Dave Zitko from St Louis Blues Goes Down Under
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Back in January, I received a message on Facebook from a guy I played footy with on the U23 Revolution team a couple years ago. The Revolution is the U.S. National team and the U23 team is the team for players 23 years old and younger. He asked me if I was interested in playing in Australia for a season. I replied back and said I was interested, and shortly after got an email from the Revolution head coach, Matt Bishop. At the time, I had no idea what was happening, but several people were working to find a team for me in Australia.
A couple months went by and I didn't hear anything, so I started to count it out. At the time, I was going to be graduating from college in May, so I had to start job searching if things weren't going to work out. I decided to follow up with Matt and see if any progress had been made. He said he hadn't heard anything. I told myself that I'd give it until the end of March, and if nothing came up, I would start searching for a job stateside. A week after that I was contacted by Tony Fairhead, the United States Australian Football League liaison for placing Americans on teams in Australia, and was told a club had been found for me.
Once I got the news, I applied for a work visa and did some more waiting. After a month, I received the visa, let everyone know, and was then informed that they had a different team for me but were working out living arrangements. I put all of this in the back of my mind as I finished up with final exams and notified work I would be leaving soon. A couple weeks later, Tony emailed me back and said that everything was set up, and that I should buy a plane ticket and head down as soon as I could.
A week and a half later, and here I am in Australind, Western Australia. I'm living with one of the guys on the team, Adrian, and his friend Kara. I haven't got any work sorted out yet, but that should be happening soon. As far as footy goes, I'm pretty excited. I'm playing for the Harvey Brunswick Lions in the South West Football League and just played in my first game this weekend.
More on that next time.
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