HAWKESBURY City Football Club has done it again, bringing a fresh face into the fold of the team all the way from Uruguay.
Joaquin Veliz has been in Australia for about six months, and will ply his trade with Hawkesbury while living in the country.
Hawkesbury begins it season this weekend, with an away match against Dulwich Hill.
Veliz is one of five Uruguayans who has joined the club in the past few seasons, and hopes to help the club qualify for the Football NSW NPL 3 finals this year, and perhaps even a premiership.
One of the club coaches, Gustavo Yuletian, arranged for Veliz to join the club, as he has in the past with Santiago Pallares and Santiago López.
Now it is Veliz, who has been with the club for three months.
“I've been living in Australia for six months and it is a very beautiful place. The people are very friendly and I love it here,” he said.
Veliz said he spent six weeks living on the Central Coast, trying to crack the Mariners’ squad before joining up with Hawkesbury.
“I wasn't so lucky there. They only had one visa place, and they wanted a striker not a midfielder,” he said.
However, he has wound up at Hawkesbury and said he was thoroughly enjoying his time at the club.
“The club is a family, they are very nice people,” he said.
Meanwhile, Yuletian’s son Allen also plays for the club, and the teenager has even drawn some interest from A-League teams, which he said he was thrilled about.
Gustavo was a player in Uruguay for about 20 years, both football and futsal, and clearly Allen is taking after his dad.
He said he wanted to play football for a living, hopefully in Uruguay, but potentially elsewhere in the world too.
Allen has picked up a fairly clean Australian accent during his time here, but said ultimately he missed his home and hoped to return as a footballer.
Later in the year, he will take part in a training camp for the Uruguayan junior team. Juniors from across Uruguay and abroad have been called into the camp.
“It is a good point to try. It doesn't mean he will play in the national team, but we are very happy about it,” Gustavo said.
Allen, who is in Hawkesbury’s under-16s team this year, said he was looking forward to attending the camp.
He has been living in Australia with his family for a few years now, but said his future ultimately lay back in Uruguay.
As the club did last year, it will also host a Uruguayan drum show at the start of one of its games on March 31, to celebrate some of the newer members of the club.
