Retirement of a club stalwart shines spotlight on the quiet heroes who help make each A-Leagues club live and breathe, writes Tom Smithies.
Pat Tatum goes by a few nicknames. He’s “a bloody machine”, according to one colleague at the Mariners, or he’s “Pat the Doorman” to the hundreds of players he has welcomed and protected over the years at the door of the Central Coast Stadium dressing rooms.
Now Tatum has decided to take things a bit easier after more than 16 years in the service of his beloved Mariners, the last three years working eight to 10 hours a day most days of the week as the assistant kit manager. But then, he is 71.
It’s people like Pat Tatum who make each A-Leagues club live and breathe, the efficient cogs in a bigger wheel who intrinsically root their team into the local community. His decision to retire will quietly end an era at the Mariners, as well as giving him the chance to spend more time with his four children and various grandchildren.
In fact it’s not entirely clear if Tatum knows how to take things easy, more than a decade and a half after he was asked to come along to the Mariners’ second-ever game and help out as a volunteer “just for the one game”.
Over the ensuing years he has undertaken myriad roles in addition to minding the dressing room doors, including overseeing the inflation of the club’s iconic sauce bottles at Central Coast Stadium each home game (a revelation which may disappoint those who had assumed they were actually full of sauce).
Having officially retired from his day job as a truck driver six years ago, Tatum clearly needed a new focus because three years ago, the Mariners’ now ex-kit manager, Melissa Woods, asked him to work with her fulltime.
She’s the one who calls him “a machine”, filling ice baths, preparing the dressing room, inflating balls and travelling with the squad to every away game to ensure everything is shipshape. (When KeepUp calls to interview Tatum, he’s with the players at the Melbourne Airport check-in desk, on the way to Adelaide for his final match as a staff member.)
You can start to imagine the daily banter of the last three years when Woods relates with glee how Tatum is famous for mismatching kit, and for getting lost while driving the kit van home late at night. That includes an away game in Wollongong, south of Sydney, where, according to Woods, Tatum simultaneously managed to drive north back to the Central Coast via Kiama (even further south), and pick up a speeding ticket in the process.
“No comment,” is Tatum’s taut response to that story, before noting that Woods’s exit from the Mariners recently was in order to join Sydney FC – “and where she’s gone is where she belongs…”
In fact, Tatum is “a gem of a guy, an absolute gentleman,” says Woods of her former colleague. “He works harder than anyone, he’ll be at the ground til midnight when there’s a game on and back up for the recovery session first thing the next day.
“He won’t stop for a coffee, there’s always things to do, he’s literally run around after training on the pitch gathering the balls in.”
When his co-conspirator Woods resigned, Tatum decided he too would call it quits, and insists there’s plenty left for him to do in life. “Before I came in fulltime, my wife and I would go for walks and travel, so I’ll keep myself busy,” he said.
“I’ve got plenty of family and we all live pretty close so I can see a lot of them – though I reckon my other ‘family’ is a bit easier to handle.
“The club have said I can come to the games still, and my wife goes every week anyway so I can sit with her. Or maybe I’ll just sit on the bench…”
Adelaide United v Central Coast Mariners
Saturday, February 26
Coopers Stadium
Kick-off: 7.45pm AEDT
TV: P+, Network 10
MATCH CENTRE | BUY TICKETS | HOW TO WATCH
