This year, 26 district sporting legends are being inducted to the hall of fame, honour roll andjunior honour roll categories in the Greater Shepparton Sports Hall of Fame. The News is featuring stories on each of the inductees in the lead-up to the induction ceremony on August 6. Today News reporter Liam Nash speaks to Matt Higgins, who is being inducted to the honour roll.
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Matt Higgins never dealt in half measures.
That’s why he went as far as he did.
Shepparton’s hockey doyen can look back with immense pride at a career which spanned nearly two decades at Victorian Premier League club Altona, embellished by more than 100 caps for his state.
He could have mailed it in when tasting failure for the first or 100th time, but didn’t.
Instead Higgins stuck to his guns, embodying the notion that eternal vigilance is the price of excellence.
And funnily enough, it was the physical challenge of hockey which piqued his interest from the get-go.
“I liked the fact that hockey was difficult,” Higgins said.
“I was always a pretty active kid, so running from one end of the ground to the other kept me busy.
“All the different skills that come with it too; it’s a pretty complicated sport and that really made me like the game.”
Shepparton Youth Club housed Higgins’ burgeoning love for the game early on — his first coach Mark “Pepi” Sexton made sure of that — and soon, the watching was over.
“Ian Ritchie who was the coach at the time invited me down to train with them and from there it just blossomed,” Higgins said.
“I had really good mentors on the field and sideline, Teddy Wayman taught me a lot about how to read and understand the game as I was out there playing with him.”
As he progressed, a step up beckoned.
Trialing for the Victorian under-21 side in Melbourne, Higgins had made it to the last round before being outed — but all was not lost.
Because at that moment, born from his initial exasperation came a life-changing call to arms.
“I was walking out of the hockey centre with my tail between my legs and the Altona coach Gerry Anastasio yelled out from the grandstand, ‘Matthew Higgins, wait there’,” Higgins said.
“He was a big bustling bloke, so I thought, ‘shit, what is going on?'
“Gerry came down and introduced himself and said ‘you’re doing pre-season with us, I’ll see you at the club in a week’ — he didn’t give me an option.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
While still living in Shepparton, Higgins travelled down two to three times a week to train with Altona, fighting tooth and nail to prove his worth.
Sure enough, when round one came along, Higgins was on the team sheet.
And he was ready.
“It wasn’t really daunting because it was what I really wanted,” he said.
“The training, expectations, how you went about playing — everything was 100 per cent commitment.
“It was the same as how I was raised at SYC; once the game is over we’re all mates, and Altona Hockey Club was fantastic like that.”
He was making a name for himself at Altona, enough so that Australian representative Darren Duff tapped on the shoulder of Colin Batch, asking the then Victorian coach to have a look at a tenacious young man by the name of Higgins.
Batch obliged — and when he called, the answer was always yes.
“He invited me down for a few training sessions and I loved every second of them, but at the same time it was just a new level,” Higgins said.
“I was offered a full-time scholarship, which I was over the moon about, and from there I worked toward making the state team.
“We were doing gym and training sessions at any time from 5am to 8pm at night and working in between, so life was pretty busy. But it was what I wanted, so I enjoyed every second of it.”
If he wasn’t already, Higgins was now rubbing shoulders with the elite.
Labelling the state training regime as “fierce, but fantastic”, being surrounded by national representatives was enough of a dangling carrot for Higgins to really put the hammer down.
“I had a great bunch of mentors, who played for Australia at the time, and they showed me the right way to go about training and gym sessions,’ he said.
“It was 100 per cent and nothing but 100 per cent every time you turn up.”
Between 1999 and 2008, Higgins maintained that staggering work rate across 108 appearances for Victoria.
In nine years full of memories, nestled right in the middle of that stretch was one which certainly struck Higgins as a “pinch me” moment.
“One of the most memorable weekends I had was just before the Sydney Olympics,” he said.
“The Netherlands hockey side were acclimatising up in Cairns and, so, Colin Batch organised a team to go up and play them and invited me to go along.
“They were the best in the world by a long way at that stage and we played two matches against them. I thought playing in the national comp was fast, but wow, those guys were fantastic.”
It was some time after playing against the world’s best before he’d return to his roots.
He’d taken every previous step up in his stride, but for Higgins, stepping back down to SYC in 2017 hit home.
“That was a bit surreal, returning back to the club,” he said.
“Of course, things had changed and players had moved away, but SYC still has such a community orientation about it.
“I enjoyed being back there, reconnecting with some old mates I hadn’t played hockey with for some time.”
Higgins continues to help out at SYC, but at 44, he’s decided to hang up the stick for good.
Three kids and a business to look after while committed to senior hockey is a spinning plate act he has left behind, and has no regrets about.
“It’s been an easy transition; you know when you’ve come to the end of the road, but I do miss it from time to time,” he said.
“I gave it my all playing for Altona and Victoria and gave it everything at SYC, so I’m okay with where I’m at today.
“But you can’t do this alone, no matter what sport you play — Pepi Sexton, Teddy Wayman, Ian Ritchie, Darren Duff, Jamie Bennett — they’re all great mentors and friends that’ve helped me along the way.
“Then of course my parents, they were superstars; all of those people made it possible.”