When Steve Allen says he was Patrick Beach’s under-13s goalkeeping coach, what he means is he was his first goalkeeping coach.
If you watched Beach become something of a national hero on Sunday in Australia’s 2-0 win over Turkey, you might reasonably assume the Socceroos’ World Cup debutant had been practising that diving fingertip save to deny Turkey’s Abdulkerim Bardakci since he learnt to walk. You would be wrong.
“He was a left-back and then he was a striker – he got moved around a fair bit,” said Allen, who oversaw the 12-year-old’s transition from outfield utility at Mount Druitt Town Rangers FC – since rebranded as Western City Rangers FC – and taught him from scratch how to be a shot stopper.
“He was half playing in goal, deciding if he liked it, and half playing at left-back. He was still playing softball at the time as well.”
Beach, 22, is from a softball family – his brother, Matthew, plays at a high level – and may have followed his sibling down that path. But Allen, who just spent three years as the Central Coast Mariners’ A-League Women goalkeeper coach, could see straight away that Beach had the raw skills – and the personality.
“Honestly, the kid couldn’t do more,” said Allen, who lived near the adolescent Beach and drove him to and from training three nights a week for about four years while his dad, Mark, was at work as a truck driver.
“He always wanted to do extras. He would ask a hundred million questions. He always had a very good, cocky presence around him, but in a good way, if that makes sense. He knew he was doing something right always. But he would spend all day at football – literally from 13s through to 18s, he would sit there and ask questions of the older boys.
“It was a lot of technique [to teach], but he had a great stature about him. He was a great physical size, and the reactions were just unreal. There were mistakes along the way, but when anyone’s transitioning into something different and something new, you’re going to have those. He took it all in his stride and just kept going. Nothing was ever stopping the kid … he never [got] disheartened, never looked negatively on anything. He just kept going.”
Keep going Beach did, to Marconi Stallions and then the Mariners, before joining Melbourne City in 2023 and making his A-League Men debut.
Steve Knight, who coached Beach as a left-back at Mount Druitt, called his former charge “a student of the game”.
“He was really good,” Knight said. “He was taller than the other boys, so he had that physical advantage. But he also wanted to do all those little one-percenters that make the difference, and push himself as far as he could in training and pre-season. He sort of set the standard.”
On Sunday, 10 years after learning his trade and with only two seasons of first-team football and two Socceroos caps under his belt, national team coach Tony Popovic did the unthinkable: he overlooked captain Mat Ryan, despite the incumbent’s excellent form with club Levante and country, and named an unheralded 22-year-old in his starting XI.
The pundits asked questions. Social media melted down in shock. Popovic simply said: “I just wanted to play Patrick”.
Beach’s commanding presence between the posts featured eight saves, including that clutch match-defining dive and stretch, in a display up there in quality with Australia’s 2005 penalty shootout great Mark Schwarzer.
“I take my hat off to him because the guy was outstanding,” Schwarzer himself told ABC Sport Daily on Monday, in recognition of Beach’s trademark “cocky presence”. “He was put in an incredibly pressurised position. The manager obviously believed in him 100 per cent because otherwise he would never have put him in that position.”
Popovic, after the game, said there “were maybe shocks for a lot of people, but not shocks within our playing group or staff”.
“It’s something that we’ve always seen,” Popovic said, “and I’ve got a lot of belief in the young man.”
He had, in fact, made the decision two days earlier, pulling Beach aside and letting him know he’d be starting.
“This is all you think about as a kid,” Beach managed to say through his full-time euphoria. “This is the pinnacle, to play for your country on the world stage.”
It’s easy to imagine, when you see the look of determination on the face of the tiny tot on the ball for the Alligators (under-5s to under-7s) with his very first club, Glenmore Park FC.
Long-time club secretary Kim Griffiths has been in regular contact with Beach’s parents, Mark and Jo, and brother Matt, who are in North America to support Patrick, and cannot believe the “whirlwind” of calls she’s been receiving from the media.
“It’s been phenomenal,” Griffiths said. “He started way, way, way, way back in the minis, so it’s literally his foundational years. That’s what’s been a bit exciting for us, because we’ve got a really large club with the vast majority of that being junior players from the community. And all of a sudden, it’s a tangible dream for some of these little kids – that they can look and go, ‘Oh wait, I’m an Alligator – he was me’.
“It goes from being a bit of a pipedream to if you want it, it could be a reality.”
Beach, despite the showing beyond his years and despite his innate self-confidence, conceded he had been nervous before the Turkey game.
“I always get nervous,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing … it’s part of the job. You get out there and you’re in front of 50,000 people, and how many around the world? But at the end of the day, you just keep it simple. It’s a game of football and two teams is going at it.”
