Ode to my father

Andre Gerrit Barnard

1959-2011

My father was the reason that I am sports mad. From an early age growing up I would wake up in the morning and creep into the lounge to see the South African cricket match going on. I would watch with wide eyed anticipation, but not understand what was going on. My father saw from a young age that I was sport crazy and encouraged me to take part in any thing.

My father passed away this week and he was the reason that I am sport mad. So this blog will be dedicated to him. One of my earliest memories is being a 6 year football (soccer) player who was fortunate enough to be pretty talented. My dad would take me every Sunday morning to practise and every Saturday to the games. When I failed to perform he would say better luck next time. When I played well he was the first to congratulate me. He was my motivational speaker and my personal coach.

I also remember lying on my parents bed watching Paul Merson score a goal against Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup Final in 1993. From that day onwards I was hooked on the Arsenal. You see, my dad was my inspiration for which teams I supported and gave rise to why I support the Cheetahs, Arsenal, The Proteas, the Springboks and at the time the Eagles cricket (Which I subsequently changed from going to watch Easterns go and play a lot).

My dad also had an immense love for stats and kept cricket stats of all of South African International Cricket stats in all forms of the game. This translated into my life where I kept stats for Arsenal, Pro 20 and even computer games. I used to sit and watch him doing the stats for hours at a time with no worry about anything else in the world.

We also used to play championship manager when I was younger and we would compare our teams and tactics. My dad of course kept stats for his teams and I was truly proud when I got to see how awesome these stats were.

When I got to Standard 2 (Grade 4), I started playing cricket. My dad was very encouraging of my endeavours and even used to play occasionally in the garden with me. When I got to high school my father enrolled me into the Eastern Gauteng cricket academy and would take me every Saturday morning to my training sessions. At the end of games weeks i could not wait for him to fetch me so we could digest my performance in the week. I also will never forget the day I travelled with my High School team to Rhodesfield in Kempton Park to play a game. My dad left work early so that he could come and support me. It was my worst ever performance, but my dad simply said I am proud of you and the comeback is more important. I had much better performances in the season, but my dad was there for that game and that meant the world to me.

As I got better at hockey my dad supported that too. He would chat to me about my performances and come and watch me play at the Aitken tournament. More importantly when I started coaching he was a sound board for my tactics and my approach to the game.

Our sporting evolution continued and alongside each other we clocked over 500km in race walking each (he ended up clocking close on 1000km) in 2004. We would spend a lot of time driving to Pretoria, Johannesburg or even Heidelberg for races. We even had a friendly competition going on where he taught me many a lesson in how to walk ten km races. I also will never forget the pride of finishing the 702 walk the talk 21 km in 2005 and having my dad finish mere minutes behind me.

He was fortunate enough to have seen sporting highlights of two rugby world cup wins, the epic Cheetahs Currie cup wins and countless Eagles wins. Together we watched the highs of the Springboks, the lows of the Proteas and the mixed emotions of Bafana. A sporting highlight for him was when he got to have breakfast with the Springboks in 2004 after the Tri Nations victory. He got me a signed cap that I still keep to this day. He was the first person on the phone to calm me down after the 1999 World Cup draw when I kicked a heater and the first person to console me when Arsenal lost the 2006 Champions league final. We shed a tear together over Hansie gate and a beer together over the 438 game.

I could talk to my dad about any sport, like I talk to all of you now, but it didn't matter if it was golf or tennis, cricket or rugby, hockey or chess, I could talk to him about it all. From verbal communication to email to our most recent Blackberry Messenger epics. I am not sure if I will ever have a relationship so multi sport faceted again in my life, but i will value the memories that I am blessed enough to have. My dad was my friend and I will miss him dearly.

Rest in peace dad. Till we meet again.

JABU