Forward thinker
Michael Gleeson
The Age
February 24, 2007
Many teenagers aspire to the moment they can call themselves a footballer. Others, once they have earned the right, find the mantle sits uncomfortably.
Kent Kingsley wrestled for years with the notion of being defined by a single aspect of his life. Only in recent times has he accepted that how others define you is not the definition of who you are or what you do. A restless character, he has a range of interests outside football. He has been involved in enterprises, mainly successful, ranging from an internet company, a restaurant and bar, to owning, then selling, one of Australia’s biggest juice bars.
Along with success on and off the field came a realisation that it was futile to fi ght what you could not change and better to embrace the game that you loved.
"Football is something that is the No. 1 priority for now and will be as long as I am lucky enough to play. I probably battled with it for a while. I was in denial that I was a footballer for a long time, only purely because of the prejudice and label you get as a footballer, but I think I am at ease with that now but I battled for a long time. I’d say, ‘Hey, I am not just a footballer’," Kingsley said.
In his 1995 book, Football Ltd, Garry Linnell posited that in Melbourne, a footballer could go on to win the Nobel Prize for devising a new theory for quantum gravitation — he did admit this was unlikely — but still be known as the talented half-forward who played 86 games for Footscray.
Presciently, state cabinet minister Justin Madden — then with the AFL Players Association — noted in the book: "It permeates every level (of your life). No matter how hard and cynical you are, it becomes part of you. You are Justin Madden footballer, or Justin Madden ex-footballer. It engulfs you and the things you go on to do in life end up reflecting back on your footy career." Is Madden now ever referred to without his footballing being mentioned?
Kingsley believes the labelling goes further, to consign any success a footballer has outside of the game as being due to the opportunities afforded them by the game.
"No matter what you do after football, you will still be known as the former footballer first, but also no matter what successes you have, people will perceive that, ‘Well, the doors were opened for him because he played football’. It is frustrating. It is something you deal with; there are plenty of intelligent blokes who play football and go on and do other things, so I battled with that for a while, I was in denial," he said.
"I felt like, ‘Hey, I do do other things and if it wasn’t for football, I would be doing other things’, but I have learnt to accept that I am a footballer and I don’t mind.
"I arm-wrestled it and have accepted it, but it probably affected people around me for a long time. It tested relationships and all sorts of stuff and I think it is amplified in Geelong.
"Because you are a footballer, you are public property and the perceptions about everyone else, friends, girlfriends, partners become public property, too, and they are affected by the same sort of stigma that goes with being a footballer, too."
It was part of the reason he chose in the middle of last year to sell his house in Geelong and move back to Melbourne. He was still playing for the Cats, albeit the VFL Cats, but he had decided his future no longer resided beside Corio Bay. The club, it seemed, had reached a similar conclusion some months earlier.
"I think my papers were stamped and they were stamped pretty early on," he said.
"I started the season pretty well and went through a couple of hamstring injuries and I am the first to admit I struggled for a bit of form after that. But it was a little bit of a frustrating situation for me last year."
While an ankle injury has denied Kingsley the chance to line up against his old club today, the former Cat is philosophical about his departure from Geelong.
"But I am not the first and I won’t be the last to have that (a club make a decision on them). I suppose I got an opportunity in front of David Mensch and guys like that when I started in Geelong, so it is the natural progression, you accept it. So I wasn’t bitter about it at all; it was just time for me to look elsewhere.
"I played in Geelong for six years and four-and-a-half of those years I lived in Melbourne and I actually moved back in the middle of last year to Melbourne. It was pretty much when I knew I would leave (the club). It was pretty much when I was over Geelong as a town.
"Geelong is very much a fishbowl environment. You find most of the older guys move out of there; the majority of guys live down the coast or back in Melbourne. The town and the club were great for me, but it is a hard town to live in and play football, especially when you are not going so well. So it was more a decision to keep some sanity and get out of there."
Kingsley’s identity problems related not only to being called a footballer, but the sort of footballer he was. Like the notion that playing football did not mean he was strictly a footballer, playing full-forward did not mean he was a full-forward.
There is no worse position on the ground to have an identity crisis than at full-forward. Big, but not big enough, Kingsley battled to be something he was not at Geelong. He could not be the forward panacea the club craved. He was also not the first to fail to fill the superhero role left by Gary Ablett, among the handful of greatest players the game has known.
Kingsley's size meant he could never hope to be the total forward answer for Geelong, but his speed and ability meant that when conditions were right and the match-up worked favourably, he could kick big bags of goals. Invariably, his size would ensure that when he was opposed by bigger, better defenders and the ball did not come the way he needed it, he was easily quietened.
Geelong felt he was teasing where it was probably Kingsley who was being teased. The fault was that he was in a role not best suited and with an inadequate structure to work within. The departure of Ben Graham to punt on a career punting in America was traumatic for the club in losing its captain, but perhaps felt even more acutely in pure football terms by the fullforward. In Graham’s absence, the forward line became a very lonely place at times.
"I have made no secret that I think I am a little bit undersized to play key position and I am not a contest player as such to play key-position forward (he is 190 centimetres and 90 kilograms). But I think I did a reasonable job for a period of time down there and it was just unfortunate that Benny Graham left," Kingsley said, hinting at the ripple effect of structural change caused by the former captain’s departure.
The scenario ensured that when Kingsley quit the club, he sought a trade to a team with at least one other strong key forward, where he could complement the structure and not be the structure. He sought Richmond.
"When I decided to leave Geelong, it was definitely that I wanted to go to a club that has a key forward, and I don’t think there are too many better forwards in the game than Richo," he said. "So it is exciting for me to consider taking a third or fourth defender instead of taking the first defender every week. Over my career, I have managed to kick two or three on average, so if I can continue to do that, I am more than happy."
Terry Wallace was equally convinced of Kingsley’s logic, believing that, with the right players around him, he could be an extremely awkward proposition.
"I think any bloke that can kick eight goals in an AFL game in the last 12 months is worth chasing. We have probably only got two blokes in our side that have got that sort of capability in their kit bag, so I have always ranked him reasonably high. I always felt with senior blokes if they haven’t lost speed, the age factor doesn’t matter, and he is legitimately quick," Wallace said.
"He is a nice size, but he is not a monster playing down there and sometimes playing against blokes that are bigger and stronger, that made it more difficult for him. He is a fairly intelligent guy, so he is a good bloke to have around a young group. He has looked after himself on and off the field, so that aspect appealed to me as well."
With a new club and a new position, Kent Kingsley has a new aspect to his evolving identity — cover for Matthew Richardson, the man Richmond fans think wears a cape. It’s Kent, the quiet unassuming alter ego for the Tiger superhero.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/articles/2007/02/24/1171734075463.html
