T'S not about how far kids can kick a Sherrin or how high they can leap to take a mark. That's what you have to remember about Kane Richter%u2019s job.
The AFL Cape York Secondary High Schools manager runs the organisation’s youth programs in Cairns and Cape York.
It’s an enormous catchment. You could lose a European country or two within the borderless terrain Richter is responsible for.
Barely a month goes by that the 29-year-old isn't driving north to a remote community like Bamaga or Weipa for his job.
The odometer of the mud-streaked AFL Cape York troop carrier has seen more zeros than Gina Rinehart’s bank manager, but Richter doesn’t mind the travel.
There’s always some curiosity in the landscape to occupy his mind during the hours travelling along highways and rutted tracks.
An alien-looking termite mound. A wedge-tailed eagle pecking at road kill. A gutted car wreck abandoned to rust.
The journeys are never boring. Sometimes they’re the things that make the destination worthwhile.
Kane loves his job. Seriously, he does. He’s not just saying it so his boss will be impressed and give him a pay rise when he reads this article.
It’s impossible to fake the enthusiasm he has. The camouflage would eventually fail. It’d peel off like a cheap paint job and he’d get found out as an impostor.
Kane wants to see young people succeed. He knows every teenager has the potential to make something worthwhile of his or her life.
But it’s not always easy convincing them of the fact. That’s the difficult part of Kane’s job. Sometimes it’s a hard sell.
Attitudes towards education are often negative. Classroom learning is seen as an inconvenience – a six-hour impediment to having fun.
School? What’s the point? You’re trapped in a building behind a desk while some adult writes words and numbers on a whiteboard. It’s sooooo borrrring. Who cares?
It can all seem so meaningless and irrelevant in a remote community where the sun is shining, the beach is beckoning and the rest of the world appears so far away.
But football can help. It can make receiving an education more enticing.
It’s amazing the power an oval-shaped ball can have. It’s just a bit of leather inflated with air, but it’s a tool that belies its mundane materials.
If you want to play football in the Cape York Crusaders representative teams, you have to go to school. That’s not up for negotiation.
The talented aren’t given special consideration. It wouldn’t matter if you were version 2.0 of Adam Goodes or Buddy Franklin without the weak right foot. If you’re not in the classroom, you’re not on the field.
But it’s not about uncovering future draft prospects. That’s incidental. Kane is about uncovering opportunity. Maybe it is playing football, but more than likely it’s going to university, TAFE or finding a vocation that suits an individual’s blend of talents.
The young people Kane encounters taking part in the AFL Cape York programs are only just starting to make the choices that will impact the trajectory of their lives.
They can either go up or down. The direction is yet to be defined. Sometimes all it takes is a nudge from the right role model to keep them soaring.
But there isn’t always a happy ending. It’s a tough realisation, but Kane knows he won’t be able to help every kid he comes across.
But there will be successes. Little shining lights he calls them. Constellations of young people who knuckled down and didn’t take the easy path.
They make the job worthwhile.
Last Modified on 25/09/2012 11:14