Brian Kaltak became the first professional footballer from Vanuatu, FIFA‘s 164th-ranked nation, at age 29 this season. His journey to A-League stardom is incredible, writes TIM ELBRA, as is what he means for the game.
The wind that blew in from the ocean was ominous.
Brian Kaltak and his Erakor Golden Star teammates paused their training session, looking at one another then out across the lagoon to the vast Pacific. This was not an afternoon for football.
“This wind just picked up from nowhere. Our coach told us, ‘We’re expecting a cyclone tonight’,” Kaltak recalls. “I looked at my cousin Jason and said, ‘Let’s go home’.”
They ran from the seaside pitch below Erakor Village as Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam arrived, howling grim intentions. Her winds grew fiercer as they ran to their families.
“It was horrible. Really bad,” Kaltak says. “We ran up to the village and started getting everything prepared and as we were, the wind was just … out of nowhere it was just bursting into the covers and everything was just flying out. We managed to secure the house and all the families were safe.”
Pam hit Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, on March 13, 2015. A Category Five cyclone with winds in excess of 250km/h, she took lives, decimated food crops and ruined water sources. She demolished homes and schools.
Kaltak’s family and their home survived. It was nonetheless devastating and there was much helping to be done in the tight-knit Erakor community; all while trying to prepare for an OFC Champions League campaign in Fiji with another Port Vila club, Amicale FC.
“That was a tough time,” Kaltak says. “But we recovered really well. It’s beautiful again.”
Cyclone Pam was one of the worst natural disasters in Vanuatu’s history. Soon afterwards, a notable gesture of assistance arrived from Australia.
“I’ve got a friend that lived in Vanuatu for years and after the cyclone, I sent over containers of stuff,” Central Coast Mariners coach Nick Montgomery says.
“When I retired, I went over there and spent some time in the village for a week and it’s weird, but I remember having a conversation about the footballers in Vanuatu. Good athletes, though none of them played professional anywhere.”
*****
There is wonder in Brian Kaltak’s laugh as he sits in a dressing room beneath Central Coast Stadium, the Mariners’ gorgeous home ground on the Gosford waterfront.
Four days earlier in front of 20,059 fans, Vanuatu’s first professional footballer kept a clean sheet against Adelaide United to book an A-League grand final showdown with Melbourne City; just one unfathomable achievement of his maiden pro season, at age 29, playing under Montgomery.
The central defender also won the Mariners’ Coaches Player of the Year award and earned selection in the PFA’s A-League Team of the Year. His village of about 2,500 people, and supporters all over Vanuatu, gather to watch his games. On his old pitch next to Erakor Lagoon, where he once ran around pretending to be Ronaldinho, the kids now pretend to be Brian Kaltak.
“Watching Ronaldinho triggered something in my heart and in my mind, that I want to play football until I get to be a professional,” he says. “And now every day, I wake up and I’m like, ‘Wow … I made it’.”
Vanuatu is FIFA’s 164th-ranked nation. That the Mariners’ own ‘Brick Wall of Gosford’ rose from there seems absurd; though less so when you remember that Vanuatu was colonised by England and France. The beautiful game long ago took root among the Merbau and Polynesian Chestnut trees of the island nation.
Kaltak’s father – Timothy, a striker – played for the national team, like his father before him. Brian is now the captain, having debuted as a teenager.
“My family, my bloodline, they are football lovers. Football is strong in the family. My dad, cousins, everyone plays football. I walked down to the field every afternoon with my dad and that’s where my passion started,” he says.
“It is a beautiful field. Just next to the ocean, close to the school. I’d finish school, drop my bag and run down to the pitch, kick some balls and then have a swim in the sea.
“It’s a bit different from here, just goalposts and lines and you find a ball. The school owns some balls but after school they lock everything in the change rooms, so we’d find something else. We’d get plastic bags and use sellotape to make a ball, then just have fun. Then later the senior team would come down for training, so we might get some balls from them and kick around at the side. We’d do it every day, ever since I started following my dad to the football field.”
Coral reefs and seagrass meadows with dugongs and sea turtles lay beneath the lagoon alongside Erakor Sports Ground. The kids catch redmouth, pico and moustache fish, and they play football with athleticism and joy.
Kaltak first remembers playing at age seven. The village children started barefoot; later, they had three pairs of boots between 20 kids, so they would take turns wearing them. Kaltak, playing as either Ronaldinho or David Beckham, wore a single boot on his right foot. He soon stood out.
“We definitely knew that he had quite a lot of talent,” former Erakor Golden Star president Josiah Russel says.
“He comes out of a family that’s got a long, rich history of soccer players that represented the country. One of his grandfathers back in the 70s went and played in Tahiti.
“You mention the Kaltak name in Vanuatu and everyone will say, ‘Oh, those guys can play football’. Boys and girls.
“We knew he was going to be a professional soccer player. We had no doubt.”
Erakor Golden Star – a proud, village-owned club founded in 1938 – was relegated from the local Premier League to First Division in 2010. Many senior players left. Kaltak, at just 15, was promoted with a bright crop of fellow youngsters and they won the competition. Within two years of promotion, they won the Premier League.
Coach Kalo Noel Benjamin nurtured Kaltak’s talent and then at 17, he was part of the Vanuatu Football Federation Academy’s inaugural intake after its establishment by FIFA. He played an Oceania Football Confederation tournament in New Zealand and was talent-spotted by former All Whites international Colin Tuaa, who arranged a six-month scholarship for him to train with A-League club Wellington Phoenix while playing local football with Waterside Karori.
That was July 2011 and he was still just 18. He wasn’t ready and the training stay went no further, but it made him hungrier, sustaining him through clubs stints with Hekari United in Port Moresby, Solomon Warriors in Honiara and Golden Star back home. He had brief stays at Tasman United in Nelson and Lautoka FC in Fiji, whose home ground Churchill Park can hold about 10,000. Kaltak wandered for seven years, looking for the right opportunity. By 2018, he’d landed at New Zealand powerhouse Auckland City FC.
In 2016, Vanuatu Football Federation had engaged an Australian, Josh Smith, as a technical advisor. He kept a close eye on Kaltak’s obvious talent, right up until he did some work with the Central Coast Mariners. Last year, he tipped Montgomery into Kaltak, who was summoned for a trial.
“Honestly, the situation where I am and my age … any other coach wouldn’t give me a chance,” Kaltak says. “But Monty, it’s different. He sees something in me that he wanted. I’m just grateful.”
Montgomery recalls: “I looked at some footage and said, ‘Let’s get him in straight away’.
“That was towards the end of last season and he came in and just straight away, without even playing, you’re just looking at this athlete; and also the most humble, genuine guy you’ve ever come across. Then we stuck him in training and he was physically just ridiculous; tackles, headers, but very raw, rash, with a massive lack of game understanding. You could see that he’d been playing in Auckland City and a lower level for many years. Wellington had never taken him on trial or had a [genuine] look at him, yet we saw then just massive potential.
“Unfortunately, he hurt his knee; he’d probably never been injured before but he was actually trying so hard that he hurt his knee and he was out for about eight weeks. The guy was devastated, virtually to tears. Devastated. But it was near the end of our season and we said, ‘Go away and get yourself back fit and come back in pre-season’.
“I don’t think he believed that we were going to do it but he actually went and played for Damian Mori – who’s assistant in Adelaide United now – in the NPL (at Adelaide club FK Beograd). So we followed him, we watched his games and as soon as we started pre-season, we brought him in. He trained and we knew straight away. I remember calling him during the day, he’d gone back to Adelaide and I called him and said, ‘We want to bring you in mate, we’re going to offer you a contract, an injury replacement contract for Moresche. Let’s just get you in’. And that was it.
“He was just beside himself. I don’t think he believed that we were going to being him in, but we did and the boys already loved him from when he came on trial. Everybody loved him and now, he’s just been unbelievable.”
How could you not love Kaltak and his story? The Mariners, having accepted an early glut of dubious red cards as a learning curve, loved him enough to give him a contract for the next two seasons. He signed his first bona fide A-League contract, as opposed to the injury replacement deal, at age 29.
And they certainly love him at home.
Russel, the head of sales for Vodafone Vanuatu, organised for the Mariners’ semi-final games to be live streamed in Erakor Village, not certain what the reception might be. The Community Hall was packed for the first leg, so much so that the Australian High Commission chipped in refreshments for the second leg.
Central Coast prevailed and Kaltak starred. All of Vanuatu will be backing them in the grand final.
“They say in Brazil when people watch Neymar, little kids go out in the streets and want to be Neymar. In the village after the semis, everybody goes to the field and wants to be Brian,” Russel says.
“He’s really achieved something quite outstanding for the village. Everybody’s been praying it for a very long time and he’s gone out and he’s achieved it. We’re all super proud of him.”
*****
Kaltak is not the only one. There is talent in Vanuatu. Raw, promising talent. The football-mad kids also play rugby sevens on public holiday long weekend tournaments, running fast and strong.
Kaltak has given them a pathway of sorts; while at the same time exposing the need for a direct pipeline into elite-level systems. If Kaltak proved this good in his late 20s, having wandered around the Pacific looking for his big break, it is intriguing to imagine what he might have achieved had he been given elite-level coaching and playing opportunities from his teens.
Vanuatu’s population is about 300,000; only one-third of Fiji, yet the same as Samoa and Tonga combined. If Fiji, Samoa and Tonga can be treasure troves of talent for the rugby codes, can Vanuatu become the same for football?
“I don’t see why not, at all,” says Matt Nemes, a former Mariners youth player who is now Kaltak’s manager. “But doing the sport over there will stunt them, they need to come over into an environment like the NPL, like the A-League, to get that opportunity to see them keep growing.
“I’ve been chatting with Josiah and Josh about creating an obvious pathway for these talented kids to come over and get a home, get a job, play NPL and get an opportunity to get into the A-League teams. We’re working on that; very early stages but that’s the vision. To give these guys an opportunity and use the pathway that Brian’s created.
“He’s only gone into a full-time environment in the last 12 months; just under 12 months. Imagine that he’d had the opportunity to go into a full-time environment at 17, 18 years old.”
Russel says that overseas clubs are already clamouring for fresh Ni-Vanuatu talent, which is abundant.
“Football is crazy in the village. Every afternoon, kids finish at school, which is right beside the pitch, and everyone plays soccer until nightfall,” he says.
“You can see kids who have got the talent and if you really look after them well, condition them well, they could definitely be up there. We saw that in Brian when he started playing.
“We’ve got interest from coaches in New Zealand and Australia who have said, ‘Hey, we’re interested in some of your players – have you got any Brian Kaltaks available?’
“We can see probably in the three to five years, we’ll probably have two or three more players that have the potential to be playing in New Zealand, Australia or elsewhere. There’s definitely the talent here and with what Brian’s been able to achieve, and creating pathways, we definitely could see that happen.”
Kaltak’s influence on Pacific Islands football could be profound. He got a reminder of that from his cohort of Ni-Van fans, who travel to Mariners games in their own special bus, after full-time of the semi-final win in Gosford.
Flashing smiles and waving a Vanuatu flag, they approached him with a gift.
“They gave me a little statue for their appreciation of what I’ve been doing here,” Kaltak says.
“It’s a little coconut; in Vanuatu, we call it navara. Those are the ones that you plant, so that they can grow into a coconut tree. I plant the seeds here in Central Coast Mariners, so that the seeds will grow and hopefully in future, you’ve got more Pacific Islander people come here to play. We will see how many of us make it here.”
For now, Kaltak is the standard bearer. And while his A-League rise has been a fairytale, Montgomery says he could go further still.
“He’s been an inspiration for everyone in the Pacific Islands, everybody loves him on the Coast and I think there’s not one A-League team that wouldn’t take him now; but he’s loyal to the club here and to me for giving him his opportunity. Even at 29, I think he could play at the highest level, I really do.”
