Fabulous Fred. Paul Amy
the Peninsula extension he did general labour on the Eastlink road development, and drove an earth-moving truck when the Mount Martha Cove Marina was under construction.
The physical work explains why he looks reasonably fit. But he says he’s on a ‘bucket’ of medication, mainly for a heart condition and high cholesterol. It can leave him lethargic. He also suspects it contributes to his mood swings. He will be happy for a week, then overcome by sadness for a day or two. He says he can distinguish between sadness and depression, and he never feels depressed.
Cook likes to have an early breakfast — toast and coffee, and two cigarettes — and watch the ABC News 24 station on the shiny, large flat-screen television in the lounge. News and documentaries hold his interest.
Surprisingly, for a man known to have a leviathan eye for the ladies, he says he’ll take female company as it comes.
He’s committed only to doing as he pleases. ‘I’ll go down to Tasmania and propose to Bob Brown before I get married again! I’m used to doing it my way. I’ll get out of bed when I’m ready. Cook a steak when I feel like it. Have no-one to tell me to piss off outside to smoke. Whatever suits me.’
Cook speaks to his three children with Desmond — Jarryd, Jordan and Jaimee — most days, and often natters with his great mate Newman. They were opponents on the field and clicked like Lego pieces off it. He concludes every phone call to Newman, as he does most people, with the words, ‘Love ya, see ya, bye’. And when he calls people he knows well and will laugh off his bullshit, he’ll often greet them with, ‘Fred Cook, superstar, here.’
Now and then he catches up with old pals. A few days in to 2014, he had lunch with Balmer and retired sports journalist Scot Palmer at Sorrento. A month later he shared a beer with former Richmond players Tony Jewell and Mal Brown.
‘But honestly, I don’t get out much. I sit around watching the TV. Watch too much of the bloody thing. I’m going to have to get off my arse and do some exercise. Went and had my heart checked and they put me on one of those treadmills. I could only stay on it for seven minutes and ten seconds!’
Even when he was in his physical prime he wasn’t much of a runner. At Port Melbourne he stayed close to the goals, living on his marking. All his former teammates say it: he was a lousy kick, but he had the best hands you’d see on a footballer. The ball got lost in them.
There is little in the house to indicate Cook was a football great. No trophies or premiership medals are on display. He’s unsure what happened to them.
A 1970s poster promoting the VFA as the cradle of community football is taped to a lounge room wall. A fit, strong and smiling Cook stands in the front row, his first son Nathan at his feet. He recognises Sandringham’s Terry Wilkins and Prahran’s Kim Smith as among the other players in the poster.
But ample reminders of the days when he ruled VFA goal squares can be found in the worn blue suitcase he keeps. A fading Ansett baggage tag hangs off the handle. When Cook was on drugs he jumped frog-like from house to house. But he always took the suitcase with him.
Cook opens it to show a few yellowing newspaper clippings, a handful of VFA Recorders, photographs and a falling-apart scrapbook he believes was maintained by a sister. Pieced together, it marks his rise from Footscray Tech Old Boys to league club Footscray, his controversial transfer to Yarraville in the VFA, an equally headline-taking move to Port Melbourne, his many triumphs in Borough red and blue, and his drug-fuelled demise.
It also has evidence of his time as a media man. Newman, Cook, footballer writer Greg Hobbs and ex-Carlton rover Adrian ‘Gags’ Gallagher are splashed on the front page of the mid-week edition of the pink-papered Sporting Globe of 29 March 1978.
‘Here’s our team,’ the Globe trumpets. Cook is described as the ‘prolific Port Melbourne goalkicker and VFA’s biggest drawcard’.
Cook snaps the suitcase shut and points out what he calls his most prized possession from football. It’s a small medal that hangs off a long screw on a doorframe in the kitchen.
It was awarded to him in 2007 for serving as an assistant coach and goal umpire for the Kangaroo Flat Primary School side that won a lightning premiership in Bendigo. Jaimee, his youngest child and third daughter, played in the team.
‘It would be nice to win one game,’ Cook remembers the school sports master telling him before the first match.
‘I said to him, “Stuff that, let’s win every game.” Wouldn’t believe it but they won six out of six and finished up with the premiership. Could have cried, I was so proud.’ He left the presentation with the words made famous by his childhood hero and adult pal Teddy Whitten: ‘We stuck it up ’em!’
He was similarly proud when son Jarryd came second in a league best and fairest on the Peninsula. That year they were living together in a caravan and Cook was still doing drugs. He was so broke he sometimes went to service stations to steal sandwiches for his boy to take to school for lunch. They often used to joke that when the world ended they’d be the only survivors to keep the cockroaches company.
Cook has little interest in big football, regarding it as a ‘sheila’s game’ with a defensive element that bores him. ‘Can’t be bothered with it. Years ago there was room for everyone: the superstars, the chubby kid who knew how to get the ball, the thugs. They stuffed all that 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