Look, mate, you've got to hand it to Kelvin Templeton. After kicking more than 590 goals across the VFL, winning a Brownlow Medal, and building a successful business career overseas, the bloke could have retired quietly. Instead, he's done something entirely different: he's written a novel.
Collision, Templeton's debut novel, was launched on October 22 in Melbourne. The novel transports readers to Melbourne during the 1970s and 1980s and into the world of 20-year-old Joshua Shamrock, whose life revolves around football, sex and booze. Joshua Shamrock is a goal-kicking sensation for the Bulldogs footy club, and the game of Aussie rules has always come naturally to him. Then, his career comes to an early and tragic end.
What happens next is where Templeton gets interesting. This isn't your standard footballer's autobiography or some nostalgic reminiscence about the good old days. Shamrock's self-worth has been tied to his status as a star sportsman, and with his career over, he now finds himself ill-prepared for life after football. As the years go by, an increasingly reclusive Shamrock nears rock bottom with only his loyal partner Justine to prop him up.
Fair dinkum, if you're wondering whether Templeton knows what he's talking about when it comes to the brutality of 1970s football, he does. The 1970s and 80s were among the most brutal in the history of the game. The John Greening, John Somerville and Geoff Southby incidents were just a few of the decade's most vicious clashes. As a young star full forward Kelvin Templeton had a front row seat to the carnage and more than his fair share of the aggression directed at him. His debut against Collingwood was a sensation, for Templeton kicked six goals at full-forward, back in 1974.
After a football career where he won a Brownlow Medal, two Coleman Medals and elevation to the AFL's Hall of Fame, Kelvin pursued new challenges in business and through post-graduate studies in Australia and at The University of Pennsylvania in the USA. During his business career he lived and worked overseas in the Middle East for 15 years.
What's remarkable about Templeton's shift to fiction is that he's not writing another footy yarn. Templeton writes with authority as a former AFL player whose career was shaped by the physical demands and culture of the game. He captures the rawness of a period in which toughness was demanded on and off the field. The novel explores themes of resilience, fear, masculinity and healing while evoking nostalgia for the era. The real story is about what happens when the thing that defines you vanishes. Because the primary purpose of Shamrock's life is to be a football star, when that hope is gone, he faces the question 'Who am I?' Most of the book is about how he tries to answer that question. The central theme of the story is the search for identity.
At the end of the day, what's impressive here isn't just that a former footballer wrote a novel. When you read a lot, as Templeton has, there can come a time when you want to try it yourself. That happened to him. It was only then, when he did start, that he came to realise how difficult a task writing a novel is. He's created something that resonates beyond the footy crowd. That's the kind of ambition that makes you fall in love with the game and the people who played it.