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AFLPA Founder Gareth Andrews on the changing face of the AFL

Gareth Andrews from the AFLPA (Photo: Lucas Radbourne-Pugh)
Roar Rookie
14th November, 2016
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Gareth Andrews is a man for whom experience takes a bow.

When he speaks, the gentle wrinkles adorning his eyes fluctuate with rhythmic precision. When he smiles – as he does often and with a warmth that divulges his soft nature – the furrows on his brow briefly align, each one a tell-tale rendition of a life lived to its greatest potential.

He’s 70 years old this December, but at 191 centimetres tall and with a robust, imposing posture, Andrews belies his years. Before our interview begins he mentions he’s nervous, perhaps intentionally relaxing the stressed-out procession of student journalists jittering around him.

Andrews presents an interesting definition of a legend of Australian sport. He was a very good footballer, a premiership winner as a hardy back-liner. For this reason, it would take fairly extraordinary events to create a circumstance where it’s his legacy post-football that sets him in even higher regard.

In a revolutionary decision that would change the game forever, he co-founded the AFL Players Association in 1974. He also served as CEO of Richmond until 1979 and was more recently vice-president of Geelong for many years. He unquestionably devoted his life to the AFL, yet the AFL was not always so kind in return.

A figurehead of the sport, Andrews’ experience of football in this country is largely unparalleled. In terms of wistful yarns on the good and bad ol’ days of Aussie rules footy, Andrews never falls short of an enchanting reminiscence.

However, there is a far deeper side to one of the AFL’s favourite sons.

His life post-football can be seen as indicative of why he felt such a pertinent desire to improve conditions for future footballers. In challenging what was then an exploitative behemoth in the VFL, Andrews boldly ventured where many subjugated footballers at the time had feared to tread.

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“Back in my day, players were just pawns,” he says.

“You just did what you were told and were hardly paid any money. It sounds pathetic now because we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, but back then you couldn’t get car parking for yourself or your family.

“I’ve got my original notes from the foundation of the players association. They show what now seem to be ordinary, pathetic things. But the reality was they weren’t pathetic to us, they were important to us and they were things the AFL didn’t respect us for.”

The VFL vehemently opposed the players association and footballers had to strike repeatedly throughout the 1980s in order to enforce recognition. It was a long-fought battle for Andrews, and you could forgive him for perhaps feeling a touch jaded about the organisation that he devoted his life to improving.

But when Andrews speaks about the AFL, any resentment soon fades and is replaced by a keen nostalgia. The deep baritone of his voice lightens, and he becomes reflective. From his perspective, it almost appears as if the VFL didn’t know any better. Things were just different back then.

“The VFL in my day was just 12 old clubs. An old style club was an old boys type club. Guys used to get on the board of a footy club in order to wear the blazer and get free grog.

“When the footy clubs changed from having a five million dollar turnover to 50, 60 million dollars, the entire ballgame changed. Players used to only get $5,000 a year, you had a job and footy used to have to work around it.”

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Looking back, VFL in the 1970s was possibly the pinnacle of the ‘bloke’s mentality’ aspect of Australian culture. The sport was rough, occasionally bordering on brutal. Those who took part were expected to be the same. As Andrews nonchalantly remarks, “There were a lot of breakages.”

“Shoulders, arms, fingers, noses. There was a lot of, what would be considered today, illegal tackles.

“Overall, it had to change. In the 80s, crowds were starting to drop. Interestingly, it was because mothers didn’t want their sons playing footy. Guys were getting head-high tackles, they were being knocked unconscious.

“Today the work they do in the pack is enormous, and they’re fitter for it. But you just don’t get the sly ‘hit-behind’ play. Some of the great stories of my time were guys who were just poleaxed behind the play.

“They became legendary stories. There was one great one in a grand final, where 100,000 people at the MCG looked around and there down the other end of the ground was some guy laying flat on his back. His opponent just standing there next to him, as if he’s done nothing wrong.”

Physicality was always at the heart of Andrews’ game. He was described as a good marker, but with an awkward, unnatural kicking style. Still, a 6’2″, uncompromising forward who could also play in the backline was rarely short of demand.

An accomplished player, he retired on a high at the age of 29 only 12 months after winning a premiership for Richmond. But although he became a stalwart in what was then the VFL for many years, Andrews often found himself shuffled through positions season to season.

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He describes himself in his twenties as ‘restless’. He always “wanted to experience what other twenty-somethings were.” In many ways, Andrews had the world at his feet in 1970. He was what every young Victorian male wanted to be.

However, the young man from Geelong College felt the need to push his own boundaries. He had recently suffered a heartbreaking grand final defeat playing for the Cats against Richmond, losing by a merciless nine points.

So a 25-year-old Andrews left football in his prime to spend a year travelling the world. A decision he says these days would be ‘unthinkable’. “You would risk losing three hundred, four hundred grand.”

In hindsight, it was perhaps his impatient personality that delivered the greatest success. Unsurprisingly, the majority of his time today is spent running his charitable foundation, Life Again, which encourages men to broaden their own horizons.

“I was slightly random as a professional footballer. I just wanted to be what young blokes are and just get away for a year. I risked everything, footy, my career, a pretty girlfriend.

“Left them all, came back and got back into footy and got another girlfriend,” Andrews beams, jokingly yet serene. “If you’re determined you can do anything.”

In telling fashion, it was the defining moment of his professional career, for all the right reasons. Two years after returning to Melbourne, Andrews had left his local boyhood club of Geelong for the rivals that had so ruthlessly dispatched his premiership hopes in 1967, the Richmond Tigers.

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He controversially switched in Round 7 and that very season he would win the flag. The 1974 premiership winning side for Richmond is considered one of their best ever, and was labelled by the media at the time ‘united’ ‘cohesive’ and encompassing ‘fierce comradeship’.

Coincidentally, these were the same traits Andrews later saw as woefully lacking in the VFL’s treatment of their players.

For Andrews, physicality didn’t breed longevity. For someone who topped Geelong’s goal-kicking category in his debut year, 167 appearances pales in comparison to some of the greats of his era. He mentions that former teammates Kevin Bartlett and Sam Newman both made over 300.

Yet it was what Andrews provided after football that is the most extraordinary, cementing his place within the AFL’s upper echelon of iconoclasts. Before Andrews, there was no protection for the rights of AFL players. The players association is now the largest representative body for athletes in Australia, and today acts as a model for all other sporting codes to follow.

Its influence on the modern game is plainly evident. The AFL is now verging on breaking the two million dollar mark for a single annual salary. Given the average footballer’s career lasts just four years, Andrews’ legacy today is more important than ever.

While still idolised by millions of fans, players are now protected in all walks of life. It’s a duty of care that couldn’t contrast more starkly with Andrews’ own experience. However, according to the former great, it’s one that may extend too far.

“Today they’re too protected from the fans.” Andrews reflects. “I think that’s a problem for them. We were much closer to the fans, after a game we used to go and have a drink with them.

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“Back in the day, we used to work, we used to rub shoulders with our fans. We lived in the real world. Footballers do live in a bubble today and when that bubble bursts that’s when the trouble can start.”

Despite having never had the questionable luxury of such a sheltered lifestyle, Andrews knows all too well the dangers of a post-football plunge into reality.

“I just regarded myself as a typical bloke,” Andrews says, reflecting on life after retirement at the young age of 29. “Then at 55, I became clinically depressed. I totally hit the wall.” He claps loudly as he utters the last line, as if to emphasise the shock.

“From 40 to 55, I thought you just had to suck it up. I thought that’s what life’s all about, it’s great when you’re young but then you just get stuck in all the trappings and the responsibilities.”

“I really determined then, if it can happen to me, and I can tell my story then it might help other guys not have the same problems. That’s why I set up Life Again. I wanted it to be inspirational.”

If legendary status is judged on physical achievements, Andrews has a glorious and varied catalogue from which to choose. If based upon historical importance, there are few others who have so drastically changed the face of Australian sport.

Most admirable, however, should be the courage he has drawn on in using his own hardships as inspiration to change the lives of others. Whether it’s improving the lives of footballers through the AFL or ordinary individuals through Life Again, Gareth Andrews re-defines what it is to be a legend of Australian sport.

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For the unassuming man himself, being celebrated is of little importance. He appears content as long as he remains involved with the game he has always loved.

“I always struggled with life after football,” Andrews admits. “I’m still very reflective on what it meant to me. You do get that white line fever. To be a young 25-year-old running around the MCG with 120,000 fans, you never replicate that life again.

“I think in hindsight I always tried to replicate it too quickly. I just didn’t find anything that satisfied me in the way that football did. I got into real estate and hated it, the culture and the values.

“Luckily I stayed involved with football, working for the ABC and writing for the Age. I think if I had of just focused on business I would have gone mad.”

Andrews pauses for a second, then smiles. “Probably have.”

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