Perth was always a bridge too far. Football, as Johnny Warren liked to say, was the first sport in Australia to go national. In 1977, the country's first national football competition, the National Soccer League, fielded teams from New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Canberra. In 1978 Newcastle KB United entered the competition, but Western Australia remained the missing link. “It is everyone’s wish,” wrote Soccer Federation of Western Australia chairman Brian Le Fevre in 1978, “that in the long term Western Australia will be in a position to participate in the national competition.”

It would take almost two decades for Le Fevre’s wish to come true. The story of Perth Glory’s entry into the NSL in 1996-97 is now well known, and tends to dominate discussion of football in Western Australia. Before the Glory, however, there was the Perth Kangaroos International Football Club, an all-conquering side that participated in the Singapore Premier League for one season in 1994.

The story of the Perth Kangaroos is equal parts innovation, entrepreneurialism, betrayal and disorganisation. At the 1990 World Cup Tom Mackay – a former reporter for Scottish newspaper the Press and Journal - had a chance encounter with Sir Alex Ferguson. Ferguson and Mackay discussed why Australian football was not in better shape. “You have superb athletes, a strong economy, many migrants from countries where football is the major sport and a wonderful climate,” Ferguson told Mackay. “Yet your country has only qualified once for the World Cup.” According to Mackay, this conversation motivated him to become involved in the administration of the game in Western Australia, which had been his home since 1979. Upon his return, he was appointed president of the new Soccer Association of Western Australia. “I made it very clear from the start that my main ambition was to get a Perth side into the national league,” Mackay told Guardian Australia.

The idea for a Perth-based team to play in Singapore was announced in 1993, as a partnership between SAWA and a private consortium. “This is the first time a team from any football code in Australia has played in a major competition in a foreign country,” said Mackay at the time. “Whoever wins the licence will be spearheading Australia's entry into the Asian soccer scene.” By March, the Kangaroos were promising bumper crowds and high quality football.

Perhaps the cancellation of the pre-season friendly in March should have served as a greater warning. The Kangaroos recruited all 29 of their initial squad from local State League clubs, with 10 selected from Perth Italia, a particularly strong side. Italia, unsurprisingly, were not happy. As the Kangaroos prepared to play Selangor in a friendly match, Perth Italia slapped writs on five key players – Gareth and Craig Naven, Dale Wingell, Vince Matassa and Paul Strudwick. The game was called off, Western Australia’s sport and recreation minister, Norman Moore, called it a “debacle” and SAWA was forced to quickly negotiate a compromise between the Kangaroos and the State League clubs. It was a sign of things to come. “It was one crisis after another,” remembers Mackay. “One thing you need when forming a team like this is stability, and that’s one thing that the Perth Kangaroos never ever had.”

Perth’s Asian adventure was born out of the continued reluctance of the Australian Soccer Federation to establish a NSL team in Western Australia. During the 1980s, the NSL had become something of a holy grail for Western Australians. Richard Kreider's definitive history of Western Australian football, Paddocks to Pitches, notes that Spearwood Dalmatinac looked to join the league as early as 1983. In 1987, the merger of three Italian clubs – East Fremantle Tricolore, Balcatta Etna and Perth Azzuri – under the name Perth Italia was another effort to gain entry into the competition. Nick Tana was heavily involved in the merger. “Self interest was rife through the ASF at the time,” Tana told Guardian Australia. “It was clear that to do something in a national league you had to have all the states playing.”

The push for a Perth team intensified after the 1990 Bradley Report to the ASF recommended wide-ranging reform to the national competition. Football was politically disorganised, financially destitute and losing the battle with mainstream Australia’s thinly-veiled chauvinism towards ethnic-based clubs, which dominated the competition. Soccer was seen as a poor, foreign basket-case.

“To achieve the level of prestige required,” wrote the report’s author, Graham Bradley. “The competition needs to be truly national and include teams from all states.” Bradley argued for the game to shed its “ethnic image” and for steps to be taken to franchise the clubs. Further, Bradley recommended that “every state and major population centre in Australia should be represented”, and financial arrangements be made to accommodate Perth, which, with most NSL clubs based on the eastern seaboard, would become one of the longest away trips in world football.

Much of the Bradley Report fell by the wayside as football’s culture of political infighting and cronyism continued to stymie progress. Western Australia was one of the victims of this inertia, as the ASF flirted with the idea of establishing a team for several years without fully committing. Tom Mackay spent years lobbying the ASF in his role as president of SAWA. “Nearly all the other states delegates in the ASF opposed the proposal claiming Perth, an Aussie Rules stronghold, would not get enough spectator support”, Mackay remembers. “The real reason why the eastern states were against a team from Perth was the extra money the ASF would have to find to cover the cost of team airfares between the east and west coast. Twenty years ago flights took longer, and none of the clubs in those days had money to help overcome the problems of airfares.”

In early 1993, the ASF chief executive, Ian Holmes, commented “the sooner we have a team from Perth, and also the ACT, to create a truly national league, then the better.” Teams from Perth were encouraged to table a bid to the governing body, while plans were also being made in football circles in New Zealand and Canberra. By March 1993, it was clear that the Perth bid would not eventuate. “After more than three years of fruitless lobbying, I could see little prospect of the ASF admitting a Perth team to the competition,” Mackay said. “We needed to look at other ways of convincing the Federation that we were worthy of admission.”

In June 1993, Frank Schaper, the president of the Professional Soccer Association, flew to Singapore to discuss entering a team into the Singapore Premier League. “The NSL is still the priority for us and we want to make sure we are the next team that is admitted,” said acting secretary of SAWA, Richard Marles. “If it is a National League it should encompass the whole of Australia before it goes overseas.

“But the Asian competition would certainly enable us to clear out a lot of the cobwebs. We would get accustomed to the problems of travelling and would have a squad of players training full time as a unit unlike the combined teams that represent the state now.”

Along with Darwin Cubs, a new side backed by Carlton and United Breweries in the Northern Territory, the Perth team were granted a three year licence to the Singapore Premier League, with an option to renegotiate after the first season. Schaper, a key figure in organising the venture, resigned from the PSF to head up the Global Football Australia, the organisation that ran the team. Mackay was appointed to the board of GFA to “keep an eye on things” for SAWA. The Kangaroos name was chosen by popular demand, the team was linked with National Basketball League side Perth Wildcats, while Radio 6NR came on board to broadcast the games. British football show Futball Mundial commissioned a feature story on the Kangaroos, to be shown on ABC. Like the rest of the country, football in Perth was deeply rooted in immigrant and ethnic communities. This new team was supposed to broaden that base. The Kangaroos targeted ‘mainstream’ Australia.

Perth Kangaroos gave away tickets in promotions in order to publicise football in WA. Photograph: /Richard Kreider Photograph: Richard Kreider

Perth Kangaroos won their first match against Gibraltar Crescent 2-0, which was followed up by a 4-1 drubbing of Geylang International. Before the match against Gibraltar Crescent, Schaper said, “the result would be quite irrelevant to me. We want the crowds to come … we have actually given out about 10,000 tickets to the general public – not to the soccer fraternity here – because we want soccer to catch on in Western Australia.”

However, the competition hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons as the team traveled to Singapore. “Kangaroos warned of Singapore bribes” screamed the back page of the West Australian before their match against Tyrwhitt Soccerites. Match-fixing and bribery were alleged to be prevalent in Singapore, with many fans seen openly gambling on outcomes during the match. According to the West Australian’s football reporter Mel Moffat “illegal betting on the outcome of the game was clearly evident.” Tyrwhitt’s Croatian goalkeeper was jeered off the field when fans alleged that he had succumbed to a bribe, while supporters who had placed bets on a 2-0 outcome pleaded with Kangaroos players to not score any more goals. The Kangaroos won 3-0.

The bribery claims were not the only factor affecting the perception of the Kangaroos and the Singapore Premier League in Perth. It became clear that the Australian sides were simply too good for the opposition. After just a few rounds both Perth and Darwin Cubs had raced to the top of the table with impressive goal differences.

On 17 April, the Kangaroos thumped Jurong Town 11-0 at home, with Paul McVittie and Paul Strudwick scoring a hat-trick each. The first goal came after just 80 seconds, when McVittie headed home Strudwick’s cross. “The Perth Kangaroos will win the Singapore championship after what I have seen here,” said Jurong Town coach Krisnan Suppaiah. The locals were less impressed – “the one-sided nature of the contest might have done the credibility of the competition more harm than good” wrote Moffat in the West Australian.

Meanwhile, in the State League, infighting continued to plague the sport. Plans were made to force clubs to de-ethnicise their names after crowd trouble between Greek-backed Floreat Athena and Stirling Macedonia. The Australian government had formally recognised the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia earlier in the year, and, typically, the angst that went with the decision was played out on soccer fields around the country.

Despite the early setbacks, the Perth Kangaroos did put football in Perth in a brighter spotlight. Vince Matassa was told by national coach Eddie Thomson that he must play at a higher level than the State League in order to be considered for selection. “That’s why it was vital that I was initially included in the Kangaroos squad” Matassa told the West Australian. The Kangaroos were also a focal point for Thomson when he arrived in Perth to assess the local talent for his Olyroos squad. Moreover, Thomson threw his support behind Perth, commenting “it’s vital that Perth gets in the NSL. Players like Robert Zabica, Robbie Dunn and Stan Lazaridis would never have been capped for Australia had they stayed in Perth and there must be a lot more like them in Perth who could do likewise with proper exposure.”

In early May, rumours continued that Perth were in line for a NSL licence, with SAWA executive director Roger Lefort commenting that there was “strong interest” shown by a private consortium who were willing to bankroll the club. However, the pitfalls of private ownership quickly became evident as Global Football Australia pulled out the Kangaroos venture, leaving players and coaches in the lurch mid-season. It was a horror week for the Kangaroos, who were forced to postpone their match against Balestier United after confusion over flights, as well as losing their major backer.

Global’s pullout came after they became increasingly disillusioned at the way in which the competition was being run. Promised big things by the Football Association of Singapore, including competitive matches and television exposure in Asia, instead, the competition was second rate and sponsors were hard to come by. “We feel we’ve been let down on several fronts,” Mackay told the West Australian. “The FAS has not promoted the tournament vigorously, it withdrew the best players to keep them exclusively for the national team which plays in the Malaysian league, and it has not met commitments regarding TV coverage, which has harmed our chances of gaining sponsorship.”

With crisis looming, SAWA found a saviour in Arena Investments, a group of businessmen headed by Nick Tana, Paul Afkos and Anthony Di Francesco. Nick Tana had coveted an NSL spot since the merger of Perth Italia in 1987, and behind the scenes, Arena Investments were lobbying for a licence. “At the same time we were courting the eastern states to having a team from Western Australia in the national league,” Tana told Guardian Australia. “We never went into it [Perth Kangaroos] with a view to continuing with it or expanding it or developing it. I suppose it was damage control so that it didn’t spill over onto our purposes and our plans.

“We knew that getting into the national league was going to be an expense. The last thing we needed was a distraction like the Kangaroos to add to the expense. I suppose it’s like insurance. We had to take out the insurance of finishing off that season so we could limit the fallout.”

While Arena Investments were willing to front for the Kangaroos’ remaining accommodation and travel expenses, they would not pay wages. The players were left with a difficult choice: play on and preserve their undefeated run for no pay, or return to their State League clubs. There was little recourse for the playing group, and with the players union still in its early days, there was nobody to lobby on their behalf.

With an NSL licence on the horizon and big business onside, the players did not want to cause trouble. Except for McVittie, most played on, despite estimates that the squad would lose $80,000 in wages. “The players could easily have withdrawn from the venture and got paid by playing for their PSF clubs at the weekend,” said coach Gary Marocchi after a 3-0 win over Singapore’s Police Team in Singapore. “But they’ve made the commitment for the long-term good of the game in WA.”

In an effort to bring in greater revenue and generate interest for the lagging competition, the Kangaroos switched to night games. Previously, amateurs who played on Sundays found it difficult to attend the afternoon fixtures, robbing the team of a core group of supporters. Junior clinics with the players were also organised in order to connect the team with the local community. Meanwhile, the first head rolled over the Global Football Association pullout, with Mackay resigning as president of SAWA, acknowledging: “I have to accept some accountability.”

“It was a bitter pill to swallow” Mackay told Guardian Australia, who says his resignation was one of the conditions that Arena Investments had placed before SAWA in order to take over the licence. “But if my resignation would let SAWA off the hook and enable the Kangaroos to play out the season it was was the right thing for me to do.” Tana believes that the slate simply needed to be wiped clean.

Things began to look less bleak. Before resigning, Mackay was informed by the ASF that a Perth team would be allowed into the NSL as soon as possible. It was a “consolation” for the man who had spent so much time lobbying for the cause. By June, the ASF confirmed that Perth would enter the competition in 1995, with Arena Investments tipped to take the Kangaroos into the NSL. For the ASF, there was more than just internal pressures to include Perth. In 1995, the ARL established the first ever Western Australian rugby league side, the Western Reds, while the Fremantle Dockers entered the AFL. The football marketplace had never been so crowded in Western Australia, and soccer needed its own foothold.

In July, as attention increasingly turned towards entry into the NSL, the Kangaroos completed the formalities by taking out the Singapore Premier League title with a fortnight remaining in the competition. Turning in what Marocchi described as their “worst performance at home”, the Kangaroos still managed a 5-0 victory over Singapore Police at Dorrien Gardens. The financial reward was $70,000, although it was reported that Arena Investments still recorded a loss of $20,000. The players, of course, got nothing. As the final three matches were effectively dead rubbers, players returned to their State League duties. Captain Gareth Naven, Scott Miller and Dale Wingell were all recalled to Perth Italia, leaving Gary Marocchi frustrated once again. Italia refused to budge – “we have given more players to the Kangaroos than any other club” said secretary Maria Ieleti – forcing Marocchi and assistant Micky Brennan to pull on the boots against Tiong Bahru. The team which began in turmoil with Perth Italia would end in much the same way.

The Perth Kangaroos were, in many ways, reflective of the spirit of Australian football in the 1990s. If, as football historian Roy Hay wrote of the 1980s, “soccer marked time while others moved ahead”, in the 1990s the sport flailed about for a solution, and still the other codes moved ahead. A great many experiments were undertaken by Australian football in the 1990s in an effort to push the game beyond its traditional boundaries. Full of optimism and vision, in Perth, soccer again led the way among the football codes in establishing ties with Asia. “It caused a lot of interest”, Mackay says, “because they [ASF] had been eyeing Asia for a long long while. They saw it as a move away from Oceania. I think they were a bit upset that we had stolen the march, so to speak, by going in by ourselves.”

Alas, football’s entrepreneurial spirit and lofty goals have also been its great downfall. Vision and governance rarely operated in unison during the NSL, and lessons were rarely learnt in failure. The Perth Kangaroos, however, might be an exception. In October 1994, five months after coming to the rescue of the Kangaroos, Arena Investments were officially awarded a licence by the ASF, becoming the first privately owned club in the NSL. The Kangaroos were culled, and plans for a new team, Perth Glory, were finalised. “Conceptually, what the Kangaroos were all about was good,” Tana says. “It was just targeted at the wrong league.”

In the Glory were remnants of the Kangaroos. Entering the NSL in 1996, Roger Lefort was appointed general manager, while Gary Marocchi was named head coach. Ex-Kangaroos dominated the playing staff, with Vince Matassa, Paul McVittie, Paul Strudwick, Dale Wingell, Vladimir Beretovac and the Naven twins Craig and Gareth forming the core of the squad. According to Mackay, the Kangaroos experiment got the players to gel as a unit and accustomed to long flights. “Because we were flying up there every second weekend, we got used to the travel, so when Perth Glory came along most of the players didn’t think anything of the traveling,” says Mackay. Tana agrees: “In essence they had already done some of the work for us, what we didn’t want to do was take any of the hierarchy with it.”

Current Perth Glory chief executive Jason Brewer says there will be an effort to recognise the 20th anniversary of the Perth Kangaroos players at their annual ‘People’s Game’ celebrations on 5 April. “Without the Perth Kangaroos there would be no Perth Glory” says Brewer. To this day, 20 years after Perth Kangaroos entered the Singapore Premier League, Mackay remains a foundation member of Perth Glory. “I enjoyed the Glory matches as a spectator,” he recalls of the club’s first season. “They were a very good side, they had passion and the experience of the Kangaroos experiment. They knew how important it was to get a club into the National Soccer League.”

• With thanks to Richard Kreider and Chris Egan