Robbie Fowler has found a place in the sun, one where he can still be a star on the field yet be anonymous off it.
The ex-Liverpool striker, nicknamed “God” by his fans at the Kop when he was at the height of his goal-scoring powers in the English Premier League, has reinvented himself as a football missionary in a two-season deal with new Australian A-League club the North Queensland Fury.
After an important goal to earn the Fury its first home win in Round 12, he moved to second place in the league’s scoring list with a double in last weekend’s 2-0 win over Gold Coast United.
Three goals in two matches have lifted his tally to eight at the midway point of Australia’s season. And it has dragged the club off the bottom of the table after it opened with three losses.
Not that Fowler thinks it’s because he’s only now finding his range.
“I think I settled in straight away. From the minute I touched down in Townsville, I’ve been made to feel like one of the lads,” he said after his two-goal performance on the Gold Coast. “I’ve said right from the start, it’s not about scoring goals. The most important thing is getting three points. If I’m scoring, or somebody else is scoring, it doesn’t really matter.”
There were plenty of questions asked about his motives when the 34-year-old former England international chose not to pursue another Premier League deal and, instead, relocated his wife and four children to the transport and agricultural hub of 160,000 people in tropical north Queensland.
It’s hot all year and usually humid, even in the monsoonal downpours, and it’s about as far away from the premiership as he could have got in the English-speaking world.
There was speculation he would quit even before he started. After all, he’d reportedly turned his back on an earlier offer from the more glamorous Sydney FC - the same club where ex-Manchester United striker Dwight Yorke spent his time in the A-League.
Critics said Fowler was overweight and supposed he only wanted to holiday on the Great Barrier Reef, or was only in it for the cash.
Fury coach Ian Ferguson, a Scot, was never among the doubters.
“If he’s in holiday mode, I can’t even imagine what he’d be like if he was taking it seriously,” Ferguson told The Associated Press. “Robbie’s an absolute professional. A star player - a marquee for us and the league.
“He’s got too much status, too much pride to put at stake to come here and just have a holiday.”
Football Federation Australia, which re-launched the national competition as the A-League in 2005-06, is delighted with Fowler. Average crowds have dropped across the league from a peak of 14,600 per match in 2007—08 to roughly 10,000 this season, but the FFA says that is because there are more teams and the venues are further afield.
Getting crowds of 7,000 to Townsville matches is a real coup, considering it is home to successful teams in national rugby league and basketball competitions.
“Robbie Fowler is a model marquee player,” the FFA’s spokeswoman Bonita Mersiades, told the AP. “Not only is he exemplary off the field and helping to build football’s profile in North Queensland and elsewhere, but he has been outstanding on the field.
“His class as a player is a joy to watch and his eight goals so far this season include at least four that are goal-of-the-season contenders.”
Gold Coast midfielder Michael Thwaites, got a close up look as Fowler’s sweetly timed strike gave the Fury a lead in the 64th minute last weekend.
“He taught us a lesson,” Thwaites said.
Only 2,616 were at the match amid a protest against Gold Coast United’s billionaire owner Clive Palmer’s decision to impose a cap of 5,000 on the crowd to save $100,000 in venue operational costs.
Michael Fenson, an Englishman wearing the Fowler No. 9 on his back, was among the sprinkling of fans wearing green Fury jerseys.
Fenson has lived in Australia for four years and has attended two A-League matches - both to see Fowler. He said he’d been watching Fowler since he scored on first-team debut in the league cup at Fulham in 1993, then scored five goals in the return match.
“He’s as good a finisher as I’ve ever seen,” Fenson said moments before Fowler scored in the 64th, then he laughed and continued, “See. He’s got a gift.”
While he’s made himself at home in Australia, from where he controls his vast English property portfolio remotely, Fowler is being careful not to get too comfortable.
“I’ve been told that back home they reckon I consider myself Aussie these days,” Fowler wrote in a newspaper column. “I posed for a photo to help out Australia’s 2018 football World Cup bid, agreeing to hold up a green and gold scarf. When I came over here, from the start I have said I will do anything that can help promote the sport in this country and I have kept my word.
“Of course England are a rival to host that year, so it hasn’t gone down well back home.”
So he wanted to set the record straight.
“Obviously, being English, and with it being in 2018, I’ll probably be back home then, so I would like to see the World Cup there,” he said. “But if England don’t get it I think Australia would deserve it.”
In Sydney, the club had a Beatles tribute band playing and a red double-decker bus parked outside the stadium to welcome Fowler. In north Queensland, rugby league territory, Fowler had “been a slow burner,” the Townsville Bulletin’s sports editor, Ray Andersen, says. But Fowler’s recent exploits are changing that.
“To be honest, he’s probably had a bigger impact on the rest of the league than he has here so far,” Andersen told the AP in a telephone interview. “He could walk around town, people aren’t mobbing him in the streets like they would be in Liverpool.
“Coming from England, where you’re in that environment where you’re life’s in the spotlight all the time, he’s probably enjoying keeping out of it a bit.”
The Fury is averaging 6,975 fans at Dairy Farmers Stadium, which seats 25,000 and is frequently full when the North Queensland Cowboys’ home National Rugby League matches.
But even the Cowboys fans have been curious, and with the NRL in recess and with the Fury winning back-to-back for the first time, Andersen and others are convinced Fowler will start pulling bigger crowds.
“By the end of the season, he’ll go down in the short history of the A-league as the most influential of the marquee players,” Andersen said.
Ferguson also has no doubt Fowler will leave his legacy in Australia.
“He’s genuine in what he’s doing here,” Ferguson says. “You only need to see the impact he has on the other lads to know that.”
