McIntosh moments: The eccentric world of an athletic TigerMichael Gleeson
The Age
22 September 2017"No way! It was 15 bags. See there, that's what I'm talking about, they always trying to stitch me up!"
So it only weighs 300 kilograms?
"Yeah ...[pause] it's a heavy table. Actually the legs will weigh another 100 kilos."
McIntosh doesn't like to sit still. He'd seen a table he liked so he decided to make it because the boys were telling him he couldn't. He is always making things, keeping busy. He thinks he was always that way, but helping raise his brothers and sisters also brought it out in him.
McIntosh is from Pinjarra, south of Perth. His mum and dad separated when he was four and have both since remarried and had more kids. Now McIntosh is one of nine.
"Four of us are full-blood related and then there are five that aren't. So Mum and Dad have us four, then Dad had two more and my mum had another three girls. I call them the three little pigs, they are all a year apart and the young ones of the family," he said.
Kamdyn's dad moved away and now lives a two-and-a-half hour flight north of Pinjarra so they only saw one another on school holidays, but they remain close.
Kamdyn's mum and her partner are fly-in, fly-out workers on the mines, working one week on and one week off. They both worked the same shift so for the week they worked, McIntosh, at 17, looked after the house of four younger sisters. His sister Hannah was two years younger than him, then there were the "three little pigs" who were all at primary school.
His mum would leave a list of things to be done for the week and he would work his way through it: make the lunches, clean the house, do the washing. He was able to get a motorbike licence at 16 so he got a small scooter to get around and get to footy training.
He worked three part-time jobs at the time, as well as footy training and looking after the girls. He was busy.
"It was pretty hard because if one of the girls got sick they couldn't stay home because either I would have to stay home with her or she'd have to just man up – or toughen up – and go to school," he said.
"So pretty much it was toughen up and go to school unless it was pretty bad and I could see that she wasn't just putting it on. Sometimes she would get crappy with me.
"I think I was probably harder on them than Mum. It was quite funny looking back. We are a pretty independent family. "
Only once did he have to dink one of his sisters on the scooter. She wasn't keen on a second trip.
McIntosh has traded his scooter in for his dream bike – a Cafe Racer SWM Gran Milano. A footballer's life has its perks.
When he came to Melbourne, drafted to Richmond, he was put in a house with three other recruits from out of Melbourne. He felt like he hadn't left home. He was still managing the house.
Without family here, Richmond has become his world. He gets teased like a brother would, but he also offers up such fertile material.
Recently Shane Edwards and Shaun Hampson arrived at the club enthusing about the movie Dunkirk. McIntosh hadn't heard of it but he was persuaded that he just had to see it. So he went home and tried to stream it on TV. After 20 minutes he turned it off. Complete rubbish.
Next day he arrived at the club to tell the boys they were fools, that Dunkirk film was crap.
"I didn't realise until the next day when I told the boys that I watched the wrong one. Because it was new it wasn't out to stream online. I watched Operation Dunkirk, which was filmed in 1980 or something. It was so bad."
The players liked that story.
Kamdyn's immediate next building project (he has plans for another outdoor concrete table with a fire pit down the middle and another one with a trench filed with succulent plants) has been to build a spinning wheel for the players' fines and pranks.
"It's this 1.7-metre wide Wheel of Fortune wheel. It only took a couple of weeks to make so I am adding to it. I have this confetti gun that shoots out confetti when you spin it. There are punishments and things on it that you have to do so I built a podium in the front of the wheel that you will have to stand to do your punishments in front of all the boys.
"I am thinking of getting a counter weight I can put on it so it will spin but it will always land on the same person. So I can stitch up someone like Ben Lennon or Shaun Grigg for stitching me up all the time."
Grigg, for all his pranks and extravagant stories about McIntosh, has also been his teacher. Mcintosh only took up football at 15 – he'd previously played soccer – and Grigg has been helping him learn where to position himself and where to run.
Tall and athletic McIntosh is an excellent runner so has moved to a wing after playing previously behind the ball.
"They want me to cover more of the ground with my running ability. 'Grigga' still teaches me how to read the play and position myself around the ground so he is stitching me up and teaching me a few things as well."
Against Fremantle in round 22 McIntosh played in Perth. It was the nearest he had come to having his whole family at a game. Even then there were still five of his closest relatives missing.
It was the first time his grandparents had seen him play a game of football live. Living on a farm they had never had a chance to see watch him play even as a junior. The first time they saw him play was on TV playing for Richmond.
The large extended family has created a further problem should the Tigers get through to the grand final.
"I can't cater for the whole family. I have already said 'immediate family only'. So my mum, my stepdad, my dad, my stepmum, my older brother and sister, my 20-year-old sister and my partner. That's nine, then I have got my other little brother so my other little sister misses out, so I think we are just going to buy another ticket and just divvy it up and then that is it – everyone else will fend for themselves. And the three little pigs miss out."
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/afl/mcintosh-moments-the-eccentric-world-of-an-athletic-tiger-20170922-gymqmo.html
