Matabele
Journey Man
A very good profile on Ian Roberts on last night's Australian Story.
Most of the story focussed on his interaction with a street kid named Aaron that he mentored for a while.
It ended up that Aaron was the target of abuse from a paedophile ring and, after urging from Roberts, Aaron began to help the police with their investigations to crack the rock spiders.
Eventually Aaron was killed (as often happens with prime witnesses with these sorts of things) though his body was not discovered for several years.
The episode took a huge toll on Roberts as he basically became the only person that Roberts trusted. Most of this was going on between 1993-97, a time when Roberts was in stellar form for us.
It's a credit to him that he was able to maintain his form with everything that was happening off the field.
Interestingly he felt that he couldn't share his burden with anyone - so from what I could gather the club remained oblivious to what was happening in his life.
I'd suggest that it would be worth their while to watch Australian Story and review their player management strategiews from that period to see if they can learn anything from the episode. I suspect that not much has changed.
Holistic player management is essential if the club wants to get the most from their personnel. From what I'm hearing, it's not happening. (And why would it when you have an unqualified clown as "football manager").
Australian Story provided a valuable insight into that suspicion.
Most of the story focussed on his interaction with a street kid named Aaron that he mentored for a while.
It ended up that Aaron was the target of abuse from a paedophile ring and, after urging from Roberts, Aaron began to help the police with their investigations to crack the rock spiders.
Eventually Aaron was killed (as often happens with prime witnesses with these sorts of things) though his body was not discovered for several years.
The episode took a huge toll on Roberts as he basically became the only person that Roberts trusted. Most of this was going on between 1993-97, a time when Roberts was in stellar form for us.
It's a credit to him that he was able to maintain his form with everything that was happening off the field.
Interestingly he felt that he couldn't share his burden with anyone - so from what I could gather the club remained oblivious to what was happening in his life.
I'd suggest that it would be worth their while to watch Australian Story and review their player management strategiews from that period to see if they can learn anything from the episode. I suspect that not much has changed.
Holistic player management is essential if the club wants to get the most from their personnel. From what I'm hearing, it's not happening. (And why would it when you have an unqualified clown as "football manager").
Australian Story provided a valuable insight into that suspicion.
