Hockey: Not Your Average Joe Read Online Free Page A

whacks,’ Father Schneider, who turned 100 in 2012, says. ‘Mrs Collins thought it would help them learn their spelling. But he wasn’t looked on as a troublesome boy in any way and he left with a good name.’
    It was on the sporting field that Joe felt most at home, debuting in Year 6 in the Under 12 XV for rugby as well as the Under 12 cricket team. A year later he added soccer to his list of sports. ‘Joseph Hockey played well in goals and made some good overhead saves,’ the school newsletter, the Aloysian , remarked in 1978.
    His passion on the field continued and he joined the college athletics team in Year 10 as their representative shot putter. He reached the Second XI for cricket in Year 11. ‘Joe at times can be temperamental but batted and bowled very well during the season,’ the school records show, and he was welcomed onto the field for a few games in the First XV in rugby, too.
    In his final year, Joe captained the Second XI in cricket, only losing three of its 12 matches, as well as being captain of the Second XV. Sport offered Joe a camaraderie and a sense of belonging. The boys had to depend on each other, and he loved the sense of being part of a team. He especially loved when he got to lead the team, and his gregarious nature and quick wit made him a popular choice. But despite being sports mad, perhaps more so than many of his peers, and being good at it, he sat at the top of the second-tier teams, frequently being the first to miss the call into the top teams.
    Joe’s weight was central to that, as it would prove to be for the rest of his life. He was a big baby who grew into a pudgy primary schooler, and a solid secondary school student. It made him the brunt of jokes, too. Taunts such as ‘fatso’, the ‘fat Lebo’, and ‘fat wog-boy’ were standard fare in a schoolyard packed with boys. Others were the butt of jokes over their sporting performance, or their academic records. By today’s standards, it was bullying, and Joe felt it, but he gave back as good as he got. Sometimes that involved a physical scrap, but afterwards the boys would always wipe the dirt off and head back in from lunch as a pack. In quiet times, though, it really needled him. ‘I reckon Joe grew a thick skin then,’ Jeremy Melloy says. ‘That sort of bullying – or whatever you call it today – was part and parcel of the way everyone was dealt with. He gave as good as he got and he could verbalise things well. But like all of us, it would hurt; it would hit a raw nerve.’
    It wasn’t helped by Joe’s lunchbox either, which was sometimes full of Arabic delicacies. In a school where conformity reigned, he stood out. At home, family discourse also revolved around food. It was plentiful, and good manners and grace dictated you finished eating what was on your plate. Joe’s father had gone without food at times as a youngster and now he considered a full stomach a sign of prosperity. Waste not, want not. Joe’s father was proud of his son’s size. It proved he was raising a strong and healthy boy with a tough constitution. But at school, while Joe would respond to the fat jibes with a smile or a rebuke, it stung. ‘It was pretty much a white Anglo-Saxon thing,’ Joe says now. ‘I was knocked for being a wog. I really copped it. But I got through it. I don’t think it ever really affected me.’
    It was in Year 9, as an early teenager, that Joe hit his straps in public speaking. He loved the drama and ability to have people listen to every word he uttered. He believed what he said, too. ‘We have been blessed with a land of opportunity; this lucky country has talent and potential in every one of its citizens,’ he told the school in Year 10. ‘When John Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, we ask the question, what does our country do for us? Australia gives to us what many millions of people around the world don’t have: food, shelter, a