Tara Murray
When Aamir Abdallah decided to make the move to Hume City this season it was about getting some more playing time.
Little would he know that the decision would see him become the best player in the National Premier League competition.
At the competition’s gala night, Abdallah scooped the pool of the NPL awards.
He won the top honour the Gold Medal after polling 32 votes. He also won the players’ player award and the Bill Fleming Medal as the best player judged by the NPL commentary team.
He finished with 14 goals and eight assists in 20 games.
“I knew about one of the awards [the media award] but the rest of them, it did shock me,” Abdallah said. “I wasn’t aware I was going to win those.
“I was shocked to be honest. I was more than honoured… I had in my head that other players were in the running to win the other trophies.
“Once I knew it was for me, I was over the moon”
Abdallah wasn’t at the awards night.
It was Hume captain Josh Bingham that informed him that he had claimed the Gold Medal.
“When I got the call, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I was like there’s no frickin way.
“When he said that you’ve taken everything, I thought that was ridiculous.”
Abdallah said he thought he’d had a good season and thought that he may be in contention for the awards.
The 2024 season was Abdallah’s first at Hume City. For him, he just wanted to play some more minutes.
“I was looking for more game time,” he said. “I played at Heidelberg the season before and I didn’t get much game time.
“I was looking for a place to express myself up top and really play as many minutes as I could throughout the year.
“Hume was a place that I could do that. The coach being Cam [Watson] at the time. He bought me in for a trial and I did well and from there he gave me the go ahead whenever I got the ball up top to express myself.
“Down the line, Chicky [David Chick], the other coach, he was the same. It was the same mentality over again.
“It made it easy to play the way that I wanted to play.”
Abdallah played a key role in Hume City’s season which resulted in the club making the finals of the Dockerty Cup, the NPL competition and the Australia Cup.
He said the playing group were very happy with what they were able to do after not making finals last year.
“It was a let down getting knocked out by South Melbourne in both the NPL finals and the Australia Cup, they’ve been our achilles heel,” he said.
“We thought we could have beaten them the last one and we gave it our all, but it still wasn’t enough.
“We got unlucky. We were really proud of the season that we had. We had many achievements, getting to the quarter finals of the Australia Cup, getting to the second final of the NPL and hitting 50 points which was the most in the club’s history in the league.”
Abdallah is hoping his season will be a good starting point to build going even further. He’s hoping that it may lead to an A-League deal.
“If not, just to continue this sort of form into next season with Hume.”
