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Great article in todays Telegraph. Had a tear in my eye.
Kirk has last laugh
By JEFF WELLS
September 6, 2003
"WE HAVE been given a skill to play footy, use that opportunity. Those men in the battlefields didn't have that opportunity. To be the best you must have an edge, do the extra more than others to make you be the best." Brett Kirk's Kokoda diary.
The elevator door at Canberra's Crowne Plaza opened on May 24, a Sydney Swan in a tracksuit, who was facing the Kangaroos the next day, emerged, and the heart of the woman who is stuck with me, and knows nothing about football, went aflutter.
"My God, he's so cute," she cooed. "He's the fifth Beatle." But she frowned. He didn't look big and strong enough to be mixing it with those musclebound gorillas of the game. He looked like he needed a good cuddle.
Well, I explained, he runs like Bambi, only slower. He is a left-footer and kicks it like a loaf of bread. He's got no bum and spaghetti arms and legs. Sydney once sent him a dear John letter and told him to get lost. His teammates thought he was a hippie. A hippie via Albury for heaven's sake, dressed by St Vinnie's op shop worse than the notorious hipster doofus Kramer on Seinfeld.
And when he put himself in the draft as a 22-year-old the whole league laughed. It looked like he might end up at Burrumbuttock where his old man played. His only chance to don his beloved red and white.
Now Brett Kirk, 26, 184cm and 81 kg, is the AFL's best tagger and tackler. He is proposed by Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse as all-Australian. Week after week he fights, above his weight, and at the bottom of packs, and wins. He takes the points from champions like Nathan Buckley. He is one of the great contrasts between image and reality you will find in sport.
But it only takes a little investigation into Brett Kirk's background to find out why. Sure his father Noel played for North Albury in the tough Ovens and Murray league before he moved to Burrumbuttock, where he played well into his 30s, and was five times runner up in the best and fairest, and little Brett became addicted to the smell of the liniment in the dressing room.
But Noel was a player with a difference. He had lost a hand in a farm accident at the age of four and never opted for a prosthesis.
"It never stopped him from trying anything," Kirk ? his mop splendidly uncombed and T-shirt coolly crinkled ? said in the Swans players' lounge the other day. He is a soft-spoken intelligent university-educated young man, a qualified teacher, with a proud sense of family that seems to guide his life.
"When we were kicking the footy in the backyard I couldn't have told you which hand was missing," he said. Nevertheless, even though he wasn't big, mid 70kg range, a Noel Kirk whack behind the ear was a common souvenir from a Burrumbuttock fixture.
But as much as he admires his father the bravest man Brett Kirk figures he has met is his grandfather Wally Moras. Wally fought with the 39th Battalion on the Kokoda Track and Brett never missed an Anzac Day in Albury when "Pop" marched.
In 2000, in homage to his grandfather ? and in the company of some men of character, teammates Andrew Schauble, Leo Barry, Ryan O'Keefe, Rowan Warfe, and Gerard Bennett ? he spent a week walking the mud and treacherous terrain of the track, and picking off the leeches, with a guide and wrote a moving report of the experience which went into the Swans' database. On the last day he refused to remove his wet gear ? it was all the way the tough way. That alone was worth keeping him at the club. There were hidden depths in the hippie. Time would see them emerge.
"It was the toughest thing, physically and mentally, I ever did," he said. As his body was tortured by the effort he was both awed by the courage and stamina needed by young Australian soldiers to survive on that murderous, snaking battlefield, but disgusted at the lack of recognition they have received. There were more memorials to the Japanese. And he was moved to tears by a meeting with one of the "Fuzzy wuzzy Angels" who had helped them. "This war was all about endurance and the human spirit," he wrote. "Mostly teenagers were fighting it and they showed heroism beyond belief. If I can get through this I believe I can endure anything."
Brett started playing in the midfield for North Albury at 16. And soon he was being tagged. He knew that side of the story. So after his recall to the rookie list, he mapped out a campaign to get himself into the Swans midfield. As a tagger.
"My mother said always be an individual, not someone else, not a sheep," he said. "I'm not big enough to push these great players around ? I just get my body in the right place."
The Swans are probably the closest thing to an Anzac platoon in AFL football. And at least one of them will be carrying the Kokoda spirit into this finals series against Port Adelaide tomorrow. With both hands.
Kirk has last laugh
By JEFF WELLS
September 6, 2003
"WE HAVE been given a skill to play footy, use that opportunity. Those men in the battlefields didn't have that opportunity. To be the best you must have an edge, do the extra more than others to make you be the best." Brett Kirk's Kokoda diary.
The elevator door at Canberra's Crowne Plaza opened on May 24, a Sydney Swan in a tracksuit, who was facing the Kangaroos the next day, emerged, and the heart of the woman who is stuck with me, and knows nothing about football, went aflutter.
"My God, he's so cute," she cooed. "He's the fifth Beatle." But she frowned. He didn't look big and strong enough to be mixing it with those musclebound gorillas of the game. He looked like he needed a good cuddle.
Well, I explained, he runs like Bambi, only slower. He is a left-footer and kicks it like a loaf of bread. He's got no bum and spaghetti arms and legs. Sydney once sent him a dear John letter and told him to get lost. His teammates thought he was a hippie. A hippie via Albury for heaven's sake, dressed by St Vinnie's op shop worse than the notorious hipster doofus Kramer on Seinfeld.
And when he put himself in the draft as a 22-year-old the whole league laughed. It looked like he might end up at Burrumbuttock where his old man played. His only chance to don his beloved red and white.
Now Brett Kirk, 26, 184cm and 81 kg, is the AFL's best tagger and tackler. He is proposed by Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse as all-Australian. Week after week he fights, above his weight, and at the bottom of packs, and wins. He takes the points from champions like Nathan Buckley. He is one of the great contrasts between image and reality you will find in sport.
But it only takes a little investigation into Brett Kirk's background to find out why. Sure his father Noel played for North Albury in the tough Ovens and Murray league before he moved to Burrumbuttock, where he played well into his 30s, and was five times runner up in the best and fairest, and little Brett became addicted to the smell of the liniment in the dressing room.
But Noel was a player with a difference. He had lost a hand in a farm accident at the age of four and never opted for a prosthesis.
"It never stopped him from trying anything," Kirk ? his mop splendidly uncombed and T-shirt coolly crinkled ? said in the Swans players' lounge the other day. He is a soft-spoken intelligent university-educated young man, a qualified teacher, with a proud sense of family that seems to guide his life.
"When we were kicking the footy in the backyard I couldn't have told you which hand was missing," he said. Nevertheless, even though he wasn't big, mid 70kg range, a Noel Kirk whack behind the ear was a common souvenir from a Burrumbuttock fixture.
But as much as he admires his father the bravest man Brett Kirk figures he has met is his grandfather Wally Moras. Wally fought with the 39th Battalion on the Kokoda Track and Brett never missed an Anzac Day in Albury when "Pop" marched.
In 2000, in homage to his grandfather ? and in the company of some men of character, teammates Andrew Schauble, Leo Barry, Ryan O'Keefe, Rowan Warfe, and Gerard Bennett ? he spent a week walking the mud and treacherous terrain of the track, and picking off the leeches, with a guide and wrote a moving report of the experience which went into the Swans' database. On the last day he refused to remove his wet gear ? it was all the way the tough way. That alone was worth keeping him at the club. There were hidden depths in the hippie. Time would see them emerge.
"It was the toughest thing, physically and mentally, I ever did," he said. As his body was tortured by the effort he was both awed by the courage and stamina needed by young Australian soldiers to survive on that murderous, snaking battlefield, but disgusted at the lack of recognition they have received. There were more memorials to the Japanese. And he was moved to tears by a meeting with one of the "Fuzzy wuzzy Angels" who had helped them. "This war was all about endurance and the human spirit," he wrote. "Mostly teenagers were fighting it and they showed heroism beyond belief. If I can get through this I believe I can endure anything."
Brett started playing in the midfield for North Albury at 16. And soon he was being tagged. He knew that side of the story. So after his recall to the rookie list, he mapped out a campaign to get himself into the Swans midfield. As a tagger.
"My mother said always be an individual, not someone else, not a sheep," he said. "I'm not big enough to push these great players around ? I just get my body in the right place."
The Swans are probably the closest thing to an Anzac platoon in AFL football. And at least one of them will be carrying the Kokoda spirit into this finals series against Port Adelaide tomorrow. With both hands.
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