A footy story.
Chris Gibbins was described by the local footy scribe as "fast and aggressive, a great runner", when the 1981 King Island TOTY was chosen after the season. Chris saw his beloved VFL Tigers belt the f### out of Collingwood the year before, and they were still reigning premiers when he got this accolade after a strong 1981 season playing for GF runners-up Grassy. He hated Hawthorn, used to sneer at me and grumble "htf did you end up a Hawk?!?", and seeing him in a KIFA photo I'm still trying to find, wearing Grassy's brown and gold stripes, looking visually and uncannily like Leigh Matthews hunting his next behind the play target, those same hunting eyes, used to give me a smirk. I have his Grassy tracksuit jumper here...big 1970's gold stripe running down each arm of a brown jumper, true retro feel...he loved playing for those guys, but those colours would have been the bit he hated...!
Chris is my brother, the oldest sibling of 6, and we got the news a couple of days ago that he died.
He was my senior by nearly 13 years (4 kids born between 1957-63, then 7 years later along comes no.5, me - yeah, I'm a glorious drunken accident!!!). There's a photo where he's a young teen holding his baby brother, one of only four photos I'm aware of with both of us in it. The second photo was a few years later, when we all went to a christening, both of us with age appropriate versions of the massive bowl cuts popular in the 1970's (Bill Oddie on the Goodies...Chris had clothes like that too). In 1975, when I was in kinder, he left the house as an 18yo and over the next decade travelled through NZ and WA as an electrician for various mining companies. Once he showed me the mining vehicle he was responsible for in Kalgoorlie - wheels two storeys high. When he'd come back home to visit, me and my little sister were allowed to scrounge his suitcase and keep any coins loose in the bottom...there were usually shitloads.
During those years, he was an East Launceston junior, then went to King Island after NZ. He left KI after that good season, and we went to see him play in a local country league in 1982 once. Can't remember the team, but I've got vague memories of him, as a 12yo not giving af about the match on the day, wearing black and the other team red and white, so it might have been him playing for Perth v Bracknell. We saw Chris doing what he was fairly well known for and was the style at the time, behind the play knocks and a lot of fights started! "Dirty player" was a description! The Gibbins boys are not tall, but a little bigger in the upper body and thighs than most...we can run very fast (when young enough!) and we can lift heavy things around the house when our wives tell us to...Chris was the comparative brick shithouse of us three, hence the Leigh Matthews reference...!
The next year he went to East Launceston again, and I heard him brag more than once that in the pre season it was "Doug Barwick on one wing, and me on the other". That season, our cousin Michael Gibbons and Barwick formed a formidable forward pair...Doug played with the amazing form that saw him recruited by Fitzroy, and with Michael nearly topping the NTFA goalkicking, the top 5 NTFA goals list had two Demons. How the hell East still didn't make the finals is beyond me, but they always found a way to suck! Michael, by the way, was "required" by the NTFA to make himself available for the rep game that season, which was to be his wedding day. When he declined, the board got narky, and Michael told them to EAD. They never reconciled, so he was on the outer for rep games forever after that, despite often being East and South's best player outside the star mainland recruits. Also, you'll notice the surname spelling - we are the Gibbins's, but Uncle Bevan, Michael's dad, wussed out and changed to the more common Gibbons's via deed poll after being fed up with people getting it wrong every time. My attitude is "f### off, it's up to every other bastard to get it right"...!
In 1985, Chris moved to WA, and journeyed around the mines. Got no idea who he played for, but get this - if I was to contact every country pub in WA, someone somewhere would remember Gibbo. Mortlockwatcher - here's your homework! This is how I tracked him in 1998 - sure enough, calling from the GC to an Exmouth pub, the bargirl who answered yelled out to someone in the background, and an answer came back along the lines of "yeah, I remember him, he was here 6 months ago...he's in xxxx now, I think..."...and a couple of phone calls later, I got him. We only ever spoke twice on the phone, both that year. I was in Qld by this time, carving out my own life, so we never got in touch again. He was supposed to show up to our nephew's wedding in 2001, but didn't...wouldn't be the first time...
The last time I was ever to see Chris in person was in 1987, when we were in our other brother's wedding (Anzac Day 1987, the same day as the infamous inaugural Haw v WC clash where both teams wore gold...a Youtube screen melter!). Me and him as groomsmen, that's the third photo, and then someone managed to grab Mum and Dad and all six kids and put us together in photo #4- possibly the only complete family photo of all of us in existence. One morning the next week he says "I'm going back to WA today. See ya." And that was it. We would never be in the same state or country again, except for a brief mid-90's period when he was in the pointy bit of Qld and I was 3000km away on the GC...
Chris had a clashing relationship with his parents, and the story gets truly bizarre from here. My oldest sister was the only person who managed to keep in contact with him for any length of time, and she's convinced that his old friend Sandra, an ex-Navy pyschologist, got it into his head that the cause of his mental demons was his parents. He said once that no one helped him with his mental illness...to be honest, we never really knew and weren't given an opportunity to in later years, when the stigma of such things had dissipated. I think there was a degree of autism - see the horse racing example below. This all fermented, until 2008 when Dad died. Mum had a computer, and was at the "oh, that's the On switch" old people's level of proficiency at this time, so discreetly forwarding his intercepted email to her after I edited all the offensive bits out was a simple task. In that message for Dad's funeral, he badmouthed everyone...I deleted everything except the two lines where he basically says sorry for your loss...Mum has no idea to this day. I was furious - we were Facebook friends a few years later, and I shredded him over this when a separate argument started, before axing him from my list!
In 2014, I got on FB one day again, and saw Chris Analyser had liked a post of mine. It was me playing guitar in concert, and he'd tagged "Little brother" to all of his mates. Didn't take long..."nawww...life's too short...sorry brother, how're you doin'...?..."...yup, we were mates again. "Analyser"? Chris was mad keen on horse racing. We all thought "yeah, sure" when he once stated that he'd created a system of betting so sophisticated that he'd never release it because it would bring down the racing industry...! But he put himself through uni, got a degree in Computer Science, and created a program specifically targeting certain Hong Kong races. My bro-in-law Daryl, my older sister's husband and the only other person able to keep tabs on Chris as a result, was linked up with him one night where Chris laid multiple successive bets on races over a few hours and won the lot, after stating that he would...$40k later, Daryl was in shock..."f### me, the bastard actually did it...!"...
Chris married a Ukranian lady around this time, and once he'd finished up in Weipa, he emigrated to the Ukraine. Over there, as a new Ukrainian millionaire (big BHP payouts convert very nicely into roubles), he was an outspoken fan of Putin. He hated America, and when the airliner was shot down, we got into a discussion about the likelihood of inferior Ukrainian technology being able to do what has pretty much been proven a Russian fired missile did. Knowing the volatility of my brother when it came to opinions, especially in this age now where the online warrior is now an uninhibited he-man with no filter, I would finish every conversation with "luv you brother". So while we were pounding arguments about war and America and he was calling me a sheep and a lackey and a Yank sympathiser and all sorts way worse, I knew to deadbat, and never once, unlike the previous time, did I resort to an insult. He axed me when I kinda dared him - and then afterwards, blocked and unable to respond, I watched as he unloaded more conspiracy crap onto that conversation before finally deciding he was done...! There are a few in our family who are into this, some proper dumbarsed nutters amongst our cousins, but Chris was the one with a brain, albeit one that didn't have a filter! All throughout, I signed off with "Luv you brother"...
The war. My first thought when Russia invaded was "F###, Chris is in the middle of that...!". His daughter Rhiannon and me both searched the internet looking for a sign, until we found activity from him 15m earlier. I had scary visions of the mouthy pro-Putin Australian being put up against a wall and shot...no info for weeks...then on LinkedIn we found his updated status in Poland. By this time, Chris considered his family to be his wife and stepson, and before he died he was a step-grandad. I hear he was loved. His wife had tried to get him and mum to converse, to mend bridges, and there were signs it was working. Never met her, but I intend to get a message over there...she sounds great...
Two days ago, my phone rings in class before the school day finished. It rang again before I could get to it, and when I dug it out a little while later, I saw missed calls from two sisters. My heart raced, because I only get messages on my phone from family when it's bad...I thought they were about to tell me our 86yo mum had died. They told me Chris, and I breathed a sigh of relief - and then immediately I'm questioning my worth as a human being because I was relieved it was my brother, my actual brother, who'd died and not mum. 38 years, no contact of any worthwhile type, we'd been disowned, and his behaviour had been pretty unlikeable...but still...?!?...I think I might be the one who needs that psychologist. Speaking of which, when the Ukrainian authorities (Russian actually, their place was occupied, and for some inexplicable reason they went back) rang Australia to tell them an Aussie citizen had died there, the only contact they had was Sandra. And Sandra had only one number herself - my sister. A tenuous connection. So we don't know any details...we suspect heart attack, because that's the Gibbins way...f###ing heredity, other people get money and titles, we get a genetic heart condition...!
So I've spent the last few days constantly thinking, wishing I was grieving but understanding why I'm not. It occurred to me, after my 13yo daughter implored me to remember the good times and not "Uncle Tin Foil Hat", which we'd jokingly labelled an uncle she'll never meet when things weren't serious, that the only good memory I have of him amongst a scarce number is footy. I'm researching Tasmanian footy, and it was a thrill to see this clipping below. And this is how I want to remember him. I missed out on having a brother despite having two...we're not close in either life or age, and my other one is in WA and also left as a teen when I was little...we get on great when we see each other though, like once a decade, and he and Chris didn't! And Chris's flaws...we've all got them, we all have the capacity to be dickheads, and we all have the good streaks, which I believe he was trying to do by way of making amends but couldn't. He made it hard...it cost nearly $10k to fly to the Ukraine, and it's not such a good idea today...plus he never showed up when he said he would, a few examples there. FB made it possible to converse, but that would inevitably fail...
So I'll leave it there where it should be, in amongst footy consciousness, with a community who understand that people are flawed but from the viewpoint of our common footy interest. Chris Gibbins, 1981 TOTY for the KIFA, a fast and aggressive ("dirty"!) wingman, played on the other wing to Doug Barwick, and was also a CC for a few teams as he got older...he did it in the NT, someone said it was St Mary's, but I think it would have been a lower division. A loved dad to his adopted family (we all think his ashes should stay there), and the bro who told everyone his younger sibling was a gun guitarist...
Luv you, brother.
Chris Gibbins was described by the local footy scribe as "fast and aggressive, a great runner", when the 1981 King Island TOTY was chosen after the season. Chris saw his beloved VFL Tigers belt the f### out of Collingwood the year before, and they were still reigning premiers when he got this accolade after a strong 1981 season playing for GF runners-up Grassy. He hated Hawthorn, used to sneer at me and grumble "htf did you end up a Hawk?!?", and seeing him in a KIFA photo I'm still trying to find, wearing Grassy's brown and gold stripes, looking visually and uncannily like Leigh Matthews hunting his next behind the play target, those same hunting eyes, used to give me a smirk. I have his Grassy tracksuit jumper here...big 1970's gold stripe running down each arm of a brown jumper, true retro feel...he loved playing for those guys, but those colours would have been the bit he hated...!
Chris is my brother, the oldest sibling of 6, and we got the news a couple of days ago that he died.
He was my senior by nearly 13 years (4 kids born between 1957-63, then 7 years later along comes no.5, me - yeah, I'm a glorious drunken accident!!!). There's a photo where he's a young teen holding his baby brother, one of only four photos I'm aware of with both of us in it. The second photo was a few years later, when we all went to a christening, both of us with age appropriate versions of the massive bowl cuts popular in the 1970's (Bill Oddie on the Goodies...Chris had clothes like that too). In 1975, when I was in kinder, he left the house as an 18yo and over the next decade travelled through NZ and WA as an electrician for various mining companies. Once he showed me the mining vehicle he was responsible for in Kalgoorlie - wheels two storeys high. When he'd come back home to visit, me and my little sister were allowed to scrounge his suitcase and keep any coins loose in the bottom...there were usually shitloads.
During those years, he was an East Launceston junior, then went to King Island after NZ. He left KI after that good season, and we went to see him play in a local country league in 1982 once. Can't remember the team, but I've got vague memories of him, as a 12yo not giving af about the match on the day, wearing black and the other team red and white, so it might have been him playing for Perth v Bracknell. We saw Chris doing what he was fairly well known for and was the style at the time, behind the play knocks and a lot of fights started! "Dirty player" was a description! The Gibbins boys are not tall, but a little bigger in the upper body and thighs than most...we can run very fast (when young enough!) and we can lift heavy things around the house when our wives tell us to...Chris was the comparative brick shithouse of us three, hence the Leigh Matthews reference...!
The next year he went to East Launceston again, and I heard him brag more than once that in the pre season it was "Doug Barwick on one wing, and me on the other". That season, our cousin Michael Gibbons and Barwick formed a formidable forward pair...Doug played with the amazing form that saw him recruited by Fitzroy, and with Michael nearly topping the NTFA goalkicking, the top 5 NTFA goals list had two Demons. How the hell East still didn't make the finals is beyond me, but they always found a way to suck! Michael, by the way, was "required" by the NTFA to make himself available for the rep game that season, which was to be his wedding day. When he declined, the board got narky, and Michael told them to EAD. They never reconciled, so he was on the outer for rep games forever after that, despite often being East and South's best player outside the star mainland recruits. Also, you'll notice the surname spelling - we are the Gibbins's, but Uncle Bevan, Michael's dad, wussed out and changed to the more common Gibbons's via deed poll after being fed up with people getting it wrong every time. My attitude is "f### off, it's up to every other bastard to get it right"...!
In 1985, Chris moved to WA, and journeyed around the mines. Got no idea who he played for, but get this - if I was to contact every country pub in WA, someone somewhere would remember Gibbo. Mortlockwatcher - here's your homework! This is how I tracked him in 1998 - sure enough, calling from the GC to an Exmouth pub, the bargirl who answered yelled out to someone in the background, and an answer came back along the lines of "yeah, I remember him, he was here 6 months ago...he's in xxxx now, I think..."...and a couple of phone calls later, I got him. We only ever spoke twice on the phone, both that year. I was in Qld by this time, carving out my own life, so we never got in touch again. He was supposed to show up to our nephew's wedding in 2001, but didn't...wouldn't be the first time...
The last time I was ever to see Chris in person was in 1987, when we were in our other brother's wedding (Anzac Day 1987, the same day as the infamous inaugural Haw v WC clash where both teams wore gold...a Youtube screen melter!). Me and him as groomsmen, that's the third photo, and then someone managed to grab Mum and Dad and all six kids and put us together in photo #4- possibly the only complete family photo of all of us in existence. One morning the next week he says "I'm going back to WA today. See ya." And that was it. We would never be in the same state or country again, except for a brief mid-90's period when he was in the pointy bit of Qld and I was 3000km away on the GC...
Chris had a clashing relationship with his parents, and the story gets truly bizarre from here. My oldest sister was the only person who managed to keep in contact with him for any length of time, and she's convinced that his old friend Sandra, an ex-Navy pyschologist, got it into his head that the cause of his mental demons was his parents. He said once that no one helped him with his mental illness...to be honest, we never really knew and weren't given an opportunity to in later years, when the stigma of such things had dissipated. I think there was a degree of autism - see the horse racing example below. This all fermented, until 2008 when Dad died. Mum had a computer, and was at the "oh, that's the On switch" old people's level of proficiency at this time, so discreetly forwarding his intercepted email to her after I edited all the offensive bits out was a simple task. In that message for Dad's funeral, he badmouthed everyone...I deleted everything except the two lines where he basically says sorry for your loss...Mum has no idea to this day. I was furious - we were Facebook friends a few years later, and I shredded him over this when a separate argument started, before axing him from my list!
In 2014, I got on FB one day again, and saw Chris Analyser had liked a post of mine. It was me playing guitar in concert, and he'd tagged "Little brother" to all of his mates. Didn't take long..."nawww...life's too short...sorry brother, how're you doin'...?..."...yup, we were mates again. "Analyser"? Chris was mad keen on horse racing. We all thought "yeah, sure" when he once stated that he'd created a system of betting so sophisticated that he'd never release it because it would bring down the racing industry...! But he put himself through uni, got a degree in Computer Science, and created a program specifically targeting certain Hong Kong races. My bro-in-law Daryl, my older sister's husband and the only other person able to keep tabs on Chris as a result, was linked up with him one night where Chris laid multiple successive bets on races over a few hours and won the lot, after stating that he would...$40k later, Daryl was in shock..."f### me, the bastard actually did it...!"...
Chris married a Ukranian lady around this time, and once he'd finished up in Weipa, he emigrated to the Ukraine. Over there, as a new Ukrainian millionaire (big BHP payouts convert very nicely into roubles), he was an outspoken fan of Putin. He hated America, and when the airliner was shot down, we got into a discussion about the likelihood of inferior Ukrainian technology being able to do what has pretty much been proven a Russian fired missile did. Knowing the volatility of my brother when it came to opinions, especially in this age now where the online warrior is now an uninhibited he-man with no filter, I would finish every conversation with "luv you brother". So while we were pounding arguments about war and America and he was calling me a sheep and a lackey and a Yank sympathiser and all sorts way worse, I knew to deadbat, and never once, unlike the previous time, did I resort to an insult. He axed me when I kinda dared him - and then afterwards, blocked and unable to respond, I watched as he unloaded more conspiracy crap onto that conversation before finally deciding he was done...! There are a few in our family who are into this, some proper dumbarsed nutters amongst our cousins, but Chris was the one with a brain, albeit one that didn't have a filter! All throughout, I signed off with "Luv you brother"...
The war. My first thought when Russia invaded was "F###, Chris is in the middle of that...!". His daughter Rhiannon and me both searched the internet looking for a sign, until we found activity from him 15m earlier. I had scary visions of the mouthy pro-Putin Australian being put up against a wall and shot...no info for weeks...then on LinkedIn we found his updated status in Poland. By this time, Chris considered his family to be his wife and stepson, and before he died he was a step-grandad. I hear he was loved. His wife had tried to get him and mum to converse, to mend bridges, and there were signs it was working. Never met her, but I intend to get a message over there...she sounds great...
Two days ago, my phone rings in class before the school day finished. It rang again before I could get to it, and when I dug it out a little while later, I saw missed calls from two sisters. My heart raced, because I only get messages on my phone from family when it's bad...I thought they were about to tell me our 86yo mum had died. They told me Chris, and I breathed a sigh of relief - and then immediately I'm questioning my worth as a human being because I was relieved it was my brother, my actual brother, who'd died and not mum. 38 years, no contact of any worthwhile type, we'd been disowned, and his behaviour had been pretty unlikeable...but still...?!?...I think I might be the one who needs that psychologist. Speaking of which, when the Ukrainian authorities (Russian actually, their place was occupied, and for some inexplicable reason they went back) rang Australia to tell them an Aussie citizen had died there, the only contact they had was Sandra. And Sandra had only one number herself - my sister. A tenuous connection. So we don't know any details...we suspect heart attack, because that's the Gibbins way...f###ing heredity, other people get money and titles, we get a genetic heart condition...!
So I've spent the last few days constantly thinking, wishing I was grieving but understanding why I'm not. It occurred to me, after my 13yo daughter implored me to remember the good times and not "Uncle Tin Foil Hat", which we'd jokingly labelled an uncle she'll never meet when things weren't serious, that the only good memory I have of him amongst a scarce number is footy. I'm researching Tasmanian footy, and it was a thrill to see this clipping below. And this is how I want to remember him. I missed out on having a brother despite having two...we're not close in either life or age, and my other one is in WA and also left as a teen when I was little...we get on great when we see each other though, like once a decade, and he and Chris didn't! And Chris's flaws...we've all got them, we all have the capacity to be dickheads, and we all have the good streaks, which I believe he was trying to do by way of making amends but couldn't. He made it hard...it cost nearly $10k to fly to the Ukraine, and it's not such a good idea today...plus he never showed up when he said he would, a few examples there. FB made it possible to converse, but that would inevitably fail...
So I'll leave it there where it should be, in amongst footy consciousness, with a community who understand that people are flawed but from the viewpoint of our common footy interest. Chris Gibbins, 1981 TOTY for the KIFA, a fast and aggressive ("dirty"!) wingman, played on the other wing to Doug Barwick, and was also a CC for a few teams as he got older...he did it in the NT, someone said it was St Mary's, but I think it would have been a lower division. A loved dad to his adopted family (we all think his ashes should stay there), and the bro who told everyone his younger sibling was a gun guitarist...
Luv you, brother.
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