There are many reasons that got me started in martial arts. I think I was 12 years old when I officially started at Sylvania Heights Youth Centre with Gordon, but the desire was borne well before that.
I guess the inner flame was just a desire to be good at sport. Dad was good at cricket and rugby league, and so he put me in them (actually soccer first because mum wouldn’t let me play footy). In cricket I was a good wicket keeper, but in the football codes I sucked. I never grew until I was 17 (more on that later), and as any parent of a kids’ footy team knows - size and strength is a huge advantage.
Moving into high school, I switched to rugby union, but as much as I tried, I was never an A-Grade player.
Another reason was the plethora of martial arts movies and TV that was on in the late 80s and early 90s. In 1988 (when I was 10), there was this movie you might have heard of called Bloodsport. And JCVD followed this up the next year with Kickboxer. And in 1990 we had the first Ninja Turtles movie …. So you can see where I am going with this. Plus, the fact that I was already a huge James Bond fan, and there are martial arts scenes in those films, just gave me aspiration of doing likewise.
And then the final, and probably most driving reason that not only got me started, but more importantly kept me going, was the bullying I suffered.
There are 26 letters in the English language, and the one letter I struggled with was R. So when a teacher in school would ask my name, in front of the whole class, I would reply with “Wodney”. You can imagine the reaction of the class.
It also didn’t help that I went to Newington College, a school which in the early 1990s had a lot of good rugby players, all of whom towered over me. I remember for year 7 or year 8, they had all 200 boys lined up from shortest to tallest, and there were only a handful shorter than me. This in itself wouldn’t have been too bad, except for the aforementioned lisp, and my smart-arsed wit.
So yeah, to summarise, it was a combination of wanting to do a sport I was good at, the inspiration of all the martial arts movies, and getting picked on at school. Mould all that together and you have a reason to start, and a reason to keep going, despite the setbacks.
