5s expert to assist Fiji soccer
8-Aug-2009 10:24 AM

FORMER Australian national 5-a-side coach Scot Gilligan will be assisting the Fiji Football Association to set up a proper programme for development of Futsal soccer in Fiji.

Gilligan who is the current Oceania Futsal Development Officer will be in the country on August 23 and will work with national soccer coach Saiyad Ali and other development officers.

Ali revealed yesterday that he would be meeting with Fiji FA president Doctor Sahu Khan after the Inkk Mobile BOG tournament and provide him detailed reports on Fiji’s performance in the recent Futsal soccer tournament and the beach soccer tourney in Tahiti, where Fiji performed very badly finishing with the ‘wooden spoon’.

“Definitely the performance of our national side showed that we need far more development to properly groom our Futsal and beach soccer team.

“Fiji FA is very serious in developing our national team for these two particular sport.

“A request was made to Scot Gilligan to come down and assist Fiji FA to set up a proper plan towards developing Futsal soccer in Fiji.

“We are glad that he accepted our request and will be in the country for three weeks in the next few weeks.

“He has a lot of expertise in Futsal soccer as he has been the former Australian five-a-side coach so we hope to learn a lot from him.”

The former Navua coach added that they will involve a lot of school teachers in the three-week workshop by Gilligan so that proper development of Futsal soccer starts from the grass roots level.

Ali stressed that they are optimistic that a platform set by Gilligan will see much better results by our national Futsal soccer team in the years to come.

By Sanjay Goundar