Adios to Bali Geckos

By Justin Robertson in Bali
ITCHY feet always catches up with you.
For former Kooweerup Secondary College physical education teacher Peter Muir, itchy feet cornered him when he moved to Indonesia in 1999.
Muir captained the Inverloch-Kongwak mob that year and left for Bali after seeing an ad in The Age newspaper: “teacher wanted at private school” it read.
Football was the furthest thing from his mind when planning the move to Bali. Muir was looking forward to living the dream, hitting the beach for a surf or even rolling the arm over.
But eight months after landing, he saw a flier on a noticeboard after cricket training one night, from the Bali Geckos Football Club. They were looking for players.
“I guess I got itchy feet,” Muir said. “I was interested in having a kick and just turned up.”
Like most overseas Australian Rules football leagues, it’s a different ball game.
The Geckos – who formed in 1997 – train and play on a soccer pitch in Canggu, a beach village 45 minutes north-west of popular tourist haven Kuta. With the small soccer field comes restrictions: nine per side and you can only score goals inside the 35-metre arc. Muir said the game draws comparisons to netball.
“Yeah, it’s different style. On the small soccer field you can take a grab at full back and then you’re looking for a lead up at full forward,” he said. “It’s fast paced and action packed.”
The bloke they call “Gun” teaches at the International School in Sanur, located on the east side of the island. During the early days of the Geckos, the team would have to train in the dark because there were no lights.
“It often meant short training sessions, but we’d have a few beers afterwards and sometimes that would last longer than actual training,” he said. “We’re a close-knit group, so training would last into the early hours of the morning.”
The Geckos don’t play a regular season, but instead organise tours around Asia to destinations such as Singapore, Jakarta and Brunei and invest time in hosting annual tournaments, which are considered the biggest football events outside Australia. It’s a little adhoc, but it works.
The Geckos host two events each year, the Bali 9s Masters in June and the Bali 9s in early October – the latter is an annual dedication and fundraiser to the victims of the Bali bombings.
Muir is eyeing a move to Hong Kong later this year, and will sadly drift away from his beloved Geckos, a team he’s been a part of for 12 years. He’ll strap on the boots for the team in Hong Kong, but his heart will always be with the Bali Geckos.