Curtis Edward Good, 23 March 1993, Melbourne, Australia.
PART ONE
Curtis Good began playing football at Nunawading City, in the city’s eastern suburbs, where the attraction was the game itself and the next chance to play, rather than anything that might one day appear on a contract. He also ran cross-country with his friends, an early sporting interest that suited a youngster who would eventually have to cover ground, keep concentrating when tired and judge when to spend his energy. Football gave those physical qualities a more specific purpose, because a defender needs to move with the game rather than simply run through it, and Good’s promise included an ease on the ball that mattered as much as his size.
A tall centre-back can make himself useful by heading away crosses, but the more interesting young players are those who can win possession and then do something sensible with it, without turning every defensive intervention into another invitation for the opposition to attack. Good was developing along those lines when the Australian Institute of Sport offered him a two-year scholarship, and in 2009, at sixteen, he left the familiar setting of suburban football for Canberra and a much more demanding daily routine.
At the Institute, football occupied a larger part of the day, and improvement depended on keeping up with other young players who had also been selected because somebody thought they were good enough to go further. Training regularly within that environment brought a different standard of comparison, because being among the better players at a local club offered no guarantee of being among the better players in a national programme. Good’s position required him to learn several things together: how to judge a forward’s movement, when to step towards the ball, when to stay alongside his defensive partner and how to pass without giving the receiver a problem of his own.
Those are ordinary parts of a centre-back’s work, but they become harder when the opposition moves the ball quickly and a moment’s hesitation can leave a large space behind the defence. The scholarship gave him time to develop those habits before senior football made the consequences more public, and by 2011 he was ready for an opportunity with Melbourne Heart, a club still establishing itself in the A-League. Heart initially needed cover for an injured defender, so his opening came through a practical shortage in the squad, rather than a promise that an academy graduate would immediately be given a permanent place.
The temporary arrangement became something more substantial when Heart signed him to a senior contract, and on 8 October 2011 he made his league debut away to Newcastle Jets in the opening round of the season. The match finished 3–2 to Newcastle, a lively and disappointing introduction for a young defender, but the important point for Good was that his manager had trusted him to take part in a competitive first-team match at eighteen. There was no long period in which his development could be discussed without anybody seeing what happened when an experienced opponent tested him, because the learning now came in games where points were at stake and mistakes could decide the result.
Heart were themselves a young club, playing their second A-League season, and that offered room for a promising footballer to establish himself without pretending that he was already a finished player. Good’s composure suited a side that wanted to use possession constructively, while the physical demands of senior matches gave him a firmer measure of what still needed work. By the end of the 2011–12 campaign he had made twenty-five appearances for the club, enough to turn an initial opening into a substantial first season and attract interest well beyond Australia.
PART TWO
Newcastle United acted on that interest in July 2012, signing Good on a six-year contract after the work-permit arrangements had been completed, with the transfer fee reported at about A$600,000. He was nineteen, his senior experience amounted to one season with Heart, and the length of the agreement suggested that Newcastle were buying a player to develop rather than a defender expected to walk straight into their Premier League team. That distinction mattered, because an impressive introduction in Australia did not remove the considerable distance between being a promising recruit and winning a regular place in England’s top division.
Good joined a club managed by Alan Pardew, where training offered access to a stronger daily standard and competition for first-team places was correspondingly harder. The move also changed the scale of his surroundings, taking him from a recently established Melbourne club to a city where Newcastle’s results commanded attention throughout the week. For the teenager, there was a great deal to absorb before he could show supporters what he could do, and the immediate task was to make the most of the training while finding enough competitive football to keep improving. A long contract provided time, but the time would only become useful if it brought matches.
International youth football supplied some of those matches during the autumn of 2012, when Good represented Australia at the AFC Under-19 Championship in the United Arab Emirates, and a loan to Bradford City followed in November. Bradford were playing in League Two under Phil Parkinson, which meant the Australian was leaving the surroundings of a Premier League club for the fourth tier, but the move gave him access to senior football that Newcastle could not regularly offer.
The difference in status was less important than the difference in responsibility, because a loan player in a competitive lower-division side has to help the team immediately, whatever his parent club may expect him to become. Parkinson had a side with experienced players, a busy fixture list and supporters who expected effort to be visible, and Good had to fit into that working environment rather than treat the loan as an extended training exercise. His first senior appearance in England came against Brentford in the FA Cup second round on 30 November, a match that ended 1–1 and should have been remembered as a useful introduction. Instead, an administrative mistake threatened to remove Bradford from the competition and gave the defender an unusually troublesome first entry in the club’s match records.
The problem concerned the written permission required from Newcastle for Good to play in the FA Cup, which had not reached the Football Association by the noon deadline on the day of the Brentford match. Bradford were initially expelled, appealed against that decision and were reinstated in December, with the punishment reduced to a £1,000 fine, so the error did not ultimately cost them their place in the competition. The missing document left Bradford defending their place in the competition at the same time as they were trying to improve their position on the pitch, an unwelcome distraction for a club with plenty of football to occupy it.
PART THREE
Bradford City’s other cup competition was attracting far more attention as the winter developed. Their League Cup progress had already included a victory over Wigan Athletic before Curtis Good arrived, and it continued with Arsenal and Aston Villa, turning a fourth-tier team into an increasingly improbable finalist. Good had arrived during that run, joining players who already knew how it felt to beat Premier League opposition and were preparing to try it again.
Bradford’s success was striking because each Premier League opponent presented a different test, and the side kept finding enough organisation, nerve and finishing to survive it. Wigan and Arsenal were beaten on penalties, while the semi-final against Aston Villa was settled over two legs, with Bradford carrying an advantage from Valley Parade and protecting enough of it at Villa Park to reach Wembley. Matt Duke’s goalkeeping was an important part of the run, but the wider achievement also depended on defenders holding their positions, midfielders making the opposition work for space and forwards giving the team a way to move away from its own penalty area.
Good’s loan placed him inside a squad accomplishing something that few people would have considered likely when the competition began, and it also exposed him to the practical demands of adapting his game for different opponents. His main position was centre-back, yet Parkinson could use him on the left of the defence, where the job required another set of decisions about closing down wide players and covering the space inside them. By February, the loan had brought the nineteen-year-old an opportunity that many established professionals never receive: a starting place in a major English cup final, with Swansea City waiting at Wembley on 24 February 2013.
Good started that final at left-back, wearing Bradford’s number twenty-seven, against a Swansea team whose passing made the afternoon difficult almost from the beginning. Michael Laudrup’s side had the technical quality to keep possession without becoming static, and Bradford had to defend against players who could exchange positions and alter the direction of an attack before the defending side had fully adjusted. Nathan Dyer opened the scoring after sixteen minutes, following up when Duke could not hold Michu’s effort, and the goal forced Bradford to consider taking more risks against opponents already enjoying the ball.
Michu made it 2–0 in the fortieth minute, giving Swansea a lead that reflected the difference between the sides rather than a single unfortunate incident. Good’s first half therefore involved a great deal of defending and little opportunity to demonstrate the passing qualities that had helped earn his Newcastle move, because Bradford’s immediate concern was to contain attacks rather than build their own at length. At half-time, Parkinson replaced him with Andrew Davies, making a defensive change while there was still a second half to contest. Good’s involvement in the final ended there, after forty-five minutes of a match in which Swansea had established both a scoring advantage and control of the play.
Dyer scored again in the forty-seventh minute, and Bradford’s position became harder still when Duke was sent off after bringing down Jonathan de Guzmán. Jon McLaughlin came on for Nahki Wells to take over in goal, while Dyer and De Guzmán argued over who would take the penalty, with the winger seeking the third goal that would complete his hat-trick. De Guzmán took it and scored in the fifty-ninth minute, then added Swansea’s fifth in stoppage time to complete a 5–0 victory, leaving Bradford with an afternoon that was painful on the pitch and remarkable in the wider context of their season.
Good watched the third goal, the dismissal and the two De Guzmán finishes from the bench, his own involvement confined to a first half in which Bradford had struggled to contain Swansea’s movement. His loan ended with nine appearances in all, a modest total that nevertheless included a Wembley start and several months of useful senior football. The final offered a demanding lesson in the distance between resisting pressure and controlling a game, but it was also a match he had earned the right to play through his work at Bradford. His next task was to return to Newcastle and see whether that experience would bring him closer to their first team.
PART FOUR
In March 2013, Curtis Good was named among Newcastle’s substitutes for the league match away to Manchester City, although he did not get on, and the distinction between being included and actually playing remained an important one. A place on the bench showed that he was within the manager’s immediate options, but it did not add a Premier League appearance to his record or settle the question of where his next run of matches would come from. During the summer, he returned to international youth football with Australia at the Under-20 World Cup in Turkey, another opportunity to play against unfamiliar opponents rather than spend the entire period waiting for domestic selection.
Australia opened with a 1–1 draw against Colombia, then lost 2–1 to El Salvador and 2–1 to the host nation, finishing their tournament in the group stage. For Good, the competition added to a growing range of football experience, covering Australian senior matches, English lower-division games and international youth tournaments within a relatively short period. The variety was useful, but Newcastle still needed evidence that he could contribute to their own senior side, and that opportunity finally came in the League Cup on 28 August. He started away to Morecambe, where Newcastle won 2–0 and he completed his first competitive first-team appearance for the club.
The Morecambe match gave Good a place in Newcastle’s senior playing record, but it did not immediately produce the regular selection needed by a defender still learning through experience. The club had established players ahead of him, and a young centre-back could benefit from training with them while still needing matches in which he had to organise himself, recover from errors and make decisions without a coach stopping the session. On 31 January 2014, Newcastle therefore sent him to Dundee United on loan until the end of the season, placing him in the Scottish Premiership and giving him another chance to show what he could do beyond reserve football.
United, managed by Jackie McNamara, offered a different setting from Bradford, with top-division matches in Scotland and a side containing young players attracting attention of their own. Good was old enough to have useful experience but still young enough for each sustained spell of senior football to influence his development considerably, and the new loan initially supplied the kind of progress Newcastle had wanted. He made five appearances across the competitions during his short stay and scored once, with the league goal coming in the 3–2 home victory over Kilmarnock on 15 February. That contribution helped make the month an encouraging one before international selection opened another possibility.
Ange Postecoglou selected Good for Australia’s friendly against Ecuador at The Den in London on 5 March 2014, and the twenty-year-old started his first senior international in a side being prepared for the World Cup. Australia began strongly, with Tim Cahill scoring first, Mile Jedinak converting a penalty and Cahill adding another to establish a 3–0 lead before half-time, giving the new defender an introduction that appeared unusually favourable. The second half changed the result completely, however, as Ecuador scored four times and Australia finished with a 4–3 defeat, a reminder that a promising opening does not settle an international match.
Good’s more serious problem was the hip injury he sustained during the game, which interrupted the Scottish loan just when regular football and national recognition had begun to come together. The occasion had brought him his first cap, yet it also left him unable to build immediately on the performance, and the medical consequences became far more significant than the final score. He had been approaching his twenty-first birthday with a Newcastle contract, a productive loan and a place in Postecoglou’s plans, but the weeks after the Ecuador match would be governed by his recovery rather than by the next team selection. The injury kept him out for the remainder of the club season and made his World Cup prospects uncertain.
Postecoglou still included Good in Australia’s provisional thirty-man World Cup squad, allowing for the possibility that the hip would recover in time for Brazil, but inclusion on a preliminary list could not solve the underlying fitness problem. The defender needed to be capable of training and playing at international intensity, rather than merely fit enough to travel, and his recovery did not advance sufficiently for him to remain in contention. Good was withdrawn from the squad before the tournament, losing an opportunity that had seemed close enough to be realistic only a few weeks earlier. The disappointment was specific and substantial: a young player who had just been handed his senior international debut could no longer compete for a place at the largest tournament on the schedule.
The preliminary selection had kept the possibility alive while he worked towards fitness, making the eventual withdrawal a particularly frustrating outcome after those weeks of uncertainty. More importantly, the hip problem did not disappear when the World Cup finished, so Good could not simply return to Newcastle with the disappointment behind him and resume the development planned when he signed. The injury had become a continuing obstacle, and the next stage of his football depended on getting his body capable of repeated work rather than winning a single argument over selection.
During the following seasons, Good spent long periods dealing with the hip problem and trying to recover the fitness required for regular football, with treatment and rehabilitation occupying time that should have brought him more competitive experience. He underwent surgery in the United States roughly eleven months after the injury, according to his later account, but surgery itself was only one part of the process, because returning to training did not automatically mean being ready for senior matches. Newcastle’s football continued while he worked through those difficulties, with managers changing and the first-team squad developing without him as a regular participant.
That made the challenge broader than simply waiting for a medical clearance, since a player coming back after an extended absence also has to recover timing, confidence in movement and the sharpness that opponents test immediately. Reserve and development matches offered a way to do some of that work, although they could not replace the sustained senior programme he had been seeking before the Ecuador injury. The long contract that once allowed room for development now contained substantial periods in which development was restricted by fitness, and the record of appearances became increasingly sparse. Good remained a Newcastle player, but for much of this period his most pressing football problem was how to get through enough training and games to make himself a dependable selection again.
PART FIVE
By November 2016, Curtis Good was playing for Newcastle United’s under-twenty-three side and speaking positively about being involved again, a meaningful change after the interrupted seasons that had preceded it. Those matches mattered because they required him to work within a team and respond to opponents, rather than judge progress only through exercises designed around rehabilitation, and they gave him a more practical route towards senior consideration. Newcastle were then in the Championship under Rafael Benítez, with promotion the main first-team objective, so an opening for a defender returning from a long absence was still difficult to secure.
On 28 January 2017, Good started the FA Cup fourth-round match away to Oxford United, his second competitive senior appearance for Newcastle and his first since the Morecambe tie in August 2013. Oxford won 3–0, making the afternoon a poor result for Newcastle rather than the clean demonstration of progress he might have wanted, but the appearance itself confirmed that he had at least reached first-team competition again. It did not lead to a regular role in the promotion campaign, and Newcastle’s return to the Premier League came without him playing a Championship match. The club’s success therefore needs to be distinguished from his personal playing contribution, which remained limited even as his fitness had improved enough for that cup selection.
Good’s contract ran to its end in 2018, and Newcastle released him after six years in which he had made just two competitive first-team appearances, against Morecambe and Oxford. The total was stark, particularly beside the length of the agreement, but the explanation involved a serious injury and repeated disruption rather than six uninterrupted seasons in which a fully fit player had simply failed to impress. He had trained within an English professional club, played on loan in England and Scotland, and learned a great deal about the demands of the game, yet he needed a setting where the next season could be measured in actual appearances.
At twenty-five, the immediate question was whether another club would give him that opportunity and whether he could stay fit enough to use it, because a past transfer and a national cap offered little help if he could not complete the work required now. A return to Melbourne became the answer in September, with the club he had left as Heart now operating as Melbourne City. The familiar connection gave the move a clear starting point, but the football case still had to be made in training. Good undertook a trial before City offered him a one-year contract, allowing the club to assess the defender in front of them rather than rely only on his teenage reputation.
Melbourne City announced his signing on 18 September 2018, and Warren Joyce’s squad gained a left-footed defender whose first priority was to become useful over a sustained period. The one-year agreement was a sensible reflection of the circumstances, providing an opportunity without pretending that years of interrupted football could be dismissed because the player had returned home. Good needed repeated involvement, and Melbourne City needed evidence that he could manage the physical demands of the schedule while contributing to the way the team defended and used possession. He made eighteen appearances during that first season back, a total that represented much more than a line in the statistics after the scarcity of senior football during his later Newcastle years.
Each selection added to the practical case for keeping him, because availability could now be assessed across weeks and months rather than through a single encouraging training session. Good´s earlier technical strengths remained useful, particularly his ability to receive the ball and move it on without making the defence unnecessarily hurried, but the value of those strengths depended on being present often enough for teammates to rely on them. By the end of the campaign, the short initial contract had done its job: Melbourne City had seen enough to continue, and Good had started to replace uncertainty about his fitness with a working record of senior appearances.
PART SIX
On 8 July 2019, Melbourne City announced a two-year extension for Curtis Good, giving him more security and confirming that the first season of the return had persuaded the club to invest further. The timing coincided with a change in the coaching staff, as Erick Mombaerts took charge and Patrick Kisnorbo worked alongside him, and the team increasingly expected defenders to help establish possession rather than regard the ball as somebody else’s responsibility once it had been won. Good’s left foot and measured passing fitted that requirement, while the tactical demands also required him to judge the space behind a side prepared to commit players forward. City improved sufficiently to reach the 2020 Grand Final, where Sydney FC won 1–0 after extra time, leaving Good and his teammates with progress to show and a major disappointment to absorb.
Kisnorbo took over as head coach for the 2020–21 season, and Good remained central to the defence as City developed into the strongest team over the regular campaign. On 11 January 2021, the club announced another extension, this time for three years, strengthening the relationship between a player who had initially returned on trial and a side now expecting to compete for the main prizes. City’s attacking football attracted plenty of attention, particularly when they won Melbourne derbies by large margins, but a team that commits numbers forward also requires defenders who can judge danger before it becomes an emergency.
Good’s work included holding the line, choosing when to challenge and giving teammates a usable first pass, all of which helped the side retain control between attacking moves. As the campaign progressed, City established themselves at the top of the table and won the Premiers’ Plate for the first time. Good’s contribution had therefore become part of a measurable team achievement, and his improved standing was soon reflected outside the club when Australia selected him for the World Cup qualifiers in Kuwait.
Good made his second senior appearance for Australia against Chinese Taipei on 7 June 2021 in Kuwait, with the match falling in the early hours of 8 June for viewers in Australia, and the national association recorded a gap of seven years and ninety-four days since his debut. The interval was the third-longest between a player’s first and second Socceroos appearances, a measure of how much football had passed while Good worked towards another chance with the national side. He started at left-back in a 5–1 victory, with Harry Souttar opening the scoring, Jamie Maclaren adding a penalty and Trent Sainsbury extending the lead before Mitchell Duke scored Australia’s final two goals.
The selection was based on the defender’s recent work with City, so it represented a football decision made possible by his sustained recovery rather than a ceremonial reward for having endured difficult years. He was again trusted to help Australia win a competitive match, and the performance belonged to the present quality of his game. The long absence made that ordinary responsibility unusually significant, because he had needed several seasons of rehabilitation and then regular club football before the national opportunity returned. His second cap added international recognition to City’s successful campaign, although the trip also created a complication when the domestic season reached its decisive match.
Australia’s international commitments and the quarantine requirements that followed meant Good was unavailable for City’s Grand Final against Sydney FC on 27 June 2021, along with fellow Socceroos Maclaren and Connor Metcalfe. City nevertheless won 3–1, recovering after Kosta Barbarouses put Sydney ahead through goals from Nathaniel Atkinson, Scott Jamieson from the penalty spot and Scott Galloway, with Sydney reduced to ten men after Luke Brattan’s dismissal. Good had helped the squad complete the premiership and championship double, although quarantine left him unable to join his teammates on the pitch for the match that secured the championship.
Two days later, City named him their Player of the Year, an award that recognised the work he had done before leaving for national duty and confirmed how highly the club valued his contribution. His return had now produced regular football, a central role in a winning team, another Australia cap and the club’s main individual award, a substantial change in circumstances without requiring the claim that every earlier problem had vanished. The season’s final weeks also demonstrated how football can offer success and frustration together, because the national recall he had waited so long to receive prevented him from joining teammates on the field for the biggest club match of their campaign.
PART SEVEN
Melbourne City entered 2021–22 as defending champions and again finished first over the regular season, winning a second successive Premiers’ Plate while Good continued as an established member of the defence. The campaign brought another interruption to his fitness when he got sick from influenza, and he later described the difficulty of recovering his breathing and returning to his previous level of work, a problem that added a different kind of physical setback to those he already knew. He still helped City reach another Grand Final, this time against Western United on 28 May 2022, with the opportunity to take part in the championship match he had missed the previous year.
Western won 2–0, taking the lead through an early Nuno Reis own goal before Aleksandar Prijović added the second, and City could not convert their regular-season superiority into another championship. Good was therefore part of a team that had again been the most consistent across the league programme but had lost the match carrying the other major domestic honour. The distinction was becoming a familiar feature of City’s results, although the second Plate still represented a substantial achievement over many months. For the defender, another full campaign also strengthened the evidence that the 2018 return had produced lasting improvement in his ability to contribute, rather than a brief spell of good form.
The 2022–23 season brought a change of coach during the campaign, with Kisnorbo leaving for Troyes and Rado Vidošić taking over, but City maintained enough consistency to win a third consecutive Premiers’ Plate. That made them the first club to win three in succession in the A-League Men competition, and Good’s involvement across those seasons placed him within the defence of a side setting a new standard for sustained regular-season success.
The Grand Final against Central Coast Mariners on 3 June 2023 was a different matter, as City lost 6–1 in a match that became increasingly difficult after the interval. Jason Cummings put the Mariners ahead, Samuel Silvera doubled the lead and Richard van der Venne replied for City before half-time, but two second-half Cummings penalties restored and extended Central Coast’s advantage. Beni N’Kololo and Moresche then completed the scoring, giving City a defeat too heavy to explain through one isolated mistake or one unlucky decision. For Good, the afternoon belonged alongside the Plate rather than being concealed by it, because the season contained both sustained success and a badly failed final. City had proved their consistency over the league schedule, yet their defending in the championship match had not met the standard required, and the next campaign would begin with that result still part of the assessment of the team.
City’s 2023–24 season was less successful, with the team slipping to sixth and having to approach the finals from a much weaker position than in the preceding three campaigns. There were changes in personnel and coaching, with Aurelio Vidmar taking charge after Vidošić’s departure, and the side no longer maintained the regular-season authority that had produced the three Plates. Good remained one of the experienced players within that changing team, although experience could not by itself reproduce the combinations and results of the preceding campaigns. His accumulated appearances nevertheless became an important club figure, because the player who had once struggled to get on the pitch was now Melbourne City’s record holder for matches played.
When the club announced his departure on 1 May 2024, it credited him with 179 appearances across his two spells, including twenty-five in the Heart period, a first season that had opened the opportunity in England before his second spell added many more matches in Melbourne. City also announced that its Clubman of the Year honour would be renamed the Curtis Good Award, recognising his standing within the club as well as his playing record. The decision to leave created one further task before any overseas move could begin, since City had qualified for the finals and Good still had an elimination derby against Melbourne Victory to play. That derby took place at AAMI Park on 5 May, and Good returned to the starting side after Nuno Reis was ruled out, making his final City appearance in a match that initially moved in his team’s favour. Tolgay Arslan had a penalty saved by Paul Izzo in the seventeenth minute, but Samuel Souprayen headed City in front in the twenty-ninth, and Victory’s position became harder when Zinédine Machach was sent off in the thirty-seventh.
City had the lead and an extra player, yet they failed to establish the second goal that would have given them greater protection against a late change in the match. Nishan Velupillay equalised in the eighty-eighth minute, taking the contest into extra time, where Good received a booking and then a second yellow card in the 118th minute after bringing down Velupillay. His farewell appearance ended before the penalty shoot-out, and Izzo’s saves helped Victory win it 3–2 after the match had finished 1–1. It was a disappointing final entry in Good’s City record, particularly after the position the team had held, but it was the result of that evening rather than a fair measure of all his seasons there. The departure announced four days earlier now became an actual ending, leaving him free to begin the next move outside the A-League.
PART EIGHT
Buriram United became Curtis Good’s new employers in 2024, taking him to Thailand and another league where the team’s expectations were shaped by winning rather than merely establishing a place in the competition. The transfer move came when he was thirty-one and had accumulated enough senior experience to arrive as an established defender, with a much clearer playing record than the one he had carried into his Melbourne City trial six years earlier. Thailand offered different conditions, opponents and travelling demands, while Buriram’s involvement in domestic and international competitions required the squad to cope with several types of match across the season.
Good’s usefulness still depended on the same practical qualities that had served him in Melbourne: positioning, sound passing, control of the space around his defensive partner and the ability to repeat those tasks without becoming hurried. A transfer abroad at this stage was therefore another application of an established game, rather than an attempt to recreate the circumstances of his teenage Newcastle move. Buriram were a leading Thai club and expected to contend for the league title, so the Australian entered a setting where experience had to produce an immediate contribution. The 2024–25 campaign would give him both a domestic championship and a particularly visible role in the regional competition, where a defender’s attacking contribution became part of a closely contested final.
Buriram won the Thai league in 2024–25, and on 14 May 2025 Good scored in the first leg of the ASEAN Club Championship final away to Công An Hà Nội. The Vietnamese side went ahead through Léo Artur before Good equalised with a header, then Alan Grafite restored the home lead and Peter Žulj’s later goal gave Buriram a 2–2 draw, leaving the tie open for the return in Thailand. The second leg on 21 May ended 3–3 after extra time, and Buriram won the penalty shoot-out 3–2 to take the inaugural regional title. Good’s first-leg goal was a direct contribution to the result over the two matches, giving him a more prominent attacking place in that final than centre-backs usually receive.
Buriram also won the Thai FA Cup and League Cup during the season, completing a collection of domestic and regional honours that made the move a productive one. The results extended his experience of winning teams beyond Australia, and his involvement in the ASEAN final supplied a clear match event through which supporters could assess his contribution. By the end of that first season in Thailand, he had become part of a squad successful across several competitions, with the next campaign presenting the demanding task of keeping those standards while opponents had another year’s evidence of how Buriram played.
Buriram retained the Thai league title in 2025–26 and reached another ASEAN Club Championship final, this time against Selangor, carrying a 1–0 first-leg advantage from Malaysia into the return on 27 May 2026. Selangor’s Syahir Bashah levelled the aggregate score with the opening goal in Thailand, but Suphanat Mueanta equalised on the night and Theerathon Bunmathan added the winner, securing a 2–1 victory and a 3–1 aggregate success for Mark Jackson’s side. The club also added the Thai FA Cup again, keeping Good within a squad that had brought repeated success in domestic and regional football. Not bad for someone who, at one stage in his early twenties, was pushing hard just to get back on the pitch.