How footy freed a troubled teen
Emma Quayle | July 12, 2009
Meet Troy Taylor, a once-troubled 17-year-old with a big future ahead of him. As Emma Quayle learns, he's come a long way already.
THEY saw him for the first time in May, early one Saturday morning. The Northern Territory's under-18 football team was playing the Dandenong Stingrays in a warm-up match for the national championships, and scattered around the cold, suburban oval in Melbourne's south-east was a small group of parents, friends and AFL recruiters, looking for the next big thing.
First, Troy Taylor scooped the ball cleanly off the ground, while running at full pace. He sidestepped an opponent, sliding by him. He kicked two smart, skilful goals. All day, he crunched opponents to the ground, laying six fierce tackles. Within just a few minutes, the recruiters' heads had turned. "There were a group of us, all looking around," said Kevin Sheehan, the AFL's talent manager, "asking: 'Where has this kid been?' "
This time last year, Troy Taylor didn't want to be the next big thing. All of a sudden, football had become boring to him. Growing up in Darwin, the teenager had made the territory's under-14 and under-15 teams, but after he was picked in the under-16 squad, he stopped showing up for training. At school, Taylor had made a couple of new friends, and they had other thoughts on how he should be spending his spare time. On a Saturday night two years ago, when one of them suggested they rob a service station near their homes, Taylor wondered: why would you want to do that? But he was bored, and frustrated. He wanted to fit in, to do what his mates were doing.
When he walked into the store, he turned and walked back out. "It was pretty scary," he said. "Every time I walked in I was thinking: I don't want to do this. But in the end I turned around and thought, let's just do it. I don't know why. There was a lady in there and my mate just told her to give us the money, really, and she did what he said and we took off."
It was scary, but also a rush. "I was pretty happy, you know," Taylor said. "I got a bit of money out of it, so I was sort of happy, just to get a bit of money. I wasn't even thinking properly, but then after a while I got pretty scared. I was just looking at myself, thinking: why would you go and do that?"
Taylor was placed on a good behaviour bond when he was eventually caught three months later. He was placed on a nightly curfew, but this wasn't where his story began to turn around. Instead, he became more angry, more frustrated, more bored. "I kept thinking: I'm missing out on a bit of fun here, so I'd better take off," he says. "And every time I'd take off, the police would come around, and I wouldn't be there." After a while, the teenager's behaviour began to drain the energy of the people who cared about him.
Taylor's mother, Tania, had his siblings to look after at home, and no car. She had also reached a point where she no longer knew what to say to him.
"He didn't listen to anything, to anyone, except for his mates," she told The Sunday Age.
"He didn't want to listen - he was too busy having a good time, getting into trouble. With the police, he sort of knew their pattern, when they'd be around. I kept telling him: 'I'm going to go in and tell them they need to be checking you every day of the week, twice a night.' He said, 'Why would you do that?' and I said, 'Troy, no one knows how to help you any more'."
Taylor found himself in more trouble. He spent a weekend in a detention centre early last year and did a few more weeks here and there. He found himself in court again after "a couple of assaults" and found out there was a final straw.
Where was he, two months before that match against Dandenong? Taylor was sitting in a jail cell, nearing the end of a four-month stay in Darwin's Don Dale Youth Detention Centre after another late, drunken night with his mates ended in another fight.
Even before he was sentenced, the 17-year-old had come to realise this was not, really, how he wanted to live his life. "I was pretty scared about it," he admitted, "but mostly I thought: 'I don't want to be like this any more'." Inside, he started some classes; since his release, he has gone back to repeat year 11, and stuck at it.
His mum found him more willing to listen, and tried to help him look ahead. "I kept saying, 'you've got to come out of here and take your chance,' " she said. "He knew if he messed up another time, he'd be looking at the big place and everyone kept saying to him, 'you just need to come out, do the right thing and have another go at it.' "
She believes that even when she couldn't be there, the same message was pushed. "It was good because a lot of the officers in there were football players as well," she said. "Troy found it hard because his father wasn't around, he didn't have many male role models. But some of those officers had a good influence on him."
For Taylor, a low point came when one of his junior teammates turned up at the centre to host a football clinic. "It was really embarrassing, you know, to see one of my football mates come in and see me locked up," he said. "He looked at me, like: 'What the hell is he doing in here?' I tried to hide myself, I didn't want him to see me."
The four months were long: Taylor felt depressed at times, homesick all the time, and at other points optimistic. "I'd go to court and I'd just be hoping I'd get bail to go home and stay home. I really wanted to go home," he said. "It was a bit scary in that place. I reckon it was the scariest part of my life."
On February 28, he finally walked out. "Just waking up that morning was so good. I couldn't really sleep the night before," he said. "It was good to go outside and see my mum and take off out of the gates. After all that, all my trouble, I was really thinking to myself: I'm just going to change my whole life now and move on and leave all that stuff in the past."
Football has helped him. Taylor moved with his brother Corey and mother to Alice Springs when he was released. Mrs Taylor had got a new teaching job. She wanted to take him away from the negative influences in Darwin, and his guardian, a family friend, Jason Bell, lived there.
He started playing footy for South Alice Springs and, like that Saturday morning in Dandenong, he was noticed within a few minutes. Coaching against Souths in an Easter carnival match, Brett Hand, the territory's under-18 coach, watched Taylor play in the ruck and star. Later, he and Jarrod Chipperfield, the AFL's NT talent manager, sat with the teenager and asked if he wanted to rejoin the program.
Taylor was surprised: "I never thought they'd want me." But to write a kid off at 17, said Hand, was ridiculous. "We sat with Troy and asked him how things were going, and we said: 'What do you want to do?'
"He said, 'I want to go as far as I can with my footy. I see it as a pathway out of trouble.' So he started training with a squad we have in Alice, and he hasn't set a foot wrong since. He's a good kid, a really nice kid. He's done a really good job."
Taylor has come a long way. He starred for the territory at the national championships, a five-match series that finished in Melbourne last week.
Now he has some decisions to make.
Turning 18 later this year, he is able to enter the November player draft and potentially get picked by any AFL club, in any state. But as a Territorian, he is also eligible to sign with the new Gold Coast club, as part of its draft concessions. He met Gold Coast officials after the territory's final game, and flew there yesterday with his mum and Corey. Today, he will debut for the senior NT side in a Queensland state league match against Mount Gravatt.
"He's had a lot to get used to and it's happened in a big hurry," said Chipperfield. "We'll make sure that he gets a good manager and gets some good advice. The kid's head is spinning, but we'll make sure he's clear on all the options."
Taylor's mum has seen her kid's confidence shine in the past few weeks. "It's been such a big turnaround," she said. "I'm pretty proud of him."
Hand has come to know him as a quiet, respectful man who likes to ask questions and follow instructions. "Troy's had a tough life and he's got a long way to go. He knows that, but he's doing well and he's got some good people in his life . . . I just really hope this kid makes it."
And Taylor? He has started over. He wanted to tell his story because he wants people to know where he's been and that he won't be going back. "Footy's the big thing for my life now. It's my path now," he said. "Footy's turned me right around."
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/07/12/1247337016523.html
