Power
ALL PICKLES ON HEINZ STUY!
Jack Spijkerman's love for the club began when his fellow townsman Heinz Stuy moved from Telstar to Ajax in 1967. The comedian and presenter is now part of the fabric of the club: member of the association, of the ABA/Business Club and volunteer at the archive. "They remain heroes to me."
Jack Spijkerman's love for the club started when his fellow countryman Heinz Stuy moved from Telstar to Ajax in 1967. The comedian and presenter is now part of the red and white furniture: member of the association, of the ABA/Business Club and volunteer at the archive. “They remain heroes to me.”
Text: Bart-Jan Brouwer | Online editor: Natasha Hendriks
Image: John van Helvert
How are you going through this corona time?
"That's just the way it is. You can get angry about it, but that doesn't help. I enjoy myself indoors and walk for at least an hour a day. Always in a different neighborhood, otherwise it would be so boring. So I'm getting to know Amsterdam quite a bit, haha. What do I do at home? Room by room I am throwing away rubbish. Yesterday I started working on my office, which is completely full of theater and cabaret books and records. This is how I go through my own history. My son, Joska, gave me a disc with all of them for my birthday at the end of last year Tacksbroadcasts. He got them from everywhere. Every night before I go to bed I watch one episode. Nice to see who all stood with a hammer on the nail block and what kind of crazy topics came up. Very nice! I do notice that I have forgotten quite a lot. Oh yes, I did that too! In terms of clothing it is dated, but in terms of topics we were progressive. I believe we were one of the first to show clips from the Internet and have an Internet expert speak. That was in 2000, twenty years ago! We were a real pioneer in that area. Google and YouTube, where you can now find everything, did not yet exist. Last year, on December 7, we had a one-off Tacksbroadcast and it turns out that the formula still works: no fewer than 2,5 million people watched it.”
When you watch those episodes, aren't you overcome with a feeling of 'if only I was back in those days'?
"No. When I turned sixty-five, I made a very conscious decision: I am now quitting TV. I thought I had to make room for young people. And my fear was to become a kind of Henny Huisman, constantly begging to be allowed on television and portraying the deterioration: full of botox and dyed hair. Oh no, that's definitely not going to happen to me, I thought. So I very consciously stopped. But I still do a lot: I write for people, come up with things, present a pub quiz or a football quiz here and there. And… never say never! You don't know what might come along and I'll say: hey, that's nice to present. But I'm just as happy if nothing comes at all.”
How do you compensate for the lack of football on radio and television?
“Well, I like those repeats. I enjoyed watching the Netherlands – Germany from 1988. I had even suggested among my regular friends to set up a pool and bet money on the winner. They all wanted to bet 100 euros on the same result, haha. And for the rest, yes… It's not there. Then you can be annoyed about that, but that's the way it is.”
How did you become an Ajax supporter?
“I come from IJmuiden, where as a boy I was in goal for VV IJmuiden. In 1963, rivals VSV and Stormvogels merged to form Telstar. I liked going there to watch it. As a Reformed boy I received six cents in church fees, and a ticket for Telstar cost fifty cents. With the dime I had left, I bought a roll of King, those little mints. I think I lost my place in heaven with that act, but there are worse things imaginable. When I was about sixteen, I had a summer job in a pickle factory, the NECO, Dutch Preserves. Heinz Stuy, who was goalkeeper at Telstar at the time, was a forklift driver there. During lunch he stood on the table and we threw pickles at him, which he tried to catch. I always told Heinz that I contributed to his career as a goalkeeper, haha. He now has the seat behind me in the ArenA, so I speak to him often. When Heinz started playing goalkeeper at Ajax, I was with him went along, in the sense that I started following Ajax. A boy from IJmuiden who stood there on goal: that was quite something. I continued to attend Telstar matches, but became an Ajax fan.”
That 'boy from IJmuiden' won the European Cup three times in a row.
“Heinz always held up one hand with three fingers in the air and with the other he made a zero: three times he had kept the zero in the finals. Then he was no longer in the pickles, of course.”
How long have you been loyal to Telstar?
“Quite a while. Later I was a teacher in Heemskerk and Telstar then, in the 1975-1976 season, employed an Englishman, Colin Ayre. I started talking to him at the club. He stayed with a host family in IJmuiden, but did not like it there. I lived in a spacious apartment and said he could rent a room from me. So he lived with me for six months. I went to parties with him and met all kinds of players. Nice story: Fred André, defender of Telstar, lived around the corner from me. He often came by to pass on messages to his teammate. Colin had once said to me: 'Fred doesn't speak English, but thinks that if he talks loudly, I will understand.' One day the doorbell rings: Fred. He told me that Colin had to play a practice match against Haarlem. And then shouting at Colin: 'YOU HAVE TO PLAY A PRACTICE MATCH AGAINST HAARLEM.' Hahaha, I'll never forget that.”
You are now a fanatic Ajax supporter. When did that creep in?
“I occasionally went to matches in De Meer or the Olympic Stadium. But the season tickets were all gone. My downstairs neighbor in Amsterdam was Maarten Oldenhof, financial director of Ajax at the time. In 1995, Ajax played the Champions League final against AC Milan in Vienna. Maarten called from Schiphol and said: 'If you are at Schiphol within twenty minutes, you can come with your wife, because two of them did not show up.' And we saved that. We received a ticket and had to find our own way there. Don't ask how, but we ended up at a dinner with all Ajax directors and the mayor of Amsterdam. And of course we saw that match. The following year, the ArenA was opened and season tickets became available. I immediately bought it for my wife and me. That ticket of the Champions League final hangs framed on my wall.”
You wrote the musical in 2000 in honor of the club's centenary.
“Ajax chairman Michael van Praag was presented with something during a TV program, and if that did not work, the compensation was that he had to participate in the cabaret of the radio program Nails with heads. That's how I got in touch with him. He talked about the centenary and his idea to celebrate it with a musical. 'Can you help?' I have formed a club with, among others, actor/director Fred Florusse, former board member Uri Coronel and Michael himself. That's how we started making the musical. I provided texts and helped with rehearsing. We held auditions among the Ajax staff who would perform the musical. Sjaak Swart's daughters participated, the daughter of Ajax Museum director Thijs Lindeman, Ajax player Joop Leeuwendaal, people from the office, canteen teachers... It was a great time, there were rehearsals two to three times a week and the musical was eventually performed a few times in the RAI, with fifteen hundred people in the audience each time. A huge success. What I am most proud of: In the archives we found a song from 1928 that Hail Ajax Hail was called. We have rewritten that Go Ajax Go and had it sung by Joop Leeuwendaal: 'Go, Ajax, go, red and white crowd, Brave fighters proud and brave...' Every match when I sit in the stands and the club song starts, I think: that's a good thing we have taken from the archives!”
As a member you undoubtedly have access to the player home.
“Well, there I was suddenly face to face with my heroes. They also remain heroes to me. My son was still small at that time. Later, when he was about nine, he sometimes asked after a match: 'Shall we go to the players' home?' “We only do that twice a year,” I said. 'It has to remain special.' Jan Mulder once said on television: 'Those heroes have to come onto the field at half past two on Sunday afternoon, leave the field again at a quarter past four, and you should not see them for the rest of the week.' Marco van Basten was such a hero, an almost mystical figure; you didn't see it on talk shows, it disappeared. If you ever met him, it was immediately very special. There walks Marco van Basten! Now it's almost my neighbor at the back, haha.”
You have already experienced quite a few memorable European matches yourself...
“I was once asked by the ABA/Business Club to take a football quiz at the away match against Schalke 04. So I join that group of people. In Arnhem we boarded a Rhine boat and sailed to the Ruhr area. On that boat, where we also spent the night, I took the quiz. Very nice, I wanted to come more often. But I wasn't a member of the ABA/Business Club because I already had chairs from the association. Yet I was able to become a member by taking out an extraordinary membership. From then on I could register for trips to international away matches. I have been doing that for about four years now, together with my son. It is quite a core group that does that, about a hundred and fifty people. These are usually three-day trips, and sometimes you fly with the player plane. Those players sit at the front of the plane, you see them walking at Schiphol, but nothing more. You are in a hotel in the city, there is food, there are activities in which you may or may not participate. I usually go into town with Joska. And after the match a club is usually rented. The players often come there too. These are really fun trips. This has created a core of about twenty men who get along very well. No supporters were allowed to be present at the away match against Chelsea, so we rented a skybox at Stamford Bridge with those twenty people, haha. And that's how we did it at Tottenham, because we won't let ourselves be stopped."
You have been a volunteer in the club's archives for nine years. How did you end up there?
“When I quit television, I suddenly had some free time. I approached Michael van Praag and asked if I could do something for Ajax as a volunteer. They needed someone in the archives since Wim Schoevaart stopped there. I go there. Boxes emerged containing stacks of competition pennants, thousands of tickets from 1928 onwards, competition booklets... It all had to be organised. I spend one day a week there. The pennants have now been measured, classified, provided with a source reference and stored in acid-free folders. Now I have paid attention to the entrance tickets. And I also do the shirts: shirts that have been exchanged by players, shirts with signatures... On a football site I recently saw the shirt that Marco van Basten had worn during the final of the European Championship 88 for sale for three thousand euros. Well, it just hangs here, haha.”
You will come across some pretty nice things there.
“Yes, like a silver box with three old cigars, with the inscription 'Congratulations on the championship, Prince Bernhard'. Crafts from fans, such as a portrait of Piet Keizer inlaid with wood veneer. Sometimes people bring things. Van Basten's wife said: 'Marco is cleaning up, come and get something.' Frank de Boer once said: 'Jack, come with me to my car.' Life-size photos came out of his trunk. Piet Keizer has given his things to the archive, Sjaak Swart…”
What happens to it?
“There used to be an Ajax Museum. That is no more. Nowadays we have, as we call it, a museum setup above the Ajax Fanshop in the ArenA. Every stadium tour ends there. Of course not all the pennants and shirts are hanging there, but there is a selection. We also have shirts and pennants hanging in two enormous display cabinets between the main entrance and the first ring. We update its content every year. In addition, we have been portraying Ajax's story for two years now by interviewing former players, board members and volunteers. We want to put the entire history on film. I have already visited Henk Groot, Gerrie Mühren, Dick Schoenaker, Arie van Eijden, Klaas Nuninga... You name them all. That's how I enjoy myself, and at the club I love!”
MASTERS #42
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