And there is the special love that joins people who don’t share bloodlines, but end up sharing just about everything else along the journey of life.
I love Tommy Hafey.
He was the Tommy who stepped into my life when my father, also called Tom, died when I was still a teenager. He was the Tommy who, as like any young footballer I had ups and downs with early in my career, picked me up when the ball bounced the wrong way and I got clobbered. He was the Tommy who pulled me down when I got ahead of myself.
“You’re not that good Kevin, remember you’re just a back pocket player and the world’s got plenty of those.”
He was the Tommy who started out as this huge, almost unreachable figure - my first VFL coach - and over the years became one of my best friends, someone I reached out to almost on a daily basis. And as we got to know each other as more than footballer and coach, Tommy reached back.
We would catch up in person over a cuppa, on the phone, or just by me mentally channelling him: asking myself in a particular situation “now what would Tommy do here?” When we got together, we could talk forever about football, about life and be nowhere near the end of the subject. But now those conversations have ended … and I don’t know what to say.
I console myself with the thought I can still do that mental channelling, looking up into the sky and asking Tom, the two Toms now, my Dad and my friend, for the guidance I know I will still need on my life journey. But never again will we be able to look over the tops of our tea cups at each other and talk about the things that matter, even the things that didn’t matter all that much, but we just wanted to talk about them anyway in the easy way that friends just keep a conversation going.
Never again will I ask him how he is and he will reply “sensational, but I’m getting better Kevin”.
Never again will he call me “Kevin” in that way that made me feel that there was no one else in the world that mattered but me. Never again will we reminisce about the days at Richmond when we were the greatest team in the VFL. Or talk about the games when we coached against each other. That was a huge thing for me when I went to Essendon, coaching against established men like Ron Barassi, David Parkin, Allan Jeans - the superstars. But against Tommy, well it didn’t really matter who won, we were just two mates having a bit of fun.
And speaking of fun, never again will Tommy laugh about how he got to live the high life in Sydney after I knocked back the job at the Swans. He wrote about that in the foreword to my memoir Stand Your Ground.
“Thanks Kevin, it was a wonderful experience for Maureen and me, living close to the beach, having club functions at the Bourbon and Beefsteak in the Cross; trying to educate the people of Sydney about our game. I reckon we did a pretty good job, too. I know they enjoyed the time at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1987 when we thrashed the Bombers by 163 points.”
Now that loss did hurt, not because it was against Tommy, but because of what it meant at my own club then - Essendon. I can tell you it is nothing like the loss I am feeling now. There is a giant hole in life and in my heart. That’s because as well as being a huge part of my world, Tommy Hafey was a giant of our game … a member of The 500 Club, the men who had coached more than 500 games of VFL and AFL football. He got that far by riding the highs and lows of the game with a DETERMINATION THAT WAS UNIQUE.
He enjoyed premiership victories. Grand final losses burned inside him right to the very end. I never worked out why he didn’t win another premiership after he left Richmond. I can only think the players at Geelong, Collingwood and Sydney didn’t understand him the way we did. But players at all his clubs wanted to emulate Tommy - 18 became senior coaches. That’s an amazing stat. But hardly surprising: There’s so much about Tommy Hafey that is amazing.
He became a role model for senior citizens, a fitness freak, swimming in the freezing Port Phillip waters year round, doing thousands of sit-ups and push-ups. And it wasn’t just the oldies for whom he was an inspiration, even a life-saver. He visited schools to encourage young people to get the best out of themselves. After one visit, he got a letter from a young man who said he had been contemplating suicide until being inspired by Tommy’s words.
There was so much good in Tommy Hafey, in his words and in his actions. That’s another reason we all loved him, another reason why we will miss him. Tommy you were and will forever be “sensational” and we are all the better for knowing you. Today our broken hearts go out to his wonderful wife, Maureen, and those three other important women in Tommy’s life, his daughters Rhonda, Joanne and Karen.
Our game took him away from you, you and the whole extended Hafey family, as he continued his great works shaping and inspiring the lives of so many people. We say a big thank you for sharing Tom with us.
