are flowing through tennis, pavilion and sports-ground programs, and if a $49.9 million flagship sporting centre can be delivered, then telling Malvern City simply that there is “no funding” is not really an answer.

It is only the beginning of the question.

Why that facility?

Why now?

Why them?

And why not Zelman Cowen?

Malvern City has spent decades making do.

Its president admits the club has not always been loud enough.

But over the last decade, that has changed.

“We’re doing everything right as a club,” Hatzis says.

“We need to be heard”

Perhaps the real test for Stonnington now is not whether it can find enough money to fix every sporting facility in the municipality.

It clearly cannot.

The test is whether, when the council sits down to decide who waits another decade and who moves forward. Malvern City, a club with more than 800 players, a senior men’s program that is among Victoria’s elite, and a growing cohort of girls can make a convincing enough case to finally move up the list.

Because asking girls to wait years for a proper place to change is not a particularly convincing way to build the future of women’s sport.

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