ABC Grandstand's Unsung Sporting Heroes

by ABC Grandstand

  ‘Wow, how good is this?’ I remember saying to my mother with delight. ‘He never told us.’

  We always knew there must have been good sporting genes somewhere in the pool as his two sons were both very athletic. The younger, my uncle, was a ridiculously talented Australian Rules player, as were my two elder brothers.

  My grandfather’s first love, however, had always been cricket, a sport whose culture reflected his own gentlemanly demeanour. He played well into his twilight years, making a hundred runs on his fifty-fifth birthday, while playing for his beloved local team of Borden, where he was a life member and where his name adorns the honour board many times. Perhaps the reason he never played Australian Rules was that it only was in its infancy when he was in his teenage and young adult years, but I am sure if he had played, he would have been an incredible football player as well — such was his natural talent.

  He also would have made a wonderful radio sporting commentator, as he spent many hours, while working on the farm or quietly sitting in his kitchen over a cup of tea, listening to the likes of Alan McGilvray calling the cricket or George Grljusich calling the football. He could quote statistics and describe the abilities of many an Australian cricketer of bygone times, most of whom he would never have seen play, as it was before the arrival of electricity or television in rural Western Australia. His mental pictures had been developed purely through the descriptions given by the commentators. In his fading years in the aged-care home, with his sight failing, listening to the cricket on the radio was one of his few remaining pleasures.

  Long before the advent of the national AFL competition, he also followed with great intent his beloved East Fremantle in the WAFL, a club of which his city-based in-laws were members. I am sure it was a very proud day for him when his youngest son was chosen for his first league game with the club. Although, as was typical of his modesty, you never heard him boast.

  He was also an excellent marksman with a rifle. Not surprising when you consider that shooting was a necessity for life on a farm, but he also carried it over into the competitive realm, winning many local tournaments, as well as serving on the club’s organising committee.

  Delving further into the cardboard box from the back room, I found a stack of photos from his days at the prestigious Hale School in Perth. A handsome, lean young man, with his hair parted in the middle and the collar on his crisp, white linen shirt raised, he marks his place in the First Eleven cricket team, at the tender age of fifteen. Although the photo is black and white, his piercing sapphire blue eyes are still so obvious that any family member would instantly recognise him.

  Looking at the photo, I was suddenly struck by the fact that one of his great-grandsons was the living image of him in so many ways, with his fair hair, blue eyes, the way he walked and his genuine love of the game and of being with his mates. I know my grandfather would have delighted in watching his great-grandson playing in his whites.

  Another of the photos was the official school photo of the 1927 athletics team, with the boys wearing the long underpants-style shorts (reminiscent of Chariots of Fire) that were the order of the day, alongside the very conservative-looking school masters in their tweed suits. They are proudly displaying the prestigious Alcock Shield, the trophy that is still awarded to the champion school at the Public Schools Association athletics carnival. There was also a photo of him as the cox of the First Four rowing team, taken out on the beautiful calm waters of the Swan River on a typical still and sunny Perth morning. This photo is not dated, but most likely was also taken in 1927. These pictures revealed a whole hidden history of sporting achievements that I, and most of my family, never knew about.

  The trophy I first pulled out of that cardboard box now proudly takes the central place in my trophy cabinet and the photos now hang on my wall.

  Piecing the history together, it became obvious that family tragedy stole any chance of Alec pursuing further sporting greatness, and maybe even the opportunity to compete in the likes of the 1932 Olympics. In 1926 and 1927 he lost first his mother, then his father, to consumption (tuberculosis). With the loss of his father, the family breadwinner, Alec, the eldest son, had to leave Hale School and return to the farm for good. His duty to his family and the land was always paramount, and he never would have thought twice about making such a sacrifice.

  Alec McLennan passed quietly in June 1999, just nine months after his beloved wife, Maisie.

  Not only is he my unsung hero, but he’s also an Australian character that may soon fade from existence: the quiet, hardworking, sport-loving, country gentleman.

  Real devotion

  by Peter Newlinds

  THE GAME OF ‘real tennis’ has the oldest world championship of any sport. It was the favourite pastime of King Henry VIII; Shakespeare referred to it in Henry V and its courts have appeared in feature films and crime novels.

  It is steeped in history, but also mystery. It has a set of rules that can take months to understand. It is its own sporting universe, and exists in virtual obscurity beyond the world of its globally scattered devotees.

  Somewhat surprisingly, Tasmania is a hotbed of the game, and Barry Toates is in his second term as the professional at the Real Tennis Club in Hobart. Those who fall under his influence consider themselves, without exception, lucky to have done so. He’s at once a friendly, encouraging force and a high authority on the game, unrivalled in his knowledge of its rules, its lore and its personalities.

  Now sixty-one, Barry has been teaching and nurturing the game that he loves since 1964. He’s taught the rankest of wide-eyed beginners (including mid-life latecomers like me), and has hit with two of the undisputedly great champions of the sport, and just about everyone in between.

  It’s a slice of life experience that springs hours of anecdotes. The roll call continues: Martina Navratilova, Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams, Barry’s own sporting hero Colin Cowdrey, HRH Prince Edward, and more recently cricket guns George Bailey and Ed Cowan have all been his students.

  The story of how an apprentice club professional from England came to exert influence upon generations of tennis players the world over is taken up by the Hobart club president Graeme Bradfield, who’s known Barry from his first days in Hobart: ‘By the early 1960s, our club was having problems. We couldn’t find a professional of any merit to fill the void left by a long-standing professional called Percy Finch. Some members had heard about a kid who was doing his apprenticeship at the Cambridge club in England. They were keen enough to find someone good to go all the way to England to interview him. So in 1966 a spindly sixteen-year-old arrived to start work at our club.’

  In his young life, Barry had worked under one of the game’s great teachers, Henry Johns, who was based at Lord’s Cricket Ground, where the tennis court is located just behind the main pavilion. Under Johns he discerned how to best go about being a club professional, and, in Bradfield’s words, ‘learned the art of being a perfect gentleman, and always making people feel welcome and comfortable in their own space — though that was part of his own persona anyway’.

  Barry Toates’ effect on a floundering club was immediate. ‘At the age of sixteen, he managed to get the club going. He built up the membership, made the balls extremely well and strung racquets beautifully,’ Bradfield recalls.

  By the mid-1970s, the opportunity to ply his trade elsewhere and to expand his experience beckoned and, in 1977, Barry moved to the US to work as the head professional in Boston and Newport, Rhode Island. At the peak of his game, he was consistently ranked in the top three players in the world, and collected the 1979 US Open title along the way.

  By the time he returned to Australia ten years later, to work at the Melbourne Real Tennis Club, he was recognised as the best club professional in the world.

  If teaching a group of children to kick a soccer ball in the same direction is a simple start to the world of sports coaching, introducing a keen or curious racquet-wielding novice to the real tennis court is at the o
ther end of the scale. The court is part medieval movie set and part oversized pinball machine. And real tennis itself could be described as the most complex backyard racquet game you ever saw. (What is a ‘hazard chase’? How do I do a legal serve? What do all those numbered lines on the floor mean? Why is that sloping roof called a ‘penthouse’? What on earth is a ‘tambour’?)

  Barry’s heard the questions for fifty years, and he knows every answer. A club member, a school principal of many years’ experience, told me, ‘Barry’s a great teacher. He always starts where you are at; he’s able to put himself on that level and see things from your perspective. It’s an incredible quality and one that you come across very rarely. It makes him extraordinarily special.’

  An hour on court with Barry is an education on more than just real tennis. Sometimes I’ll watch him give a lesson just to observe the quality of the man and his teaching. Dressed in the all-white attire the game’s etiquette requires, and wearing a simple vest, he floats around the court returning balls with a professional’s efficiency. His soft southern English lilt comfortably and authoritatively fills the environment; this is his space.

  It’s evident that coaching is a skill he’s honed over half a century. His advice, as another fellow player told me, is ‘always precise, unemotional and constructive’. His lessons are pitched at the right level in every sense: ‘Keep that wrist a little lower’; ‘Remember one bounce of the penthouse and it will spin back’; ‘If you’re stuck at the hazard end, go for one of the galleries, it’s a safe play.’ It’s the language of an ancient and complex game and Barry speaks it more fluently and precisely than anyone else in the world.

  ‘There is evenness about Barry,’ a fellow battling student explains to me. ‘He treats everyone the same way, and his standards are impeccable.’

  I agree. He’s as interested in the beginner who can only just manage to serve the ball, as he is in the gifted racquet player. (‘Moved like a panther,’ Barry reminisced to me once about an hour on the court with Martina Navratilova.)

  A bearded man with a lean frame fine-tuned by decades of moving around the court, sometimes for several hours at a time, Barry’s days are filled with the particular duties of a club professional. He was taught well by Henry Johns at Lord’s. His set of skills runs from diplomat to artisan. The diplomat smoothly integrates a necessarily eclectic group of club members into a cohesive membership. As an artisan, his craftsman’s touch is evident in the painstakingly expert manner in which he makes the club’s balls. Real tennis balls can’t be shaken from a can; each one is handmade: a cork centre bound by string, and wrapped in a hand-sewn cover. The tennis club needs sixty a fortnight.

  In his workshop, straddling a small bench known as a ‘horse’, he carefully winds and sews each new ball. Members and visitors to the club stop and watch — they know how important it is that this skill, so fundamental to the game, isn’t lost to it. As Bradfield says, ‘He’s simply one of the best ball makers in the world.’

  It’s not quite true to say that real tennis racquets haven’t changed for centuries, but it isn’t a total exaggeration. The head is the size of an open hand, the frame and neck are sturdy and wooden, and the strings are made of natural gut. It’s crucial that the racquet is strung well as the ball that it’s designed to strike is smaller and far heavier than a lawn tennis ball, and travels at speeds that would shatter a modern tennis racquet. Barry spends hours repairing the racquets of club members to make sure they’re up to the task. His skill and patience help perpetuate the game.

  Real tennis has been his livelihood, and his life. ‘He has a huge consideration for people who play the game and you don’t always notice it,’ Bradfield explains. ‘I had four older brothers, and when my mother went into hospital to give birth to my youngest brother, Barry took us all to the country for the day in his little Mini Minor, just to give my father, who was very busy, and of course my mother, a bit of a break. He was only in his early twenties at the time.’

  As to the satisfaction Barry gets from teaching and working in the game, Bradfield says simply, ‘He just likes seeing people develop an appreciation of this interesting and nuanced game as well as having fun out of it. That’s what really drives him.’

  A lifelong supporter of Kent Cricket Club in England, Barry might well have had a career as a professional cricketer, had he not chosen real tennis as his path. His personal sporting hero is the great English batsman Colin Cowdrey who, as you’d expect from a high-class cricketer, was a natural at real tennis, and excelled at the game. A favourite memory of Barry’s is of having breakfast with the 1974/75 touring Marylebone Cricket Club team on their visit to Hobart, and then driving Cowdrey in his trademark Mini Minor to the Hobart court for a game. ‘He knew his way around a tennis court,’ Barry recalls.

  That’s the thing with Barry Toates; he attracts people to the game through his impeccable approach and his ability to create the best possible environment around it.

  For countless numbers of players, Barry Toates has been the doorman to a rich and wonderful game. In talking to people who’ve known him, a constant theme emerges. As a fellow player said, ‘Like everything in life, it’s how you approach things. Through this sport he’s been able to embrace the whole world.’

  Blood, sweat and swagga

  by Kim Sharpe

  LOOKING AROUND THE impressive two-thousand-seat stadium, it is hard to believe that a sporting event boasting elite international Australian athletes, including a handful of Olympians, can only fill around three hundred chairs.

  Disappointing? Definitely. But the nine-year-old sitting next to me doesn’t seem to notice the crowd — or lack thereof. Judging by the excited look on her face as they introduce the players, to her, this could just as easily be the women’s basketball finals at the Olympics. There is one player, however, who is granted a decidedly louder cheer from this young fan: West Coast Waves’ number twenty-four, Deanna Smith.

  Deanna, or ‘Doccy’ as she is affectionately known, is a veteran of the Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL). During her career she has played basketball in several international teams in various countries, including Russia, Portugal, England and Italy, in addition to representing her own country as an Opal.

  Considering all of the above, why should we consider her an unsung sporting hero? Let’s say, for example, you were trying to purchase her jersey — or any female basketball star’s jersey, for that matter — at a sporting store. Odds are you would go home disappointed. They are not available for sale alongside the male teams’ merchandise. But take the time to order one through the club and Deanna or any one of her teammates would be more than happy to spend time signing them for the kids.

  The road has not been an easy one of late for Deanna. Having been afflicted with injury — she was forced to miss the entire 2010/11 season after undergoing major shoulder surgery, and was also sidelined for the final games of the 2011/12 season due to a stress fracture in her foot — her return to court for the 2012/13 season was much anticipated. Unfortunately, she was dealt a devastating blow — after only six minutes of play and a change of direction move, an ominous ‘pop’ signalled that she had aggravated her foot injury. A fractured cuboid bone saw her sit out most of that season as well.

  However, Doccy’s dedication and passion for the game were still on display for all to see as she cheered on her Waves teammates from the sidelines wearing her trademark ‘moon boot’. Never one to sit still, this animated support would at times be done hopping on one foot or while riding an exercise bike on the side of the court.

  With the season over due to injury, most in her position would use the off-season to rest, rehabilitate and regroup. Not Doccy. Her tireless work ethic and commitment to keeping her skills up saw her use this time to take up a new challenge: wheelchair basketball.

  Wanting to maintain her fitness and skills, Deanna expressed an interest in participating in wheelchair basketball socially. She did not expect to receive an invitation
to play for Women’s National Wheelchair Basketball League (WNWBL) team the Western Stars from their head coach, John Triscari. When asked about her rehabilitation and decision to take to the chair, Deanna comments, ‘It’s been a long process and it’s had its ups and downs, but at the same time I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I guess wheelchair basketball has enabled me to still be involved in the game that I love in a different capacity.’ This involvement as an able-bodied rookie for Western Australia’s Western Stars has earned Deanna Smith yet another achievement to add to the résumé: first woman to play in both the WNBL and the WNWBL.

  Coming out firing on all cylinders, however, is not a given, even for a WNBL superstar. ‘I’m completely out of my comfort zone,’ remarks Smith. ‘I can read the game, but I’m thinking, “Where do I go and how do I move the chair?” I’ve still got a lot to learn.’

  What a great role model to teach our kids about sportsmanship, team spirit and persevering despite setbacks. That seems quite an old-fashioned notion these days, with multi-million dollar contracts and brand-sponsored athletes. This is not the reality for Deanna or any of her female counterparts, with most of them requiring day jobs to fund and supplement their basketball career.

  Unfortunately few are able to fully appreciate these qualities due to the underexposure of the league. Wins and losses are not usually featured as part of the nightly news and newspaper articles are few and far between. Were it not for the one saving grace, a weekly game broadcast on ABC Grandstand during the season, you could be forgiven for thinking Australia did not have a female league at all.

  But with this stark underexposure comes a surprising side benefit to the fans: virtually unrestricted access to the world-class female athletes they admire so much. Young fans can go down to the court pre- or post-game and have a chat or a photo with their favourite players. Aspiring basketball players can attend coaching clinics on school holidays run by their sporting heroes, while getting to know them personally in the process, a privilege that fans of other more publicity-rich sporting codes would give their right arm for.