From The Market Garden To The Ad Agency: Jobs That Shaped me as a Coach

So back when I was 13 in school holidays as a 13-year-old, My parents, you know, growing up in Euredla in the Adelaide Hills, it's a market garden area.

It's full of lettuce, cabbages, as well as orchards and more recent times, vineyards.

So we were, you know, our footy team was called, we were called the Cabbage Cutters.

That wasn't our official name.

That was sort of the teasing name from other more residential towns in the hills.

So we were always considered the Cabbage Cutters.

So it was, It was kind of a rite of passage that I got to go and work as a cabbage cutter effectively in my school holidays during high school.

So year eight holidays, I know I started, I did a big stint in the year eight holidays.

Look, I wasn't cutting the cabbages.

I was mostly just bringing crates out to deliver to the men who sat all day with their back down, cutting, putting them in.

It was actually a pretty physically hard job.

I mean, I was only 13, quite small.

And I remember my mum reminds me that I had some elbow problems from it because I think I was carrying these big crates and trying to keep up.

You don't want to let people down.

These were cousins of mine.

Everyone knew my family.

You don't want to let them down by being a weakling sort of thing.

But I do remember this school holiday job.

I remember my first paycheck, just full of cash, and I just thought, this is amazing, even though it was really hard work.

That was the year eight holidays.

Now, I did similar, I didn't actually do the whole holidays again because I think tennis took over and I had to play tournaments, so I couldn't really commit to just working in the holidays.

So tournaments in the holidays for a good portion of teenagehood took precedent over working.

So that was the first job was in the market garden.

And some other jobs I did around the high school period, again, mostly just sort of ad hoc jobs or school holiday jobs.

My dad was an earthmover, so he had a backhoe and an excavator.