‘Fully Committed: The Ben Sigmund Story’ – Wildcard’s Review
If you ask a hundred Wellington Phoenix fans to describe Ben Sigmund, it’s to the credit of the man that they’d probably all say the same few things. Tough, uncompromising, honest, passionate, dedicated… you get the idea. Ask fans of rival A-League clubs and they may use a couple different words but few wouldn’t carry a similar respect. It’s hard not to respect a guy like Siggy who played every game in the same way. In a relatively down to earth footy league, he is as genuine as they come.
The greatest appeal of the bloke was that he was never a prodigious talent destined for the bright lights. Sure, he played youth internationals for his country but then he famously also took a year off at one stage to play club rugby. He was a player that made the absolute most of the ability he was given, he was the ultimate version of you or I as fans. And what’s more is that he always seemed to realise this, never cutting corners and always staying grounded. Plus he loved the Nix. He loved them as much as any of the die-hards that bring the noise to Westpac Stadium every second week. What more can you ask for, really?
Siggy retired at the end of last season following 181 games for the Phoenix. He was rarely the best player on the field in any of them but he was almost never the worst. A club man all the way. Now he’s got a book out and it’s a book that lives up to all those things that we’ve always known about Siggy. With other players we may call those things pretensions. With Siggy, well, he was always an open book himself, there was never any ambiguity. Ghost-written by Jason Pine (the voice of the Phoenix), the autobiography is called ‘Fully Committed’… because of course it is.
I can tell you that I’ve read a small library’s worth of footballer’s biographies, from the great (Roy Keane) to the truly terrible (Michael Owen). The ones that succeed are the ones that are able to establish the author’s voice on the page, something that most fail miserably at because they’re so heavily ghost-written that even the boring monotone of post-match television interviews is lost beneath it all. That’s all you really want from a book like this: the player’s point of view, a window into their world, the story as told by the person themselves.
Hence why Siggy is such a perfect subject. He speaks honestly and candidly, just like he always played. His voice shines through on every page. It’s not a difficult book by any means and that’s exactly how it ought to be – it’d be fraudulent if Siggy and Piney were out there busting literary conventions and milking the tale in their best ersatz Cormac McCarthy prose.
Having said that, though, Fully Committed actually does work outside the box. Scattered throughout are exploratory quotes from friends, family and acquaintances, from his parents to coaches to the likes of Tim Brown, Andrew Durante and Glenn Moss. Ernie Merrick, the coach that brought the best out in Sigmund, has more than a few glowing appraisals to make. In fact there’s even an entire chapter dedicated to a roundtable discussion about the man by some of his Wellington Phoenix teammates, plus a transcript of the press conference in which he announced his retirement. All of this adds a layer to this tale that doesn’t exist in the singular vision of most autobiographies, it’s a cool little trick. Not only because of the added context it supplies but also because when kiwi sportsmen start talking for long periods of time, it usually helps to mix things up and throw in a few extra voices. We make some quality athletes but orating isn’t a priority – and Siggy is one of the best talkers out there.
There’s also a full chapter in the middle of the text that is written by Ben’s wife, Deanna. Beginning as a tale of how they met, it soon emerges as the emotional core of the entire book when it unfolds into the story of their son’s premature birth and the complications that followed that – many of which occurring while Ben was away in South Africa at the 2010 World Cup. The whole thing is written with such openness and humility that it is genuinely moving in a way that so few such books ever become. It’s easy to look at many of the struggles that face a professional footy player and think ‘yeah, but they’re still getting paid to play football’. We hardly ever hear about the times when real life gets in the way of all that, we just moan when they make mistakes on the pitch.
Meanwhile the narrative core of the book is the relationship between Ben Sigmund and Ricki Herbert. For a long time there Siggy was a major player for both the Nix and the All Whites while Ricki was managing them both – which was always a bit of a cop out by NZ Football. The revelation that Herbert wasn’t the most direct or approachable manager isn’t really a revelation, that stuff was clear to all of us in the stands and on our sofas at home. What Ricki did superbly was he organised. He got the All Whites to a level of professionalism to where even if it still wasn’t where it should have been, at least they took themselves seriously. And he did take us to the World Cup too, let’s not forget that. Same goes for his role in getting the Phoenix steadied after he was brought in as their first manager.
What Ricki didn’t do well were the tactics. Man-management clearly comes into that too, which Sigmund goes into a few different examples of. Most notable was the fact that, having played an important part in getting us to the 2010 World Cup (he won the corner that Rory Fallon scored from!), he was then condemned to the bench for all three games of the tournament with recent inductees Winston Reid and Tommy Smith coming into the fold. Plus I’ll always have resentment over the time he made a couple defensive subs in a season-ending game against Melbourne Victory in the early days of the Nix with the team losing by a goal and needing a win to make the playoffs for the first ever time. They lost 2-0, Herbert didn’t even go for it. Siggy mentions that game but only that the team “played our guts out”. I don’t doubt it, if only their manager was as ambitious. As for the end of his Nix reign, well, that reads like every bit the mess that it seemed from outside.
The thing is, Sigmund was never gonna start ahead of Smith or Reid at that World Cup. He wasn’t good enough, not on that stage and not compared to those guys. Bear in mind that his best seasons as a pro would come a few years later as Ernie Merrick brought out a more confident side in Siggy’s possession football, encouraging him to do a lot more distributing and a lot less clearing. That he wasn’t even spared a few minutes off the bench late in a game is a little harsh but remember that they drew all three games – there wasn’t any garbage time to be had. Sigmund, to be fair, admits that he could have handled the dropping if he’d only had it explained to him. Instead Herbert – who declined an invitation to contribute to the book, understandably – said nothing. No reasoning, no tactical explanation. Nothing.
Every professional gets dropped but if you’re at least given a reason then you’re at least given the power to take it into your own hands, to be proactive about the decision. You know what to work on in training and how you’re going to impress the coach enough to recall you – whether you agree with it or not doesn’t even matter. Without that you’re adrift with no paddle.
Of course, the hero’s journey is all about overcoming adversity and Sigmund found his triumph when Ernie Merrick came to the Phoenix. Merrick makes the point that so many great footy managers have made in the past: that football management is mostly man-management. The contrast between he and Herbert is like night and day in that regard… admittedly through Sigmund’s eyes.
Fully Committed does get wrapped up in the Herbert thing but given his ubiquity in football in this country for a while there, it didn’t have a choice. Prior to that it does the usual in breezing its way through the early years of Ben Sigmund and the decisions that made him the man he became. That stuff is enjoyable enough but the final third or so is a joy as the book flies through Siggy’s accounts of the last half decade of the Welly Nix. From assessments on fellow players to the odd humorous little anecdote (the one about Tony Warner and the gear-nicking fitness trainer is a belter) to the man’s take of a few iconic moments in Nix history – even ending with his all-time Phoenix team.
Because what this really is, is a redemption story. The bloke that fell out of love with football enough to take a year off, the bloke that worked his arse off to get to the World Cup only not to play, the bloke with all the makeup of your typical battler finding himself in the place now where he can retire a legend to so many fans and a fine husband and father to a loving family. What a champion.
I will say this: there does seem to be an excessive amount of drinking in this book for a sportsman’s tale. Siggy even bemoans the fact that some of the youngsters don’t drink at all – like, how are they supposed to socialise with the team if they don’t drink? Umm, how about by socialising with the team and not drinking? Not that athletes and alcohol should be like Ben Sigmund and moustaches (there’s a pic in the book of a Movember effort and it ain’t pretty), but by 2016 it’s pretty well understood that having a few superstitious drinks the night before a game isn’t the best preparation possible. Also, Siggy seems to enjoy a fight or two slightly too much (specifically the all-in brawl against the Jets in pre-season that time).
Hey but what do you want, the watered down version that pleases everyone or the honest one? As if there was ever any doubt which we’d get from this guy.