Bengt Carlson: Hi. I’m Bengt Carlson from Sport Medicine Massage. Here with me today for my first ever interview is Warwick Hadfield. Warwick has an enviable professional career, working with major publications both aboard and in Australia. These include The Daily Telegraph in London, The Australian where he held the positions of Chief of Staff, Editorial Writer and Chief Sports Correspondent, The Mercury in Hobart and ABC Radio in Tasmania and currently Radio National in Melbourne. As well as being an on-air presenter, Warwick has also worked as a marketing manager and producer. Warwick has written a dozen books, including Kevin Sheedy and Chopper Read’s autobiographies. He has also written two plays, has recorded two CDs of original music and was also in a children’s music band. *Warwick has now finished Tony Greig‘s biography also*
Warwick has covered sport all over the world, including Olympic and Commonwealth Games, test cricket, rugby union, rugby league, hockey and Australian Rules Football. He also has extensive experience in public relations, particularly in the travel and higher education sectors, and for three years worked as a communications manager for the Geelong Football Club. He’s an all-round great guy and a long-time client here at Sport Medicine Massage. Please welcome Warwick. Warwick, can you tell us what you did before you entered media and how you broke into a competitive field where you’ve gone on to be highly respected?
Warwick Hadfield: Gee, Bengt, that’s a long story and it’s also a long time ago. When I first left school – because my father was a depression and World War II baby, all he wanted me to do was get into the Public Service because you couldn’t be sacked from the Public Service. That was the rationale back then and I can remember the last day of school – the first day after that, on the train to Sydney to get an interview for the Public Service and I was accepted and I spent 10 years in the Public Service in the justice department, and for me, in many ways, that was my university, because working alongside brilliant barristers and listening to them talk, I made a rule to myself that every time I heard a word that I didn’t know used by a brilliant barrister, I would look it up and I think that was a great help.
But all the time, my real love was in sport and I eventually found myself working for local newspapers and for AAP, covering grade cricket in Sydney, and after 10 years in the Public Service, I took some of my long service leave and went off to the West Indies to cover some cricket there at my own expense. And when I came back, I thought, well, if I’m going to make it anywhere, I’m going to have to do something to jumpstart it in sports writing so I took a huge risk, left the Public Service and went to London and I applied for a number of jobs at local newspapers and didn’t even get an interview. I applied for three jobs on Fleet Street which of course then was the centre of newspaper publishing just about in the world and I got accepted for all three. Now, one of those was the London Sun which was probably not my sort of newspaper. Writing captions for page 3 girls wasn’t something that I was into, but The Daily Telegraph had five pages of sport and it covered every sort of sport you could hope for, equestrianism, speed boat racing, all sorts of things, and it was a terrific experience to do that.
And at that time, I was also given a lot of responsibility because the Australian rugby union team and the Australian cricket team were there, so any time anyone had a question about Kim Hughes’ middle name or anything like that, that came straight to me. So I got a lot of experience there. When I came back to Australia, that counted enormously when I applied for a job at The Australian and Kevin Jones the sports editor was terrific. I just rang him up one day, haven’t even sent him a CV and he just said come in and get trained. I started as a casual and eventually became a permanent on the sports subs desk, then got to write and many other things flowed from there, writing editorials, being Chief of Staff, covering Olympic Games, test cricket tours, rugby and so on. So that’s basically how I got that first break. You know, it’s all about the harder you work, the luckier you get. But I’ve got to say, there’s probably a little bit more luck than just being able to fluke those three jobs on Fleet Street to really kick-start my time as a sports writer.
Bengt Carlson: And also being willing to take the jump.
Warwick Hadfield: Look, I mean, I was married. I’d been married for 10 years. We had a house. We had a mortgage. We had all of those things. We didn’t have any children at that time, but – and I can remember people telling me I was mad thinking I could go from a – you know, doing AAP and local newspaper things in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney to get a job in London, but fortunately, as I said, the cards fell right for me with having those two Australian sides there and the newspapers wanted to use that knowledge that I did have of Australian cricket and Australian rugby and I’d been covering both those sports part-time in Australia, particularly rugby where I was very close to people like Gary Pearce and John Lambie, you know, internationals who gave me great insight into their games and that proved very, very handy.
In fact, it was John Lambie who said, “When you get to London and you’re covering the test match at Twickers, make sure you catch up with Corny and a few of the other blokes,” and I went and knocked on the door of the change rooms at Twickenham and I said, “Warwick Hadfield here, a friend of John Lambie”. You know, well, the red carpet just rolled out and they said, “This bloke’s a mate of Lambo’s”. So I just got inside and there was the manager of the side, Sir Nicholas Shehadie, quite a character to come from New South Wales, Lord Mayor of Sydney and whatever, and a rugby international and he held his media conference totally naked in a bath, smoking a cigar.
It’s quite a memory to take away at Twickenham. That and, of course, the streak by a woman by the name of Erica Rowe. Those with long memories will remember at half-time she dashed onto the field topless and it took of those London bobby’s hats to contain her – that triceps as they walked off the pitch. So there was a lot of nudity around at Twickenham in 1980/81, but also there was a sad loss by the Wallabies as well which I remember, but, you know, that’s the sort of thing. You take a risk. I think if you don’t risks at times, you don’t have great stories to tell as your life of old.
Bengt Carlson: Yeah. So what’s the highlight of your career so far?
Warwick Hadfield: The highlight of my career. Look, the Olympic Games has got to be a highlight of anyone’s sporting career. I can – I was the only person from my paper sent to The Australian which meant I was going to have to spread myself incredibly thin and I was with a man by the name of Ian Hanson who was a swimming writer for News Limited and I said, “Where do you think I should go, Hanso?” and he said, “Come to the swimming with me, you’ll be right”. We walked straight out of our hotel room or our digs into a tropical storm, so by the time I got to the swimming pool I was drenched. We had four competitors in finals. The first three got absolutely trounced and I’m thinking, Hanso, you have sold me a pup and a very wet pup at that.
Thankfully, the last swim was Duncan Armstrong and I got some – I got the story of the day. I was there. The people back at The Australian said well done for picking the right event and I thought how lucky I was, if only they knew, and it was terrific because Dawn Fraser came down to the warm-down pool to be part of the celebrations and Dawn Fraser, of course, is a large figure anywhere, but in the Olympics, she’s just so excited and particularly when someone’s won a gold medal and she walked up to Duncan Armstrong and said, “Duncan, would you like to come and have a beer and celebrate?” and he said, “Sorry, Dawn, I’ve got another event I’ve got to prepare for” and she just came out with this great line. She said, “Well, I’m off to have a beer without Duncan”. The Slim Dusty song, I’d Like to Have a Beer with Duncan, was, of course, a big hit at that time and, look, you know, other things at that Olympics were just phenomenal.
The Ben Johnson incident, I was one of the first people in the world to know that Ben Johnson had tested positive to steroids because I was rooming with Mike Hurst who was the coach of Darren Clark as well as being the athletics writer for News Limited and he’d become good mates with Charlie Francis who was Ben Johnson’s trainer, manager, coach or whatever, and one of the first people Charlie Francis turned to for advice was Mike Hurst, but there’s two sides of Mike. There was the trainer and of course the journalist and he knew which one had to take over at that stage and he just came into my room and said, “You’d better to wake up, Warwick, we’ve got a big story to cover” and it went from there. It was an astonishing moment in the history of sport. Many of us, many naively, wrote then that this was the beginning of the end for the drug cheats and I have to admit that I was one of those. It was certainly big.
Look, in terms of highlights of my career, you know, writing – working Kevin Sheedy every day is a highlight. I’ve written books with Kevin. It’s a pleasure to work with such a fine man. Contemporarily – just recently, he was accused by a Sydney soccer writer of being a racist. It was the most outrageous accusation that anyone could ever make against Kevin Sheedy. If there’s one person on the planet who’s not a racist, it’s him. He’s just a generous man. I know his generosity from a personal point of view and I know how generous he is to people out here in the community. So it’s been a thrill to write books with him, to know him, and in many ways, even though, you know, he’s not that much older than me, he’s been a guiding light for me in the way to embrace people and to listen to other people’s stories and learn what you can from them and what a great thing it is to be a good listener as well as a good talker.
Bengt Carlson: So is there anything else you want to achieve with your career?
Warwick Hadfield: With my career? There are things I still want to do career-wise. I mean, I plan to work till I’m 65 formally. That’s just in terms of superannuation. Musically, I’ve still got things I want to do. I still want to write some fiction of some sort. My real aim in life at the moment is to live long enough to meet my grandchildren. That’s – and that’s something, you know, that might seem a bit flippant, but I think that the – just that that is – the family sort of thing takes over. When you get to 60 – and 60 was a big moment for me. I really – everyone told me that I should celebrate it full on and I did. I brought very close friends back. I wrote a book that reflected on my writing career and so on. So looking forward, there’s more music, there’s more writing and just – I think just to be the sort of person who’s got good health and still got an active mind when you’re 65 and 70 and beyond. I think that’s a – if you get that, that’s something to treasure.
Bengt Carlson: And have time to do things you want to do.
Warwick Hadfield: Well, look, I’ve been fortunate, but some – for much of my life, people paid to do the things I wanted to do. One day, I sat down and worked out what – every sporting event that I’d gone to, how much it could’ve cost in terms of travel, accommodation and tickets to get the seats where I got and it was some astronomical – it was $40,000 or $50,000. I mean, if you go to cover the Australian Tennis Open in the press box, you’re at courtside. If Joe Blow comes in off the street and wants that seat in a similar place, he’s going to be paying $300, $400 for it so it’s a privilege to have done all those things and to have been supported by a lot of people along the way, but, you know, covering – travelling the world now and covering sport, that’s something – I’ve seen so many hotel rooms that – you can only bounce on the bed, switch all the switches on and off and all the things in the room, you know, just have fun with room service and everything so many times.
You know, it’s not really a bowl of room service cherries, the travelling life, but anyway. I mean, the thing is, you know, good health and just ticking off – there’s not too many things left on the bucket list. I mean, I’ve written the plays, I’ve done the music, but in the last little while I’ve been writing songs – new songs and that’s – I think I can just feel myself being drawn to doing some more music rather than writing. I haven’t stopped writing since July last year and this is probably what’s pushing me in this direction. I’m totally exhausted. I don’t think I ever want to see another book for a while. So that’s why I think I’m going to change direction and do something a bit different in the next little while.
Bengt Carlson: All right. Thank you very much, Warwick, for being – – –
Warwick Hadfield: It’s been an absolute pleasure, and if anyone’s listening to this, this guy does the best massages in Australia. I think it’s about five years – I don’t think your son was born when I first started coming here so how old’s Charlie now?
Bengt Carlson: He’s five. You first came 28th November 2006.
Warwick Hadfield: See, return customers, they’re the best in the world. Thanks very much, Bengt.
Bengt Carlson: Great. Thanks, Warwick. Bye.