Former Footscray JUST star Frank Micic has been inducted into the Football Victoria Hall of Fame.
Micic, who is Victoria’s most capped representative player, was named last week as the 26h inductee into the hall of fame.
Micic played a remarkable eighteen consecutive seasons in the Victorian State League, seventeen of them with Footscray JUST.
He represented Victoria during a 15-year period between 1961 and 1975, earning a record 55 appearances, many against some of Europe’s finest club teams.
Born in Yugoslavia Micic arrived in Melbourne in 1959 and would represent Australia on nine occasions.
Estimates suggest he played over 500 matches across league and cup competitions along with representing Victoria on 55 occasions.
He is the only three-time winner of the Bill Fleming Medal, the longest running individual honour awarded by Football Victoria.
Micic later turned to coaching in 1978, taking the helm at St Kilda Hakoah midway through the season and managing three playing appearances off the bench.
In the FV’s hall of fame series, past players remember Micic as a fair player who was also smiling and a worthy inductee into the hall of fame.
Former Australia coach and Micic’s teammate Footscray, Rale Rasic said that Footscray was Frank Micic and Frank Micic was Footscray.
Footscray JUST still lives on and is now known as Melbourne City, the state league club now based in Spotswood.
Micic said he came to Australia as a stop off on the way to America and never left.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “Everyone told me I was mad to come to this country.
“I was playing in the lower divisions in Italy, I wanted to get away from Italy and go to America.
“JUST heard about me, ‘OK we heard that you can play a bit of soccer and if you want to stay in Melbourne, you can play [here] and we’ll find you a job and accommodation and I’m still here.”
He said when he thinks about the hall of fame, he remembers all the times he played for Victoria and the people that he played with.
