Читать книгу Legacy: The Autobiography of Tim Cahill - Tim Cahill - Страница 12

WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN I made a trip back to Samoa that turned out to be one of the best—and most complicated—experiences of my young life.

I’d been to Samoa at a young age; we’d go there long enough to get a taste for the culture and lifestyle and, most importantly, our family heritage. It was crucial in helping us kids understand where we’d come from.

Then, sadly, my grandmother became very ill. At the same time, I’d been called up to play for Samoa as a youth international. Both Sean and I were selected for an Under-20 tournament team, Sean, of course, as the goalkeeper. I was picked as a midfielder though I was still six years under the cut-off age and doubted I’d see much playing time.

I vividly remember the family discussing it over the kitchen table. Football, was in fact, secondary: the biggest thing for Sean and me was going to seeing my grandmother—we could make certain she was being cared for by the local doctors and my Samoan family.

We’re from a tiny village in Samoa called Tufuiopa, right on the water. It’s the village where all my maternal family were born and raised. We had a small family house situated on a bit of land. The typical home in Samoa is called a fale, an open dwelling with a concrete base, some mats, four big poles and a roof. But if it rained—and the afternoon storms were often fierce—the rain would lash in through the sides. The fale is where they have village meetings, traditional ceremonies, feasts, as well as prayer for church on Sunday. It’s the centre for communal life in that tiny village.

This visit to Samoa was different from the ones I’d made as a kid, trips I could hardly remember. Now, for the first time, my brother and I were fully immersed in our Samoan heritage and culture. In the mornings we bathed in a watering hole right across the road from where my grandmother lived. One side of the hole was for cleaning your clothes and the other side was for washing yourself. It was the strangest thing for a couple of kids from the suburbs of Sydney to look down and see a fish swimming at your feet as you’re soaping yourself up.

Bathing that way is just an integral part of Samoan culture. No one bats an eye; you go down and have a wash in the local watering hole. Right next to you are other families bathing and also the local women are doing the laundry.

The Under-20 team prepped in Samoa for three weeks before leaving for Fiji. When Sean and I weren’t training, we spent loads of time with my grandmother and we did it rough. We enjoyed mucking in, cleaning up, helping with the cooking—all while running back and forth from training. Living just the way most Samoans live their daily lives.

We got so immersed in the culture that whenever we weren’t in our football kits we’d wear the national dress. The men wear a lava-lava—a type of simple sarong, often brightly coloured and with beautiful patterns. Sean and I would walk around the village in the lava-lava with no T-shirt, sometimes in flip-flops, sometimes barefoot, to and from the watering hole, looking exactly like the locals.

My brother and I were there for football but, in truth, rugby is the important sport for most Samoans. Many of my own cousins became quite successful playing at both the club and the international level. It’s unreal the amount of talent that comes out of Samoa—a lot of it ends up in Australia in rugby league, or in New Zealand for rugby union and in New Zealand’s national team, the All-Blacks. In American Samoa, there’s also been an explosion of academies to discover talented youths to take to the USA to play in the National Football League. That’s largely due to the success in the States of islanders like Troy Polamalu, who grew up in California but is of Samoan descent.

We got to know our extended family, all these rugby-playing uncles and cousins, most of whom had that typical Samoan male build: huge and powerful, which made me feel even smaller than I already did. There’s something in the Samoan genes—yes, the men are strong and big-boned, but they also tend to be quick and athletic. I never could sort out if it’s a combination of the diet and the outdoor lifestyle, but clearly there is also something in the Samoan DNA. You can see it as you stroll around the island, predominantly in the younger men: they’re basically naturally built athletes.

Not every Samoan male is big and agile, but many are. They’ve had generations of natural training. It’s often said that the only tool a Samoan man needs is a machete: to cut the grass, to slash open a coconut, even chop down a tree.

Because my grandmother was so ill, Sean and I would wake at 5:30 a.m., fetch water for tea, then walk down to the bakery, which opened at 6 a.m., to get hot bread. We used to have this delicious New Zealand butter spread really thick on the toasted bread, with a cup of hot tea, and if you were lucky maybe some baked beans or spaghetti from a can. That was considered a special treat.

Normally, when you go into camp as an international, you think you’ll stay in a hotel, get tracksuits, proper kits. Not in Samoa. When we went to meet the staff and the players—a few of whom had flown in from New Zealand—we realized most were locals and were dirt-poor. Some of the boys had no football boots, or if they did, the boots were in horrible condition, not even the correct size for their feet.

The training pitches were awful—the grass was very high, the field was lumpy, the goalposts were wonky. The quality of the play was poor and the organization was disjointed. Once we put all the boys together, you could see what a mixed bag we had on our hands: some were above-average footballers, but some had mostly played rugby, so they had some stamina but minimal technique. You could see from the outset we were unlikely to be bringing home any silverware from Fiji.

Still, for me, that camp was a brilliant experience. Not for the footballing but for the cultural values I learned—the traditional way of life; feeling myself, for one of the first times in my life, to be truly a Samoan. When we ate, we cooked collectively as a team, mostly foods from the plantation like taro and pork, though sometimes we’d whip up some chop suey. The players would cook together, and then we’d all sit on the floor cross-legged and eat in the fale.

It was basic, but it was also so real. This was more than just playing football. As part of the process of building our bond as a team, we’d say a prayer before and after every game. This prayer, called the Toa Samoa, is a spiritual expression in the form of a song, a profound symbol of the country and people. We’d clap at the same time—passionate, aggressive, singing the Toa Samoa in harmony. It’s not exactly like the haka in New Zealand rugby, but there’s a similarity: you’d better sing it with everything you’ve got, because it’s seen as much more than an anthem.

My parents helped gather funds to send over all new kits and football boots. In fact, Sean and I brought over three suitcases between us and came home with virtually nothing in them. We ended up giving all our clothes away. Did we really need them? We had so much more than these island kids. We figured they’d appreciate jeans or trainers or jumpers more than us.

We used to jog together as a team, someone sitting on the back of the ute, singing a Samoan song, egging us on, and we’d run that way, three or four miles, to get to training. Some boys had holes in their shoes, a couple were actually running barefoot, while my brother and I wore perfect new trainers from Australia.

At the end of a month in Samoa, we went to Fiji and didn’t perform well at all in the Under-20 tournament—lost every single match, in fact, and I played for only a handful of minutes, coming on as a substitute late in a game that was already a lost cause.

Little did I realize the impact those few minutes would have later in my life. No one had a crystal ball when I was fourteen. No one knew that I was going to become a professional; no one knew I’d go to England and learn my trade. And certainly no one could have imagined that I might someday be called up to represent my country and that those few moments on the pitch in one game for Samoa would become a huge legal complication for me.

Despite the trouble it caused, I have absolutely no regrets about living there and playing for Samoa. On the contrary, it changed my whole outlook on life.

In Samoa, they grow up with virtually nothing: sun, sand, the plantation, a few livestock—it’s so bare-bones and simple. Virtually everyone visiting Samoa looks at these islanders and feels sorry for them. I did, myself, the first time I saw my family and their friends in Samoa.

But my mind-set changed. Today I don’t feel the least bit sorry for them. Why? Because they’re happy. Imagine being in Samoa, living in a fale with just four poles holding up the roof, where everyone you love sleeps together, eats together, gathers for family meetings. Imagine having nothing more than the sand, sea, food and family—all the essential things in life. What more do you really need?

In fact, now that I’m thirty-five and have had a successful career, have travelled the world, I can tell you: in general, those kids in Samoa—and most of the adults, too—are happier than a lot of millionaires in Sydney or Melbourne, London or New York, who live in mansions or penthouse apartments and drive luxury cars to the fanciest shopping malls.

The Samoan life is simple, it’s true, but they’re content. They don’t need the things we have; they haven’t grown soft and dependent on our culture of excess. They’re happy with the lifestyle that revolves around freedom and nature and love of one’s family.

That trip with my brother Sean to be with our grandmother was one of the greatest eye-openers for me. It helped me learn what’s really important—that life can be simple, without any luxuries, but still filled with satisfaction and fulfilment.