‘Drop ten, turn and Face.’ Quilty’s Football Yarns 17 Finding the World Game.

‘Drop ten, turn and Face.’ Quilty’s Football Yarns 17

Finding the World Game.

Having worked in various locations around the world I have always been a big advocate for finding some familiarity when living somewhere new. For me it always through the game I loved, football. Having spent time working in both Israel and the USA, a couple of stories will illustrate this. 

Probably spent over a year in the mid-seventies living on Kibbutz Tel Katzir in the Jordan Valley. While we didn’t have an official football team we spent many hours playing under floodlights in the shadow of the Golan Heights. With such a variety of nationalities around we always found ways to divide ourselves up into teams. Being up against the South Africans was always a task. They never liked to lose at anything so playing against old mate Neville Nankin  was always tough but fun. Playing the Israeli’s was something else because from the start there would always be disputes, they never liked the basic physicality of the Brits.  I was learning Hebrew quite quickly, much helped by volunteering to coach the Kibbutz kids football team when they took on other Kibbutizm in the Jordan Valley. My future wife Terrie often reminds me of a classic surreal event when Tel Katzir’s team hosted Kibbutz Ha On from up the road. To my amazement lined up on the other side was a bloke I had gone to school with, the late Brendon Burke. If that wasn’t a big enough surprise, half-way through the match a dog came running onto the field with a dead chicken in its mouth. While this was disturbing it only got worse because the dog was closely followed by a cow who once on stubbornly refused to shift! The realisation of what a special moment that was, shows how fortunate we were to have such opportunities while getting an insight into other cultures all speaking the ‘world language’ what was football.

Another overseas working experience was the three summers I had on Summer Camp in Connecticut, 1979, 1981 and 1982. Again football played a big part in the story as I coached the Camp Delaware kids side and took part in the regular Yanks v The Rest of the World matches. Taking place at night-time, these games were ‘under lights’ and resembled WW3. In those days the camp kids urged on their counsellors in a gladiatorial arena. Here no one died only an occasional ego or shin being bruised. In those various summers, I joined a large group of British and Irish Camp Counsellors to travel across to the West Coast delivering cars for a freight company or driving South to Florida. On these trips we rocked up to universities such as Emory, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania and Yale and challenged their side to a game. Interestingly, most obliged but only after a day or two. We later found out that their coach wanted to protect his games record and called in Alumni to enhance the team and avoid defeat. What was most striking to us at the time was the sheer quality of the University facilities. This was with the realisation that Football wasn’t considered a major game. This of course ignored the fact that football was the biggest participation sport in the USA at a Youth level. A few years later I also worked for four months down in Houston, Texas. Once again, finding the familiar football outlet was important. Luckily I got talking to some other ex-pat Brits and signed up to play for a team whose home base was a bar. While our team were predominantly British and Irish, the rest of the League had teams from a list reading like the United Nations. An experience in itself, coming up against Mexicans, Guatemalans, Costa Ricans, Polish and Japanese to name but a few. My lasting memory of playing in Houston was actually a farce. There we were half-way through an evenly balanced game when it started raining. Unperturbed we played on. After all, our blokes were used to colder rain than this. What was a wet field going to do? So we continued while the rain continued and continued. After twenty minutes the ball ceased rolling freely and the centre circle disappeared in an ever growing puddle. Eventually only the advent of lightning forced us to stop. The game was abandoned and my football career in the states was over. 

That comradery  in sport, as I stated previously, was why it was so important for me as immigrant to find a football team to join in Australia. Thus, in March 1992 I was walking down from our temporary home on La Mancha Caravan Park to answer the advert for players posted in the local petrol station. My destination was Berowra Oval and the meeting was pretty fateful. Walking into the changing room I was greeted by Englishman John Everitt, who upon asking my name turned to introduce two others. “This is my brother Jimmy and this is Colin Strang, who is also a Pom. Looks like we will be playing together down at Brooklyn in the ‘Stunned Mullet Cup this weekend”. And so it was