September 2001 Volume 82 Number 9 "serving the protectors"
In Support of Police in Sport
By Brett Williams

With a more-intimate-than-usual knowledge of police life, sports presenter, Chris Dittmar, tells why cops have a place in pro sports.

Channel 7 sports presenter, Chris Dittmar, knows the fear a family holds for one of its own on the thin blue line. He still remembers the day he came home from school to news that his police officer brother, Stephen, was involved in a siege.

Dittmar’s father broke the news to him and appeared outwardly blasé. Today, Dittmar knows that, inwardly, his father was “petrified”. He also knows that what seemed a blasé exterior helped prevent a family panic.

Stephen survived the siege but died of leukaemia in 1999. He had been a cop for 25 years. And, in that time, Dittmar saw how police work affected his brother’s life.

“I noticed change in him,” he says. “I think you live the job as a policeman. It ends up consuming your life. I can go home and say to the missus and kids: ‘Let’s go to the movies’, and you sit and have a laugh for a few hours.

“I know a policeman can do that, too, but I just get the feeling it really does take over. I really felt he (Stephen) changed a heck of a lot.”

So, for Dittmar, police life holds little mystique. He not only saw - at close quarters - character change in his brother but, through him, came to know other cops. As well, the Dittmar backyard was the occasional locale for traditional night-shift police barbecues.

At those times, Dittmar felt as if he was living parts of the highly acclaimed book, The Choirboys, which he had read sometime earlier. Renowned for its rare grit and insight, the book told of American police life - on and off the streets. But by what degree does Dittmar regard police work as tougher than other jobs?

“By the length of the straight,” he says. “Police are at the coalface - they’re out there. How do I react if I walk into a room and there’s a bloke with a gun? It’s never happened to me. I’m lucky.

“But what would you do? How would you feel? It must be horrific, and everyday when a police officer goes to work, there’s that potential. It takes a special person.”

And few know better than Dittmar that cops are special people. He sees them as endlessly reliable - even outside of their work. He has seen that, in amateur sporting clubs, police members are the ones to whom the rest “always” gravitate for help.

Now, from the commentary box, Dittmar catches sight of front-line police as they patrol the boundary lines and move among packed crowds. When he sees those cops deal with excessive behaviour, he shakes his head in disbelief - and sympathizes.

“I can’t believe they’re as tolerant as they are,” he says, “and that they put up with what they do. Some people just deserve to be dealt with. Policemen show a lot of restraint, and they do a great job.”

Dittmar found his way into media work after he retired from the professional squash circuit as the world number one. He had left school as a 15-year-old to live and play full-time in Europe. A 15-year career followed, and Dittmar found life as a pro sportsman “a great education”.

Nonetheless, retiring in 1993 came as “almost a relief”. He had spent endless hours travelling, was by then the father of two young boys, and had sustained a knee injury. His sporting life had worn him down.

He underwent several operations, but a specialist advised him to give the game away. Dittmar did not argue: he returned to Australia.

In 1995, he signed on with radio station 5AA and Channel 7. But aspects of the move from sports star to media personality were tough. Dittmar had acted as his own boss through his squash career and, since his teens, never worked for anyone.

“It took me a long time to get used to the fact that I had bosses,” he says, “and that you had to get there at 9 o’clock, leave at 5. I was used to coming and going and doing what I wanted.”

Dittmar’s weekdays now start on radio at 5am and finish at 7pm after his evening TV sports reports. But, raised in Alberton and from a family of former Port Adelaide footballers, he revels in his AFL commentary role.

“I fly around the country watching Port Adelaide play - and the Crows, of course - and it’s unbelievable,” he says. “It’s what I dreamt about as a kid, so I’m very lucky.”

And his commentary role at the Sydney Olympic Games last year is one he describes as the “greatest thing ever”.

Dittmar shares the view of his 5AA colleague, Ken Cunningham, that professional sport will one day become inaccessible to police. He believes pro sport requires commitment far too great for cops dedicated to full-time law enforcement.

But he suggests that, if police departments supported officers in professional sport, they, too, could reap rewards.

“If policemen are being robbed of that chance,” he says, “it would be very sad. I think the police force can use these people as role models. With the youth problems we’ve got today, why wouldn’t you have police junior training clinics?

“You might say: ‘How does that help police?’ Well, kids look up and say: ‘That copper’s not a bad bloke - he coached me today’. I think it can work two ways.”

Meanwhile, Dittmar holds concerns about law and order, and his young sons’ likely exposure to the drug culture. “If I saw someone, who offered my kids that stuff,” he says, “I’d take to them.

“If things were better policed, we just wouldn’t head anywhere near that (drug culture) direction. But that points to the government, not the police. I am all for the police. I wish they had more help in all this.”

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