While the influence of Italian, Greek and Croatian communities on Australian football is well-known the role Dutch immigration and culture has played on the game down under is often overlooked. If you were playing word association Guus Hiddink is perhaps the first Dutch name that springs to mind given his much eulogised success in leading the Socceroos during their breakthrough 2006 World Cup campaign. Hiddink was assisted by Johan Neeskens, goalscorer in the 1974 World Cup final and certified Dutch football royalty. But the Orange influence is much deeper than any individual and spreads across all facets of the game in Australia.

Perhaps driven by the successful marriage of Hiddink and the Socceroos’ class of 2006, Football Federation Australia appointed the former Holland assistant coach Rob Baan as its technical director in 2006. Baan was responsible for the rolling out of small-sided games across Australia, while the various national youth teams adapted a 4-3-3 formation.

Partly as a result of that influence the Socceroos will face Holland in Porto Alegre fielding a 4-3-3 very similar in style and philosophy to that favoured by the Dutch down the decades. Notably, the Oranje tackled Spain with a non-traditional 5-3-2 formation last week, leading to a gnashing of teeth in some quarters of the Dutch media. Suffice to say Louis Van Gaal’s critics have not been so strident in recent days.

Baan, meanwhile, was succeeded by another Dutchman, Han Berger, whose tenure finishes next month ending an era which included Jan Versleijen as national youth coach and head of the Australian Institute of Sport’s football programme, plus of course Pim Verbeek as the Socceroos coach during the 2010 World Cup cycle. The Dutch flavour even overlapped to the Matildas with Hesterine De Reus presiding over a tumultuous 18-month stint in charge of the women’s national team.

But the influence of the Dutch in Australian football goes back many decades. Immigrants from the Netherlands were among the first of those fleeing war-torn Europe to arrive in Australia, and by the mid 1950s it seemed every city in Australia had a club whose named evoked Holland. Wilhelmina were prominent for a time in Melbourne, Perth had (Morley) Windmills, and there was even the Hobart-based Hollandia. Meanwhile in Brisbane a club built by a hard-working group of migrants called Hollandia Inala laid the foundation for Australia’s most successful club of the 21st century. The side morphed into the National Soccer League’s Brisbane Lions with the licensed club the backer of the city’s lone representative when the A-League launched in 2005, the Brisbane Roar. Even now the orange shirt and lion-inscribed logo of the A-League’s reigning champions is – in a rare survivor of former FFA chief executive John O’Neill’s scorched earth policy – a nod to the club’s origins.

The orange shirts of Brisbane Roar, the reigning A-League champions, are a reference to the club's Dutch influence. Photograph: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images Photograph: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

Perhaps as a direct or indirect result of the Dutch technical staff permeating through the upper echelons of the Australian coaching structure, the A-League has enjoyed a distinct Orange tinge. Twenty-one Dutchman have taken the field in the nine seasons since the competition was launched while the number who competed in its predecessor, the NSL, can be tallied on one hand.



In some ways the overlap between the two nations is a good fit. Both have similar populations and boast strong sporting traditions with overachievement, in relative terms at least, a common thread. There is also perhaps a case to say both have a rebellious mentality. Yet when Holland are not reaching the World Cup final they seem to be imploding in the group stage, or not even qualifying. The Australian mentality is much more one of team ethic.

A common refrain from Dutch coaches is that Australian players are ‘coachable’. In other words they are willing to learn and be flexible. The rapid-fire change in Australia’s football philosophy in a few short years suggests new world football culture is one that is disposed towards embracing change.

The significant and obvious differences are space. David Winner’s book Brilliant Orange proposes the view that “space is the unique defining element of Dutch football”, thus tying their mentality to the lack of land. Hence Total Football and the prevalence of street football in the Netherlands.

But what of the similarities in mentality? The former Socceroo David Mitchell, who was the pioneer of a long line of Australian footballers to head to the Netherlands when he linked with Feyenoord in 1987, concurs with the view that both the similarities and differences are many.

“In my experience the Dutch are open-minded, innovative and forward thinking, and have an ideas-based mentality,” says Mitchell. “I think Australians are similar. They [Dutch clubs] like the mentality of Aussie players because they work hard, they don’t have a problem with the food or culture so the basis and basic mind-set is there. But maybe that never-say-die mentality is not always there [for the Dutch] so they like that in Australians.

“As a trading nation over previous centuries the Dutch made their own unique mark in the world considering they are so small, and it is the same in football. I recall Pele was once asked to name his top 100 all-time footballers and after Brazil the next highest was Holland with 13 or 14 players, which is amazing for such a small country.”

In more recent years key Socceroo contributors such as Jason Culina and Brett Emerton were heavily schooled in the Dutch methodology, while Tommy Oar and Jason Davidson are maintaining that lineage with the pair well regarded at their respective Eredivisie clubs, Utrecht and Heracles.

The current Socceroos left-back, Davidson, says Australian players are welcomed because of their “mentality”. He said: “We work hard and are team players. But I’m not sure there are so many similarities. I think the Dutch are more individualistic in the way they approach football.”

Remarkably Australia have yet to lose to 2010’s World Cup finalists in three previous matches, and maintaining that record this week would be the greatest achievement of them all. Davidson is one player with an extra interest in ensuring that happens.

“[My Dutch team-mates] always have digs at me about Australian football. But we have never lost to them and hopefully we can keep that going. Playing in Holland there are a few people I would like to prove wrong,” Davidson says with a smile.

Whatever the result in Porto Alegre, Brisbane’s Dutch immigrants surely never envisaged such an era when they first took the field in front of family and friends in suburban Inala way back in 1957.