Extract
From Section 1: Not Just a Father
But then how did my father with his short, Dutch-accented, grammatically confused sentences and effortless use of silence so strongly command respect and attention and consequently motivate and inspire so many young boys in his lifetime? Could we relate to his very male clumsiness with words? Was it because his expert knowledge, referent power and sincere, quietly confident manner communicated important things very effectively in spite of his fumbling to find the correct words at times? (I remember reading a description of the Brazilian coach, Rene Simoes, who took Jamaica to the World Cup Finals in 1998 communicating with an ‘inimitable form of broken English, a dialect that relied on hybrid words and lots of body movement’ - and felt that this would be a similarly apt way of describing Dad’s manner of communication.)
Yet to me the answer is simple and straightforward: he was a real human being and he was around.
In his excellent paper, Teaching Social Responsibility, educator Dr Timothy Hawkes tells of his being alarmed by a Wall Street Journal statistic which indicated
...that American parents spend less than 15 minutes a week in serious discussion with their children, and for fathers, the amount of close association with their children is 17 seconds a day.
It certainly puts a whole new perspective on the concept of quality time when you have under twenty seconds for it to occur. I suddenly felt spoilt by those long sunset sessions on Holman Street.
Hawkes then goes on to quote from Steve Biddulph:
What children get from a career father is not happiness, nor his teaching, nor his substance, but only his mood. And at seven o’clock at night that mood is mostly irritation and fatigue. Men show their love by working hard and long. They do not get appreciated for it – since it is their presence not their bounty that is hungered by their children.
In brief, dads, your children need your presence, not your presents.
It also does not hurt for them to find some good role models somewhere.
A lot has also been said about self-image, heroes and role models. It was, for me at least, imperative that I had successful male figures to look up to, idolise and receive inspiration from in those formative years. As a hip twelve-year-old, I happily marched, make-up on my face and tongue protruding, in the Kiss Army. And after all, it was the big, evil, bass guitarist Gene Simmons who once crooned:
A world without heroes
Is like a world without sun
You can’t look up to anyone
Without heroes...
(I still think that’s pretty cute for someone who spits blood and breathes fire.)
Sure, rock stars, sports stars and actors all featured prominently on my adolescent bedroom wall, along with Supergirl Helen Slater, Princess Caroline of Monaco and Olivia Newton-John carefully woven into the fabric…
But the adolescent male needs inspiration from real people too. Marlon Brando will never appear, to give him an acting master class; nor lanky Hans van Breukelen pop in at a training session to share some goalkeeping tips; and, sadly, it is no more likely that some sexy super-vixen, princess or rock diva will ever be an option for a formal date. Far away from international sports stadiums, royal palaces and Hollywood glitter, there need to exist more gritty, imperfect but no less influential human people in their lives. People who live in the real, everyday surrounds. People who struggle with the same things that they do, week in and week out: the pressures of constantly having to produce the goods and reach expectations; of having to cope with mistakes and errors of judgement that seem insurmountable; of having continually to find inspiration at times when it’s absent; of having to recognise and aspire to realistic goals; of having to fight physical and mental barriers in order to achieve these goals; of having to work hard, regularly and incessantly even to keep up with the pacemakers; of having to resist the joys of short-term success over long-term happiness; and, regardless of failures and successes, of having the tenacity to maintain survival on a daily basis with your dignity, integrity and self-confidence intact.
In movies, our heroes mostly succeed in checklisting all of the above in a lifetime of about one and a half hours. Maybe that’s why we idolise them. They can do things we normal folk cannot. And in half the time.
In reality, it can take very long, uninspiring and sometimes painful lengths of time to achieve things. This is where good coaches, teachers, leaders and mentors come into their own. They are the constants in their charges’ fluctuating allegiances, moods, abilities and desires, showing them ways of making the struggle in small things like sport, and larger things like existence, something well worth working at. In the case of boys in this new millennium, more real, gritty and human inspiration is needed to give them a better start.
With a little more than seventeen seconds to spare.
Reviews
It is refreshing to be reminded just what sport is all about. In the relaxed, insightful and entertaining style made famous by Bill Bryson George Huitker recounts a lifetime of sporting experiences and anecdotes delivering messages so often forgotten in these days of decreasing sports participation and increasing sports contracts.
- Robert de Castella
Football is life and, as George Huitker says, not just footy. Huitker as a fan, a son of a fan, a player and a coach narrates a classic every-man football story. The highs, the lows, the joys, the frustrations, the rewards and the ingratitude are all there in ways and doses we can recognise all too well. We have all played this game.
- Les Murray
For George Huitker, footy is certainly not just footy. Coaching his kids allows George to express himself as a writer, and a teacher, and as a son who became increasingly aware of his father's influence. George displays the kind of Australian passion and intensity for sport that must go a long way in explaining the incredible success this nation has enjoyed for many decades. His prose and poetry are sensitive, humorous and informative. A delightful account of not just footy.
- Dick Telford
I opened this book with trepidation. I have avoided all competitive sport since being in the Downer United Under 7s Soccer Team, which won only one game all season (on a week I didn't play). I've written a poem about not caring about the Raiders. How could I possibly give a fair review to a book called Not Just Footy.
But by the end of the introduction (entitled Pre-Match Entertainment: Not Just an Intro) I was excited. Here was passionate writing about sport as romance and fairy tale, that decried those who seek success at any cost and the commercialism of the game. At last, I thought, here is a writer who can unlock for me the mystery of why anyone has the slightest interest in sport.
Two hundred pages later I haven¹t rushed out to join a local sports club, but I have gone on a journey that has variously exhilarated, intrigued and frustrated me. Primarily a memoir, the book moves through sociology, poetry, photography and philosophy. It also shifts between beautifully crafted, vulnerable and perceptive paragraphs to pages of banal travel stories.
The book is a lovingly rendered meditation on a son's relationship with his father, as mediated by the game of soccer. It is a window into the strange world of school sporting competition. It edges towards being Zen and the Art of Coaching a Schools Sports Team'. It is a sports book by and about the not-at-all-famous and the not-always-successful.
These are is strengths. Its greatest weakness is a 66-page description of a trip to Britain by Huitker and the school soccer team he coaches that could have been condensed into just three pages. In the rest of the book, the light-hearted style of Huitker's prose is tempered by his passion and purpose.
What I found frustrating is that Huitker raises big questions - about sport and life, winning and losing, and the under-performance of boys in school - and then, after starting to answer them, shrugs the more difficult aspects of these questions off with a joke.
I hope Huitker goes on to write more about sport and its lessons for life, delving deeper into the tougher questions. He clearly has the passion and ability. In the meantime, Not Just Footy is well worth a read, especially for a sports coach or a young player. Or a sports cynic.
- Robin Davidson, Muse
Until you've shivered on a grassless frozen tundra in a t-shirt at 9.00am as a six year old , or fallen heavily on a slippery concrete cricket pitch trying to take a throw in, or felt the hug of your dad on the sideline, or waited motionless in Casualty, or chased a ball down a concrete culvert, or tried to raise money by selling thin air to the same people you sold it to last weekend... you can't appreciate the spirit of Canberra football.
But enlightenment is now close at hand. George Huitker's book Not Just Footy allows our soccer community to celebrate its commitment and vitality. Outsiders can get some inkling of the human galaxies which revolve around that bouncing narcotic called, simply, "ball". The spirit of community, the conflict between success and ethics, the complacency of the winner, the desire of the loser. All of these emotions tumble out of Huitker's simple and special retelling of his experiences as a boy growing up in Canberra and later as an imperfect coach and faithful mentor to boys who had embarked on the same journey as his.
In these days of inflated soccer industry egos and unimagined salaries, the people who matter are left behind. Huitker reminds us, sometimes hilariously, sometimes humiliatingly, but always with humility, of what it's really all about.
His writing is part of the social cement which keeps us together. It puts things in context. It made me feel better. Buy it, read it, and you'll feel better too.
- Danny Moulis
George Huitker reflects on his years as a soccer player and, more recently as a junior football coach. He himself had an exceptional coach, a man of integrity, humor, maturity and wisdom - his father.
Huitker discusses the stupidity of coaches, parents and spectators who, with their fanatical support, spoil the fun of playing and therefore discourage children from progressing to senior football. Interspered with poetry, philosophy and history, this book is not just footy.
- Mavis Angove, Canberra Book Review
It's a terrific book... It's also a very loving portrait of his father... who encouraged him to play soccer... He talks rather lovingly about how he took him along to the football, and would make comments to him from the side of the goal with his cigarette hanging out of his mouth. And also how he encouraged him to be a supporter of the Dutch soccer team which would also be a pretty tough thing to have to live through... His tone would be influenced a little bit by Robert Ford and perhaps Davis Miller... Indeed he has some poems and they're all perfectly apt for the point that you're at in the story... He's quite a literate fellow as you'd probably imagine being an English and Drama teacher...
- Graham Vickers, ABC Radio 666
In the world of sport, Published Memoirs abound. Yet they are rarely worth reading. Such trips down memory lane usually deserve a flick through, but not close scrutiny. While reminisces of star athletes or coaches - the staple of such published works - tell us about the trials and tribulations of performance, they tend to say little about the nature and purpose of sport itself. Physical culture is thus presented as 'natural' rather than as invented and nurtured human activity heavily laden with wider social values and ideologies.
George Huitker's "Not Just Footy" is a shining exception to this trend. It is replete with questions about the socio-cultural significance of sport, reflections on the appropriate role of the coach, and criticisms against the idea that sporting acumen compensates for poor educational and social skills. This is an important message: even Robert de Castella, on the back cover of the book admits "We can easily forget that sport is a part of life, and life a part of sport." Huitker reminds us that it is folly to conceive of sport as anything other than a part of life.
The first half of "Not Just Footy" is devoted to Huitker's childhood with his father (and soccer coach) Jan, a Dutch migrant to Australia. It describes how sport was a means by which their father-son relationship flourished. Skills of life were learned here, not simply dribbling and heading drills. George went on to coach soccer at Radford College, Canberra, where he also became a Drama teacher. Aware that the soccer pitch was theatre, and the game an important stage in his pupils' lives, Huitker always tried to teach life skills - magnanimity in victory, graciousness in defeat, and respect for others. He is aggrieved by loud-mouthed, abusive parents at football matches, and disgusted by coaches who adopt a win-at-all-costs approach to children's sport. Such people devalue the skills-for-life outcome that sport can offer youngsters.
The second half of "Not Just Footy" reflects on a Radford College soccer team trip to England. This part of the book has interesting snippets, but is no match for earlier stories about Huitker learning to coach, dealing with defeat, and believing in victory. His sense of what is possible moves from pessimism, to fatalism, and eventually to realism; that is, the players more so than the coach are responsible for their destiny. The coach, nonetheless, has a vital leadership role - not just by helping to develop sporting attributes, but also by promoting to young people valuable skills-for-life.
- Dr Daryl Adair
Lecturer in Sports Humanities Centre for Sports Studies
University of Canberra in Sports Coach, (Vol 24 No 4 2002)
Studio readers know some of George Huitker's poems (described in your review as "reverent"). In Not Just Footy he has written a lively, entertaining, sometimes adolescent demotic prose, narrating his life as a soccer fan, goalkeeper then coach at Canberra.
George early had personal coaching in this nimble art from his taciturn, middle-aged father, immigrant Dutchman Jan Huitker. Pithy words of sporting wisdom are recalled reverently, impressed upon George's mind as he grew. A repeated lesson was, "Gordon Banks blocked out Pele's bullet header, in the 1970 World Cup". No shot on goal, however perfect, was unsavable for a 'keeper!
Canberra families are sports-conscious. Since early 1960s suburbs were planned, clustered around city centres and having numerous competitive schools. Adult club competitions extended to tennis, rugby league, cricket, soccer and hockey.
Huitker's many on-field soccer anecdotes begin with being goalkeeper for Junior Under 8 Division 3 ("there were none lower"). Inspired by Dad, he became a confident player. A long experience followed of near-wins, many losses. A hard coach at High School encouraged toughness; his Dad allowed an independent mind. Playing "footy", he learned to be true to self, active in teamwork without cheating. With his skillful use of schoolboy slang and youth culture, Huitker's potential readers are adoelescents. But he can seriously discuss a broader subject. Social responsibility in busy parents: "Dads, your children need your presence" and, again, "the adolescent male needs inspiration from real people who struggle." Hence, good coaches inspire enjoyment of the game.
In the section, "Second Half", Not Just Footy finds George coaching at Radford (Anglican) Secondary School at Bruce. His girls' team consistently won their matches, surprising their young coach. The boys Division 2 team in 1996 ohered, making dexterous, funky play. He stopped resisting their own creativity. They entered Division 1 and despite self-doubts and obsessions, won the Premiership 1998. The winning goal came fast from a modest midfield player.
After the collocated photo illustrations, "Extra Time" portrays the Radford boys' team's touring and playing in England, 2000. Huitker digresses freely here about naything, like a good conversation. Old Trafford is recalled. But to my delight, he composed a quiet talk, mutually respectful, between senior-student and teacher (pp. 170 - 172) as they admired a sunset over Wales from Warwick Castle.
-Jack Horner, Studio
