Brian Aubusson proved there are more important things in life than kicking a footy
A wonderfully talented footballer passed away recently, but not someone you are likely to have heard of. Brian Aubusson did not reach the heights of his NRL star sons, Mitch and James, but for those of us who remember him as a schoolboy at St Leo’s on Sydney’s upper north shore he was equally as gifted.
His nickname at Leo’s was “Aubo”. We were an imaginative lot. I was in awe of Aubo. He could do it all. Run, pass, kick, tackle, everything. He was like a combination of those two great 1970s rugby league full-backs Graham Eadie and Russell Fairfax – power and flair.
I can still picture Aubo, broadshouldered and barrel-chested, leaping up to take a high ball or bursting through the defence in the midfield. When we left school in 1977 we just assumed he would play first grade rugby union or rugby league, but it did not work out that way.
During that final year of school Aubusson was invited to a training camp for candidates for the 1977-78 Australian Schoolboys tour of Europe. But when the schoolboy representative games came around he was unexpectedly selected in the TCS seconds to play CHS seconds at St Patrick’s Strathfield.
Aubusson then missed out on the tour. The team became known as The
Invincibles. If he had gone away with the likes of the Ella brothers, Michael O’Connor and Wally Lewis, who knows where he would have ended up.
Instead of pursuing rugby stardom, Aubusson played with the St Leo’s Old
Boys, otherwise known as SLOBS, in Sydney sub-districts during his first year out of school. The following year I heard he was playing for Hornsby in a suburban rugby league competition – in the second row.
I contacted Aubusson and talked him into having a game with Gordon Colts. It was mid-season. The coach agreed to put him on the reserves bench. Not long into the game at Chatswood Oval the Gordon full-back got injured and was taken off. The coach looked down the bench for Aubusson, but he was not there.
Unlike other clubs, Gordon sang their team song, A Gordon for Me, in the dressing shed before the game. The chorus ran: “A Gordon for me, a Gordon for me, if you’re not a Gordon you’re no use to me.”
Well, Gordon was no use to Aubusson. After the song the players ran out on to the field. Aubusson ran out last, headed for his car and drove home.
Later, I rang him to find out what happened. He told me he could not play for a team that sang about a “cocky wee Gordon” just before the game. In those days Gordon was a fairly traditional and conservative club, while Aubusson was a knockabout bloke, a likeable larrikin. In hindsight, it was not a good fit.
If Aubusson had gone to another club, would things have turned out differently? I don’t know, but that was
pretty much the end of his rugby career.
Over the years, while watching Mitch and James Aubusson playing in the NRL, I would think of the line “If I don’t make it, you know my baby will”, from the Bob Dylan song It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry.
It used to make me think “what a waste of talent”, but I don’t think that any more. Sure, Aubo did not fulfil his potential as a footballer, but he made it in another, arguably more important, way.
The same year that Aubusson could not bring himself to run out for Gordon, he joined the NSW fire brigade and had a distinguished career, rising to station commander senior instructor at Ballina on the NSW far north coast, an area hit hard by the recent bushfires.
Aubusson was just two weeks away from retirement when he died suddenly last Thursday. Since then, tributes to him have poured out, reflecting the high esteem in which he was held by the firies’ community. Not only was Aubusson an outstanding firefighter, he was also a great mentor to young firefighters.
The former National Basketball
League referee Brad Giersch is also a firefighter. A few years ago I asked Brad if he knew Aubo. Turned out Aubo was Brad’s instructor. He could not speak more highly of him.
Looking at recent photographs of Aubusson, stylish in his commander’s uniform, decorated with the medal he received in 2016 for 35 years’ service, he still wore the same cheeky grin he had as a schoolboy, never seeming to take anything too seriously, including himself.
I would loved to have seen Aubo make it in rugby union or rugby league, but there are some things more important than kicking a football around. Like saving lives. Whether on the football field or fighting a fire, Brian Aubusson was a good man to have on your side.