Our club & the heart of a man
“Hey mate, hope you’re well,” he texted on a Friday morning.
Five words that helped change a life, get me back on my feet, returned to the field, finding a way again to Matlock, to play hockey.
This is a story about the Camberwell Hockey Club, but it could be any club, an exchange between any teammates, of any ages, playing in any grades. It’s a story about what a club might mean, about care, and looking out for each other, especially when the chips are down.
Seasons are turning, ends and beginnings, and now is a time to take stock.
It’s a season to celebrate what’s been achieved – all those games played, the great things that might yet beckon for some – but a time also to acknowledge what’s more important than the wins and losses.
Scorecards don’t record friendships.
There’s no medal handed out for being in the crowd, for the support it offers.
Trophies aren’t given for the belonging that comes with being in a club.
*
My name is Dugald and this is a story about someone I met through the hockey club, and how he helped in a difficult time, and what this might mean.
Be part of a club, and our lives are not lived alone.
A history is shared, and we are part of a group, with so many who’ve come before us – see those names etched on the honour boards – as with those who come after.
Like many within the Camberwell Hockey Club, I was affected profoundly many years back by the death of Jesse Foster. Still think of him. Long ago I was his Pennant A captain, and as with many I played with, he was on the up, and I was hardly going no higher. I remember him as a beautiful boy, a young man; and as a captain, my role was to include him, nurture him, inspire him.
I wish he had of known, I wish we could have talked.
*
A few years ago, I went through a pinch – I’m still not out of the woods – and so many within the Camberwell Hockey Club helped get me back on my feet. Old friends, and new. In little gestures, a telephone call, offers of help, in the knowing they are there.
In this turning of the seasons, I hope some might find nourishment in this sharing.
Life is not all beer and skittles, but every part of it is worth living.
Play for as long as we can.
Live for as long as we can.
We only get one shot at this, best make the most of it.
*
This story is about Adrian Young – all in our team call him ‘Youngy’ – and it unfolds in three parts.
Last year I wrote about something Youngy had done for me, with a hope to have it published in a newspaper. I thought it a beautiful story, and sent it to others, and they agreed, and you’ve gotta trust the words, how they’re put down, that they’ll find an audience, settle where they need to.
But these words never did.
Two newspaper editors said ‘no’, and a part of me is left hanging.
*
The story I wrote was about generosity, and the social contract of sporting clubs, and of men helping other men. It was about Youngy and a few others who’d reached out, offered a hand, helped pull me up from a fall.
“Hey mate, hope you’re well,” is how it began, with a text he sent one Friday morning.
“I’ve just received a summer hockey email and thought of you straight away,” his message read. “Would be good to see you back playing for the Watson Young team again, and I’d like to ‘sponsor’ your return as encouragement”.
And with that, a life turned.
After a stumble – a separation that’d turned in ways it never needed to - one thing led to another, and it led to me turning away from so many of the things that make up a life. One of these was sport, and a Thursday night tennis group I’d started with a bunch of school dads, and Monday night hockey, including a summer team in which my role was to give the pre-game address.
What I usually spoke about was what the game might mean. The togetherness. The playing, the caring, the looking out for each other. The sharing.
All a bit woo woo, but so be it.
After the upheaval of a separation, my hockey stick and tennis racquet lent in a corner of my bedroom for two years, and I was uncertain I’d ever use them again. That part of my life was over. Returning to the field seemed too hard. Rent money, bills, food – basic necessities – preoccupied my hierarchy of needs.
Then Youngy sent a text.
A first game back, deep breaths, my two boys happy for their dad to be doing again what I’d always done; go out to play, with others. I scored a goal that first game (my only one for the season) and it won us the match, and afterwards I lay in bed into the night, couldn’t sleep for the happiness of it all. Being part of the team again, included, with other men – Whitters, Wardy, Yeatesy, Walshy, Deccers, Faulksie, Paulie, Tobes, Simmo, Steve Whittwer, the Great Scandretti.
At 11.41pm on a Monday night I texted Youngy: “My gratitude is lifelong. Thank you.”
He replied without hesitation.
“I knew it was what you needed,” he wrote.
“Was for me, when I started playing and was in the middle of a divorce and didn’t know a single person at the club, in the team, and you made an effort to make me feel welcome. It’s my turn to be there for you.”
*
That was the story, never published.
The summer I returned to hockey, back to the fold, and at the season’s end at a pub in Richmond, all of us around a table, I was asked to say some words. What I told all my teammates is what Youngy had done for me. He had paid my hockey fees. Got me back on the pitch.
He had looked after me.
*
Adrian Young lives a few blocks away, and in summer we share the driving to-and-from games on Monday nights.
He’s a successful architect who leads a fast life; always travelling, moving, meetings, boardroom talks, contracts, big projects, three conversations at once, running a busy practice, offices interstate, and overseas, he never sits still. With his financial success come the trappings. One is a very fancy car. I call it the spaceship.
When he drives to hockey, I travel in a leather seat, low slung, that gives a bum massage if you press the right buttons, in a sleek black Mercedes, straight from a showroom.
My turn to drive, and he’s in my dear old jalopy, I call her Dorothy, a nothing-fancy ute, with hanging sticks and cockatoo feathers, and spilled coffee in the centre consol, and mind the tools at your feet.
Wind down the window if you need fresh air, I tell him.
“Stands out like dog’s balls, Duges,” he says.
*
A few weeks back, Youngy texted again.
“Just got home from hospital. Broke my ankle in 2 places Friday morning after a freak accident with the dog lead. I’ve had surgery to repair.”
My reply was immediate, then a few days later.
“Need to make that pub night a priority,” I wrote.
*
Soon after, Youngy texted early on the morning of my birthday.
“Onya Youngy!!!” I replied.
“Been thinking about you this week, how you’re getting on. Drove by your office late Monday to see if you were about, but all the curtains were drawn.”
What I didn’t tell him, is if the lights were on, I’d have pulled over to go check on him, see if he needed a lift home.
Doesn’t matter what car you drive.
It’s the care that carries us through.
*
I met Adrian about 13 years ago, soon after returning to Melbourne, because a friend – Adam Beaumont – signed me up to play in a summer hockey competition. I brought a few others into the team, some friends I hadn’t seen for years, and then recruited my brother, Hugh, and this group of ours have had a glorious ride, winning a few premierships, but doing something far more valuable.
Making lifelong friendships; looking out for each other.
Win, lose or draw, our team – the one Youngy sponsors – always gathers after the game. We drink beers and tell stories, and share recipes (last summer we had running commentary on the best ways to cook zucchinis). We ask after partners and children, and all of us know we are equals for those two hours we share on a Monday night.
At season’s end, Youngy asked if I’d like to join his winter team, and said he’d pay my fees, if that’d help.
We all have our own love languages.
This is one of his.
*
Another thing about Youngy is this: we were born a day apart, fifty-something years ago.
I’m a day older that he, he’s a day younger than me.
He’s always Youngy.
And on his birthday, I thought of him, on crutches, his broken right ankle, in pain, and the frustration of it, how it must be gnawing at him.
Being hurt, injured.
And I’ve thought how much I need him to get better, and get back out there.
I’ve thought about some of the things this friendship offers; the space and time we have together on the drive to-and-from games, the talking, the sharing, the confiding.
Hockey is what’s brought us together.
Being together on and off the pitch, at the bottom of the hill at Matlock.
*
And now another season is closing and please know it’s a time to be careful, to look after others as much as you can. All the research shows that in mid-latitude cities like Melbourne, suicide has seasonal patterns, and as spring bursts, from mid-September to November, this is a difficult time for so many, myself included.
There is a seasonal readjustment that can trick the brain. It’s caused by an overstimulation, triggered by sunlight.
I’ve often thought also, once the social contract of winter sport disbands – when all the changing rooms are cleared out, the grounds sit idle – many of us might feel untethered from the ties that bind. It is a time of unsettledness.
To know this, to understand this, is to empower ourselves, and others.
Suicide, in our part of the world, is markedly seasonal, clustered in spring, and predominately it affects men. It is why R U OK Day is next week, it is why Movember is when it is, because this is the season when awareness is needed the most.
Women are not immune, but maybe they’re better at talking about it, discussing mental health, better at the casual social networks that mean so much. Maybe they just have greater fortitude.
All of us are complex individuals, and all of us are loved.
For those who are still playing, enjoy these last games – do all you can to help your teammates on the pitch – then redouble those efforts to help them when the game is done, when the time comes to leave the ground. Look out for each other. Be there for each other. Offer support. Ask questions. Never judge, nor assume.
Winning is great, but it is not everything.
This is a great gift of the Camberwell Hockey Club; that it gives so many this space – a venue, a time, an opportunity – to have these conversations.
And here is a great legacy of our friend Jesse, that he might forever make us share this discussion.
May we always be there for one another, because it’s the most rewarding thing we have.
Each other.
All of us joined by a game.
And thank you Adrian, for helping get me back to the game, in from the cold, to a place where all of us belong; on the steps, on the field, in the changerooms, among friends and teammates, at the Camberwell Hockey Club.
by Dugald Jellie