60 in 60 #23 Carine Part Two
I am reflecting on the last 60 years, and writing 60 blog posts in 60 days. 30 about people and 30 about events, places, experiences and entities.
I started working at Carine SHS as the school’s inaugural chaplain in 1993 when I was 32 years old. It was strange to be back at my old school, especially considering the change in roles. I doubt any of my peers at school would have imagined me returning as a school chaplain.
I spent the first year getting to know as many people as possible, both staff and students and then working out where I could best fit into the school. The basic requirement was to represent the Christian faith and to provide support to the school community. After that I had a lot of freedom to shape my role so I looked for any gaps I might fill and any existing areas that I could assist with. Most people were supportive and welcoming and the students warmed to me quite quickly. I soon had a steady stream of visitors as kids came to talk to me about stuff that was happening in their lives, either at school or at home.
I visited lots of form groups to introduce myself and I developed an acrostic for the purpose where each letter in the word CHAPLAIN described a part of my role.
Christian- a caring Christian presence, representing the local churches
Helper- someone they could approach if they needed help in any way
Available- kids could come and see me at any time if they needed to
Positive, proactive and prayerful
Listener- I was a trustworthy, independent adult in the school ready to listen
Active- I was involved in a wide range of activities within the school
In touch- with resources and people
Not a teacher- I was not part of the disciplinary, teaching or assessing elements of school.
One of the first things I did was approach the Phys Ed dept and look for opportunities to get involved with school sports teams. There were two outcomes to that: there were plenty of I could coach or support, and I developed friendships with the PE teachers that still continue now, over 20 years later and long after I left Carine. I sat on the PE table for Friday recess when there were goodies to share and where Mr Willy told stories and handed out awards to people for stuff-ups and funny happenings. On the sports front I started coaching the junior football team in the Channel 7 Cup inter-school competition, the school soccer team, volleyball teams in one day round robin tournaments and even coached and umpired the cricket team.
I did my level one and level two coaching certificates in football and in 1997 we had the makings of a very good team in the Channel 7 Cup. The early rounds were played against other schools in the Claremont WAFL city zone and we won every game, putting us into the zone finals and a trip to the country to play the country winners. We won that game which put us into the last nine schools from around Western Australia. It was getting serious, especially as some games were played as curtain raisers before AFL games at Subiaco Oval or the WACA. Most of the remaining teams were from private schools such as Trinity, Mazenod and Hale.
We kept winning convincingly and reached the Grand Final against Aquinas College, a school known as a breeding ground for AFL footballers. The game was a curtain raiser before Fremantle played Geelong at Subi on Sunday 24 August but there was a problem, many of our players had to play a final in their local footy comp the same day. There were a lot of discussions and negotiations to try and avoid the clash but in the end both games went ahead as scheduled. With Geelong in town and me looking for any advantage I could find, I rang the hotel where the Cats were staying the day before the game and asked to speak to Garry Hocking, aka Buddha a true Geelong champion. They put me through to his room and after explaining who I was and the situation, Buddha spent about 15 minutes on the phone to me talking about his experience of playing in Grand Finals and then handed the phone over to footy larrikin John Barnes to give me his colourful opinion.
We had won every game we played by an average of about 8 goals so I was pretty confident going into the game. Sadly my confidence was misplaced. Aquinas gave us an old-fashioned belting and we never looked like winning.
It was a tough loss to take and when the soccer team also lost their Grand Final a couple of weeks later staff at school started stirring me about choking the way Geelong had in four losing Grand Finals between 1989-1995.
The following year we embarked on the same journey and followed a very similar path. By this time I had gotten to know the kids and many of their parents very well. Teams in the Channel 7 Cup were from years 8 & 9 and all of our best players were no longer eligible.
I had rated the 97 team very highly (it included Mark Nicoski who went on to play 112 games for West Coast) but we’d lost the GF and I confided to one of the Dad’s that I didn’t think we’d have as good a team this season. Again I was wrong, the team took all before them and won through to the Grand Final and again, our opponents were Aquinas.
The game was a curtain raiser before Fremantle played Adelaide at the WACA, under lights on a Friday night.
I really ramped up our preparation and convinced Cesare, the Principal, to let me take the team on an overnight camp a couple of days before the game to train and to do some team-building. As we drove into the campsite I stopped the bus at the bottom of the last hill and told the boys they’d have to push it the rest of the way. They were a bit half-hearted and not making much progress so I stopped the bus and got out and gave them a pep talk about needing to work together and give maximum effort, exactly what they would have to do to have a chance of beating Aquinas. It worked, they pushed the bus easily up the hill and into our campsite and the rest of the camp worked just the way I hoped it would.
I had also arranged for Max Greive, a teacher who had played league football for East Perth but was dying of cancer to speak to the boys about giving everything for the cause.
Despite all of the preparation I was not optimistic, Aquinas had taught us a lesson the year before and I didn’t expect to win. I’m pleased to say I was wrong yet again, our boys turned it on from the first siren and by half time had a 6 goal lead! We went on to win comfortably and become the first Carine team to win a state-wide footy competition. I compiled footy books for each of the kids recounting the events of the season, complete with photos, newspaper clippings, team sheets and my game notes and the story of each game. Cesare wrote a testimonial congratulating the boys in which he said in all the years he had been Principal it was the best performance by any Carine team in any competition he’d ever seen.
Fast forward to 1999 and lo and behold, déjà vu, with another largely new team Carine played Aquinas in the Grand Final of the Channel 7 Cup for the third year in a row. I had another camp with the team in the lead-up and it worked because we became the first school to ever win the trophy two years in a row.
Following the success with the junior team I took on the job of coaching the senior team as well, playing in the Barry Cable division of the Smarter than Smoking Cup. Carine was one of only two government schools in the division. It was around this time that Gerard Neesham (former Fremantle Dockers’ coach) and Ben Allan (former Dockers’ captain) started a football program for Indigenous kids at Clontarf Aboriginal College. They had kids from all over WA and played footy with total freedom and flair and several Clontarf kids were recruited by WA clubs over the years. We played them in the home and away season and lost by over ten goals but we had a pretty good team none-the-less and qualified for the finals.
The preliminary final was an absolute thriller with one of our stars, Adam Jones kicking the winning goal in the last minute of the game. We faced Clontarf in the GF knowing that in the three years they’d been in the competition, they had never lost a game. In fact, they won the Cable Division STS Cup, the top schoolboy footy comp in WA every year for seven years, except one. That one loss was in 2002, to Carine!
It was an incredible game. No-one gave us a chance and the boys themselves didn’t really believe they could win but I took them on another team-building camp and we trained hard and planned strategies and tactics in the hope of pulling off the upset. The kids played a fantastic game but it came down to the final minute again. We were a couple of points behind when our full forward, Peter Sinclair marked the ball on the 50m arc. One of my assistant coaches on the day asked me “Can he kick the goal?” I said, “Yes, he’ll take a horrible shaky looking run up and then kick it dead straight” and that’s exactly what he did to put us in front and win the game. Carine were the state champions. I was ecstatic and the kids, staff and parents celebrated wildly in the changerooms after the game.
After that triumph I retired from coaching school footy at Carine to focus on other things I wanted to do.
To be continued…
Note. 60 in 60 has turned out to be a bigger and more ambitious project than I anticipated. In my original plan I had one post set aside for my time at Carine, however the eleven years I spent there were the best years of my working life and although I’ve written two posts already I realise still have a lot more to say, therefore I will continue the Carine story in a third (and possibly a 4th!) post.
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