Rationale

In my last book, Not Just Footy, I touched on the need for adolescents to have real heroes, as well as those who are larger-than-life. Complementing this, I also think that adolescents need real life endeavours (as opposed to Play Station and sporting academies) to balance out the more pie-in-the-sky, dreamy and lofty hopes and aspirations that they or their parents might have. It may seem ridiculous, but I guess I am advocating that a sporting team should do some charity work together.

In doing so they will not only connect better with each other both on and off the field but with their wider community. They will end up the better for it as charitable work enhances a desire for improvement, selflessness, commitment, hard work and team-play over and above the immediate phase of play or short-term gains. As Hugh Evans points out in his book Stone of the Mountain “...a sense of community connection seems particularly hard for young people in Australia to achieve... It seems evident that our society prefers the faster fix and not the long-term investment.” Sound familiar?

So I encourage all representative players - if not all adolescents per se - to take Hugh’s or my advice and be like the Canberra Raiders and go play with kiddies in hospitals, visit the elderly in a nursing home or raise some money for a charity as well as for your overseas trip or silky representative tracksuit. Get your team to sponsor a tsunami orphan and think beyond the 4-4-2. Tracksuits will fade and formations will fail, but investments made beyond oneself do not disappear as easily. You may then be even more susceptible to looking beyond results and into the heart of things. You may recognise that the world exists beyond the dimensions of a soccer pitch. Or four witches’ hats.

That way you will unclog your humanity and feel a little better about yourself even if things go awry in your sporting life.

(Taken from George Huitker’s How to Succeed Without Really Winning, Ginninderra Press, 2005.)

teamSUPPORT

teamSUPPORT is Not Just Footy Club’s way of trying to get young artists and sporties to give something something back to the wider community. Any individuals or teams wishing to engage in a charitable act can contact us and Not Just Footy Club will line you up with a charity and/or a charitable act to do. As gratitude you will receive absolutely nothing but a certificate of thanks from Not Just Footy Club and a strange, fuzzy feeling of well-being.

In 2005: Radford Soccer collected, cleaned and then sent some balls and strips to East Timor.
In 2006: a teamSUPPORT crew of Year 10 leaders from Radford
* undertook leadership training under GH
* assisted in Wests Wacky Day for students from Black Mountain and Woden School in September
* participated in the YMCA's excellent RAID (Recreational Activities for young people with Intellectual Disabilities) Basketball Program at Dickson College
* assisted with the HMT Blues Brothers/Soul Sister gig this time for Hartley Lifecare, and
* will organise a Xmas-theme event for Black Mountain and Woden School in early December.
In 2007:
* the Radford teamSUPPORT crew are hoping to run their own event for Camp Quality
* a bunch of elite futsal players from Futsal ACT's older rep teams will form a teamSUPPORT network to assist with junior development at both the representative and domestic levels.
* GH is also hoping to create an e-friendship between teams in the UK, USA and Australia who will participate in a simultaneous teamSUPPORT charity event in their respective countries.