Frank’s story
From holding Annie’s hand to playing up an age.
This is Frankie’s real journey so far, told by his dad. No highlight reel. Just the steps that got him here.
First pitch
Frankie started club football at four, in the Under 5s at Shellharbour Junior Soccer Club. He did not love it straight away. He hated the noise from the parents on the sideline and he hated the muddy fields.
When he fell over and got dirt on his hands, he ran straight to Mum to clean them before he would go back on. Some days his big sister Annie held his hand just so he would stay on the field.
Game by game, something changed. By the end of that first season he loved it.
Love of the game
The next year he played Under 6s at Shellharbour. In the off season he kicked a ball with Dad most nights, and his love for the game kept growing.
Under 6s was the game changer. He worked hard and really started to play.
Finding home
Before the Luke Wilkshire Football Academy opened in Unanderra, they put out an expression of interest and we put our names down. We had not heard back for a long time, so Frankie signed with TS11 and completed a whole term there to give academy football a proper go.
Then, only a few weeks before LWFA started, the reply came through. Frankie could train. From day one he loved every minute of it. At first he did both LWFA and TS11. After that first term we knew where home was going to be. Nothing against TS11 at all. Frankie simply loved Luke’s coaching, and he still smiles before every single session.
Nearly three years on, his growth has been amazing. It has never been about winning or losing. It is about everything else along the way. The culture at LWFA is electric, and Frankie learns from Luke, Egor, Alex, Sebastian and Thiago every week.
Playing up an age
In his first year at Luke’s there was no league team yet while squads were being selected. So Frankie played with his academy mates at Wollongong University for two seasons under Vlad Nikkoloski. He played up an age and still dominated. That was the moment we could see the academy training working.
Since then he has played in the main LWFA Under 8s, played up an age in the LWFA Under 9s Dynamo in 2025, and in 2026 he is focused on the LWFA Under 9s with a few runs in the Under 10s.
Tournaments
Three years with Luke has taken Frankie a long way from those muddy Shellharbour fields. He has played the Far North Queensland Cup, the Gold Coast Invitationals, the 2024 LWFA Japanese tour and the Sydney Premier League for the last two years.
There are more tournaments to add as we remember them. Every trip teaches him something new, on the pitch and off it.
