site never used this - thought someone might enjoying reading it -
not Synbad obviously.
KOUTAMAN!
The great players have something attached, an act or action forever theirs in the pantheon of heroes. Cry the word Jezza with a voice full of wonder and joy and suddenly you’re flying in the air taking another screamer on the back of some poor, hapless hack. Jezza’s aerial ability made the link and kids across the state took up his name whenever they flew for the mark. As a kid I’d play kick to kick on Paul Scanlon’s front lawn with a half a dozen kids from around the block; all of us trying to take the best Jezza of all, something comparable to Jezza soaring upon Jerka Jenkins’ back and into folklore.
Polly Farmer is handball (some say ruck work but dad and pop would never hear of that - Big Nick is their only ruckmen, the rest are mere shadows), because he made a desperate ploy used by footballers to rid themselves of the ball into an offensive, destructive weapon.
Bartlett, the hungry goal sneak, the will o’ the wisp, able to toss the ball in front the instant before someone grabbed his jumper. He frustrated everyone so much they changed the rule to negate him, and failed.
Captain Blood, whose name said it all and many, many others, heroes all, champions who each had something theirs, something that identified them and made them stand out from the pack and in an instant another joined them all. I was there with Keith standing near the fence enjoying the beer, the camaraderie, the football, when a single act took the crowd’s breath away. A young, bobbing-haired Kouta, the large number 43 catching the thin autumn sunlight, reached into a pack with his right hand and grabbed the ball, grabbed it as if it were no more than a small foam ball, and then ran down the wing, ball clutched in a single hand.
Keith turned to me and screamed, laughing, ‘did you see that?’ I had. So had everyone else at the ground and the Legend that is Captain Kouta began. Since then he has scaled many heights and performed many amazing feats, seeming to defeat whole teams with his ability to play back, forward and on the ball. He was a bloke that could ruck, run back to CHB and then run to FF and feed the ball out and run past and do everything else in this game. So much so it’s rumored Leigh Matthews once commented that he’d have 22 Koutas in his side.
I remember an article in one of the papers (I will not mentioned which one, I will not give advertising to papers that seem fit to bag us as much as they possibly can) that had a large cartoon drawing of a footballer with arrows coming out everywhere; biceps, thighs, chest etc. The article was on the future prototype of an AFL footballer, the cartoon was of Kouta, the new footballer.
Since then a thousand scouts have searched a thousand lands for the great athlete to be turned into a footballer, this quest could be called the search for Kouta. It has occupied
every club since Kouta burst onto the scene. Sheedy is known as the Master of the flexible team,; sides full of footballers that can play back or forward at a coach’s whiteboard whim. Sheedy dreams of Kouta. Sad dreams where he wakes cursing, bathed in sweat knowing in his black heart Kouta will never be his, never!
Since his knee injuries the greatness of Kouta has been curtailed somewhat. Yet his drawing power has not. At Aus kick and football grounds around Australia kids in navy Blue invariably have the number 43 on their backs. Kouta is Carlton to many of the children who follow the bluebaggers and deservedly so, he is the dream we all dream as kids. The dream of being the full back, then the Centre Half Forward, the Ruck palming the ball down, the Rover running past, the dashing Wingman, the leaping Flanker. He has been them all.
In some distant future day when people are writing about this era of football I have no doubt his name will always be mentioned, he will be the example of the moment when footballer and athlete met. Though injuries have robbed him of some of what made him great we should never forget those amazing heights he reached, nor the fact that those injuries came when he was playing for us, when he and a few small select group of champions almost pulled us by the sheer force of their will and skill, into the seventeenth flag.
It was not to be, reality rarely delivers the fairytales we dream of. Instead it gives us hazy glimpses, far off towers that catch the sunlight and show us the things that just might be someday in some far off and far better land. Kouta is such a tower. A lone beacon of light, a glimpse of all that we as children, and even as adults, sometimes dream of during those moments when we forget the day to day and allow ourselves the luxury of imaging the what ifs.
So now Koutaman is about to play his 250th game and I thank him for the sheer pleasure he has given me, the moments, like that one with Keith, that I will cherish ‘til I am no more. I am glad he chose this game and this club. He is another of the amazing line of great players this club has produced.
Go Kouta!
Go Blues!
Do it for Kouta!
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