Читать книгу Fabulous Fred - Paul Amy - Страница 8

COOK has forgotten much of what went on in his life from the late 1980s. Yet his recollections of his childhood in Yarraville are as clear and warm as a peak-summer day.

He was born on 16 November 1947 and was named after his father, Frederick William Cook. His mother, Shirley, had three children after young Fred: Rodney, Lynette and Pam.

The family lived at 49 Ovens Street, next to the Bluestone Hotel. Fred Cook senior made his trade as a baker at the nearby Tip Top factory. But the hours got to him and he found more money working as a labourer with Commonwealth Fertilisers, bagging it for use on farms. A quiet man, he provided his family with a comfortable existence and took pleasure from a glass of beer, a cigarette, football and a bet on the horses (his eldest son was amazed how his father could rattle off every winner on any recent racing card).

Fred Cook senior was a handy footballer, turning out for Yarraville in the VFA. He believed he could get better, but broke an ankle in a work mishap and never played again.

Footscray Football Club was one of his great loves, and he adored Ted Whitten. With his mate Barry Mitchell, he would take young Fred and Rodney to watch the Bulldogs at the Western Oval, savouring the wins and cursing the losses.

He took no chances with footballer weather, piling on layers of clothes: thermal underwear, singlet, t-shirt, shirt, cardigan, jumper, coat, overcoat. ‘You can always take them off,’ he would say when his boys chipped him about wearing so much. When the cold and rain hit, he would peel off a jumper or coat to give to his shivering sons.

Fred Cook senior got tickets for the 1961 VFL grand final on the morning of the match, apparently off the local postman. He and his sons set off for the MCG, excited at the thought of the Scraggers winning their second premiership. But Hawthorn, coached by John Kennedy, beat them to it.

‘We were crying at the end of the day,’ Cook says. ‘They called Hawthorn “Kennedy’s Commandos”. They killed us. Broke our hearts. Ted Whitten played with a bad thigh. Jesus. It was a long trip home.’

Shirley Cook kept the house spotless and was a fine cook, baking apple pies, tarts and other treats every Saturday. She rarely failed to put hearty meals on the table.

The way Fred Cook tells it, his mother was the disciplinarian of the family and impressed on her offspring the need for common courtesies. ‘She’d flog me if I did something wrong,’ Cook says. ‘Understand that was in the era that kids should be seen and not heard.’

He recalls a Saturday when he was about sixteen and had a few friends around. They decided to go out, but his mother insisted he complete his chores. He said they could wait until tomorrow and turned his back on her. The next thing he knew, he was flat on the floor, struggling to breathe. His mother had picked up a heavy garden broom and thrown it javelin-style into his back. He never did go out on that Saturday afternoon.

But he had deep respect and affection for his mother. Cook says she kissed him on the cheek every day when he left for school and always stuck up for her children.

He cites an example. Cook left Footscray Tech after Year 10 to work in a local abattoir for £14 a week. Missing his mates and the football scene, he returned a year later. But he encountered trouble on his first day back.

It was raining when he and Rodney arrived at school. There was no shelter. Fred made for the corridor, but a teacher told him it was an out-of-bounds area until the bell went. Sent to the principal’s office, he was unwilling to take his punishment, a flogging with the strap. After all, he’d just spent twelve months alongside tough working men. He wasn’t going to cop the strap over something he thought was trivial.

He was expelled and sent home. When he told his mother what had happened, she put on her hat and white gloves, took her bag and caught a bus to the school.

Marching into the principal’s office, she said Fred’s jumper had cost £5, she didn’t want it soaked by rain and the school wouldn’t be expelling him. Pointing to her son, she said, ‘You, get off to class’. That was the end of the matter.

Fred Cook remembers family outings after his father got around to buying a car. His mother would pack a picnic lunch and they would spend days at the beach, often meeting aunts, uncles and cousins.

‘A very ordinary, working-class, happy family,’ Pam Cook, ten years younger than Fred, says. ‘We didn’t have any tragedies or anything like that. All very normal, really.’

The Cooks ensured their eldest son attended St Lukes Church of England in Yarraville. Young Fred also went to ‘CEBS’ — the Church of England Boys Society — on Wednesday nights, evening song on Friday nights and Sunday school followed by mass.

His earliest schooling was at Francis Street Primary School, No. 1501. He can still reel off the names of his teachers: Miss Hogan, Miss Short, Miss Gray, Mr Henderson, Mr Crawford and Mr Hick.

But unlike his brother and sisters, he was no great student. He envied their ability in the classroom. For him, the best thing about school was seeing his mates and playing sport. He had his first game of football for the primary school, donning its red and yellow jumper, and says he barely touched the ball.

He was named on a half back and was unfamiliar with the position. ‘Just go and stand over there, son,’ the coach told him.

Cook got more serious about football when he went to Footscray Tech. He could see that good players received kudos and credit from not only teachers and students, but the wider community. It set him thinking about the possibilities of the game. He started to sleep with a football. ‘If you played okay, you suddenly had a bit of clout around the place,’ he says.

On Wednesdays, Cook lined up for Tech and on Saturdays for amateur club Footscray Tech Old Boys, where he would be coached by 1954 Footscray premiership player Arthur Edwards. He tried out for the Old Boys Under 17 team as a thirteen-year-old and was rebuffed. The next year he was initially picked on the bench or asked to be goal umpire, but eventually he found a place in the team.

The Old Boys won a grand final at Windy Hill, but Cook was quiet. ‘I didn’t make a mistake — only because I didn’t get a touch,’ he recalls. ‘At the start of the last quarter the ball came over the pack and I grabbed it and I ran in to the goals. I kicked it right through the middle — of the points. There was no interchange in those days. I just got dragged.’

Cook senior went into the rooms and told his son he might as well go home, hammer a four-inch nail in the chook shed and hang his boots from it. ‘You’ve got to find a sport you can play. It’s not football,’ he said.

If that sounds harsh, Cook says his father watched every game he played and took pleasure from his many accolades and achievements. They were photographed together after Cook won the 1970 J. J. Liston Trophy after his mark-filled season for Yarraville. Fred Cook senior’s eyes shine with filial pride.

Fred junior’s football began to take off when he was sixteen. He grew six inches and his many kick-to-kick sessions with his mates on the streets of Yarraville refined his marking and kicking.

He won a club and competition best and fairest at Under 17 level. Soon scouts from Footscray were running an eye over him. It eventually led to an invitation to a training session. And there he was introduced to his idol, E. J. Whitten. Cook was so nervous he stammered, ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Whitten’.

‘Well, it was like going to church and finding God at the altar,’ Cook says. ‘He was a man amongst men.’

In his first year back at Footscray Tech, Cook was threatened with expulsion a second time after being caught smoking in the toilets. But because of his football ability he was encouraged to sign a sorry book and forget about it. ‘They didn’t want me to miss any games,’ he says. ‘Actually, we were in the Victorian Inter-Tech grand final at the number one oval at Albert Park. We won it.’

Ricky Spargo and Norm Mitchell, both destined to play league football at Footscray, played in the team, as did John Sharp, a future VFA player with Yarraville and star District cricketer with Footscray. Teammates carried Spargo from the ground as he showed off the handsome trophy.

Spargo says the team had a simple game plan: kick it long to ‘Freddie’ in the goal square.

‘We couldn’t go wrong,’ he says. ‘We were actually behind in that game, but Freddie took over. No-one could stop him. Game over. He was the best mark of a football you could see. Don’t think I saw the bugger drop one. Best hands I’ve ever seen in football.’

Spargo and Cook met at the Technical school and became great friends. They had a lot in common. ‘Freddie was like me,’ Spargo says. ‘He was a bit wilder than me, but he loved life. He was always up. He was always happy. And he had a big mouth!

‘You wouldn’t meet a better bloke. I would have killed for him. Geez, I’ve got some great memories of Freddie.’

Pam Cook says her brother was fortunate to discover he was an exceptional footballer.

‘Wouldn’t we all love to find that one thing in life that we’re really good at and can excel at? He found that.’

When his hands weren’t holding a football, Cook was known to put them to mischievous use, breaking into factories and stealing cars. He insists the vehicles were never knocked around and that he always dumped them outside police stations.

When he needed a few bob he stole soft drinks from the back of a local fish and chip shop, and took them around the front and sold them.

‘It was typical teenage-boy stuff,’ Cook says. ‘No harm done, really.’

But police took a dimmer view of his behaviour and more than once brought him home to his startled parents. They were dismayed by their son’s casual regard of the law. The indifference never left him.

He first appeared in court in June 1963 for ‘factory break and steal’ and ‘illegal use of motor car’, receiving probation for seventy-eight weeks. In March 1965, he was up for ‘larceny from motor vehicle’. He was given a good behaviour bond.

When he was about fourteen, Cook and his mates dug a tunnel in the soft, sandy soil of the banks of the Yarra River, covered it with railway sleepers and canvas, and went about filling it with stolen goods for which they ultimately had no use. When a security guard from an oil company came across the lair and reported it to police, The Sun newspaper dubbed the unknown gang ‘The River Pirates’.

A few years earlier, Cook and Rodney stumbled upon two children who had gone missing in Yarraville. The brothers had jumped the fence of the Tip Top factory to take the delivery vans for a spin. Climbing into the self-locking vehicle, they found the frightened youngsters, a boy, five, and a girl, four, huddling in the back.

When police arrived, the Cooks thought they would be in trouble for trespassing. But they were praised for rescuing the children.

‘If it wasn’t for my brother being mischievous, they would probably have died,’ Pam Cook says.

Under the headline ‘Children Trapped 30 Hours In Van’, The Sun newspaper reported the incident, quoting a ten-year-old ‘Freddy’ Cook as telling the boy: ‘You’d better get home. He told me faintly, “I think I’d better.”’

It was the first of many times that Fred Cook was held up as a hero.