Fright Of His Life Forged Brilliant Career

Sun Herald

Sunday April 15, 2007

John Coomber

League fans are grateful that Andrew Johns decided early that coalmining was the pits and not for him, John Coomber writes.

ANDREW Johns might never have been such a great rugby league player if his father hadn't taken him down a coalmine when he was 15.

It scared "Joey" half to death and changed his life forever.

Johns and his elder brother Matthew grew up in Cessnock in the days when the Hunter Valley town earned its living from what came out of the ground rather than the grape vines that now grow on top of it.

Their father Gary worked underground, as had his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather, whose family emigrated from a coalmining village in Wales.

For Matthew and Andrew Johns, two sports-mad boys who neglected their school books, there seemed to be only one career option.

"They lived in a mining community," Gary said. "All my mates were miners, all the blokes I played football with, they were all miners.

"It was just expected that the sons more or less followed the fathers into the mine."

But this father had other ideas. He thought his sons needed to see for themselves what awaited them.

He got permission from the mine manager to take them to work with him at the Newstan mine at Fassifern near Lake Macquarie.

The day he took Matthew, there was a major cave-in. "If you haven't experienced it you can't explain it to anybody," he said. "The noise, the dust flies everywhere and you can't see anything for five or 10 minutes. It's really black.

"He said after that: 'I think I've convinced myself to try harder at school."'

Some time later, Johns took his younger son to see where he worked.

"The day I took Andrew, we got to the opening of the mine and we went down in the dolly car.

"We went down a kilometre and he got to the tunnel mouth and he saw the darkness and tried to jump out, and I wrestled him back in. He was frightened before we even started."

Gary said the impact of the visits was profound on both his sons. "It had a huge effect on them. They probably had it in the back of their mind that they would be miners, but when they experienced it, they didn't want to do it."

About the same time, the boys were toying with the idea of a career in football and Johns believed the jolt of reality inspired them to train harder to succeed on the field.

One of the main reasons he wanted to keep his sons out of the mine was to shield them from the danger and injuries that threaten the lives of so many of those who work underground.

"You don't see many blokes work to retirement age in the coal industry - the legacy of the injuries that they get - the legs, the back, the neck, the deafness forces them off," Gary said.

Gary was laid off eight years ago at the age of 47 when his body gave out. Among the many injuries that shortened his working life was a back condition that required surgery and leaves him with a bad limp. His neck was damaged in a rock fall that knocked him unconscious.

Both his sons were forced out of football prematurely by spinal injuries, but Gary and Gayle Johns, who have lived in the same house in Cessnock throughout their 36-year marriage, have the satisfaction of knowing that their sons have made the most of their talents.

The discipline of hard work instilled in them by their parents - and those mine visits - have much to do with their success.

Johns said the sight of his boys kicking a football and practising for hours on end at the sports ground near their house became something of a town joke.

The locals used to shrug and say, "That's just Matty Johns and his brother, they're out there every day".

Gary, who captained the Cessnock Goannas rugby league team and had a hand in coaching his boys, said they always had talent but stood out because they were prepared to work at it.

"There were some boys who were better players than them, but they never wanted to achieve and they never trained as hard as our boys did. They both put in phenomenal numbers of hours at the sports ground, just honing their kicking, running and whatever."

Steve Crawley, Channel Nine's director of sport, said that discipline has carried over into their television careers. Matthew arrives for every game with pages of hand-written notes.

"He doesn't just turn up and watch the footy and talk about it," Crawley said. "He's done a lot of research and a lot of thinking about it.

"His work ethic, I haven't seen anything like it in television."

Crawley believes Andrew will be a superb analyst and commentator if he decides to concentrate on it.

"I don't think people understand how much he thinks about the game and the changes he's made to the game through his thought processes," he said.

"He can change commentary if it's what he really wants to do, if he feels comfortable, and he's got the right sort of space around him to be able to read the game and tell us what's going on before it happens.

"He can take us to a new level as far as the reading of the game goes."

Crawley said Andrew had needed coaching with his on-camera work because he was like a shy country kid to begin with, looking at his feet and not knowing what to do with his hands. But he has a real interest in television and its technical side, and Crawley would be happy if he decided on a career in television.

Gary is proud of his sons and what they've made of themselves, and can't help thinking what might have been if he hadn't taken them to the mine. He and his wife got a shock when Andrew phoned them on Tuesday to break the news of his retirement.

"We're very disappointed for him but very relieved, too," he said.

"We used to say to ourselves, 'God, it'll be nice when he retires'."

The couple had worried about Andrew's constant injuries and are grateful that the seriousness of his neck problem was picked up.

"He was so lucky," Gary said. "It was only going to take a bad jolt and he'd have been in a wheelchair."