Joskun ‘Jack’ Aziz: His colourful career as a top VFA/VFL goalkicker

It went back to him calling himself Jack.

That was when Joskun Aziz, the son of Turkish Cypriot immigrants, started playing junior football at Albion, in Melbourne’s west, in the late 1970s.

As he recalls it, at the start of the season, the coach rounded up his players and asked them to introduce themselves to their teammates.

“My name’s Joskun,’’ he said.

There was laughter all around him. What sort of name was that?

“My name’s Jack,’’ he quickly added, embarrassed.

From that point, Joskun Aziz was Jack Aziz in football.

“I said my name was Jack. I could have said any name, whatever came into my head … John, Jim, Josh,’’ says Aziz, now 55.

“I said, ‘Just call me Jack’. They did.’’

In the years when he became a star of the VFA and then the VFL, only Coburg great Phil Cleary, respectful of Aziz’s cultural background, referred to him as Joskun.

Thick-bearded and bouncy, Cleary was among the cast of colourful, compelling characters of the VFA when the competition enjoyed enormous popularity through the 1970s and 80s.

Names like “Fabulous’’ Fred Cook, Joe Radojevic, Harold Martin and “Frosty’’ Miller echo through the years.

As Cleary sees it, Joskun “Jack’’ Aziz was a “throwback to the great personalities of the past, a throwback to Miller and Cook and Jamie Shaw’’.

It’s 30 years since Aziz topped the league goalkicking with a haul of 97.

In that same season, he figured in Werribee’s one and only VFA/VFL premiership, won over Port Melbourne amid wild scenes in the grand final at Princes Park, Carlton.

As players brawled, spectators charged on to the ground before the final siren.

A policeman needed stitches to the head after being struck from behind. It was a sorry sight for a competition struggling to stay afloat.

As the ground was being cleared, Aziz needed the help of trainers to stay on his feet. He had a black eye.

It had been an eventful match for him.

At the start of it, he says, he had warned his Port Melbourne opponent not to scrag him.

As Aziz took off for a lead, he felt hands on his back and threw a punch, an uppercut.

He intended it to land on the Borough backman’s midriff but it settled on his chin. He went down.

For the rest of the day, Aziz was a marked man. Many people later said that Port became more focused on getting even with him than winning the ball.

Aziz had done some boxing training under Lester Ellis; he was a strong man and could look after himself. But rather than retaliate, he decided to get through the game.

He took hits from the Port players and vitriol from its supporters.

But, he says three decades later, he had come to accept abuse about his Muslim culture and skin colour.

“I copped a lot of it. That’s an understatement … ‘You Iraqian Muslim bastard, go back to Iraq, go back to the war’, that sort of stuff,’’ he says.

“It was part of my footy. The worst part about it was when it was said on the ground and the umpires did nothing. It was frustrating. They heard it and would let it go.

“If anything, it made me go even harder. I used it as motivation.’’

Werribee recently had a reunion of the 1993 premiership team but Aziz did not attend.

Time got the better of him, no surprise given that he works on the docks at Port Melbourne and owns a restaurant, Frank’s Ristorante, in Essendon North.

*****

After Joskun Aziz gave himself the name of Jack, his football ability was quick to come through.

He was a star of strong Albion junior sides – the “standout’’, according to a teammate – and he had a “deep hunger’’ to go with his talent.

“I wanted to be somebody,’’ Aziz says.

“I wanted to prove myself, show them I could play. With football, a certain percentage of it is talent. The rest is about how much effort and work you put into it. I had a ball with me wherever I went.’’

Aziz was selected to play for Victoria in the old Teal Cup and joined league club Footscray’s Under 19s.

Steve Kolyniuk, Matthew Hogg, Danny Delre and Saade Ghazi were teammates.

At 17, he played a few matches for Footscray’s reserves team. But he twice broke his leg when he was with the Bulldogs and they didn’t persist with him.

After a successful season back at Albion, Aziz joined Williamstown, recruited by the great Barry Round.

The story goes that when Round went to Aziz’s family home in Sunshine, all he saw on the walls were photographs of young Joskun.

“Who is this guy? Does he think he’s Bobby Skilton?’’ he asked Grant Smith, who had accompanied the coach on the recruiting mission.

Round asked for a drink. Aziz’s brother brought out coffee. When Round took a drink, it was generally cold and made by Carlton & United Breweries.

But the Brownlow Medal champion signed the young forward, the second youngest of five children.

Aziz played in Willy’s 1989 grand final team, which lost to Cleary’s Coburg at Windy Hill.

Twelve months later, he was part of their premiership triumph over Springvale, with Billy Swan’s 50m kick lifting the Towners to victory at Princes Park.

“Probably the most exciting game I ever played in,’’ Aziz says.

“We were something like 35 points down with maybe 15, 20 minutes to go. We were destined to lose. Somehow it all just clicked and we made it happen.’’

Aziz’s contribution to the season was a handy 29 goals as a forward in support of Ian “Chops’’ Rickman.

At the end of 1992, Willy told the forward he was going to be shifted to fullback.

“I was not interested in playing there,’’ Aziz says. “I had more to offer.

“They said, ‘You’re a bit more creative down back’. I said, ‘Come on, man’. In fact, I didn’t even like playing centre half-forward. Because to me, centre half-forward was a bit hit and miss. You’re either too close in or too far back. I knew I was a full-forward and they had Ian Rickman there and he was easily the best kick I’ve ever seen.

“In the end, I said, ‘Enough’s enough, I’m here to win games, not try to save ’em’. So I went to Werribee.’’

And he set out with the Bees with the league goalkicking award and the premiership, under coach Donald McDonald.

Of his 97 goals, the most important was his last of the season. It was also the last kick of the preliminary final against Springvale, carrying Werribee to an unlikely victory and into the grand final.

“I don’t believe this! I honestly don’t believe it,’’ Sam Kekovich boomed in the ABC commentary box. “Look at the euphoric scenes with the Werribee people and the players.’’

Aziz finished with 6.5 for the match.

Kekovich’s colleague Cleary chipped in: “There were some who said in the big games he (Aziz) didn’t produce. After kicking that goal under immense pressure … he’d be telling a few blokes he could play now.’’

It’s one of his great memories of his time in the VFA/VFL.

The grand final seven days later was bittersweet for him. Werribee won the flag but Aziz says it was “scary to play’’.

“I was looking over my shoulder all the way through the game,’’ he says.

“Whatever happened in the first 10 minutes … the Port fullback (Paul Barlow) gets knocked out and I get labelled as a, I don’t know … Did I hit him that hard? I don’t think so. But he stayed down and it looked bad.

“I had to continue playing the game and I got beaten up here, there and everywhere. The umpires never looked after me. I was a punching bag.

“But we got a premiership out of it.’’

For a while, Aziz could not walk down Bay St in Port Melbourne without copping a verbal volley.

Twelve months earlier, his appearance at the tribunal over a striking charge made headlines when his advocate spoke about the abuse directed at Aziz on and off the field.

It prompted Box Hill to come out and say none of its players used racist comments towards the forward.

“Like most other sporting organisations in this multicultural society, our club has welcomed and embraced players, officials, members and supporters from all sections of its constituency,’’ club director Brien McMahon said.

Aziz told the tribunal he was provoked by a Box Hill player pulling his hair. Pleading guilty under provocation, he was suspended for one match.

*****

Jack Aziz topped the competition goalkicking a second time when he booted 74 goals in 1997, including a haul of 15 against Coburg.

There was a bit of showman about him.

Occasionally, he would take a mark and show the ball to his opponent.

“Oh, he could play footy … good contested mark, good on the lead, hard and tough too,’’ former Werribee and league centreman Simon Atkins says.

“Interesting character too,’’ he adds, remembering the day Aziz took his jumper off and threw it at his opponent, who’d been grabbing hold of it all afternoon.

“If you want it that bad, you can have it!’’ Aziz told his marker.

“The Werribee crowd loved the big fella,’’ Atkins says.

In 1998, Aziz was appointed the Bees’ captain, leading them into the grand final, still under the coaching of McDonald.

Werribee was a hot favourite but lost by six goals to Springvale.

“We were flat,’’ Aziz says. “We were completely flat. They shut us down. Play on a bigger ground and give us a bit of room to move and it might have been a different story. We only lost one game that year. It was so disappointing.’’

It turned out to be Aziz’s last game for Werribee.

He says he was “starting to get tired’’ and got a good offer to go to Canberra.

His decade in the VFA/VFL brought him 476 goals from 172 matches.

He says it could have been more.

“I played a lot at centre half-forward. I gave Donald McDonald a rest. I don’t want to sound like I’ve got tickets on myself but I was a team player. It wasn’t about me. I did everything that had to be done to make sure we won the game,’’ he says.

Aziz had two years with Eastlake in Canberra, combining football with work at Telecom.

When he returned to Victoria, he trained briefly with Werribee, then played some suburban football; briefly at Yarraville, at Keilor and St Albans.

Should he have played at the highest level?

Aziz believes he was too young when the Bulldogs promoted him to the reserves: “They should have held off a little bit. As a 17-year-old, it was a big ask. They were tough back then, real men.’’

Later, as he kicked goals for Werribee, he heard Carlton and Collingwood were interested in him.

Some people who saw him as a teenage footballer bracketed him with Danny Del-Re, who played 62 games for Footscray.

“Was I good enough? I believe I was. But I never got a chance,’’ Aziz says.

“I can tell you right now, I struggled playing VFA compared to when I was at Footscray.

“The room there and the way they used to deliver the ball … I was a leading player with a good set of hands. I believe if I had played league footy, I would have found it easier. I would have had a good player on me but I knew they would have been able to kick it to me.

“That’s the one regret I have about football, that I didn’t play at the pinnacle, whether it was one game or 20 or 100. But am I proud? Absolutely. I’m proud that I played at a good level and I was a good player.’’

Cleary and Ghazi both say Aziz, 188cm, was probably one of those “in between players’’; too short to play as a key forward and without the speed to play as a midfielder.

Ghazi calls him a “very good player, an extraordinary player, and he was tough’’.

“He could actually fight and the people who got under his skin found out pretty quickly not to do it again,’’ he says.

“He could really look after himself.’’

Cleary says Aziz was the best key forward of his day in the VFA/VFL, continuing on from the great spearheads of the 1970s and 80s like Cook and Radojevic.

“He was a beautiful mark of the football, he could bang through goals and he always had presence,’’ he says.

“He was great for the game, Joskun, and a real personality at a time when they were becoming fewer and fewer.’’