Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

The Boy With The Three-Metre Sidestep

You couldn’t say Joe Daley’s appointment as track and field coach at Widgee High was based on past performance. His only claim to athletic endeavour was the hundred yards sprint … and that was years back when he was being chased by an angry husband.

When the headmaster told him he’d be training kids to run and jump, Joe said that apart from that romantic dash the only running he did was water for a bath.

The headmaster pointed out that Bart Cummings trained a lot of Melbourne Cup winners but he couldn’t run to save himself. And as far as jumping was concerned, Joe was always jumping to conclusions.

Joe was the coach whether he liked it or not.

On his first day when he had the kids line up for the fifty-metre footrace, Splodger Smith, a gangly boy whose mother called him Sebastian, left the others so far behind they’d be late home for tea.

It was the same over every distance. Splodger was unbeatable.

He outshone the others in the long jump, too, with a technique as effective as it was unique. He hurtled up to the mark, propped on his left leg, took off sideways and missed the sand pit by a good three metres.

Joe watched in amazement. “How did you do that, Smith?”

“Do what, sir?”

“Jump three metres sideways.”

“Learnt to do it on the farm. Picked up a baby pig and if you’ve ever had a cranky old mother sow chase you, you’d jump out of her way, too.”

That night in the pub when the talk was the usual horses, sex and football, Joe tossed Splodger Smith into the discussion. “I have a kid at school who runs like the wind and can jump sideways for three metres.”

The silence was filled with unspoken doubt before a drinker said, “Bullshit. Nobody can jump three metres sideways.”

“This kid can – no trouble.”

“Big, is he?” Bluey Murphy asked.

“Big for sixteen. Long, skinny type.”

Bluey, a red-hot Widgee Wombats supporter, grew excited. “Big, fast, jumps three metres sideways.” His eyes were bright with the light of discovery that lit up Archimedes’ face when he saw the dirt ring on the bath. “The kid’s thrown the ball, they come in to tackle him, he sidesteps, they miss by a mile.”

Joe saw what Bluey was getting at. “You’re right, Blue, he’d be a natural for rugby league.”

“Just what the Wombats need,” Bluey said. “Bring him along to training tomorrow night.”

That’s how Splodger Smith came to make his name with the Widgee Wombats. Whenever the opposition descended on him like a pack of meat-hungry hyenas, he’d prop on his left leg, sidestep three metres and leave them grasping air.

The footy scribe on the Widgee Clarion hailed him as the best thing to happen to rugby league since some Pom picked up a soccer ball and ran with it. He dubbed Splodger the Widgee Wiz and wrote about the boy who was taught by an angry mother pig how to jump three metres sideways.

It wasn’t long before Sydney clubs showed an interest. Bottom-of-the-table Redfern Rodents brought him down from the farm for a trial. When he ran in so many tries the scoreboard attendant lost count, the Rodents had a pen and contract in his hand before he’d finished his shower.

In Splodger’s debut, the TV caller told viewers, “This is my first look at the new boy Smith from the bush. The papers say he’s fast and has a handy sidestep, but he’ll need it against this lot. They’re the best tacklers in the league – they’ll flatten him.”

When Splodger was passed the ball, the caller advised viewers to close their eyes. “This isn’t going to be pretty,” he said as six large forwards bore down on Splodger with blood in their eye.

First aid men were getting their bandages ready when the TV man shouted into the microphone: “Did you see that? The whole forward pack was about to send young Smith into Row Six of the grandstand when he turned on the biggest sidestep I’ve ever seen and left them in a tangled heap. And there he goes now, over the line for a try. I tell you, viewers, this boy could sidestep a charging rhinoceros.”

It was the start of a meteoric climb up the league ladder for the Redfern Rodents. They made it to their first grand final in sixty years.

In this, play was minutes old when Splodger, ball under his arm, headed for the try-line. Rodent supporters went mad with an early celebration. One of them took a double bunger from a bagful of fireworks and lit it.

“Bang . . !” The explosion rocked the grandstand

Splodger reacted as if he’d been shot. He stopped dead and half a tonne of forwards hit him with a crash that could be heard two streets away. They carried him off on a stretcher.

When Splodger came to in the dressing shed, the trainer asked, “What happened to the three-metre sidestep?”

“What’s a three-metre sidestep?” Splodger croaked.

Doctors diagnosed the condition as concussion amnesia, saying the lost memory usually returned. It didn’t. The erase key had been hit on the mental computer that told Splodger how to sidestep three metres. He now was a less-than-ordinary footballer.

When the Rodents didn’t want him for the next season, he went back to the farm. There for practice he’d make the sow mad and she’d come at him like a bloodthirsty pack of forwards. He’d try to sidestep but she’d bundle him head over heels into the pig pen mud.

His football career might be over but Splodger still came home with the bacon. He won first prize at the local show for pork chops.