up. Same with how they play. What’s wrong with kicking it long down the guts?’
Like many old VFA followers, he barely recognises its replacement, the VFL, a blend of traditional association clubs and AFL reserves teams.
The golden years of a competition he helped make so popular have long passed. But he’s pleased that Port Melbourne, after alignments with the Sydney Swans and North Melbourne, has survived as a stand-alone entity. He mingled with players and supporters after Port’s grand final victory over Williamstown in 2011. The team went through the season unbeaten, something that was beyond the great Borough sides Cook served.
For a long time Cook stayed away from Port out of embarrassment. He thought his drug use and stints in prison brought shame to a club he loved and was proud to call his footballing home. But now he gets to one or two games a season and is on the mailing list for the past players’ newsletter. He mostly stays in touch with Brice and premiership teammates Tony Ebeyer and Billy Swan.
Mention of Swan has him dusting off memories of the 1976 grand final. Famously, Dandenong defender Allan Harper decked Cook after he got on the end of a Swan kick and nonchalantly poked the ball through the goals. Wild scenes followed. Intent on retribution, Port players went flying in at Harper. At the other end of the ground, rugged Borough George Allen put down Dandenong forward Pat Flaherty.
ATV-O commentator Phil Gibbs described the mayhem. ‘Cook’s been flattened and it’s right on! Harper is in trouble. Let’s watch this. And another player has been flattened at the other end of the ground! Flaherty’s been flattened at the other end! And there’s another one down! A trainer’s gone down!’
A minute later, Cook, blood pouring from his mouth, waved away the trainers and theatrically raised his hands as if to say, I’m okay, let’s get on with it. Cook was never a fighter on the field. He didn’t have to be. Port had strong men who could thrash away with the best of them.
Swan has often said to Cook he would have avoided Harper’s harpoon if he’d let the ball bounce through the goals.
‘Swanny always brings it up,’ Cook says. ‘Calls me a selfish bastard and says I should have shepherded it through. Blames me for all that shit that went down.’
After watching a clip of the incident on YouTube, Cook stays silent for a few seconds, appearing emotional.
‘Just reminiscing,’ he says. ‘I tell ya, they were fucking good days. Should have been there.’
3
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
