Craig Foster

Australian retired soccer player, sports analyst and human rights advocate
the Australian sports personality and human rights advocate

Craig Andrew Foster (born 1969), nicknamed Fozzy or Fozz, is an Australian retired soccer player, human rights activist and sports analyst for the Stan streaming service in Australia. Foster played soccer professionally from 1988 to 2003, including for the national team, the Socceroos, from 1996 to 2000, and was chief soccer analyst for SBS from around 2002 until June 2020. He was the 419th Socceroo, and the 40th captain of the national team. Foster is also known for his human rights advocacies, and is a vocal critic of the Australian Government's treatment of asylum seekers. He played a high profile role in the campaign to free Bahraini footballer Hakeem al Araibi from detention in Thailand in from late 2018 to early 2019, later co writing a book about it, Fighting for Hakeem, which became the working title of a 2023 documentary film (renamed The Defenders). Foster was elected chair of the Australian Republic Movement in November 2022.

Craig Andrew Foster was born in 1969 in Lismore, New South Wales. He attended Kadina High School, periodically returning to speak and motivate students. Foster holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Football Business and a Master in Sport Management degree from the Johan Cruyff Institute. In 2019, he earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Central Queensland University Australia.

Playing as a midfielder, Foster debuted with Sydney Croatia in 1988, playing in a losing grand final in his first season. Foster has said his time at Sydney Croatia is what began his interest in multiculturalism. As a 28 year old he moved to England, linking up with Terry Venables firstly at Portsmouth in 1997/98, before moving to Crystal Palace as a free agent from 1998 to 2000. He returned to Australia to play with Northern Spirit, based in North Sydney, until his retirement from the game in 2003. In 2013 he was listed as a player for the Belmore United Over 35s along with Paul Okon and Francis Awaritefe.

Foster represented Australia at under 16 level, reaching the quarter finals at the 1985 FIFA U 16 World Championship in China.

Foster is a member of the Australian Multicultural Council, since 2018 and as of March 2022. He has long been an advocate for footballers and has been human rights and refugee ambassador for Amnesty International. He has often used his position as presenter and chief football analyst at SBS to criticise unethical practices in the game. He works in a range of social programs, including Indigenous rights and self determination; homelessness in Australia; climate change; and advocacy for refugees. Foster's many tweets on the topic were widely shared. After al Araibi's release was secured, others tweeted nominations for Foster as Australian of the Year or even prime minister. Many politicians, including prime minister Scott Morrison praised him for his efforts. Foster plays a prominent role in the 2023 documentary film The Defenders by Adelaide filmmaker Matthew Bate, which tells the story the campaign to free al Araibi from prison. It was released on Amazon Prime Video on 23 June 2023, after being shown at the Sydney Film Festival (where it won an audience award) and a special preview screening by Adelaide Film Festival in Adelaide on 21 June. Foster is also credited as co writer on the film, as some of the script was based on his book, Fighting for Hakeem, which was the working title of the film.

On 22 February 2019, Foster published an open letter to the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, in The Sydney Morning Herald, in which, after thanking them for their assistance in helping to free al Araibi, he addressed the issue of how Australia treats its asylum seekers. He said "I have waited until after Hakeem was safely home [from Thailand] to explain that one of the reasons it was so difficult to garner international support was because of our own treatment of refugees. This was a constant theme throughout discussions with international stakeholders" and "The policy of indefinite, offshore detention does not uphold our international obligations ". He said that he was urging others to uphold their human rights obligations in allowing al Araibi to return to Australia, while "we are failing to uphold our own". He became the face of Amnesty Australia's "Game Over" (#GameOver) campaign in late 2019, which has been supported by high profile sportspeople such as Liz Ellis, Benny Elias, Paul Roos, Ian Chappell, Lisa Sthalekar, Paul Wade, Frank Farina, Alex Tobin, Craig Moore; musician Jimmy Barnes, actors Bryan Brown and Anthony La Paglia musicians and many others. In October 2020, as part of the campaign, Foster and NRL star Sonny Bill Williams presented a petition containing more than 65,000 signatures to federal parliament, which called upon the government to take up New Zealand's longstanding (since 2013) offer to resettle refugees who had been held Australian offshore detention for many years. On 23 March 2022 Foster delivered the Australian National University's annual "Australia and the World Lecture", which had been postponed from 2021 owing to the COVID 19 pandemic in Australia, at the National Press Club of Australia. It was titled "Human Rights, Democracy and Global Citizenry Recovering Australia's Humanity and Place in the World: 2021 ANU Australia and the World Lecture". The address looked at Australia's role in the world from the lived experience of asylum seekers and refugees, and argued that the nation should live up to its commitments as a responsible global citizen. In the talk, he said that Australia had not performed well Indigenous and refugee rights or on climate change. He bemoaned the lack of good leadership on these issues, and said that the colonisation of Australia had been underpinned by racism, and is still present in policy and media coverage; that it is a "festering sore on the national psyche". The following day, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews announced that the government would accept New Zealand's to resettle some of the refugees.

Foster was a vocal critic of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, particularly on the issue of wage theft and labour abuses on the migrant workers that built the World Cup infrastructure. He has vocally supported the #PayUpFIFA campaign of the Human Rights Watch, which advocates for the payment of US$440 million for the affected families of the mistreated migrant workers. He has also criticised Saudi Arabia's sponsorship of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup as a case of sportswashing, stating that "It would be quite the irony for Saudi’s tourism body to sponsor the largest celebration of women’s sport in the world when you consider that, as a woman in Saudi Arabia, you can’t even have a job without the permission of your male guardian." He also criticised the reform policies of Mohammed bin Salman as mere "publicity stunts" to diversify the Saudi economy.

As a sports broadcaster with SBS, Foster won at least three Logie Awards for the Most Outstanding Sports Coverage Australia's Round of 16 match against Italy in 2006 (at the 2007 Logies); and the 2018 World Cup in Russia (at the 2019 Logies). (One source reports a win for the 2005 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Uruguay in Sydney, but this is not confirmed.) for his work with sport and human rights,

He was a finalist for NSW Australian of the Year in 2021. In 2021, Foster was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to multiculturalism, to human rights and refugee support organisations, and to football.

Foster is a former columnist for the Sun Herald, The Age, The Guardian, and other publications. He says he is an introvert, who does not relish social situations.