Why an ACL injury wouldn't stop Andrew Nabbout from helping City reach a grand final.
Injury will force Andrew Nabbout to watch the ALM grand final from the stands. But ask anyone at Melbourne City and they'll tell you not even a ruptured ACL stoped him from helping them get there.
It takes a village to win a title, a host of unsung contributors across the backrooms and offices that put those who take the field on grand final day in a position to deliver elusive silverware. And while Andrew Nabbout never envisioned being a part of that cohort when the season began, talk to anyone involved in Melbourne City and it rapidly becomes clear that even with a season-ending injury, the attacker has been an integral part of the club’s run to a first-ever Melbourne Derby decider.
Netting two goals in his first three appearances, Nabbout looked to be firing on all cylinders when the season began, stepping into the centre-forward role following a pre-season injury to Max Caputo. This promising beginning, however, gave way to agony 54 minutes into City’s round three win over United – just moments after he’d scored the game’s only goal – when he suffered a ruptured ACL that ended his season. “No words can describe what I’m feeling right now, especially after feeling like I was getting back to my best,” the attacker wrote on his Instagram.
In a flash, the week-in-and-week-out grind of the training track and game days were replaced by long and lonely (at least until the rest of the City dressing room began to resemble a casualty ward) days on the training table, the 32-year-old back in familiar, if unwelcome, confines after battling an Achilles injury during the previous season.
JDL Media is committed to keeping its reporting on Australian football away from paywalls.
If you’re in a position to, please consider supporting this coverage at Ko-Fi.
This process, aided by a remarkable work ethic and an ability to heal that should probably be looked at by science at some point, has been going rather well. Suffering the injury last November, Nabbout JDL Media that if he’d done the injury just a month prior he’d be pushing hard to play in this week’s clash with Melbourne Victory. But, alas for the former World Cup Socceroo, with that a bridge too far for even his recuperative abilities, he’s been forced to settle for helping the team out however best he can during what is the biggest week in the history of the club’s men’s program.
“It's all about them,” Nabbout told JDL Media. “I'm trying to keep them as relaxed and as upbeat as possible.
“It's obviously a big game and we can't say it's just like any other week, because it's a grand final and it is a derby, so it's not like any other week. But we're trying to make sure that we don't play the game during the week in our heads, we’re trying to save it for the weekend.
“And that's not an easy task and it's not easy for me to keep the boys calm like that -- because I'm not playing. It's harder for someone who's injured to keep everyone calm because I don't know what it's like to be in their shoes for this week.
“Because it is a stressful week for everyone and it's a nerve wracking week, but it's also an extremely exciting week. Just reminding them that, you know, it could be worse.”
“I'm the type of person that just doesn't really change. I've had my fair share of injuries, so I've learned to regulate my emotions and myself around the boys and around the change room.
“It's not about me, it's about the whole team. That sounds pretty cliche but a lot of these boys lean on me for guidance and advice and for someone to set the standards and that's pretty much what I do in the change room.
“I just make sure that everyone's on at all times. I control the fines here as well, so I'm pretty strict on a lot of things around here, just making sure that all the boys are on their toes and adhering to the rules and the standards that we go by here.”
In case you’re wondering, Nabbout said that winger Marco Tilio has copped the most fines this year – “he's paying us with that Celtic money” – while Aurelio Vidmar did note that City’s resident sheriff has tried his tried to his luck with slugging the coaching staff throughout the campaign, too.
“He's pinged everyone,” laughed defender Kai Trewin. “He's really good at that job, to be honest. We've got a lot of money in there.
“It's been good. It keeps everyone switched on, nobody's late to anything here. He's very switched on with the fines.”
Nabbout’s contribution stretches far beyond funding the end-of-season trip, however. Vidmarhas also been effusive in his praise of the impact that Nabbout has had on the dressing room throughout the campaign. Any nascent problems that could develop into something further, the City coach has noted, have quickly been snuffed out by a leadership group led by skipper Aziz Behich, and featuring vice-captain Mat Leckie, Jimmy Jeggo and Nabbout before they merit intervention by the coaching staff.
“The group has been absolutely brilliant this year,” Vidmar said last week. “Aziz and Lecks as the captain and the vice captain, Andy Nabout, Jimmy Jeggo, the experienced guys, they've kept a lid on most things. I've very rarely had to interfere with any of those things. If they see an issue happening, they nip it in the bud pretty quickly.
“What we're dealing with, we're dealing with people. They've all got different types of personalities but when you've got strong leaders around the group, it makes it very easy. They've done a great job in terms of knowing when to keep a lid on things, knowing when you know we could let her head down a little bit. So they've got a really good feeling about that, and they've had that through the course of the year. So that's extremely important for us.”
JDL Media is committed to keeping its reporting on Australian football away from paywalls.
If you’re in a position to, please consider supporting this coverage at Ko-Fi.
Vidmar and several members of the playing group have cited an improved dressing room dynamic as being key to the squad’s turnaround this season.
“The biggest take we took from last year was being consistent,” said Behich. “That's just not on a week-to-week basis, that's every day. I think that's why we didn't get so much success last year -- the inconsistency.”
Amidst this push for consistently and maintained standards in every session, every meeting, and every game, Nabbout’s effort to get back and contribute next season doesn’t go unnoticed, either.
“He's an unbelievable leader,” said Trewin. “What everyone says about him is exactly how he is. He leads by example. When he was playing at the start of the season you could see how he plays and how he leads and now that he hasn't been able to play every week he's still positive around the training pitch and around the gym. You see how hard he works.
“Even though he won't be back until next season he's still one of the hardest working players in the gym every day. It pushes all the boys on the pitch onwards every weekend, working hard for them as well as their teammates on the field.”
Of course at times this season, setting an example off the field has been all that Nabbout and his fellow veterans have been able to do in their efforts to keep City on track.
Leckie, Jeggo, Alessandro Lopane, Max Caputo, Marco Tilio, Andreas Kuen, Yonatan Cohen, Steven Ugarkovic, and Samuel Souprayen have been waylaid with multi-week injuries over the course of the campaign, with the latter set to join Nabbout and Jeggo in being unavailable for this week’s decider thanks to a persistent calf injury. This came after an offseason in which club legend and captain Jamie Maclaren moved to Mohun Bagan and was subsequently joined in the departures lounge by Curtis Good, Léo Natel, Terry Antonis, Nuno Reis, and Marin Jakoliš. On the eve of the season, widely tipped Johnny Warren Medal contender Tolgay Arslan sensationally forced an exit to take up an opportunity in the J1 League.
Plugging these gaps, teenagers and youth such as Zane Schreiber, Kavian Rahmani, Ben Dunbar, Harry Politides, Michael Ghossaini, Arion Sulemani, Medin Memeti, Harry Shillington, Emin Durakovic, Lawrence Wong, Benjamin Mazzeo have all been pressed into action and, for the most part, rose to the occasion: City’s lone trip to the top of the table this season coming after a 2-0 win over Western United back in January in which Sulemani, Mazzeo, Wong, and Politides started and Schriber, Rahmani, Memeti, and Dunbar all came off the bench – the XI that day possessing an average age of 24.9
“We don't have as many senior players as we've had in previous years and we've got a lot of young players who look to us for guidance,” said Nabbout. “It's just a natural role that I've stepped into, helping Aziz and Lecks out.
“Whatever they contribute on the pitch, I try to match off the pitch because I'm not playing. Take a load off them because it is demanding going out every week and playing and performing the way they do. So as much as I can take off their plate off the pitch, I try to do it.
“It was about setting standards at the start of the season and just making sure that everyone you know holds themselves to those standards.
“Viddy pulled me aside at the start of the year when he told me that Aziz and Lecks were going to be captains and he basically said that, without an official title I [still] have a role in that dressing room to make sure that the standards are held high.
JDL Media is committed to keeping its reporting on Australian football away from paywalls.
If you’re in a position to, please consider supporting this coverage at Ko-Fi.
“Guys like Jamo [assistant coach Scott Jamieson] and J-Mac and Curtis and guys that were here for years before us set such high standards. It's carried on throughout the years and it's up to us to make sure that we adhere to them and keep them as high as possible.”
If this all sounds a bit familiar, a key attacker going down with an ACL injury only to become a key figure in the dressing room as they switched between maintaining morale and keeping people on their toes, that’s because it should.
Ruled out of action on the eve of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Martin Boyle was subsequently installed as the Socceroos’ ‘vibe manager’ by coach Graham Arnold – the attacker bunking with current City attacker Leckie in Qatar – and was on hand as Australia stunned pretty much not bunking at the Aspire Academy by reaching the last 16 of the tournament.
“I don't know if I'd label myself with that,” Nabbout laughed. “It’s a similar role to what Boyley had, just keeping everyone in good spirits but he's probably better at doing it than I am, because it comes naturally to him.
“For me, it's trying to keep everyone as calm and relaxed as possible in good spirits, because these are the games we want to be in. It's a privilege to be in these games. It's not a burden; reminding the boys to be grateful and happy that we're here.”
If City is to claim their second A-League Men title on Saturday, it’s clear that Nabbout will have done all that he can to help get them there.
Inevitably, there will be heartache that he can’t be doing more to win another grand final; he wasn’t in the matchday squad of the 2015 title-winning Victory side, was forced to come off the bench amid injury recovery with City in 2021, and lost the 2022 and 2023 deciders. The former Brunswick City junior will also be denied the chance to play in what is probably the biggest A-League Men game in the league’s history in his hometown.
But his own emotions, as they have been all season, will be tempered around wanting to see his teammates succeed.
“I don't even know where we're sitting,” he said. “It's sold out, so I might have to sit behind the bench with the medical staff or something. But wherever I can watch, I'll be more than happy to just be in that stadium again.
“As much as I'd love to be in a playing strip and actually performing out there. I'll play my role as best as possible, sit wherever they want me to. I'll sit on the roof if I have to and watch the game.”
“It's not about me. It's about them. They deserve to lift the trophy if we go out and perform the way I think we're capable of.”