Almanac Footy: Nic Nat Retires

 

News reaches us of the retirement of Nicholas Mark Naitanui. He joins Shannon Hurn and Luke Shuey on the white Toyotas  on September’s last Saturday, three of the greatest ever Eagles, now going and gone.

 

I wrote about Nic in the context of the Eagles’ Mothers Day clash with Hawthorn in Round 8 2021. Since that day he has played only 22 more games in his beloved blue and gold. But in that 2021 year he was both an All Australian (for the second successive year) and the winner of the John Worsfold Medal as the Eagles’ best and fairest (also for the second successive year).

 

Which speaks to the fact that he was in some of the best form of a stellar career and likely, without injury,  to be an integral part of the Eagles for many years. His absence is no doubt a significant factor in the struggles of the club over two seasons.

 

There was  the knee injury in the  Round 4 2022 game against Collingwood which was one of the Eagles’ two wins for the year. And then the knee injury in his second game back, which saw him battle through  four more games before missing the last game of last season.

 

Knee surgery and then achilles injury and more surgery have kept him out of the action entirely in 2023, and his announcement of retirement comes as no great surprise. Sad yes. And providing  the opportunity to reflect upon one of the few players whose personal abilities and skills changed the game and made it more exciting and entertaining to watch. But given the form he was in before the injuries, also cruel and unjust.

 

Since his last game he has been engaged to his partner Brittany and they have welcomed their first child, a son. A daughter is on the way in November, so Nic will not be idle!

 

And one suspects that the great man will be  great parent, because of the example he had from his Mum.

 

This is some of what I wrote that day in 2021 and I think it bears remembering in tribute to   “Nic Nat” and the wonderful memories with which he leaves us.

 

MOTHERS DAY

 

It has to be said that not all of their champions were absent. Kennedy I mentioned. Gaff, Sheed and Redden were still there in the midfield. Jack Darling was leading the attack. Oscar Allen had a Rising Star gong. Brad Sheppard was leading the defence.  And Tim Kelly had won the Glendinning medal with a memorable display in the derby.

 

And they still had Nicholas Mark Naitanui in the ruck.

 

Nic had, like me, only been back at the MCG twice since the 2018 Grand Final. On that day of course Naitanui had been on the bench helping call midfield strategy and had stood with Gaff (suspended) and Sheppard (injured) watching his team-mates receive their premiership medals. He had then made his come-back against the Hawks at the MCG that day in 2019, but an ankle injury a couple of weeks later kept him out until the first Semi Final at the ‘G, in which the Eagles went down to Geelong by 20 points.

 

In 2020 of course, the Eagles didn’t play at the MCG or in locked down Victoria at all. The games were all in Queensland or Perth, with the Eagles losing the Elimination Final in Perth by a point. But the club champion in that difficult hub-living season was N. Naitanui. Strangely enough (or perhaps not) second was Andrew Gaff and third was Brad Sheppard. You might have thought that the trio had something more than their team mates to pursue, or to prove. Naitanui and Sheppard (with Liam Ryan) were 2020 All Australians.

 

It isn’t well known but while his team-mates were celebrating the premiership in October 2018, Naitanui travelled to Israel and Palestine, where he visited Beersheba where the Australian light horsemen rode their fabled charge in 1917, walked the path of the crucifixion and the tomb of the resurrection and took training with the Tel Aviv Cheetahs. He said that the trip was inspired by a trip there made by his Mum and family a few years earlier.

 

Up to this Round 8 clash in 2021, Naitanui was leading the Eagles’ clearance stats with 50, ahead of Sheed on 45. He was second for contested possessions with 77 behind Kelly with 88. He was third for tackles. So whilst there were many out, he was still there, and you got the feeling that he might be more important to the Eagles’ chances of being competitive, not just in this game, but in every game, than any member of the absent cohort.

 

So on this sunny Mothers’ Day, Nic Nat ran out with the Eagles, with their fate considerably in (as Paul Kelly once sang of another MCG star) ‘the palm of his hands.’

 

In another sense, that was fateful and fitting because Nic had recently opened up, paying glowing tributes to his late Mum, Ateca, who had passed away suddenly a month before the 2015 finals.

 

In the Ordeneroli podcast before the season, he told Neroli Meadows that he had almost given football away after the 2015 grand final; ‘The biggest thing in my life was to impress my mum and to help her live a better life because she sacrificed so much. My biggest goal and biggest drive was to give her and the rest of my family a better life and I had to find new reasons and avenues to motivate myself. I weighed up whether it was worth playing footy anymore and whether it was worth doing what I do. What’s the point of doing it if I haven’t got my mum there.’

 

Naitanui similarly told Mark Howard in the Howie Games Podcast recently; ‘Everyone has their reason why they play footy, and for me most of my reasoning why was for my mum. Whether it was to make her not have to work three jobs anymore and get her a house, or help support her or make her proud. They were my biggest drivers and I guess to not have her around anymore I thought, “what’s the point?”.’

 

Ateca had lost her partner Bola when Nic was two years old and she moved to Perth from Fiji to give Nic, and his twin brother Mark, a better life. For 20 years she worked with the homeless and underprivileged and Nic explained to Mark Howard that she brought her work home with her, as their Midvale home always had extra kids staying there, especially at Christmas. She didn’t earn much, but half of everything Ateca did earn was sent back to help family in Fiji. This meant that one of the best ruckmen to ever play the game, encouraged to play by his neighbours Michael ‘Sonny’ Walters (Dockers) and Chris Yarran (Carlton), started out playing without boots, wearing ‘a pair of Dunlop Volleys from Target’. Nic confessed to Howard his guilt at being upset at missing out on things others took for granted; ‘I didn’t really think about how hard it was to be a single mother looking after growing boys and giving money back home and working three jobs.’

 

After being persuaded to continue playing by one of his Uncles, Nic continued his mother’s kindness by sending half of his own income back to the family in Fiji. He also adopted her charitable attitude by involving himself in a number of causes including confronting issues around challenges to mental health and he established the Naitanui Academy to inspire Indigenous players to play the game and pursue their schooling.  Continuing to be confronted by racism on social media, Nic decided to try and help change attitudes at a young age by writing a children’s book called Little Nic’s Big Day to ’embrace our differences and celebrate our diversity.’ He dedicated it to ‘my dearest mother Ateca Naitanui. Thank you for the lessons in life and the memories now that you’re resting above. But most of all thank you for your nurturing and unconditional love.’

 

After his Mum’s death in 2015, Nic told The West Australian that he was inspired by her spirit and joy in life; ‘Just that spirit, I always think back to the joy she had. I watched my first game back again and the smile on the face and how proud she was.’

 

I think that just how good Naitanui is, and the way he has changed and raised the standard of the art of rucking in AFL footy, is often under-appreciated and gets lost in the other noise that now surrounds the game. He has now fought back from two knee reconstructions and the pain of significant personal loss.  But West Coast fans know who he is, what he brings and what he does. And while he is there and without a premiership medal of his own, it would be unwise to write off the Eagles in any game he is playing. Especially on Mother’s Day.

 

Only about 16,000 people were there at the MCG in the sunshine so social distancing was not an issue. The stupid batmobile came and went. Half way through the third quarter, for some reason, the lights came on. Nic Nat had 28 hit outs, 14 to advantage against a worthy adversary in Ben McEvoy. He had seven clearances and 12 disposals. Gaff had 25. Sheppard 18. Nic Nat’s influence on the game whenever he was near the ball was palpable. The young Eagles followed his lead. Brendon Ah Chee’s return to the side netted four goals. The Eagles won their first game on the road for 2021, by 38 points. Adam Simpson said it was the way they played, not the win that was important.

 

Simpson thought that McGovern, Barrass, Liam Ryan, Mark Hutchings and Shannon Hurn might be back for the next game, but somehow that didn’t seem as important as it had before, as long as the big fella was in the middle doing his thing and sending Kelly and Sheed on their way, or grabbing it himself and banging long kicks into the forward line.

 

I watched the Eagles coming off. Nic Nat seemed thoughtful and not exuberant. Satisfied though not accomplished.

 

My Dad and I exchanged some emails this week about the poetry of Australian horseman and bush poet Adam Lindsay Gordon. His statue stands near Parliament House in Spring Street. As I reflected on the life of Ateca Naitanui and the many legacies she left her son, as I watched Nic come out of the bright light into the shade at the edge of the MCG, I called to mind some of Gordon’s most famous lines and thought how fitting a tribute they were to the both of them, on this Mothers’ Day far from home:

 

‘Question not, but live and labour

 

Till yon goal be won,

 

Helping every feeble neighbour,

 

Seeking help from none.

 

Life is mostly froth and bubble

 

Two things stand like stone;

 

Kindness in another’s trouble,

 

Courage in your own.’

 

 

Naitanui had obviously learnt much from his Mum. No doubt we all do but we probably just don’t recognize it enough while we still can. One day each year doesn’t seem enough to repay the debt.

 

Without the usual thronging crowds on the concourse outside the ‘G, it was easy to watch and hear people as they left the ground. You could spot the mums with their families. Normally when one of the local teams loses by six goals to the Eagles, there is a certain level of rancour and bitterness in the air – about the umpires, the players, the coach, the AFL – but I detected little of that this day. On the contrary, most of the mums and grandmas seemed content to be out for the day with their families in the glorious Autumn sunshine. One family in front of me was laughing about the batmobile.

 

And for the first time in 30 years, I did too.

 

 

 

 

 

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