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Speaker 1: The great Greg Chapel is here along with legendary sports author and journalist Ken Peace, because there is a new book, The Chapel Chronicles Strength, Strategy and Success, and tonight at Dimmicks from six o'clock in Rundell more your chance to hear from these two legends about the book, meet them, get the book signed, all that and more. Great thrill to have you both in. Greg, firstly, lovely to see.
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Speaker 2: You, welcome, Thank you Leek, nice to be here.
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Speaker 1: And Ken, thank you for coming in. Lovely to see you too, my pleasure. We've never got to meet before, so it's a thrill to have you. You're both in here. Just quickly. Your brother quoted in the news there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's strange for you and to have an opinion. But actually I saw a clip of what he said. It didn't it wasn't quite as traumatic as and savage as that, But basically, I mean he said, that's what your job is a batsman. Four runs, you get them as quick as you can, give you a team time to bowl the opposition out.
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Speaker 1: Do you see childlike qualities of your brother and yourself now as adults in an outspoken kind of kid were you analytical as a kid coming up.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I've known him allmal life. Obviously, he's always always been there. We're five years apart, which sort of the early years I didn't have a lot to do with him because he was off with his mates of the same age and he didn't want a younger brother five years younger hanging around when he was nine years of age or twelve years of age. But he obviously ran out of friends around the time that I was nine, because all of a sudden I was interesting and someone that he invited to play the test matches in the backyard. So we've been opponents from day one, almost from a cricket point of view. Sadly for me, in the test matches in the backyard were always ashes test matches. But and as the older brother was Australia and I had to get used to being England, which wasn't that easy to get used to. But I just didn't want to be beaten by my older brother, so that was the challenge, and I always was beaten by my older brother. But when I look back on it, the lessons I learned in the backyard about loving the contest and hanging in there and just competing were pretty good life lessons. So whether he tried to teach me or not, he did and luckily I learned most of the lessons pretty well.
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Speaker 2: Ken and Greg the tables with a turn of course, with you being Australia and young Trevor being England. But there was a famous occasion there where maybe the wicket might have got watered and you were lucky to escape with your life from one of those backyard contests.
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Speaker 3: Well, as the then older brother to the younger brother, I was responsible for looking after the pitch and it was a hot summer's day and Adelaide forty degrees. We used to play serious matches and when you got out you had to go into the laundry and write the score of that player down in the score book and come back as the next bloke. Well, while he was away, I had a look at the pitch and I thought it looked a bit wilting and needed a bit.
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Speaker 2: Of a livening.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit of just a sprinkle of water. So I got the water and Cannon just gave it a little dusting and Trevor came back sort of faced up, and he said, hey, you've watered the pitch, and I said, well, not really, I just sort of just gave it a little drink. So he stormed off, but he was heading inside. But unfortunately there was a tank stand water tank outside the back door, and Dad had obviously been pruning some of the fruit trees in the backyard and left the tomahawk on the tank stand, and Trevor decided that that was a better way to sort the problem, so he came after me with the tomahawk. Luckily, I got a little I got a bit of warning when I saw him coming back with the tomahawk. I realized that he wasn't aiming to prune any trees, so I'd sort of duck between the trees and got down the side of the house and got out and stayed out for a couple of hours until he calmed down. But when I looked like I had to get over the side gate, which was the real obstacle. But I managed to get over that, but just as I landed on the other side of funk, yes, tomahawk into the date and I well, if I hadn't got out of the backyard today, I may never have got out of the backyard.
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Speaker 1: Do you know we all kicked for his kids. But you don't have these great nostalgic memories of that, but backyard cricket you do. You're a legend in the field of sport writing, Ken because you're in the Australian Football Media Hall of Fame, you're in the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame. Well have you got a love of did you just love like most kids for in winter cricket in summer?
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Speaker 2: Well, I was saying to Greg before. I was so lucky. My dad was almost always my best mate as well, because we'd go to the Melbourne creet ground in the summer yep see Victoria in Australia, but also to Hawthorne and glenfree Over in winter, and so he loved having a mate he can hang out with on a Saturday get away from home for a while. And that love of sport was just inherent in me. So between Greg and I were up to around about two might be eighty more than eighty cricket books that we've written, and I like to throw in seven thousand test runs as well forweens.
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Speaker 1: How many books in title have you written? Though your numbers extraordinary number ninety years and you're the number one Australian sports writer in the country.
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Speaker 2: Now we're the most published Jack Pollard going back at years ago he got up to ninety seven. So Jack is not here anymore.
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Speaker 1: I'm coming at to you, mate, Well do you get do you Greg hold out? And once do you get over not overawed?
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Speaker 2: You know?
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Speaker 1: Like Greg's a hero to all of us now that you get to write with him and spend time with him. Like sometimes we pinch ourselves and take it for granted that the man who we used to imitate in our backyard as kids in the southeast is sitting right across from us here. Does that ever leave you? Or you still get a through?
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Speaker 2: See they're still still fantastic picking me up at the airport today. But we all had the old Gray Nichols and you wanted to Greg started to use a scoop. So it means we have to buy school cricket bat as well to be like the Chapels and they go out against New Zealand and both made centuries. Was it in both innings? Yeah? Yeah, soo were the biggest names in sport and the Chapel family are still, yes, the biggest name in Australian cricket and today, and Greg has been a voice of Australian creek in this particular book, the Chronicles. It's not only the best of writings going over forty years, but tear there's probably half of his brand news. I've been so lucky to be involved right at the ground floor with all the brand new writing as well.
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Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the book quick one. My brother was Dennis. I was you who did you imitate like when you were kids growing Did you have a favorite player Australia?
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Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean most of the good Australian players at the time when your South Welshman. Although Neil Harvey was my favorite and he started off in Victoria even though he's left handed. I just loved the way he played. So Neil Harvey, Richie Beno, Adam Davidson, they were the sort of players that I follow when there was no TV in the early days, so if you wanted to watch Tricket you had to go and watch it live. So Dad would always say, you know, go and watch the best players. You know, these are the guys you should watch. So that was always pretty much In New South Wales team Gary Sobers obviously when he came here with the West Indies and then played for South Australia, I was a teenager. So he's no doubt the best cricket that I've ever seen, best batsman I've ever seen, best a rounder I've seen, the best field that I've seen. He was a superstar and a lovely, lovely fellow.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, KG says that golfer too. Like every sport you ever played, he was. It's the best. It's just amazing, outstanding. Can you see a correlation between everything you've done in life in sport and everything you've achieved in life outside of sport, And is that something that you know you and can together are able to tap into that the strength and strategy and success applies to both those of us who never play for our country but also just get through life.
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Speaker 3: And no doubt, I mean the beauty of team sports and cricket, particularly because it takes so long, certainly the red ball side of it. You know, four or five days of cricket, You've got a lot of time for things to happen. And most of the life lessons that I've learned have come from cricket, you know, just accepting that some days aren't meant to be. I mean, you can work as hard, you prepare as well, do all the things you'd usually do, but it doesn't happen. I mean, Don Bradman batted eighty times in testriget and only made twenty nine hundreds, so he failed fifty one times. So dealing with failure is probably the most important thing that you've got to learn early, because if you can't deal with failure, you're in trouble because there's a lot of failure.
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Speaker 2: So it's character building, isn't it very character And it breathes really good people. Because there's forty degrees out on a Saturday and you're feeling out at midwickt all afternoon, you can have a special mentality about you to still love it, don't you.
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Speaker 3: Well I do. I've passed cricket grounds now in the middle of summer and I think, how the hell did I do that?
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Speaker 2: Yeah?
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Speaker 3: So long there are other things to be done, like going to the beach, you know, doing doing other more interesting things. But I mean, I'm glad that I did it. I did it because I loved it, and that was because of the era in which we played. It was a past time. I was amateur cricket for most of my career, so you did play it because you loved it.
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Speaker 1: I often think of the parents too, who were sitting there watching little Johnny gets out first ball, and they're sitting there for the rest of the day watching all of that. So Kim so Donald Brom. Every time said Donald would speak like everyone would just hang on every word. The Chapels have that aura though, too, don't they Like when Greg talks, when Ian talks, like there is such a respect of what they're able to achieve on and off the field that people hang on every word.
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Speaker 2: Well, Iam would certainly call a spade a shovel. And there was one day there I set him with one of the stories I'd written, and he gave me a bit of a ticking off and didn't tee you it was Greg. But the next day they ken, how are you going today? You know, like he had said what he had wanted to say, and then he'd moved on, and I thought, oh, he's going to hate me forever. But we were on beautiful speaking terms ever since. And he's done the forward to this particular book, the Chapel Chronicles. Yes, some of the writing is just terrific. He talks about Greggs not a skill, but his fierce focus in the backyard when he might have been caught behind, Greg refused to admit that he'd actually nicked the ball and it's got his put it around his back there. Say you hit it? Say it? Greg refused to say it didn't you, Greek, I didn't hit it. That's why we're still arguing about that.
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Speaker 1: By the way, that's even a great life lesson too, isn't it That if things get you down, if all of a sudden your faced with adversity, you either have the decision to make you stew on it or you just drop it like that and the next day you move on do something.
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Speaker 3: And I think that's also important with sport. You know that you can't afford to carry too much with you. You know, you've got to deal with it and then let it go, learn the lessons from it. And there are always lessons to be learned. And you know, I find that today with golf. I mean, I'm a keen, keen golfer, and I relearned the same lessons over and over again about golf, and you just I sometimes just shake my head and think to myself. How many times do you have to keep learning this lesson? But that's that's the beauty of sport. Luckily we grew up in a sporting family. Sport was always there for us. Balls, bats were always there when we were kids. If we learned to catch, if we wanted pepper and salt, get ready to catch it because it was usually thrown thrown two you. So your dad taught me to catch I reckon. I was eighteen months two years old. I don't remember it, but I remember him telling me that, you know, he tried to teach me to catch front on, told me to watch the ball, but I kept watching him, so it wasn't working. So he turned me around to face the wall and threw the ball from behind me against the wall. And so I had to watch the grief that told it was Britain coaching. Really yes, And sadly he passed away at the age of sixty four, just after I retired from cricket. So before I got involved in coaching, I would love to have sat down with him and talked coaching with him. And you know what, did you understand he couldn't have got so much right by accident.
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Speaker 1: You've interviewed and written about legends for your whole career and what sets them apart. What is something that Greg has that you'd notice and you put in books like this where you just go right, these are the things that we should take away.
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Speaker 2: Or some of the lessons Greg was talking about, like Martin would walk around the house with a cricket ball and suddenly throw this cricket ball and the boys would catch it. So I do the same with my little grandstand there Ryan and Blair, Gary and his dad says in mind, I don't want to break the balls, you know. But it's really lovely those lessons. But everyone's got us through to tell on. I think this is why sports ritning for me is so interesting because I would just sit back and I'd listen. And there was an old evening batsman for Australia who became a gynecologist, George Thoms, and he said to me, you are a really good listener, Ken, and I said, I'm just loving you, George, keep on talking talking. So I've been lucky enough to be imbued with the footy and cricket all my life and the opportunity to be able to talk to from the don to Greg Chapel to Scott Boland, Now who say to Greg? Was as a young guy at Frankston my club, he was eighteen and a half stone, yet one winter he went away lost five and half stone and here he is opening the buying for Australia on Friday in the Test match.
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Speaker 1: That's amazing.
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Speaker 2: It's an amazing story.
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Speaker 1: Build the stay, Build a statue for him there we Wayne Phillips is one of ours. He works here with it. He's got a photographic memory can like as you know, he tells every run that he ever made. But he also remembers where people will position stuff. Do all cricketers have that? Do you need to have that kind of memory? And in life when you're when you're retelling stories and thinking of things, have you got a photographic memory of your career? Or you someone that just lets the past be the past?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of it. I remember a lot of it. I've let sort of let go. I don't sort of live in the past. I do like telling the stories and I do enjoy having written them down. I mean, there were so many great stories. You just had to Yes, you had to put him down. And I'm glad that we got around to doing that, and I'm glad that most of the stories are in one place now in the chronicles, and you know, so forever they're there. But I don't know that I've got the photographic memory that Ian's got or Wayne Wayne has got. I mean, Ian remembers blokes that he played against forty years ago, fifty years ago. You know, we played touring matches against just a local county team, and I struggle to remember who played in the same team with me let alone on the opposition. The stuff that he remembers is quite uncanny and it's quite amazing. Really, I'm not quite that bad, but they're I think, just getting back to your previous question, I think being able to focus on something you know for long periods, although you don't have to focus on it for long periods, it's just short snaps of concentration, and learning that lesson was probably the best lesson that I ever learned. That I don't have to concentrate for two hours. I've only actually got to concentrate for two three seconds at a time. And concentration is nothing more than focusing on what's important right now, yep. And that is applicable in any part of life.
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Speaker 1: Just cricket in all parts of life.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, Gregg's never forgotten other Lords on a boards, have you, Greg? Maybe one of the most grownding achievements that you love in cricket putting on those and not necessarily for batting.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I'm not at Lords, but at Sydney Creek Ground, I'm on both the batting and the bowling. At five we gets in an innings in a Test match against Pakistan at the Sydney Creek Ground and that probably gives me a biggest thrill than being on the batting on the board. I got on the batting on a board at Lords. Unfortunately Ian didn't give me enough to get on the bowling.
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Speaker 1: I thank you so much both of you for coming in. Give us a lesson or something you want people to take away from the book? Can I'll start with you. What do you think people will enjoy most and get out of the chapel chronicles.
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Speaker 2: I think they love the underarm and Greg's personal protests at the time because the captain was captain, but he was manager. He was ringing up the taxes, had no support at all, and Greg was just exhausted down on his feet. So the real story has been told in the Chapel Chronicles about that under m yes and a moment when maybe you went fit Greg to be Captain of Australia. But he explains why I really enjoyed that. Plus the tomo talking about electric Jeff Thompson, the cyclone. Greg signed him up for Queensland because I don't want to face him anymore. No, that makes sense, great for you.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I think just committing yourself to something yep, and focusing on the things that are important, not getting caught up in the stuff that's not that important, you know. Finding out I went. I don't know who the fellow was. I was working with Coca Cola bottlers here in town. I reckon it was out of the Nord Town Hall. Heard this guy speak and he'd been probably the sixth person from a variety of backgrounds who'd spoken about success, and his message for the day pretty much was find out what you need to be good at to succeed in your particular field of expertise. And that message really hit home. I remember walking down the backstairs and Nordtown Hall and started thinking about what have I got to be good at? And probably the watching the ball and just playing each ball on its merits. They were the things that just changed my whole practice the way I went about practicing.
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Speaker 1: That is such a great message because there's many of us without a sporting bone in our bodies, and yet you can take that and do it with whatever part of life that you want to achieve and have success in. So great to have you both in thank you. Your a legend.
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Speaker 2: You know that, you know that, and we look forward to seeing people down at the Nicks tonight.
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Speaker 1: You're a legend too. By the are you Inside Footy? That was the magazine we were talking about that in the office before. That was just like a religious kind of writere passage it winter time. It was just the best. Greg Chapel and Keep Peace word by Ian Chapel. The book he's called The Chapel Chronicle Strength, Strategy Success. It is a Wilkinson publication available now. We buy all the books Wilkinson Publishing dot com dot e. You're a Dimicks tonight in the city now you can get in from six six thirty. There you're speaking, you're signing, having a chat to people when they get to rubs shottles with two of the all time greats. One legendary cricketer of course and coach, administrator all of that, and of course a legend in the world of sporting journalism and author two in kenpase so greet Chapel ken Pace. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: The great Greg Chapel is here along with legendary sports author and journalist Ken Peace, because there is a new book, The Chapel Chronicles Strength, Strategy and Success, and tonight at Dimmicks from six o'clock in Rundell more your chance to hear from these two legends about the book, meet them, get the book signed, all that and more. Great thrill to have you both in. Greg, firstly, lovely to see.
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Speaker 2: You, welcome, Thank you Leek, nice to be here.
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Speaker 1: And Ken, thank you for coming in. Lovely to see you too, my pleasure. We've never got to meet before, so it's a thrill to have you. You're both in here. Just quickly. Your brother quoted in the news there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's strange for you and to have an opinion. But actually I saw a clip of what he said. It didn't it wasn't quite as traumatic as and savage as that, But basically, I mean he said, that's what your job is a batsman. Four runs, you get them as quick as you can, give you a team time to bowl the opposition out.
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Speaker 1: Do you see childlike qualities of your brother and yourself now as adults in an outspoken kind of kid were you analytical as a kid coming up.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I've known him allmal life. Obviously, he's always always been there. We're five years apart, which sort of the early years I didn't have a lot to do with him because he was off with his mates of the same age and he didn't want a younger brother five years younger hanging around when he was nine years of age or twelve years of age. But he obviously ran out of friends around the time that I was nine, because all of a sudden I was interesting and someone that he invited to play the test matches in the backyard. So we've been opponents from day one, almost from a cricket point of view. Sadly for me, in the test matches in the backyard were always ashes test matches. But and as the older brother was Australia and I had to get used to being England, which wasn't that easy to get used to. But I just didn't want to be beaten by my older brother, so that was the challenge, and I always was beaten by my older brother. But when I look back on it, the lessons I learned in the backyard about loving the contest and hanging in there and just competing were pretty good life lessons. So whether he tried to teach me or not, he did and luckily I learned most of the lessons pretty well.
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Speaker 2: Ken and Greg the tables with a turn of course, with you being Australia and young Trevor being England. But there was a famous occasion there where maybe the wicket might have got watered and you were lucky to escape with your life from one of those backyard contests.
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Speaker 3: Well, as the then older brother to the younger brother, I was responsible for looking after the pitch and it was a hot summer's day and Adelaide forty degrees. We used to play serious matches and when you got out you had to go into the laundry and write the score of that player down in the score book and come back as the next bloke. Well, while he was away, I had a look at the pitch and I thought it looked a bit wilting and needed a bit.
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Speaker 2: Of a livening.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit of just a sprinkle of water. So I got the water and Cannon just gave it a little dusting and Trevor came back sort of faced up, and he said, hey, you've watered the pitch, and I said, well, not really, I just sort of just gave it a little drink. So he stormed off, but he was heading inside. But unfortunately there was a tank stand water tank outside the back door, and Dad had obviously been pruning some of the fruit trees in the backyard and left the tomahawk on the tank stand, and Trevor decided that that was a better way to sort the problem, so he came after me with the tomahawk. Luckily, I got a little I got a bit of warning when I saw him coming back with the tomahawk. I realized that he wasn't aiming to prune any trees, so I'd sort of duck between the trees and got down the side of the house and got out and stayed out for a couple of hours until he calmed down. But when I looked like I had to get over the side gate, which was the real obstacle. But I managed to get over that, but just as I landed on the other side of funk, yes, tomahawk into the date and I well, if I hadn't got out of the backyard today, I may never have got out of the backyard.
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Speaker 1: Do you know we all kicked for his kids. But you don't have these great nostalgic memories of that, but backyard cricket you do. You're a legend in the field of sport writing, Ken because you're in the Australian Football Media Hall of Fame, you're in the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame. Well have you got a love of did you just love like most kids for in winter cricket in summer?
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Speaker 2: Well, I was saying to Greg before. I was so lucky. My dad was almost always my best mate as well, because we'd go to the Melbourne creet ground in the summer yep see Victoria in Australia, but also to Hawthorne and glenfree Over in winter, and so he loved having a mate he can hang out with on a Saturday get away from home for a while. And that love of sport was just inherent in me. So between Greg and I were up to around about two might be eighty more than eighty cricket books that we've written, and I like to throw in seven thousand test runs as well forweens.
00:04:58
Speaker 1: How many books in title have you written? Though your numbers extraordinary number ninety years and you're the number one Australian sports writer in the country.
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Speaker 2: Now we're the most published Jack Pollard going back at years ago he got up to ninety seven. So Jack is not here anymore.
00:05:12
Speaker 1: I'm coming at to you, mate, Well do you get do you Greg hold out? And once do you get over not overawed?
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Speaker 2: You know?
00:05:20
Speaker 1: Like Greg's a hero to all of us now that you get to write with him and spend time with him. Like sometimes we pinch ourselves and take it for granted that the man who we used to imitate in our backyard as kids in the southeast is sitting right across from us here. Does that ever leave you? Or you still get a through?
00:05:35
Speaker 2: See they're still still fantastic picking me up at the airport today. But we all had the old Gray Nichols and you wanted to Greg started to use a scoop. So it means we have to buy school cricket bat as well to be like the Chapels and they go out against New Zealand and both made centuries. Was it in both innings? Yeah? Yeah, soo were the biggest names in sport and the Chapel family are still, yes, the biggest name in Australian cricket and today, and Greg has been a voice of Australian creek in this particular book, the Chronicles. It's not only the best of writings going over forty years, but tear there's probably half of his brand news. I've been so lucky to be involved right at the ground floor with all the brand new writing as well.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the book quick one. My brother was Dennis. I was you who did you imitate like when you were kids growing Did you have a favorite player Australia?
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Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean most of the good Australian players at the time when your South Welshman. Although Neil Harvey was my favorite and he started off in Victoria even though he's left handed. I just loved the way he played. So Neil Harvey, Richie Beno, Adam Davidson, they were the sort of players that I follow when there was no TV in the early days, so if you wanted to watch Tricket you had to go and watch it live. So Dad would always say, you know, go and watch the best players. You know, these are the guys you should watch. So that was always pretty much In New South Wales team Gary Sobers obviously when he came here with the West Indies and then played for South Australia, I was a teenager. So he's no doubt the best cricket that I've ever seen, best batsman I've ever seen, best a rounder I've seen, the best field that I've seen. He was a superstar and a lovely, lovely fellow.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, KG says that golfer too. Like every sport you ever played, he was. It's the best. It's just amazing, outstanding. Can you see a correlation between everything you've done in life in sport and everything you've achieved in life outside of sport, And is that something that you know you and can together are able to tap into that the strength and strategy and success applies to both those of us who never play for our country but also just get through life.
00:07:42
Speaker 3: And no doubt, I mean the beauty of team sports and cricket, particularly because it takes so long, certainly the red ball side of it. You know, four or five days of cricket, You've got a lot of time for things to happen. And most of the life lessons that I've learned have come from cricket, you know, just accepting that some days aren't meant to be. I mean, you can work as hard, you prepare as well, do all the things you'd usually do, but it doesn't happen. I mean, Don Bradman batted eighty times in testriget and only made twenty nine hundreds, so he failed fifty one times. So dealing with failure is probably the most important thing that you've got to learn early, because if you can't deal with failure, you're in trouble because there's a lot of failure.
00:08:26
Speaker 2: So it's character building, isn't it very character And it breathes really good people. Because there's forty degrees out on a Saturday and you're feeling out at midwickt all afternoon, you can have a special mentality about you to still love it, don't you.
00:08:39
Speaker 3: Well I do. I've passed cricket grounds now in the middle of summer and I think, how the hell did I do that?
00:08:44
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:08:44
Speaker 3: So long there are other things to be done, like going to the beach, you know, doing doing other more interesting things. But I mean, I'm glad that I did it. I did it because I loved it, and that was because of the era in which we played. It was a past time. I was amateur cricket for most of my career, so you did play it because you loved it.
00:09:05
Speaker 1: I often think of the parents too, who were sitting there watching little Johnny gets out first ball, and they're sitting there for the rest of the day watching all of that. So Kim so Donald Brom. Every time said Donald would speak like everyone would just hang on every word. The Chapels have that aura though, too, don't they Like when Greg talks, when Ian talks, like there is such a respect of what they're able to achieve on and off the field that people hang on every word.
00:09:27
Speaker 2: Well, Iam would certainly call a spade a shovel. And there was one day there I set him with one of the stories I'd written, and he gave me a bit of a ticking off and didn't tee you it was Greg. But the next day they ken, how are you going today? You know, like he had said what he had wanted to say, and then he'd moved on, and I thought, oh, he's going to hate me forever. But we were on beautiful speaking terms ever since. And he's done the forward to this particular book, the Chapel Chronicles. Yes, some of the writing is just terrific. He talks about Greggs not a skill, but his fierce focus in the backyard when he might have been caught behind, Greg refused to admit that he'd actually nicked the ball and it's got his put it around his back there. Say you hit it? Say it? Greg refused to say it didn't you, Greek, I didn't hit it. That's why we're still arguing about that.
00:10:17
Speaker 1: By the way, that's even a great life lesson too, isn't it That if things get you down, if all of a sudden your faced with adversity, you either have the decision to make you stew on it or you just drop it like that and the next day you move on do something.
00:10:29
Speaker 3: And I think that's also important with sport. You know that you can't afford to carry too much with you. You know, you've got to deal with it and then let it go, learn the lessons from it. And there are always lessons to be learned. And you know, I find that today with golf. I mean, I'm a keen, keen golfer, and I relearned the same lessons over and over again about golf, and you just I sometimes just shake my head and think to myself. How many times do you have to keep learning this lesson? But that's that's the beauty of sport. Luckily we grew up in a sporting family. Sport was always there for us. Balls, bats were always there when we were kids. If we learned to catch, if we wanted pepper and salt, get ready to catch it because it was usually thrown thrown two you. So your dad taught me to catch I reckon. I was eighteen months two years old. I don't remember it, but I remember him telling me that, you know, he tried to teach me to catch front on, told me to watch the ball, but I kept watching him, so it wasn't working. So he turned me around to face the wall and threw the ball from behind me against the wall. And so I had to watch the grief that told it was Britain coaching. Really yes, And sadly he passed away at the age of sixty four, just after I retired from cricket. So before I got involved in coaching, I would love to have sat down with him and talked coaching with him. And you know what, did you understand he couldn't have got so much right by accident.
00:11:59
Speaker 1: You've interviewed and written about legends for your whole career and what sets them apart. What is something that Greg has that you'd notice and you put in books like this where you just go right, these are the things that we should take away.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: Or some of the lessons Greg was talking about, like Martin would walk around the house with a cricket ball and suddenly throw this cricket ball and the boys would catch it. So I do the same with my little grandstand there Ryan and Blair, Gary and his dad says in mind, I don't want to break the balls, you know. But it's really lovely those lessons. But everyone's got us through to tell on. I think this is why sports ritning for me is so interesting because I would just sit back and I'd listen. And there was an old evening batsman for Australia who became a gynecologist, George Thoms, and he said to me, you are a really good listener, Ken, and I said, I'm just loving you, George, keep on talking talking. So I've been lucky enough to be imbued with the footy and cricket all my life and the opportunity to be able to talk to from the don to Greg Chapel to Scott Boland, Now who say to Greg? Was as a young guy at Frankston my club, he was eighteen and a half stone, yet one winter he went away lost five and half stone and here he is opening the buying for Australia on Friday in the Test match.
00:13:15
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: It's an amazing story.
00:13:17
Speaker 1: Build the stay, Build a statue for him there we Wayne Phillips is one of ours. He works here with it. He's got a photographic memory can like as you know, he tells every run that he ever made. But he also remembers where people will position stuff. Do all cricketers have that? Do you need to have that kind of memory? And in life when you're when you're retelling stories and thinking of things, have you got a photographic memory of your career? Or you someone that just lets the past be the past?
00:13:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of it. I remember a lot of it. I've let sort of let go. I don't sort of live in the past. I do like telling the stories and I do enjoy having written them down. I mean, there were so many great stories. You just had to Yes, you had to put him down. And I'm glad that we got around to doing that, and I'm glad that most of the stories are in one place now in the chronicles, and you know, so forever they're there. But I don't know that I've got the photographic memory that Ian's got or Wayne Wayne has got. I mean, Ian remembers blokes that he played against forty years ago, fifty years ago. You know, we played touring matches against just a local county team, and I struggle to remember who played in the same team with me let alone on the opposition. The stuff that he remembers is quite uncanny and it's quite amazing. Really, I'm not quite that bad, but they're I think, just getting back to your previous question, I think being able to focus on something you know for long periods, although you don't have to focus on it for long periods, it's just short snaps of concentration, and learning that lesson was probably the best lesson that I ever learned. That I don't have to concentrate for two hours. I've only actually got to concentrate for two three seconds at a time. And concentration is nothing more than focusing on what's important right now, yep. And that is applicable in any part of life.
00:15:09
Speaker 1: Just cricket in all parts of life.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, Gregg's never forgotten other Lords on a boards, have you, Greg? Maybe one of the most grownding achievements that you love in cricket putting on those and not necessarily for batting.
00:15:22
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I'm not at Lords, but at Sydney Creek Ground, I'm on both the batting and the bowling. At five we gets in an innings in a Test match against Pakistan at the Sydney Creek Ground and that probably gives me a biggest thrill than being on the batting on the board. I got on the batting on a board at Lords. Unfortunately Ian didn't give me enough to get on the bowling.
00:15:43
Speaker 1: I thank you so much both of you for coming in. Give us a lesson or something you want people to take away from the book? Can I'll start with you. What do you think people will enjoy most and get out of the chapel chronicles.
00:15:54
Speaker 2: I think they love the underarm and Greg's personal protests at the time because the captain was captain, but he was manager. He was ringing up the taxes, had no support at all, and Greg was just exhausted down on his feet. So the real story has been told in the Chapel Chronicles about that under m yes and a moment when maybe you went fit Greg to be Captain of Australia. But he explains why I really enjoyed that. Plus the tomo talking about electric Jeff Thompson, the cyclone. Greg signed him up for Queensland because I don't want to face him anymore. No, that makes sense, great for you.
00:16:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I think just committing yourself to something yep, and focusing on the things that are important, not getting caught up in the stuff that's not that important, you know. Finding out I went. I don't know who the fellow was. I was working with Coca Cola bottlers here in town. I reckon it was out of the Nord Town Hall. Heard this guy speak and he'd been probably the sixth person from a variety of backgrounds who'd spoken about success, and his message for the day pretty much was find out what you need to be good at to succeed in your particular field of expertise. And that message really hit home. I remember walking down the backstairs and Nordtown Hall and started thinking about what have I got to be good at? And probably the watching the ball and just playing each ball on its merits. They were the things that just changed my whole practice the way I went about practicing.
00:17:29
Speaker 1: That is such a great message because there's many of us without a sporting bone in our bodies, and yet you can take that and do it with whatever part of life that you want to achieve and have success in. So great to have you both in thank you. Your a legend.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: You know that, you know that, and we look forward to seeing people down at the Nicks tonight.
00:17:46
Speaker 1: You're a legend too. By the are you Inside Footy? That was the magazine we were talking about that in the office before. That was just like a religious kind of writere passage it winter time. It was just the best. Greg Chapel and Keep Peace word by Ian Chapel. The book he's called The Chapel Chronicle Strength, Strategy Success. It is a Wilkinson publication available now. We buy all the books Wilkinson Publishing dot com dot e. You're a Dimicks tonight in the city now you can get in from six six thirty. There you're speaking, you're signing, having a chat to people when they get to rubs shottles with two of the all time greats. One legendary cricketer of course and coach, administrator all of that, and of course a legend in the world of sporting journalism and author two in kenpase so greet Chapel ken Pace. Thanks so much,
