gameplans

I wrote this in September 2000

When you are a kid, you don’t have much cause or reason to give your surname. Those who need to know it do, and a child’s life is such that they are rarely required to divulge this piece of information. You are simply Cameron, your mates are Davids, Craigs, Gregs, and generally there is more than one of each. Your whole identity is locked up in this single piece of information.

Mr Stratton, our Under 10 football coach at Essex Heights, used to write our given names up on the blackboard when selecting the teams. There was no need for surnames, even though there were names that appeared on the board more than once.

We had two Camerons in the team, but the coach did not have to explain which of us was playing where. The other Cameron was one of our better players, and was generally named in the centre, whereas this Cameron was more likely to find his name consigned to the back-pocket.

I would sometimes pretend to myself that it was me who was named in the centre, or the pivot as Mr Stratton used to call it. This was a carefree time, when ability was irrelevant when it came to ambition. Imagination meant everything.

The other Cameron was certainly one of the coach’s favourites. By mid year the other Cameron became Cam. I stayed Cameron for the rest of year.

I cannot recall exactly what time of life I stopped becoming Cameron, and became Schwab, or Schwabby to my mates. I think it was in my late primary school years when I crossed the ire of one of the older male teachers, who asked sternly “Schwab, who do you think you are?”

Most of my mates went through the same transformation, those innocent first names were lost as young children metamorphosed. The lucky ones simply adopted derivations of their surnames. There were a few Maccas, Smithies and Hutchies, a couple of Mitches and a Nicho. The less fortuitous were given names that resembled their unfortunate body compositions, features or functions, generally obvious as is the habit of pre-teens. Amongst my group of mates we had a Puddin’, Snozza and the hapless Captain Stinky.

I guess I was lucky to be Schwabby.

By the time we got to the Under 13’s these nicknames were all on the blackboard, and even the coach himself stopped being Mister and became known by some extraction of his surname.

Some things however never change. I had made the back pocket my own. Ability was beginning to overhaul ambition.

It was around this time that I realised that my surname carried with it a special significance. I was picking up a prescription for Mum down at the local chemist, when the pharmacist looked at the name on the script and looked down at me and asked ‘you any relation to the umpire?’ I knew enough at this stage to know that my Uncle Frank had umpired a VFL Grand Final, and I answered the question accordingly. He then asked, ‘you any relation to the bloke at Richmond?’ I could answer this question with greater certainty, because the bloke at Richmond was Alan Schwab, my father and Secretary (as they were then called) of the famous Richmond Football Club. Once again I answered the question politely, puffing my chest with a sense of pride.

The pharmacist grunted and returned five minutes later with whatever it was I had come to collect. He handed over the package and some advice. He said “tell your old man to sack Tom Hafey, he’s past it, put Francis Bourke back on the wing where he should have been left in the first place, and tell Neil Balme to get a haircut, he’s a disgrace”.

That evening I passed on the chemist’s pearls of wisdom to Dad, and waited for the response. I thought he would get angry with the chemist, afterall Dad doesn’t tell him how to pack his shelves. But he just looked at me and smiled and said, “he’s right about one thing, Balmey does need a haircut”. I smiled back.

From that point onwards, my own identity and that of my father were linked. Whilst Dad was not a politician, or even a famous athlete, he had a burgeoning profile in a game that captures the passions of an inordinate amount of Victorians.

And the game had captured my passion. I loved it, and continued to love it well past that day of reckoning when ability had in fact well and truly overtaken ambition. I was never going to be good enough to play at the highest level, but in no way did that dilute my obsession for the game. It was to become my life and my career.

And I could live out this obsession every day. Dad would come home, most often late in the evening, and I could hear first hand whether or not Royce Hart’s knee had recovered sufficiently to take on the Blues this weekend.

I was just so proud to be Alan Schwab’s son. I carried the surname around like a badge of honour, flashing it whenever the opportunity arose, and often it did.

He was my hero.

My hero died seven years ago, suddenly, aged 52 in a hotel room in Kings Cross. He would not have liked the way he died, it was so unnecessary.

But he did, and we carry on.

But we carry on with burden. The sadness in death that never leaves you. The fact that you still need a father. The fact that you still need a hero.

The burden of grief, not just your own but of others. I shared the loss of a father with my sister and brother, and we did what we could to support each other. But I shared Alan Schwab as hero with hundreds of others, who were Dad’s friends and for whom I became the vestibule for their grieving.

I even found myself being invited to functions and get-togethers that Dad would have attended but I was not entitled to attend in my own right. For a couple of years I became a proxy-Alan Schwab. They could still have their Schwabby.

None of this left a lot of time for me to grieve in my own right, I was too busy grieving on behalf of everyone else. This was one-way grieving, and in many ways I was just too sad and angry to grieve anyway.

Now, I am not sure what I miss most, the father or the hero. Perhaps they have always been so inextricably linked that I do not know the difference.

Most of the time, having your own real life hero was more important. If nothing else it made me a very charitable child in terms of my expectations of Dad as a father.

As I grew older I became far less charitable, and I judged Dad harshly.

We learn from death as we do from life. Perhaps my greatest lesson.

Heroes, and fathers, are indeed human, and they have human failings, they make mistakes.

I have now learnt to forgive.

I am a man now, and I am also a father. A life replaced. My son’s name is Lachlan, but I am sure he will be Schwabby one day, and he will have to work that out for himself. I hope he wears the moniker with pride as I did.

But more than anything, I hope he also learns how to forgive.