about us mission statement

Early in 2004 a couple of executive members of the then Futsal Austalia body decided to start an association playing the original South American brand of futsal, called FIFUSA, rather than continue playing one of the dead end, non international representative styles of futsal.

As most new futsal bodies have, FAO started off with plenty of gusto and politics but little loyalty to the players and the sport.

In April 2004 meetings were held between parties from Queensland, NSW and Victoria and the lobbying started, with this person and that offering support in their efforts to win positions on the new executive, and the back stabbing was fascinating to watch. After the decision to become a Proprietary Limited company things got really spiteful, so spiteful in fact that when our present Chairman, Mr Raymond Janes, went to Paraguay for the AMF World Congress in June 2004 as Australia’s futsal representative, another man, with no formal connection with futsal, turned up representing the old body and claiming he was the official representative for Australia. It became obvious that some people would go to any lengths to disrupt FFAO’s future.

In those early days Ray Janes’ position was, as it eventually turned out, sole financier as well as Technical Director. All the future share holders and investors pulled out when they could not topple a company set-up, thus making it impossible for them to create havoc in making changes whenever they couldn’t get their own way. When the dust eventually settled very few of the ‘gunners’ were left and on the 1st September 2004 FAO Pty Ltd was launched.

New South Wales had one club (Coniston), Victoria had four clubs (Ballarat, Bairnsdale, Wellington and Woodend), and QISFA eventually affiliated on 1st November but it became very obvious almost immediately that one state was not going to adhere to national policy

The extent of their disruptiveness became obvious on the eve of FAO’s first National Championships held in NSW in January 2005 when they withdrew 15 teams from the club championships, creating major problems. Yet despite all this upheaval FAO survived and over all, the championships were a success.

Following this, other major problems began to surface. Having estimated the total player base for insurance purposes, and having contracted to pay $79,000.00 for the year, several clubs deliberately withheld many player’s registration fees. Add to this, two state bodies had received a very large percentage of the player registration fees to build up their own states (the only state that did not accept this offer was Victoria). This left the national body in debt to the total tune of $40,000.00. In May 2005 Mr Di Meglio resigned as Chairman citing personal reasons.

It was at this point that Ray and Lin Janes bought FAO and its debts, changed the name to The Futsal Federation of Australia and Oceania Pty Ltd and started to reshape the FFAO sport.

Having inherited a large debt and a further $55,000.00 worth of insurance the future did not look promising. However, under the careful guidance of the Chairman, FFAO has started to move forward.

On the 11th and 12th June 2005 a National League for both men and women kicked off and although it was only a small competition (5 men’s teams and 3 women’s) it was very successful. Disappointingly, shortly afterwards the Timberwolves team from ACT dropped out.

In August/September 2005 a young but very successful men’s national team went to Mirney City, Russia, for 19 days to the AMF World Cup, finishing in 7th place. This tour enabled Ray Janes to cement his affiliation with the AMF as well as build up a good case for being accepted into the UEFS (European Futsal Federation).

So, at the end of the first year the record showed it to be a financial disaster, immensely stressful but very enlightening as to the personnel involved in the sport and their political agendas, but more importantly, the promise that there was the opportunity for incredible progress on the horizon.

In fulfilment of that promise the second year has seen FFAO take some major leaps forward. In December 2005 FFAO gained affiliation to the UEFS at a special European Futsal Congress in Ukraine. This has opened up Europe for our national and club sides to compete at the highest levels of the sport. Because of this affiliation last year’s National League Champions, Sola Electric, are off to Spain in May to compete in the European Club Championships. Junior representative teams are even now in the process of being selected for the 1st European Junior Championships to be held in the Ukraine and Russia (Moscow) later this year. The men’s National team will play in the European Championships in Spain in November 2006 and Russia, Ukraine and Spain will tour and play in the Inter-Continental Cup to be held in Australia in January 2007.

In January this year the first round of the 2006 National League saw the men’s division move out to 7 teams, the women’s division out to 4 and for the first time ever in futsal, a junior national league commenced with a competition for 11 and 13 year olds. Unfortunately this competition saw some disruption and even age cheating, and two senior selectors spat the dummy over personal politics.

The National Board has come to its final conclusion over personnel, clubs, state bodies etc which it inherited and by May of this year it will have concluded a major overhaul of its policies and personnel and will move forward in fulfilling its Mission Statement.