CHAPTER RELEASE - DECEMBER 2018
CHAPTER 6
Standing on the cold, wet sand, water is rushing up over my feet, in front of me
I see a set of deeply set footprints in the sand and along from those I can see the back of my brother as he walks ahead of me. As the salt water recedes back into the ocean, Mat turns his head and peers back over his shoulder to look at me, he pauses and as I take my next few steps towards him he turns back around and continues on to lead the way. There is no one else on this beach, just Mat, myself and white sand as far as you can see in one direction, and the rocks of the barway that shelters Musselroe Bay behind us. This stretch of sand is somewhere he and I frequented often, just the two of us, with no real plans, nothing to say to one another, we simply filled our day just walking away.
There were 3 years between Mat and I. I was the young brother willing to do anything to hang out with him and his friends. If this meant sitting in the corner and not saying a word, this is what I would do, I just wanted to be around them. This often meant playing football, basketball or cricket with the older kids. Being exposed to the generation above me made me grow up faster than my friends from school. I would sit outside his bedroom, with my ear pressed up against his closed bedroom door, as he and his mates would be in his room listening to Nirvana’s Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s Ten, Offspring’s Smash or what I consider the album we played the most, Silverchair’s Frogstomp. Mum and I bought the 3 albums Nevermind, Ten and Frogstomp 3 CD’s for $20 from Brashes music store for Mat’s Christmas present one year. It was something about Silverchair that he and I related to. We listened to that album morning, day and night, at home, down the shack and in the car. We knew the album back to front, lyric for lyric and every beat of the drum, hit of the snare and crash of the symbols. There was something in particular that felt familiar about Daniel Johns, he was the voice of our childhood and we would hang on every word of each song, and every interview he would give on ABC’s Recovery music show on a Saturday morning. Every time a new album came out, we would demand mum take us into town so that we could buy it, with money we didnt have, that mum had to find and then race home and argue about who’s room we would listen to it in first. This went on for close to 15 years with Freakshow, Neon Ballroom, Across The Night. As our friends dropped off with the new sound of Silverchair, we only became fonder of their evolving music.
Mat and I had an inseparable bond, a force between us that would continually see us come back together, almost as if we couldn’t be apart for any longer than a day. This bond grew stronger on a particular summer night when I was 16. I returned to our Willow Lane home from a day at college, I walked through the back door, made my way through the hallway and into the lounge room to find a handwritten note left on the small timber coffee table that sat in the middle of the room. I placed my bag down on the ground and puzzled as to what the letter was and who it was from I reached for it. ‘Mum’ the letter had written on top of it. It was folded tightly in 4 ways, and when I opened it I saw Mat’s writing cover the page. The contents of the letter took me to a place I had never been before, a reality I had not recognised until reading his words that he no longer found life fun, he no longer wanted to be a burden on us and that he wanted to end his life.
————————————————————-
Making my way through the corridors of the hospital, the beeping of machines, the shuffling of beds, the pitter patter of hurried feet as nurses dash from one room to another, I eventually come to a room with WESTFIELD on an A4 piece of paper in the window. I made my way in to find Mat sitting up in bed, looking straight ahead at the wall and not breaking his stare to acknowledge me as I come into his vision. ‘This is odd’ I thought to myself, as I began to discuss the Essendon football results from the game the night prior. No response, this is odd again, so I sat down next to him and looked up to him and asked “how was it feeling?”, no response. I was enquiring about his knee that the previous day he had received a reconstruction on because of an injury he suffered during a game he was playing in for the Tassie Mariners state under 18 football side at York Park in Launceston. There was a chill in the room, that was deafened by the silence. Mum sat down on the other side of the bed and asked Mat how he was as she comforted him with her warm hands on his arm, he pulled his arm away and put it under the bed sheets. Any 16 year old in hospital after surgery was not going to be a happy person, Mat wasn’t just unhappy, he seemed empty, colourless. As I looked into his eyes as he peered forward at the wall, he was contemplating what was left after something had been stolen from him. The room was drawn into silence, Mum on one side, me on the other and Mat in between us, we all had something to say, but we allowed our presence in the room to do the talking for us.
————————————————————-
After scanning the letter for a second time, I ran to the kitchen and ripped the phone off the wall and called mum’s work. “Good Afternoon, Judy’s Body Fashions, Maxine speaking…” I yelled down the phone, Mum responded with “What is wrong? Drew tell me what is wrong?” I told mum she needs to come home straight away, that it is Mat and he is in trouble. With Mum on her way home, I scan every room of the house looking for clues or answers. I start in Mat’s room where I come across a bottle of alcohol and sleeves of empty prescription medication strewn across the floor of his room. With my hands shaking, I attempt to read what they are, but I can’t make sense of the small writing and description of what they are. I hear Mum’s car pull up to a halt in the driveway, she runs inside. In tears I put the letter in her hands, as she starts to read tears swell in her eyes, and I can see her heart tear as the reality sinks in from the page she’s reading. “What do we do?” she screams. I run out into the backyard and find that his car has gone. I make my way back inside and tell her that his car is missing, and she calls the police to report the situation. We try calling Mat on his mobile phone, but there is no answer, the call keeps ringing out. With the police now searching for my brothers silver Subaru wagon, mum and I get in her car and join the search. We comb every street of the neighbourhood, looking for any sign of his car, or him on foot. Without any sign of him, we make our way home to see if he has returned, but nothing. As we walk in the door the home phone is ringing, Mum answers it and it’s Mat’s ex-girlfriend Kieren on the phone. She lets mum know that Mat is at her work, heavily intoxicated and that she’s worried about him. Mum doesn’t let Kieren know about the letter and tells her that we will be there as soon as possible. We both jump into mums car and make our way to the Casino which was a 5 minute drive away. As we pull up into the driveway, we spot Mat’s silver wagon parked on the side of the road. I jump out of the car, my heart is thumping as I make my way towards the main entrance of the building. As I get closer to the door, I see Mat stumbling out of the entry, he’s alive and nothing has happened to him. His eyes come up and he sees me. In his current state it takes him a moment to recognise the situation, but as soon as he does he makes a run for it across the near by golf course. I start chasing him, yelling out to him, pleading with him to stop.
—————————————————————
Sitting in the lounge room of one of Dad’s close golf friends house, the television is turned on to Fox Sport. Next to me, is Dad, Mat, Dad’s Friend Cass and next to him Mum. This was one of the very rare occassions that my mum and dad were in the same room together, it brought a smile to my face if only momentarily. My attention is drawn back to the tv as the announcer introduces the host for the 2000 AFL Draft Day. This was an important day for Mat. 8 years of work from when he started as a junior football at South Launceston, played his first game as senior player at 15, playing in his first senior premiership with men twice his age when he was 16, playing in front of 50,000 people on the MCG in a TAC Cup Final which was the Tassie Mariners first finals appearance and successfully representing his state at the Division 2 Under 18 carnival and winning the individual medal for the best player at the carnival. This body of work in a short amount of time had put Mat’s name into the running to be drafted that year. Mat had been contacted by a number of clubs in the lead up to the day, and there was a buzz in the room, my own thoughts were not if he would be drafted, but where he would be drafted to. As the host started called out names, the top young men of football from across the country had their careers kick started to professional sports people. A number of young Tasmanian names were amongst those called out, most notably, Danny Roach who was also from Launceston who was drafted at number 7 to Collingwood Football Club. The names rolled on, names familiar to Mat as opponents he had played against in the TAC Cup or at the Under 18 Carnival. As the afternoon went on, I started paying less attention to the tv, and more onto Mat as I could see him sink further into the chair he was sitting in. His torso went from leaning forward with his elbows on his knees in anticipation, to slumped back into the chair, arms crossed, without a word to be said. A silence grew in the room as the last names were called out. Mat stood up and made his way out of the loungeroom, out of the house and back to the car where he would wait for mum and dad to come out once they had thanked dad’s friend for letting us watch the draft at his place. I made my way out to the car to join Mat, and his attention was on anywhere or anything but me. The car ride home was uncomfortable, I was waiting for someone, or anyone to speak, but nothing. When we got home Mat went straight to his bedroom, shut the door and he didnt come out for the rest of the day.
—————————————————-
Night was falling as I chased Mat across the fairways of the golf course, even in his intoxicated state I couldn’t keep up with him, I was screaming for him to stop, to wait for me, but he disappeared into the trees and into the dark of night. I had lost him. I walked back to where I had got out of the car where I found mum with the police and they asked where he was, I told them that I didnt know, and that I lost him across the golf course. The police got back into their car and sped away, Mum and I got back in her car and began the search for Mat up and down Casino Rise Road windows down, calling out to him. The search went on for hours, we drove past all of his friends places, we went to Prospect High and Summerdale Primary schools, but no sign of him. On a lap around our old street in Rowland Crescent, we made our way down the slight incline in the road and as the lights of mums car levelled out, they shone onto Mat’s car parked on the side of the road. Inside was Mat, slumped in the front seat. As we pulled over, and the lights of the car hit him, his head came up, he was alive, he was ok. I ran to his car, and stood in front of it before he could drive away, but he made no attempt for the key in his ignition. He was tired, he was confused and he was lost.
CHAPTER 8
“He needs to eat some food and harden up”. They were the words spoken to my mum in a meeting that she had been called to, to speak to Mat’s coach after he returned during a football preseason 15kg lighter than he was the previous season.
There were concerns over Mat’s weight and the short amount of time that he had dropped it over. It was the the last year of Mat playing in the TAC Cup Under 18 League for the Tassie Mariners. In the period from when Mat joined in the Mariners as a 15 year old key position player, to 3 years later, the game had changed, the players AFL Clubs wanted to draft had changed. No longer were key position players a priority, but tall, rangey, midfielders who could run all day were now high on the talent scounts list.
Over the course of 3 months, after his knee reconstruction, Mat had gone from lining up against 6’8 opponents in the ruck using his natural spring, to grinding himself into the ground to get himself into a shape that he considered as draft potential. Previously having a naturally thick but athletic physique, Mat now looked more like a runner than he did a footballer. He went from lining up at Full Forward, Centre Half Forward and at times Full Back to running in the midfield for the majority of the game. Watching his games went from keeping an eye on him at one of the ground, waiting for him to do the spectacular that he was known for in the air taking a mark, or on the ground kicking a goal over his shoulder, to now watching him compete at every contest, with a new hardened approach to the game.
When Mat wasn’t at training 3 times per week, he wasn’t at home because he was out running. If he wasn’t running he was swimming and if he wasnt doing either of those I would be with him doing skill work at St Pat’s Oval which was 500 metres away from our home in Willow Lane. Mat would come down the hall way, football in hands, and demand me to get out of the comfortable arm chair in front of the TV that I placed myself in after school, to work my way through an ironman size serving of Nutrigrain, followed by a superman sized cold Milo. “Come ‘on Juice.. Get up, Let’s go”. My eyes would leave the TV screen and make my way across to him standing to the left hand side of it, he had now made his way into the lounge room, and was jogging on the spot. His immense amount of energy was doing it’s best to coax my lack of it to get out of the chair, it was working. Mat would make his way right across to where I was sitting, take the empty bowl out of my hand and place it on the coffee table, then return to grab my hand and pull me out of the chair. “I need to get my gear on Mat”.. I would make my way down to my bedroom and Mat would head out the back laundry door and jog along the garden path to in front of my bedroom window where he would peer in to make sure I wasn’t dragging my feet. “For fuck sake Mat, give me a minute will you”, “Hurry up Juice, it gets dark soon”. It’s November, Daylight Savings has well and truly started and I know that it doesnt get dark until 8pm and it is currently 4:30pm. Mat making reference to it getting dark and us training until then, slows me down, because I know I am not going to last 3 and a half hours. If it was my choice we’d be there and back within 45 minutes, if it was Mat’s we’d keep going until we could no longer see one another in the darkness. Knowing Mat he would bring the yellow Sherrin instead so we could see it better.
I make my way out the laundry door and see him take off out of the driveway, across the road and into the reserve which makes its way up into the bush that backs on to St Pats oval. He has already put 100 metres on me before I make it out of the driveway, so I am back to where I find myself regularly, trying to keep sight of him out in the distance. We eventually make it to the oval after a 5 minute jog, or a sprint for me trying to keep up. I’m already breathing heavily and have sweat dripping down my face. The process is the same every time we come here. We start 10 metres apart and kick it to one another 50-60 times on our right foot, or until Mat determines so based on how well I am hitting the target. Then we switch to our left foot for 50-60 kicks. On my left it’s always more because I don’t have the same control over my non preferred foot as what Mat does. “You’ve got to hit the target Juice! Keep your head over the ball and follow through”. We then go 5 metres back, follow the same process. Take another 5 metres back, same process. Another 5 metres, this time we don’t kick on our left foot because we’re now kicking between 40-50 metres to one another. Then Mat will start leading in different directions and my role is to stay in the same spot and pin point the passes. Then it is my turn to lead, after a few attempts I start slowing down, “Faster Juice!” he demands. He intentionally kicks the ball 5 metres in front of me so I do need to sprint to mark it, or risk it falling at my feet and going past it and needing to do a u turn back to retrieve it. Then Mat asks for me to kick it high into the sky over 30 metres so he can practice running up, jumping and taking a overhead mark. It’s again my turn, “Higher Juice! Get off the ground!”. We make our way closer together 5-10 metres apart and I throw the ball along the ground at Mat, 10, 20, sometimes even 50 times “Throw it harder Juice! It doesnt roll like that in a game”. Then it’s my turn and the balls come in hard at my feet “Get down to it Juice! Don’t be lazy”. By this stage any energy I had was well and truly spent, and I got lazier and lazier and my execution by hand or foot turned sloppy. In return for this sloppiness, Mat would kick the ball at me as hard as he could, if I dropped it, he would kick the ball over my head and would continue to do so until I showed the energy and execution he wanted to see “You’re not going to get any better doing things half arsed are you” he would keep reminding me.
The skills sessions would end with me flat on my back, gasping for air, my back itchy from the freshly cut grass sticking to me, small flies buzzing around my face, I didn’t care because by this stage I was in survival mode. While I laid there Mat would take off around the boundary line, ball under his arm and would run lap after lap, taking a bounce every 10-15 metres. Each time he would make it into the 50 metre arc near the goal he would punt it through the big posts, then sprint to the ball pick it up and continue on with the lap. He would do 10 laps minimum, with a system in place where if he missed a goal, it would mean another lap. I grew tired watching him, but I kept watching as he took every long stride, as every bounce of the oval football hit the ground and returned to him, it was poetic watching the way he moved. His body, the way he could use it, it was so different to my own. His arms, shoulders and legs looked like they were carved out of marble like one of Michaelangelo’s statues. I would look down at my own body and see my stomach hanging out over my shorts, the chaff turn red on the inside of my thighs and my man boobs poke through my Adelaide Crows guernsey that no longer fit me so well.
With the increased workload, Mat became more conscious about what he was putting in his body and how much was going in. He no longer ate like a horse like me, making the food disappear on his plate before blinking. He ate what was enough to get him through the day, and started requesting more fruit, vegetables and meat, instead of the cereal, rice and pasta that we grew up on. There would normally be scratches on our plates after dinner as the two of us look for every last skerrick of food and then peering at one anothers plate to see who had one, to Mat now leaving food that he didnt want on his plate and offering it to me if I was still hungry. Come Wednesday after mum had done a Monday grocery shop the pantry would normally be empty and we would need a restock, but now it was still full.
The time he had spent in his hospital bed recovering from his operation, at home in his bedroom resting, during the rehabilation that he completed, his mind was on one thing, coming back a different player to what he was. His idol was James Hird. From the time Hird appeared in the Baby Bombers premiership side of 1993, both Mat and I were drawn to him. I didn’t even go for the Bombers, but Hird’s natural ability, courage and leadership he displayed drew nothing but praise for him. I even found myself getting around football training with a Essendon guernsey with a number 5 on the back.
Mat’s newly redesigned physique and game wasnt based on Hird, it was a new age of AFL player. One that was tall and could mark, but could also run all day, one that could go forward and kick a goal, and one that could work harder than their tagger in the midfield to still influence the game. All of these things Mat had become. He had dedicated 12 months of himself to becoming a new player, a new person, a more dedicated footballer, because football now consumed 100% of his life. He was the epitome of professional, always early, always out warming up first, always last coming off the ground after goal kicking practice. He would dedicate time during the week stretching, recovering, icing, walking, jogging, skills sessions, more streching, more icing, more recovery. He was as professional player as what I had ever seen when comparing him to the senior players around the South Launceston Football Club, and from the snippets of behind the scenes footage they would show on the AFL broadcast.
With the change in Mat’s approach to his game, also came physical changes. His face had become drawn, with his cheek bones visible and I could see the hard work he had put in, in his face. He had bags under his eyes, as if he had been up all night working. He was no longer as muscular, because he dropped the additional kilograms so that he could move faster, but he hadnt lost any physical strength. When other players or people saw him after a few months of not seeing him, their face would scrunch up, they would take a double look and ask the person next to them “Is that Mat Westfield?”. The whispers behind his back started, from friends, family, football team mates, but never to him directly. The whispers would’ve been heard, Mat would’ve had to have been deaf not to hear them. But they never seemed to phase him, he never appeared to lose his focus, or miss a stride with the process he was putting himself through.
Sitting across from him in the lounge room his eyes would be cast out the window, his mind would be elsewhere, his hands fixated on the red leather sherrin, as he would spin it through his hands, thinking about how he could improve getting it into his posession more out on the football field, thinking about what he needs to do to make his dream become a reality, thinking about what it would mean to his life if he was able to run out one day as a AFL footballer.
Chapter 15
It was my first official invite to Friday Night Drinks with Westpac, which occurred every 3 months at the end of the quarter. The Centre Manager Kim would take all of the Team Leaders out for social drinks, to get to know one another better and bond outside of the call centre. I was excited, a combination of getting to socialise with the leaders of the business, and to do it at the expense of the business sounded like a perfect night to a 21 year old me. A few of the other senior members of the team I had formed good relationships with Khany who had been my manager and helped me get my role, and Adam McDonald who has been my closest ally since I moved into my new role. His desk is next to mine and whenever I was uncertain about something or he heard hestitation in my voice, he was there to answer the question for me.
The nights were known to be big ones from the reports I had been provided by Adam and Khany. For a lot of the Team Leaders is was one of their only opportunities to get out and about because they had husbands and wives at home, along with young kids. I had a road trip for football the next day to Latrobe, so I am keeping a lid on it so that it doesnt effect my performance the following day. After work we make our way down to the Star Bar at 6pm which is in Charles Street in the middle of Launceston. There was 12 or 13 of us standing around like a flock of sheep to begin with as we settled in to our surroundings and started to loosen up with a few beverages. There was some nervousness in the air, as I expected there to be socialising with the people who I spend 5 days a week with in a professional setting. I had set 8pm as my curfew, which soon came around after a few slices of pizza and 3 or 4 beers had been consumed. “Alright guys, it’s time for me to leave”, I start to shake some hands and position myself towards the exit, where I am met with some push back “Make it 9pm.. What harm is another hour going to do?”. Considering this was my first Friday Night Drinks, I have only just started in my new role and I am the youngest one here, I come to the conclusion that it wont do any harm at all. In that next hour drinks start going down faster, and beers turn into shots. The next time I look at my watch it is now 10pm and I’m thinking I need to get out of here or I am going to be no good tomorrow for football as my legs were already starting to get wobbly. I get dragged to the bar for another shot, followed quickly by another drink, and my grasp of time and the game of football I have tomorrow is lost.
“Get up!” my bedroom door is swung open and hits the wall behind it. I peel my head off the pillow and try to look at who is in the door through very glazed eyes. It’s Mat, he’s fully dressed in his South Launceston game day attire looking ready to leave. I’m trying to piece together how I got home, at what time and whether I have sobered up yet. I drag my ass out of bed to the shower and hope that the water hitting my body will somehow sober me up, it doesnt. I move down to the spare bedroom to get changed, pack my bag with playing gear and then stumble out to the kitchen to make breakfast “We don’t have time, you can get something on the way” Mat instructs me. He is pissed off and I don’t blame him, he is the co-captain of the team and his Centre Half Forward for the day is still heavily intoxicated from the night before when I should’ve been home at 8pm.
We get into the car and every breathe, movement or gesture I make I can tell is pissing Mat off . “Where the fuck were you last night?” Mat asks with steam coming out of his nostrils, “I was at a work function” I respond. “Until 3am this morning?”, “Yeah” I respond while questioning myself what the hell was I doing until 3am. The 1 hour trip to Latrobe was going to be a long and quiet one, as I could sense Mat’s blood boiling the longer the trip went on. We pull over at Subway in Kings Meadows so I can get something to eat, hopefully a foot long chicken parma sub will cure me or even just sober me up. Each bite I took seemed to get louder, the bread crispier and each crumb that spilt into Mat’s work ute set off a land mine. “When we get there, just shut up, don’t speak to anyone and pretend that you’re fine… You’re a disgrace you know?!”.
We pull up to Latrobe Football Oval, I put my sunglasses on, not because it was bright blue skies with the heat of the winter sun being felt, but to hide any sign of what I was up to last night. During the team meeting, our Coach Scott Harris who was a club legend and bled red, white and blue turned to me and said he wanted big things for me at centre half forward today because it was a new position for me and I would be working in tandem with Mat who was playing at Full Forward because of an ongoing back issue he was playing with, which kept him out of his normal midfield role. Sweat started to drip down my forehead and I took a big gulp of discomfort as I tuned out to the rest of the meeting. My actions from the night before started to sink in as I started to sober up and the thought of me running around out on the oval for the next 2hrs became a reality. This was an important game for us, and here I was still half drunk from the night before letting my other 21 team mates down, about to humiliate myself because I’ll be seeing 2 footballs in the air when it is coming at me.
We run out on the ground as a tight knit unit, normally I don’t feel nervous before a game, because I didnt take my football that seriously. Today I felt sick from guilt, I could feel it bouncing around in my stomach and twisting in my intestines. My head is drenched in sweat before the first siren sounds to start the game. During the warm up drills, I’m more focused on how do I not make an idiot out of myself instead of the ball that is being kicked at me. At this stage I think I have done a good job of not letting anyone else become aware of the state that I am in because I havent copped any looks of judgement and comments about my appearance or aroma of booze coming from me. I make my way to positon before the start of the game, I look down the centre of the ground to the other end and then turn to see Mat behind me in our goal square - he sends a gaze my way and a nod of his head as if to say, “you’ve got to do this”. As the ball was thrown into the air for the first contest, a rush of adrenaline is sent through my body and I take off towards the centre of the ground towards the ball. I’m moving faster than I ever have done before, arms pumping, knees are high and I’m sprinting, I work each side of the ground leading up to the ball, marking and moving it on to keep the speed of the game flowing. My primary focus is if I get the ball to turn and go and kick it into Mat’s vicinty where I know he will be better than his opponent in a 1 on 1 contest, which for 3 separate occassions in the first quarter he is which allows him to put 3 goals on the scoreboard for them team. I make my way into the huddle at quarter time, my lungs are blowing, sweat is in my eye and I am locked in on the game and focused like I’ve never been before. Mat comes up to me and taps me on the back “Good work Juice”. In that 25 minutes of time, I have gone from being hung over and feeling sorry for myself, to playing a key role in the game in a position I haven’t played at senior level before.
The second quarters starts the same as the first finished. I keep working high up on the wings to be the middle man between our back line and forward line. Normally my hands arent that strong in contested marks, but today they are like a vice. Even when I don’t mark it, I bring the ball to the ground in front for our smaller roving players to have first option at it. My work rate is high, I’m covering more ground in 2 quarters than I normally would in 4 and I am attacking the ball like my life depends on it. The half time sirens sounds and we make our way into the change rooms, we’re up on the scoreboard by a goal and there is a positive buzz amongst the team. Harry singles me out during his half time speech for the impact I am having on the game and demands that it continues in the second half if we are going to win. During the break I am assessing what energy is left in my body and fuel in the reserves, my fuel light is on and my legs start turning into jelly. The nerves that had left me kick back in, as the reality of needing to play another 2 quarters sinks in. We make our way back out onto the ground for the third quarter, I’ve got nothing but water sloshing around in my stomach and the taste of alcohol sitting in the back of my throat. The sweat on my face has dried up to leave a salty residue that becomes sticky like I’ve got a mask on. The ball is bounced in the centre of the ground to start the quarter and the run in my legs I had in the first half has disappeared. Fortunately on that particular day I was able to fade away into the shadows that were being cast across the ground by the grandstand as the afternoon sun lowered itself, because Mat took hold of the game, and made it his own.
Even with a lower back injury that had plagued him for most of the season, he wowed the crowd with this aerial prowess, in one contest rising above his opponet, placing his knees on their shoulders and then rising again into the air to take a mark fully stretched 6 feet in the air. He went back from the mark and banged through a drop punt from outside 50 metres. Mat could do no wrong on the field that day, a miss timed kick out of the centre by a South player would land on his chest, a ball would bounce over the back of the contest and into his hands, with centrimetres of goal to aim at from the boundary he would snap the ball across his body.
There were a number of occassions during the 2006 season where the team was down and would look to Mat to step up and win the game off his boot. Mat would frequently be on the Friday night news as a preview to the weekend of Football. On a Sunday he was across the back pages of The Examiner with paragraphs written about his heroics on the field the day before. The season of work that he had put in culminated to him being awarded the Darrel Baldock Medal for best and fairest player in the Northern Tasmana Football League for that season, beating out his two close mates Scott Stephens (or Scuba as he was known) who played for Launceston and Shane Wager (or Wage) who played for North Launceston in the count.
Watching Mat sit back in his chair at our table at the Launceston Country Club Casino as his name was called out, a big smile came to his face, the win was unexpected because he didn’t play a lot of games that season, but he had enough best on ground performance to seal the victory. His best mate Scuba who was also his house mate, came across to him in his seat, embraced him, shook his hand and from a spectators perspective it felt like they had won it together. Mat took a moment to gather himself in his seat, looking down at the ground with his hands on his thighs, it started to sink in that had been recognised as the best player in the league for that year. I could see in his eyes the pain he had felt coming back from a knee reconstruction as a 16 year old, the years of disappointment that he had felt from not being drafted the following year, that lead to him leaving the game and being a recluse for a number of years, the return he made to South Launceston where football had started for him as a 10 year old 14 years earlier, that ended in him being recognised as both the club and leagues best player for that season - it felt like redemption for him.
