You might imagine that for someone who’s been playing basketball since he was five, and just clocked up 200 games at the third highest level of basketball in Victoria, their life motto might be: “Sleep. Eat. Basketball. Repeat.”
Not so with Andrew Johnston.
The 201cm Werribee Devils forward is a big-picture person, and is honest about where the game sits in his life. “I love basketball and being able to play with my mates, but basketball is not something that defines me. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.” A glance at his Facebook page shows he is not one of those people who reveals everything about themselves, which is refreshing in this age of social media oversharing. What is clear is that he has a wide variety of interests and a healthy work-sport-life balance.
Born in Altona, a western suburb of Melbourne, Johnston moved with his family to Werribee at the age of five, and has been there ever since. He was a product of the Corpus Christi basketball club in the local domestic competition. “I first started playing in the Corpus Christi Under 8s. It was one of the first teams they ever had and my parents were involved in setting the club up. I didn’t ask to play, I kind of got dragged along and just started playing. I think I was five or six.” Unlike many Australian kids, there were no other sports played in the Johnston house during his childhood: “It was always basketball. I always get stuck into my parents for not letting me play cricket, because I’m pretty sure I’d be opening the bowling for Australia right now,” Johnston playfully declares. “I never followed basketball, just played it. I followed footy and cricket.”
Despite this, he speaks fondly of his basketball-soaked early years: “From when we were kids we always used to come down and watch the Devils games. This was in the 1990s when it was at its peak. There were guys like Eddie Cox, he’s the one who stands out for me. I remember watching him, Ken Henry, all the imports we had at that time. Brad Salter is also someone I looked up to quite a bit, and later on I got an opportunity to play with him as well, which was pretty special.” Johnston baulks when asked to single out the best basketball player he played with or against, but offers two examples of the kind of player he admires the most. “Someone like Brad Salter was a bit of a freak basketballer. By the time I played with him he was probably past his best, but he was just an incredible athlete and a good ball player; kind of understated and always looked like he had a lot of time. Also Michael Czepil, who’s our assistant coach now, but I can remember he came back from college and played a youth league game with us one day and scored something like 50 points. He and Brad…just looked like they’ve got a lot of time, never rushed, always just seeing what’s out there and making good decisions.”
The 2015 season was a disappointing one for the Devils. Johnston, the second-most experienced player on the list behind Justin Ward, carved out a niche as a back-up for big men Darcy Harding and David Cobb. Coach Mark Hughes said of him: “Andrew’s a dream player to coach. He doesn’t mind how many minutes he gets. He’s just here for the camaraderie and to play basketball with his mates. He’s played for a long, long time for the club. We’re lucky to have him and we’re very proud of him on reaching the 200 games. We wish him well and hopefully he plays on next season.”
Johnston possesses a close relationship with his family and, like many people, they have had a lasting impact on who he is today. “Dad’s a police officer and has been…forever. 40 years in the force. I grew up looking at my dad, thinking ‘That’s the kind of person I want to be,’ and trying to model myself on him in many respects. Mum had a big impact on me as well, for different reasons. She was always the driving force, where, if I was to say ‘It’s a bit hard, I think I’m going to drop out of Uni’ or ’I’m going to go and do whatever’, she kept me on track and pushed me, in a supportive way of course.” His older sister Louise is also a basketball player, currently playing Division One Women for Geelong. “We’re very close, always have been. She played Australian Schoolgirls basketball and was probably the more talented player out of the two of us, but I’m playing in a higher division now so…there,” Johnston jokes.
Johnston’s senior basketball career has been played entirely at one club, which is not necessarily a common thing at the higher levels of sport. He began at the Devils in 2004 and, with the exception of a couple of seasons out of the game due to work and school, has enjoyed a consistent run. “In 2005 I was in Year 12 and was school captain at McKillop. I just decided it was all a bit too much for me to play basketball, do the school captain thing and I wanted to try and do well at school. In 2013 I was a couple of years into working full time. Again, it was just a case of ‘It’s a big commitment, trying to fit everything in, trying to get on top of working a proper nine-to-five job and that sort of thing.”
Choosing a career is never an easy thing for a young person, and Johnston was no exception. “Midway through high school, I can remember having a discussion with mum: ‘I don’t know what I want to do,’ and I mentioned the possibility of being a lawyer, you know, from watching all those Law & Order shows. It’s what I wanted to do, but I didn’t realistically think it was going to happen. I wanted to go to Uni one way or another, so I put Law down to see if I got in, and I did.” Five years at Deakin University in Geelong followed, and now he is a practising lawyer.
The dream to travel is something that most people wish to see fulfilled at some point in their lives. At 27, Johnston is fortunate to be a well-travelled young man. “I’ve travelled mostly through Asia…India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, Laos. I’m a bit of an ‘India-phile.’ I love India and that kind of culture. Nepal was similar in many ways. Tibet was pretty incredible. I find those Eastern philosophies very interesting.” The opportunity to go to India on a study tour came through University, and he also completed an internship with a Delhi law firm. While Johnston creates the impression of being someone who thinks deeply, uses consideration and careful planning in his decisions, spontaneity is also evident in this travel story: “A couple of mates were going to Nepal and Tibet and they said “You should come.” So I said “Alright, let’s do it.” One weekend we decided we’d do it and we booked it.” He sums up the impact of his travelling experiences: “Between India and Tibet, they were both challenging in their own ways, but both life changing experiences.”
Two of Johnston’s other great passions are Australian football (particularly the Essendon Football Club) and cricket, which added a few minutes onto our conversation, since they are shared interests. On the evening we chatted, Essendon had celebrated a rare win in the footy and the First Test in cricket’s Ashes series was in progress.
Johnston is a passionate Essendon supporter: “Runs in the family. I would have been disowned if I wasn’t,” he jokes. He is also a paid-up member, even though he doesn’t get to many games because of basketball commitments. He says that “all this ASADA stuff” (the on-going Essendon supplements saga) has made him more fervent in his support of the club. “I was at the point where I was a bit over footy, it’s all a bit childish, and then when it all happened, it kind of sparked my passion for it.” Johnston was inspired further during a recent event watching two football personalities talking about the significance of the game in a cultural context: “It’s just the community sense of it and the fact that there are people out there who may be fairly isolated or not have a lot going for them in their life but they find that sense of belonging through football and what a great community service that is. My passion for footy is as strong as ever.”
Summing up his feelings about the sport of cricket, having just played a game of basketball and talked about his life for 20 minutes, Johnston says: “I’m sitting here now wondering what’s going on (with the First Test).” His love for the game was also impacted greatly by his travel experiences: “Again, this came on the back of the India trip. The Indians love their cricket and it’s so ingrained in everything about them. Then when I came back I started watching a bit more cricket, particularly Test cricket. I love every aspect: the psychological, the intellectual, the tactics, the physical challenge. There was a Test match a few years ago, I think it was against Sri Lanka. I was sitting at work, it was the fifth day with about 15 minutes left and you still didn’t know who was going to win, after this saga of ups and downs, twists and turns.”
Finally, we talk about heroes. Given the current climate, his choice of hero may be considered a bit ‘controversial.’ Essendon coach and legend James Hird has been cast as a villain in the football world and has widely been held responsible for the mess that his club is in. Yet to some he is still someone worth looking up to. Johnston explains: “If there was one person who I looked up to as a kid it was probably James Hird. He released two books over the years, and I like that he was good at sport but also academic and an intelligent person who thought about life and thought about things. That’s what I tried to be. For me growing up as a kid from the western suburbs, the ‘intellectual sportsperson’ wasn’t really around. So it was a new thing to me. When I read his book I was like ‘That’s pretty cool, I’d like to be like that.’”
There you go. Whatever happens in James Hird’s future, he can rest easy knowing that there’s a 27-year-old lawyer/200-game Big V basketball veteran in his corner.
Congratulations Andrew Johnston on 200 games of Big V basketball for the Werribee Devils.
(Photos courtesy of Larry Heywood)
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