Six Jacks, One Loser

It had become a running joke at Seaford by now. Almost a stale joke it had been so often repeated. Jack Billings would sit at a table with the skipper Jarryn Geary, Jade Gresham and Joey Montagna during lunch, and one of the other boys would be guaranteed to tap him on the shoulder, remind him that he's not sitting with any of the other Jacks. During the captain's run, there would always be one of the boys hollering and whistling when Jack Newnes was paired with Jack Steven for one of the training exercises.

Richo had no time for it. To him, his job was simple in it's desired outcome, difficult in it's execution. He was to have these young, energetic hooligans playing like a well-oiled machine. It required discipline, something some of these guys weren't renowned for. But to all of the boys, there was something in the 'six Jacks' joke. There was a kind of dynamic that was unspoken, like all of the boys knew but nobody wanted to say explicitly.

Because on the surface, they really were just six normal guys whose names all happened to be Jack, but whose characters weren't defined by their names. Yet deep down, it sort of intricately linked them to each other from the minute they joined the club. When you're a teenager and you're starting out in a professional environment (let alone a huge corporate club), you feel like you have no identity. You're just a number - wherever you were picked in the draft, whichever club you were traded in from.
You look for the most obvious and accessable sign that you are, indeed, a human being. That sign usually comes in the form of the other boys - you look for the lad who laughs at the same lame dad joke the coach tells, or the guy who gives you encouragement and support if you fuck up on the training track. Whatever the individual player needs, they'll look for the most in their team-mates. So Jack Steele actually considered himself quite fortunate when he arrived at the club. There were five other Jacks there already, and so it gave him the groundwork he needed to forge a relationship with them, even if they each did have their own personality that he otherwise may not have grown close to were their names not Jack.

Jack Steven was, and he did not use this term lightly, a bogan. He had a curly mullet that looked constantly damp, probably a mixture of sweat and Steven's non-chalance when it came to his hair care. He was constantly cursing, every second sentence featuring a "shit" or a "fuck" or a "cunt." It was off-putting but you couldn't not like Steven. He was care-free and even his angry moments he could turn into a funny story, book-ended by his gut-punching laugh. 

Steven was the antithesis of Billings, Newnes and Lonie. Even if they didn't share a name, their mutual preppy, straight-down-the-line outlook on life would probably mean they were endeared to each other anyway. They didn't exactly judge the likes of Steven and Jake Carlisle, the bad boys of the club, for the way they acted. But they didn't appreciate it either. Those bad boys engaged in shallow banter; Billings, Newnes and Lonie felt that they didn't need to buy into the stereotype of the dumb footy player. They themselves were a small clique within the Jacks: the three of them had talked about opening a bar in Fitzroy, and so their time not spent at the football club was usually spent discussing and planning their business venture.

Then there was Jack Sinclair, with his small frame, elegant features and soft-spoken nature, he was the dream player for Richo. You could get through to him easier than the other boys; he had a vulnerability that he exposed himself to. It helped that he was a promising player and a great athlete. His endurance at the club was almost unmatched, and he was consistently disciplined. He was totally willing to buy into anything the coaching staff were selling and if anyone on the playing list was going to get in any sort of trouble outside the club, Sinclair would be the last in line.

Yet for all of their different qualities they felt strangely linked. The five of them played golf on their days off, drove each other to and from the ground on match day, and bunked together whenever they'd go travelling in the off-season. And none of them would call each other close mates. It was just the natural order that they would be mates and that they would feel secure and trusting around each other.