I was around 10 years old when I first started watching professional football.
AC Milan had just toured Australia after their record-breaking 58-game unbeaten run in Serie A, and I vividly recall a bunch of animated chats with my friend Nathan about the games they played against the Socceroos.
At the time, Nathan and I both played football for the same club in Western Sydney, and I remember spending hours in the backyard at his Mum’s house smashing plastic footballs against the fence.
They say it takes 10,000 hours to master any skill, and it felt like that’s how long he and I spent trying to bend those plastic footballs around an assortment of trees and into an imaginary top corner.
We were fortunate that our interest in football coincided with Australia’s attempts to qualify for the World Cup in the United States in 1994, which meant our concept of the sport was local.
There was never any question of pledging our allegiance to anyone other than the Socceroos. The players we aspired to be were guys like Alex Tobin and Frank Farina, even if we had already seen the likes of Franco Baresi and Diego Maradona grace our shores by then.
It was not long after that Nathan and I started down different paths. He was a talented footballer – far more talented than me – and after I was overlooked for selection in his team one year, I left with a few other friends to join a new team that went on to win a couple of local championships.
Nathan was playing junior representative football by then, but I still saw him every summer because we played cricket for the same team. He was smart enough to attend our local selective school, and even though we no longer played football for the same club, we still talked about the game whenever we saw each other.
I remember watching him play rep football from time to time and realising, even then, that the standards to make it as a professional were exceptionally high.
Strangely enough, one of the last times I ever saw him play was when I faced him, as my high school had been drawn against his in a local cup competition. Nathan captained his side and I captained mine, and I remember telling my team-mates to “watch out for the kid at the back”.
It did us no good, and one of my most vivid memories of Nathan is of him collecting the ball as a sweeper, gliding through midfield, then bearing down on me one-on-one in defence. He looked up, sold me a flawless shimmy with a drop of his shoulder, then drilled a shot across our goalkeeper and into the far corner while I was sprawled out on the turf.
I was almost embarrassed by that goal, because no matter how good I wanted to be as a footballer, I was never as talented as Nathan. But I’m glad he scored it, now.
I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years by the time the National Soccer League wound up, but I was sure we’d cross paths once a new professional competition kicked off. I attended the last-ever NSL grand final and remember being so excited by the prospect of better days ahead.
I lived in a tiny apartment a few blocks from Parramatta Stadium, in an era when people still had answering machines. No one ever called me – except for one particular afternoon, when I remember coming home to three messages.
The first message was from a friend. The other two were from my mother. Her first call sounded panicked, while the second was made through tears as she told me to turn on the TV.
That’s how I found out that my friend of many years – with whom I first fell in love with football – had died. He and a couple of school friends had taken a trip to Thailand to celebrate finishing uni, got on a boat, and never came home. He was about to turn 23.
I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take to get over grief, but what I can say is there has rarely been a football game over the past two decades in which I haven’t thought about Nathan.
He never got to enjoy the A-League. He never saw the Socceroos qualify for the World Cup. He never did a lot of things.
And while I would never wish to exploit his memory, what I can honestly say is that I don’t care if Brisbane Roar beat Perth Glory in Redcliffe on Saturday. It doesn’t matter.
It’s just a game.
Far more important is that we tell the people around us, the ones we love, how we feel.
Because one day you could be taking your first overseas trip, and the next day you are gone.
Life isn’t fair, like that. It never has been.
Sometimes the best we can hope for is an entertaining game of football to take our minds off the times in life when we have genuine reasons to be sad.
Mike Tuckerman
About Mike Tuckerman: Mike is a freelance football journalist and long-time Brisbane Roar watcher. He has written for the ABC, The Guardian, Australian Football Weekly, Football Australia and theroar.com.au.
