Whether on the football field, inventing boots and bars or taking photos, Craig Johnston chases perfection, whatever the outcome.
Having previously designed the perfect football boot, Australian entrepreneur and former Liverpool wing wizard Craig Johnston is now looking at the science of soccer management as his latest career move. The blazers at the FAI could do worse than give him a call as they search for the ideal candidate to succeed Steve Staunton.
"I've got a real interest in the management process and in the science of management," he explained on a visit to Dublin recently for Science Week. "It's all in the mind, all in the scull and I think it's worth looking at in detail and trying to figure it out." It sounds like a daft idea but then so did designing a football boot with rubber ridges on the outside to give players more control with their passes and shooting.
Johnston spent three and a half years and A$500,000 tinkering with boot moulds and was knocked back by Reebok and Nike among others.
In the end, he took a gamble by visiting Germany and putting the idea to Franz Beckenbauer, a legend of the game whom he figured could open doors for him with local boot maker Adidas.
His hunch worked and the Adidas Predator boot went on to become a best seller worldwide, selling about 30 million pairs last year. It has been worn by David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and Paul Gascoigne. Even our own Ronan O'Gara is a customer. The Predator was launched in 1994 for the USA World Cup but a row with Adidas meant Johnston cut his ties with the boot in 1998 and he missed out on a massive windfall.
He says the boot has since gone down the fashion road and maximising performance has been sacrificed in the name of profit.
"The product has never, ever realised its potential," he says. "It's gone down the fashion route not the performance route. I didn't do it for fashion."
Johnston also believes that the increasing incidence of foot injuries among the sport's top players - Wayne Rooney is a good example - can be partly explained by the design of modern football boots.
"The direct reasons for the broken metatarsals are the boots," he says. "They offer too much protection with the result that there's no give in them. It's only a matter of time before a player sues a brand for dangerous equipment."
Johnston's life has been a rollercoaster ride of extreme highs and depressing lows.
He almost lost his leg to polio as a young boy, which left him bed ridden in hospital for months. That's when he started watching football and fell in love with the English game. He arrived in Blighty at the age of 15 only to be told by then Middlesbrough boss Jack Charlton that he was the worst footballer he had ever seen. "He was right, I was," Johnston admits.
Ireland's greatest ever manager told Johnston to bugger off. Stubborn bloke that he is, Johnston refused to accept his fate, partly because his parents had sold the family home to fund his dream.
Hours of banging a ball against a wall in the car park of Middlesbrough'S old Ayresome Park stadium and hiding from Charlton eventually paid off and he went on to enjoy a glittering career with Liverpool, where he won five league titles. He even pulled on a England jersey once at 'B' level.
He quit the game abruptly in 1988 at the age of 27 without explaining why. It later emerged that his sister had been involved in a gassing accident and he wanted to take care of her. Liverpool had his assets frozen for a spell, leaving him broke. It was then that he turned his mind towards his first love - inventions.
"Whenever I got a toy as a kid I'd pull it apart to see how it worked and then put it back together again," he said. "I was just fascinated with how things worked."
Johnston is best known for the Predator but he's had a string of other designs, too. There was a spiky boot called the Pig, which has yet to fly. He also designed an electronic mini bar for hotel rooms through an IDA-backed, Shannon-based company. He even lived in Killiney for four and a half years to get the project off the ground. Called 'The Butler' system, it achieved about 30,000 sales and he's hoping to breadth new life into the project in the near future. He's also plugging away on a football skills programme for children called Supaskills. To date, he's lost about £1.5 million on the project and the FA in England have been distinctly lukewarm about the idea. "It's still a great idea," he says. "I haven't given it up."
More recently, Johnston has found a new career as a professional photographer. As a footballer, he used to muck around with cameras, taking photos of his fellow professionals. Now 47, he has since graduated to shooting the likes of Tiger Woods for a high-profile Tag Heuer campaign. So what advice would he have for aspiring young inventors or entrepreneurs?
In essence, you need a thick skin and a low expectation of making money. "Do it for the love of it but don't expect any money for it," he says. "Be prepared for the fight of your life if you're going to work within a corporate structure," he says.
