by Brad Haddin
Fortunately there were no media, just Dad, my youngest brother, Christopher, and my manager and friend, Peter Lovitt, anxiously scanning the arriving passengers. When I joined them they each shook my hand and we hurried out to the car for the last leg, a 45-minute drive to Westmead, calling Karina to let her know we were on the way. Dad had been at the hospital, along with Mum and Karina’s mum, for most of the past 48 hours, leaving only to catch a few hours’ sleep at our place. He told me Mia was doing fairly well, considering, but tried to prepare me for the sight of her hooked up to tubes and wires in her room in the cancer ward.
Dad dropped me at the main entrance while he went to park the car. I had to fight the urge to run full pelt along the corridors that led to Oncology. I walked into the ward and before I had even reached the nurses’ station or opened my mouth to say who I was here to see, they were showing me where to go. They knew exactly which child I was here for and how far I’d had to come.
Finally I was where I needed to be, walking through the door saying, ‘Daddy’s here, Mia Moo. Daddy’s here now.’
CHAPTER 2
SPORT, SPORT AND MORE SPORT
EVEN BEFORE MIA’S ILLNESS, my kids were having very different childhoods to my own. Like me, they’ve been raised on a bedrock of love, in a tight family unit at the centre of a close group of relatives. But that’s where the similarities end. They’re city kids who know never to play on the road and are comfortable sitting chatting to the barista in our favourite local coffee shop. My young days were very different. Mine was a classic country-town childhood, spent outdoors as much as possible, roaming free.
I was born in 1977 in Cowra, in what’s known as the Central West of New South Wales (although it’s only a bit over 300 kilometres southwest of Sydney). It’s an area with strong family ties — my mum and dad had each grown up nearby and both sets of grandparents and aunts, uncles and cousins were within easy reach. Dad’s parents were on the south side of the town itself and Mum’s, who we called Mar and Pa, were just 50 kilometres away in the village of Wyangala.
Nearby Wyangala Dam is a really beautiful place, like a great sprawling lake. (In fact I remember being very impressed as a kid by the fact that it holds twice as much water as Sydney Harbour. Take that, Big Smoke!) People come from all around to enjoy the area’s fishing, water sports and natural landscape, including two State Parks, and there’s room for everyone. I have very fond memories of our Christmases at Mar and Pa’s place. Mum’s whole clan would gather there and we kids were in our element, swimming, chasing rabbits across the paddocks, exploring the bush and playing impromptu games of cricket and footy.
At that stage we were a family of four, including my brother Michael, who is 18 months younger than me (the youngest child, Christopher, wouldn’t make his appearance until I was seven). In 1982 we moved a couple of hundred kilometres south. Dad decided to make a career and lifestyle change from being a builder to being a publican, and he and Mum bought the Criterion Hotel in the main street of Gundagai, the town famous for the Dog on the Tuckerbox monument. With a population under 10,000, Cowra was hardly big, but it was a bustling metropolis compared to Gundagai, which was home to fewer than 2000 people. That suited me just fine.
Although Michael and I were quite young, the safety of a small-town environment meant we were given the freedom to take off on our bikes or skateboards and be out and about all day with our new friends, popping back home if we got hungry. If we didn’t feel like riding we’d head down to the back of the pub where there was a bridge over a creek offshoot of the Murrumbidgee River. We could walk across to the town’s playing fields, including the footy ground at Anzac Park, and run around to our heart’s content, or we would take the back lane to the local tennis courts. The only rules were we had to finish our chores or homework before we left and we had to head home when the streetlights came on.
The Criterion is a two-storey red-brick and tile Art Deco pub, and we lived upstairs. We had a nice backyard with a trampoline and jungle gym gear, and our mates often wanted to come over and hang out there. Mum, who helped Dad run the pub and managed the bistro, enjoyed having kids around and was happy to have what often seemed like a cast of thousands romping around the place.
We kids were aware that while a lot of the regulars came to the pub for a few low-key drinks with their mates, some of the Criterion’s customers took it too far. But Dad had the perfect temperament for running a pub: he was popular but he knew how to take charge and defuse the situation if something looked like it might get out of control. Most of the time, the place had a really good atmosphere. From when I was about seven or eight, if it was a slow Sunday, Dad would occasionally sit me up on a stool behind one end of the bar near a beer tap. The locals would come over and order a beer and I would proudly pour it for them, feeling very grown up.
If I wasn’t off with Mike or my mates, I’d be hanging around with Dad — wherever he was, that was where I wanted to be. People used to smile about me being his little shadow. In different times he might have been a professional sportsman himself. As a young man in Cowra, he loved rugby league and would line up for three games on a Saturday, playing in the Under-19s, then sitting on the bench for the Reserves and First Grade. In fact, he was so good as a halfback that just before I was born he was noticed by a talent-spotter who put an offer on the table for him to play a season in England then come home and play first grade in Sydney. But he and Mum were settling into married life and looking forward to having a family. In the 1970s you couldn’t make a living playing league: you had a full-time job and trained and played in your ‘spare time’. If he had taken up the offer, they would have had to move away from family support and he would have traded the certainty of his skilled work as a builder for an unknown future in football. His priorities lay elsewhere, so he turned down the opportunity.
You hear about some parents who didn’t get the chance to fully explore their own talents and so channel all their unfulfilled ambitions into their children. There was never even a hint of that from Dad. He was absolutely content with the decision he had made. When it eventually became clear I was serious about cricket and wanted to see how far I could take it, both he and Mum were wholeheartedly there for me. But they would have been every bit as encouraging if I’d decided to follow him into the building trade or become a teacher. Both my parents have offered unconditional support to all three of us boys our whole lives. There’s no-one’s opinion I respect more than my father’s when it comes to just about everything, sports included. He is an astute observer and an acute analyst. But he’s not the one I get my competitive nature from — that would be Mum, a talented athlete in her own right and a take-no-prisoners netballer in her day.
We kids played whatever sport was on offer, depending on the season, and Dad did too. In summer it was swimming, tennis and cricket and in winter it was rugby league. Even on freezing cold nights when Dad went out to footy training with the first-grade Gundagai team, I wanted to be there with him. Other people found the fact that a young kid would sit there by choice for hours unusual enough to warrant a comment, and I guess it was. But I was always interested in whatever was happening on the sporting field, even if it was just blokes running around doing drills. I’d be all rugged up; Dad would sit me under the goalposts with some Minties and I’d be absorbed for the whole session. On game days I’d serve as ball boy, Mike too when he got old enough, and Mum would turn up at half-time with a sausage roll or hot-dog to keep us going. In 1983, the Gundagai team made the whole town proud by winning the Riverina Division premiership for the first time in 20 years.
When it came to cricket, Dad was an all-rounder, happy to bowl and then go out and try to whack a four or six at bat. His team got together through the pub and took its name. I was thrilled to bits when as a very young kid Criterion made me their 12th man, listing me as the number 11 batsman. Of course, according to the rules of cricket, the 12th man can never bat (or bowl, or do anything other than come on as a substitute field
er). But I didn’t know that at the time; I just felt hugely pleased to be part of the team.
We would listen to the cricket or footy calls on the radio or watch them on TV. However, I wasn’t really interested in plonking myself in front of the telly after school or on weekends when I could be running around instead, so I took part in whatever was going. At age six or seven I started playing Kanga Cricket on Saturday mornings. It was a fun introduction to the game, but cricket didn’t stand out to me at that age and wouldn’t for a few years. I was really small for my age, but it was obvious from very early on that I had above-average hand–eye co-ordination. So, despite my small stature, there wasn’t really a sport I didn’t enjoy or do well in, be it tennis, rugby league, cricket or squash. In fact Mum recalls taking me to a district school holiday tennis clinic where, at age nine, I was the youngest player. The other kids were mainly teenagers but I won the award for best player and when the coach was making the presentation of a cool new tennis racquet Mum remembers him saying, ‘I want to be there when this young fella plays Wimbledon.’
Dad says he already knew early on that sport would be the focus of my adult life. At the request of my brothers and me, he spent untold hours kicking balls around with us or throwing to us in the cricket nets. His work made a lot of demands on him, but he’d give us his free time without complaint. If he wasn’t available and I couldn’t scare up a brother or mate to play with, I would kick a ball around the park by myself, hit tennis balls against the pub wall endlessly or bowl against it to practise catching.
I didn’t mind school, but sports day was far and away my favourite day — I was never too sick to go to school then. As long as I was active I never got bored; even my parents used to shake their heads in wonder at me sometimes. Dad, for instance, hated doing footy training; he went through with it because he knew it needed to be done but he loathed it. I loved training and when even the keenest of the other kids had reached the point where they just wanted to get home, I’d still be going hard at it, asking the coach to give me more. I was that way when I was seven and I’m still the same now.
Michael and Chris were also above-average athletes, with Chris talented in cricket and Michael in both cricket and rugby union. (They would each go on to captain their high school First XI cricket teams but Chris, who was a fast bowler, stopped playing after he got stress fractures in his back. Michael was good enough in rugby to have had opportunities to go on and play the game at a high level after he finished school, but he chose to study instead.)
We were raised to have a very clear sense of sportsmanship. A lot of people these days seem to feel that kids should be discouraged from being competitive, that they should be told it doesn’t matter who wins, that it’s enough simply to participate. I understand the intent and I think there are certain contexts where that is probably a good approach, but it’s not how we grew up. We were taught that it was okay to want to win. For me, competitiveness is one of the great things about sport. I enjoyed challenging myself to get better — better than the opposition and better than my own previous level. There’s nothing abstract or subjective about the scoreboard at the end of a game: it’s a clear, objective result. Being on the winning side on that scoreboard feels good, and the desire to repeat that feeling motivates you to push yourself harder to be the best you can be. But — and it is a very important but — as competitive as we were, we took it as a fundamental truth that a win was only ever worth something if you played the game in the right spirit. For us, respect was crucial: you had to respect the game, respect the coaches, umpires, referees, linesmen and any other officials, and respect the opposition. (Later I had to find a way to make that work within the often confronting atmosphere of professional sport.)
Every now and then, a kid I was playing with or against would throw down their cricket bat or kick a goalpost when things weren’t going their way. My brothers and I knew that if we ever did anything similar it would have been the end of our involvement: our parents simply wouldn’t have tolerated it. We understood that it was important that you always played fairly and, whether it was a win or a loss, at the end of the game you thanked the ref and you shook hands with the other team’s players as you looked them in the eye. If you won, you celebrated it without acting like an idiot. If you lost, it was okay to feel disappointed, but you had to accept the simple truth that you’d been beaten by a better team, end of story. I learned those values at Anzac Park in Gundagai and they took me all the way to some of the most cherished sporting grounds in the world, including the home of cricket, Lord’s. They are values Karina also grew up with and they’re ones we are passing on to our own children.
Unfortunately not everyone felt the same. Over the years I’ve seen more than enough of the ugly side of parental involvement in kids’ sport. It’s definitely the minority who don’t know where to draw the line, but it can easily sour the experience for everyone else. Fortunately I was too young to even realise what was going on the day nasty sideline behaviour turned into a real threat to me. It started out as just a normal game of footy with the Gundagai Tigers Under-8s. I was easily one of the smallest kids on the field but I was used to that. I was also one of the fastest. A kid on the opposing team got the ball, saw an opening and made a break for it. I took off after him, ran him down and tackled him. Unfortunately, he fell awkwardly, breaking his collarbone in the process.
He was much bigger than me, the tackle was legal; it was one of those unfortunate things that happens from time to time in contact sports. But in an instant the atmosphere turned very nasty indeed. His teammates moved in, surrounding me, and their parents got up and started to make a beeline for me, more intent on heaping abuse on me than on helping the injured boy. The ref tried to settle things, but it was all going downhill fast. Dad walked over, seemingly casually. He checked that the boy would be okay, then put his hand on my shoulder and, turning to the nearby ref, who he knew well, said to him quietly but with an unfamiliar intensity, ‘How much time to go?’ The ref said, ‘Five minutes.’ Dad said, ‘I think you’d better call it now.’
Still oblivious to the menace in the air I said, ‘Gee, Dad, those other parents are carrying on a bit, aren’t they?’ Continuing to project absolute calmness but walking me off the field with him as he talked, he said, ‘Yes they are. Tell you what, let’s go up to the pub. I’ll get you a lemonade and a packet of chips.’ Chips were a pretty usual treat for us but we hardly ever got soft drinks. I was very tempted, but my usual routine after I played was to stay and watch every other grade play right through till the late afternoon men’s game with Dad’s team. I told him I’d rather do that, but he said again, ‘No, I think we need to head up home.’ Finally I said, ‘Well all right, but I can come back down with you later, can’t I?’ Because Dad maintained such a calm, unworried façade during this whole event, it took me a long, long time before I realised what had really happened.
Even before that occurred, whenever he watched any of us play sport Dad preferred to stand apart from all the other parents. He never made a big show of it; he would just quietly walk to a place where he could concentrate on the game without hearing any bitching or overbearing commentary from the sidelines. He still does it to this day, and I do the same.
Moving up through my primary school years, I was increasingly selected for advanced tennis clinics or to play in regional tournaments and do rep trials in cricket or league. This often meant driving an hour or so to Wagga Wagga and Cootamundra, but somehow my parents always seemed to manage it so one of them could get me there. Family logistics got a bit trickier when they decided it was time for a change and sold the pub in mid-1987. They rented a house in town so Michael and I could see out the school year and Dad went back to work ‘on the tools’ in Canberra, where building jobs were plentiful. He would spend weekends with us, leaving in the early hours of Monday morning for the two-hour drive and returning on Friday evenings. It could be a treacherous road, especially in winter, and one sleety morning his ute hit an oil
slick and span out of control into a tree. He was lucky to walk away from the crash, which split the ute in two, and everyone was relieved that our move a few months later to Queanbeyan meant he no longer had to make that trip.
Canberra and Queanbeyan are neighbours, but the fact that my parents chose to live in one rather than the other was one of the greatest strokes of luck I could have had. I might never have become an Australian Test cricketer otherwise.
The CBDs of the two cities are less than 15 kilometres apart and at the closest point of their boundaries if you weren’t paying attention to road signs you might almost assume you were driving from one neighbouring semi-rural suburb to the next, not realising you’d passed from one city to another. But an arbitrary line on the map marks a crucial distinction between them. Canberra sits snugly in the Australian Capital Territory while Queanbeyan is in New South Wales. That means that as close as they are geographically, there is a massive difference between them — and it was even more marked back then. Canberra gets the kind of investment and attention you’d expect for a nation’s capital, while Queanbeyan often gets forgotten. Things have improved a lot, but in the 1980s the city’s nickname was Struggletown and Canberrans looked down on it from a great height (too many still do).
A lot of that stuff passes kids by, at least until they’re teenagers, and I was no exception. For me, living in Queanbeyan was brilliant because it meant that I had twice as many competitions to play in — NSW school comps and the ACT club comp that, for logistical reasons, the Queanbeyan Cricket Club was part of.
At age ten I went along to an open cricket trial at the National Exhibition Centre (as it was called then) in Canberra. There were quite a lot of kids there and after a bit of introductory talk the organisers started sorting us out to see what we could do in the five nets they had set up. They asked first, ‘Who’s an opening batter?’ My hand shot up, along with a load of others. Four got picked to form the first group and were told to pad up and head over to the nets; I wasn’t one of them. The next question was, ‘Who’s a fast bowler?’ Well everyone’s a fast bowler at that age, so again my hand went up, but again I wasn’t one of the ones picked. Then they asked, ‘And who’s a wicketkeeper?’ The closest I’d come to wicketkeeping was those hours of catching balls in the backyard, but I’d give anything a go. Up went the hand again. This time, mine was the only one. I got sent over to catch for one of the bowlers and that’s how my career as a keeper was born.