At first glance, there is nothing striking about Shannon Cole. His short, brown hair is sensibly arranged, and he wears a standard issue pale yellow V-neck shirt. His blue-denim shorts are cut just above the knee, and neat ankle-socks peer over new trainers. There are no affectations to his voice or his appearance, and if you were to walk past him in Westfield Parramatta, for example, you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s just an ordinary fella who wants to catch the afternoon screening of The Hunger Games at Hoyts.
But the Western Sydney Wanderer’s straight-man look is part of his paradox. For beneath the unremarkable exterior beats the heart of a man doggedly determined to entertain, a self-confessed and indefatigable attention-seeker. Even to the point of penning his own series of sci-fi ebooks.
Last year, he self-published his first book, Secrets of Varillien: Above the Below, and he’s halfway through the second book of his trilogy. Over 18 months, on airplanes and buses between games, he bashed out his 114,000 word epic on his iPad.
Under the nom de plume S M Cole, he writes in the first person, taking the reader on the journey of 16-year-old boy called Crisyea, who lives in a kind of post-apocalyptic city called Remmea. Walled by mountains, Remmea is enclosed by an artificial roof called “the Plate”, “the Lid” or “the Ceiling” by the city’s population. Crisyea, or Cris, is short with brown hair and blue eyes, and although he’s trying to save his city from “the Wings” who terrorise the city, he and his best friend Trake are also keenly interested in girls.
“Because it’s written in first person, I had to draw on my own experiences,” he explains when I suggest there might be shades of Shannon in Cris. “I went with someone who is athletic, but he’s a bit geeky and nervous talking to girls he’s got a crush on. His best mate is a razzler with the ladies. The relationship between Cris and Trake is actually a combination of me, my brother and my best mate.”
The plot came to him while lying by a swimming pool terrorising ants. As water dripped from his body on to the ants, Cole noticed several of them flying away. “It sounds like I’m an ant bully, but I thought, ‘How ripped off would you feel if you were one of those ants that didn’t have wings?’ Then I thought, ‘What if half the human population could fly? How ripped off would you feel?’ It just developed in my head and I saw all three books ahead of time.”
Cole is innocent and honest to a fault. I ask him about books he read as a kid, and the influences on his writing, and there is a brief pause. “Yeah, to be honest, reading wasn’t … it’s funny now because I’m writing books ... although I enjoyed reading I didn’t read everything.”
Later, he admits he doesn’t remember reading at all as a kid: “I know I read books, like Goosebumps and that, but man, all my memories were football.” I realise Shannon’s hesitant answer isn’t because he’s embarrassed but because he doesn’t want to discourage kids from reading. Next week he’s launching a mentoring group, and he is determined to create the best impression for the next generation. “I don’t want the kids to hear that,” he says. “Reading is power. The more you read, the smarter you get.”
If he wanted to emphasise to his young charges the value of such perseverance, he could simply point to the story of his own career.
Shannon started late as a professional footballer. It wasn’t until he was 24 that he signed with Sydney FC, but before that he traversed the globe looking for an opportunity. Leaving his acting classes at university behind for the New South Wales State League, he soon left for the US to play college soccer, before trying his luck in New Zealand, Israel and the lower leagues of England.
“It was out of desperation,” he says frankly. “I just really wanted to be a footballer. I was told no far more often than I was told yes. I would go and trial and get told no, and I’d go home and cry for a little bit. Then I would ask myself, ‘OK, if you genuinely want to make it in this game, then you must improve and make those weaknesses a strength.’”
It’s a lesson he has also taken into his writing, employing an editor to scrutinise his work and help develop his prose. Over 12 months he reckons he re-wrote Secrets of Varillien 20 times. “I wasn’t desperate to make a big name for myself, but I wasn’t going to do it unless I did it 100%.”
Despite being a writer, a trained actor and a footballer, Shannon says he is not a ladies’ man. But his travels brought him love as well as a career. “I was never shy to talk to girls,” he says, “but my only ‘game’ ... I can’t believe my wife went for this ... for the first couple of weeks she thought I didn’t like her. That was just me trying to flirt!” He blushes and shakes his head, but his grin shows a man deeply in love with the smalltown girl he met in Michigan. His voice grows in confidence as he announces they are expecting a child.
“She’s from a big family, the second youngest of five boys and two girls. She was super shy when she was younger. It was a big thing for her to move away and start a new life,” he says proudly. “We’re having a baby next year, so all her family envy her life. She’s writing a book too, about a girl who travels the world. She’s probably a better writer than me. I can’t wait for her to finish it because it’ll probably be a great book.”
This weekend the Wanderers play Sydney FC in the eighth Sydney derby, but you cannot get Cole to say a bad word about his old club. “I loved it there,” he says. “The crowd was awesome and they were so good to me. I was so happy to be given a chance. I think people saw that in my first season – I was always the hardest worker.”
Released by Sydney in 2012, Cole is a Wanderer by name and a Wanderer by nature. Many of his team-mates were misfits that had been released by one or more A-League clubs, but they’ve become an efficient and loyal cadre under the iron-fisted rule of coach Tony Popovic. For Cole, who often scrawls nutrition notes on his hand and sets himself personal tasks, such as to write 500 words a day for a week, Popovic’s dictatorial discipline allows him to thrive. He reckons he’s been setting himself little goals since he was 12 years old. “Success comes from planning,” he explains matter-of-factly.
While Cole is the archetypal utility player, he’s also a specialist free-kick taker and there are ocassional glimpses of flair when he receives the ball. His step-overs are more mechanical wind-up toy than Riquelme-esque waltzes through the defence, indeed you can almost see the hours of training as one leg rotates around the ball and the other follows it, his cheeks puffed out and his eyes focused firmly on the task at hand. It’s workmanlike creativity, characteristic of the man.
During the Wanderers’ successful Asian Champions League campaign Shannon played in no fewer than four different positions, and he was the decisive figure in the semi-final against FC Seoul, setting up the first goal and scoring the winner. Naturally, he’s in the process of writing a book about it. “I love writing, I love the boys in this team, so it’s something I can do,” he says. “It’s for our fans. You know that movie Miracle On Ice? I think our story is the same.”
When asked what his teammates think of his writing, Shannon smiles. “They were super-impressed by it [the eBook], but no one actually read the story.” The next book in the Secrets of Varillien sci-fi trilogy might have to take a back seat to this new real-life epic about the Wanderers, and maybe this time, teammate Matthew Spiranovic will buy a copy.
