Interview with Andy Brouwer, an English Footballer who Fell in Love with Cambodia
I met Andy Brouwer at Hotel Cambodiana in Phnom Penh shortly after Christmas. He’s a relaxed bloke who projects the aura of a man with few regrets and nothing to prove. I knew the conversation would be interesting as soon as Andy began explaining the difference between Saturday and Sunday football/soccer games in England…
Q: Tell me about Saturday vs. Sunday football in England.
A: As a child in local English football, we always played on Sunday morning or afternoon. From 16 years of age, you could move into adult football on Saturdays, which was more competitive, but everybody, whether good or not good, played on Sunday mornings. At 16 years old, I became the media manager for a professional football team, Cheltenham Town FC, in my hometown. So I played on Sunday mornings, and on Saturdays, attended professional football games. After becoming dissatisfied with the direction of Cheltenham, I joined the Kidderminster Harriers as their programme editor. With Cheltenham, from the age of 16, I was doing the public address at the games, I was reporting for the local radio stations, I was writing the match programmes, and I was doing the match reports in the local paper.
Q: What was the most fun part of the work?
A: Writing the match reports [post-game summaries]. My reports would be syndicated in other regional newspapers. Also, the match day programme. Those were a passion for me as well.
Q: What made you leave Cheltenham?
A: I didn’t like the team manager and the chairman. I didn’t think their heart was in it. My heart was in it. They weren’t interested in making the club a success–they were interested in going along with the flow. I just didn’t think they wanted the same things I wanted, and at the same time, my brother was working for the Harriers on the commercial side.
Q: Did your love of football arise out of love for your brother, who was also a player?
A: [Andy laughs] No. Definitely not. My love of football is because since I was a very small kid, I’ve always liked football. I never thought I was good enough to become professional or semi-professional, so I went down the line [and became involved in the media aspect of the game]. I never played on Saturdays until my thirties, and in my third game, I broke my leg [fibula]. That wasn’t the first break. I had already broken my arm.
Q: Is that where you got that scar on your elbow?
A: No, I actually got this after falling off my push bike when I was thirteen, and that meant I had to give up rugby. I was attending a very high level rugby-playing school. After breaking my arm, I had to give up rugby and concentrate [solely] on football.
A: In grammar schools, yes, they have Rugby Union. Grammar schools are for children from the ages of 11 to 18, and these schools pride themselves on rugby or football. Funny enough, the year I broke my arm, they started a football team in my grammar school. It was playing football, not rugby, that I broke my ankle and dislocated both my collarbones.
Q: How did you dislocate your clavicles playing football?
A: Icy conditions… it’s your basic slip and fall. The doctor recommended swimming to strengthen my shoulders, but the first time I swam, my shoulder came out.
Q: So you’re 31 years old, and you start to play football again.
A: I'd always played football! At 31, I joined an amateur club that was just starting up on Saturdays. A friend from school who'd played football asked me to join as a striker. I began scoring a ridiculous number of goals. I think I scored seven in my first game. [Editor’s note: Andy scored 237 goals in about 220 games.] Because we were winning all the time, I was perhaps playing at a level below where I should have been, but I was having a lot of fun. I also wrote the match reports. We had five or six years that were really enjoyable because we were winning all the time.
Q: Were you ever approached to play in a professional league?
A: No. I knew my level, and my level was not semi-professional. I played from the ages of 11 to 42.
Q: What would be your best memories from your playing career?
A: Erm, a couple of teams I played for, I played alongside my younger brother. Everybody hated us, because we would score a lot of goals.
Q: What's your best memory off the pitch?
A: When I left my hometown team and went to Kidderminster Harriers, the first year I was there with my brother, we got to a final at Wembley [Stadium], and we toured Wembley. The team won the FA [football association] trophy, the biggest cup you could win for a non-league team. Though my brother and I were on the commercial side, the club was small, so we didn't feel excluded in any way or any differently from the players.
Q: Did you ever compete against your brother on the pitch?
A: Oh, yeah. He was also a striker, so we've always had a mini-competition between us. He was good, so playing together was great, but a few times, we faced each other with different teams, and I remember one game in particular. His team was better than our team. It was a Sunday morning game. They were up five to zero, then I scored one, and I ran back to my teammates, saying, "C'mon lads, it's that easy!" They pissed themselves laughing. It was a brotherly rivalry, and to some extent, we still have that rivalry today, but it's off the field--we don't play anymore.
Q: How does that rivalry manifest itself now?
A: Just the way we talk about football, both past and current.
Q: What attracted you to Leeds United as a fan?
A: In 1969, when I was very young, my elder brother said he was a Leeds fan. I was an impressionable kid, only about nine, so I said, "Ok, I'll be a Leeds fan." The following year, Leeds reached the FA Final Cup match, and we lost. That was the first game of football I ever cried about, and I was around 10 years old. And because I supported Leeds, my younger brother supported Leeds.
Q: It became a family tradition.
A: Yeah. It had nothing to do with Leeds itself. Leeds was in Yorkshire, many miles away.
Q: Who was your favorite Leeds player during that time?
A: A Welsh international striker, Carl Harris. He wasn't a longtime regular for the team, and I don't know what it was, but he was very exciting to watch. We went up to Leeds one time, my brother and I, and our car broke down, so we hitchhiked to the game. Anyway, we were on the junction [using the universal hand sign hitchhikers use], and Carl Harris drove by, looked at us, and drove right past us!
Q: Why do you think there's so much violence at and after football games in England?
A: It wasn't a feature of non-league games... although, having said that, non-league games in the seventies had some violence, but it's not really a thing now, generally speaking. Unfortunately, a lot of people, when they go to games, drink [alcohol] a lot, so that's a contributing factor.
Q: Funny you say that. Qatar was criticized for banning or restricting alcohol at the 2022 World Cup, but it appears that was the right decision.
A: I know when I go to professional games in England, the fans are big drinkers, both during the match and before. Drink is always a contributing factor. Compared to the seventies and eighties, however, it's generally low-key by comparison.
Q: Your favorite Leeds player?
A: Leeds has always had exceptional players, particularly in the seventies, but within the past twenty years, the club has been demoted to a division below. We are struggling to get back up to where we were.
Q: Let's move on to music. Do you play any instruments?
A: No. I'm tone deaf. I cannot even decipher which instrument is playing. I love music. I've always loved music, and I've always been a big fan of particular groups, but I haven't got a musical bone in my body.
Q: Who got you into music?
A: My older brother. I used to listen to his vinyl albums when he wasn't there. Strawbs [aka Strawberry Hill Boys] was like folk rock, somewhat Bob Dylan-ish, but British. They're still going today. Then I got into other music. In 1978, I was into reggae, Bob Marley, etc. etc. Then I saw this band, Steel Pulse, and that's it, I was hooked. [From Steel Pulse's website: "Bearing witness to the accelerating negativity of global affairs, Steel Pulse emerges with musical vengeance to halt the disarray of humanity."] They're a British band of Jamaican descent. They play a British style of reggae.
Q: Differentiate for me a "British" style of reggae from others.
A: Technical question. In the seventies and eighties, their style was much more modern. A different beat, a different sound. The singing was better to my ear, to be honest. I could understand it because they were born in England. The band members are just a few years older than me. I've just had this love affair, and if you go to my blog, there's a lot of stuff on Steel Pulse. I collected memorabilia and wanted to write a book on the band, but I couldn't interview the two main guys... they wouldn't give me an interview. The two main guys wouldn't sit down for an interview with me, but when I left England in 2007, I got two emails saying, "Hey Andy, how about we sit down for an interview?" Eh, too late, I can't do it now [in Cambodia]. I could have done it over a videoconference, but I'd lost the impetus. I'd written forty thousand words, but it couldn't go anywhere without the two main people. They felt they didn't know me well enough and I wasn't part of their inner circle, and I also wasn't a professional journalist. I got over that, but I really wanted to do something to promote them.
Q: You did actually do a book on Cambodia, right?
A: Yes. To Cambodia with Love (2010) is edited by me. I didn't write it--I got about sixty contributors. I ended up writing the introduction to every chapter plus some stories, and we published it. They first did a book called To Asia with Love (2005), and I wrote some of the articles on Cambodia. In 2006, they wanted me to do a Cambodia-specific edition, and I began collecting pieces from my connections here. Around 2007, I brought all those stories with me to Cambodia, but I put them on the shelf and didn't do anything with them. Then in 2010, the series' publisher wanted to expand into other Asian countries (To Vietnam with Love, To Thailand with Love, etc.) and told me, "If you don't send it to me within a month, it'll never get published." I took a month off work, edited the stories, and sent it, and they told me they would publish it in 2010.
Q: Did you ever meet the photographer, Tewfic El-Sawy, for your book?
A: Before the book was published, they sent me a mock-up of what the book was supposed to look like. I told them, "I don't want to use those photos... you can use a couple of them, but the other 20, I don't want them, I don't want them connected with my writings, because they don't represent Cambodia well enough." And then I didn't hear anything else. [Next thing I know] I had the published book in my hand, and I looked at it for the first time, and they obviously understood what I was trying to say, because they made some changes." But the book was published, and I never saw the photos [before publication], and I never met the photographer.
A: It was published in the [United] States, but the publisher was Asian. I think his name was Albert Chen, who had connections in Asia, but he's based in America.
Q: If someone could read only one chapter or story in your book, which one should they read?
A: I'd read the story about Em Theay. She was a classical dancer. They called her "The Tenth Dancer" because out of every ten dancers, nine dancers were killed by the Khmer Rouge. She was the one who survived. I saw this documentary in England about her, and when I came to Cambodia, I met her and became very good friends with her. She was a survivor. The Khmer Rouge targeted anyone whom they felt was educated or who would cause them problems because of their knowledge. So the Khmer Rouge tried to kill off the arts, as such. She managed to survive. She had 16 children--not all of them survived--and unfortunately she died a few years ago. Lovely lady. Her daughters and grandchildren were also artists. It's traditional in Cambodia--once somebody becomes an artist, their children tend to follow.
Q: Why, of all the countries in ASEAN you could have gone to, did you choose Cambodia?
A: Because I saw a documentary about Cambodia by John Pilger, an Aussie-British journalist in 1979. [Editor's note: the documentary was Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia (1979).] I was also active in British politics because my government was effectively supporting the Khmer Rouge. I was going to meetings at the House of Commons, and I joined advocacy groups that aimed to change the government's mind about Cambodia. In 1994, I thought it was safe enough to visit Cambodia, and I did.
Q: Did you speak in the House of Commons?
A: No. I went to meetings and got my MP [Member of Parliament] to raise the issue. My MP, Nigel Jones, was really into it as well. He's a famous MP, because his brother was a doctor on the border with Thailand; unfortunately, Jones was attacked by a sword-wielding madman in his office, and his assistant [Andrew Pennington] was killed. Jones was badly cut. Anyway, since 1994, I've been coming to Cambodia every year.
Q: Why do you think the British supported the Khmer Rouge?
A: They just did what the Americans told them. The Americans were so anti-Vietnam, they would support whomever was on the other side, including the Khmer Rouge.
Q: When you visited Cambodia, did you focus on any particular place?
A: I went all over the country. The first couple of years I went all over, but afterwards, I would target ancient temples, so I would visit remote areas. The French documented most of the temples in the early 1900s, so there were maps, but not very good ones. Basically, I would choose an area with a few temples, and I would go with a Cambodian friend of mine, and we would go to villages and ask the village chief or the policeman, "Have you got any temples in your villages?" Then I would come back and write about it. In 1997, I was writing a lot of stuff about Cambodia, and only one or two other people were doing the same thing. One of them was Gordon Sharpless--he was American.
Q: I'm a bit of a philistine when it comes to old monuments, whether Stonehenge or the Colosseum. They do nothing for me, though with three-dimensional re-creations, I'm more interested. Are you someone who fancies himself an amateur archaeologist?
A: Definitely not. I was just somebody interested in meeting Cambodians. I always felt that the Cambodians who were unaffected by tourism--with the fewest interactions with foreigners--were the best ones to meet. So my target was the temple, but really, it was the journey getting there, whom do I meet, and the journey coming back. Staying in local houses in the villages was a highlight. It was really just trying to meet as many Cambodians as I could, but also, the temples were good because they were something that interested Westerners. A Westerner might not be interested in the family putting me up, but he or she might be interested in this pile of bricks I found in the middle of nowhere. All I know is a lot of people went to these temples after I wrote about them.
Q: Tell me about Cambodian hospitality.
A: I've always found Cambodians [in remote areas] to be very giving and not expecting anything in return. My Cambodian friend/guide would drive his motorbike, and I'd be on the back. We'd ride for hours, and when we'd ask if we could stay someplace, we were told to come on in. It was like that all the time. People just welcomed us in, sharing their food. I would offer them money, but they always said, "No." They killed their chickens, and I'm sure someone killed a pig once. I thought to myself, "Whoa, what are you doing? You're not killing the family pig on my account, are you?" But sure enough, they killed a pig.
Q: What is your favorite Cambodian food?
A: Chicken curry. It's similar to Thai, but much milder. I've always loved eating chicken.
Q: I don't understand the Khmer Rouge's endgame. Most atrocities have some logical basis. The Germans after WWI were subjected to onerous and unfair post-war treaties by outsiders, including private banks. The United States supported and trained Afghan fighters to counter the Soviet Union. Some of those fighters later became Taliban or aligned with Osama bin Laden after American intelligence and funding failed to prevent a civil war in Afghanistan. But what exactly was the rational basis for Khmer Rouge fighters killing their own people, then turning on themselves and others allegedly aligned with Vietnam?
A: I think that's the problem most people have. Even people who studied it can't get their heads around it. The leaders of the Khmer Rouge studied in France, they were teachers, then they came back, took an aversion to Sihanouk, got into bed with the Vietnamese... Remember, they [the Khmer Rouge] were never more than a few thousand [until the American bombings under President Nixon]...
Q: I heard 200,000 people joined the Khmer Rouge.
A: No, that would include all the people under them. Their fighting force was only a few thousand. They ruled with an iron fist. The Cambodian government in the seventies was so corrupt, most of official forces were badly trained. So if you've got a highly trained fighting force up for it, and they go against Cambodian soldiers being paid peanuts, they could ride roughshod across Cambodia and empty all the cities.
[Editor's note: Andy clarifies his comment above: "I was talking of KR numbers in the lead up to 1970 and the early 70s before the KR took over in '75."
From David P. Chandler, The History of Cambodia (1993):
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"Throughout the 1980s, Pol Pot's forces, estimated at between twenty thousand and forty thousand armed men and women, also benefited from extensive Chinese military aid."]
Q: What's the endgame?
A: Get them out to the countryside, work them as hard as they could to produce rice, and these ridiculous irrigation projects... why would you work your own people to death? I don't know. It was the leaders, the people were just blindly following them, and there was no organized resistance. Only the Vietnamese were willing to do anything about it, but then they stayed too long.
Q: What advice would you give someone wanting to visit Cambodia?
A: Oh, definitely come. The people here are extremely welcoming when you get away from Pub Street in Siem Reap and the Riverside in Phnom Penh. [Overall] It depends on what you want from your trip. You've got Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, you've got the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh. But if you want to experience the welcoming nature of Khmers, you've got to go to Battambang, Kompong Thom, and other areas that don't see much tourism. They've also got some nice islands, a few resorts, as well as national parks where you can do monkey or bird-watching and things like that. I think Cambodia is less frenetic than Vietnam, and less popular than Thailand. If you visit here, you should also go to Laos. It's very much like Cambodia but a few years behind. In a sense, you can get two countries for one if you're adventurous enough.
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
A: As someone who found his interest [in Cambodia] was repaid by Cambodians to me, and that I would do everything possible to promote Cambodia to the outside world. It's a double-edged sword, because I don't want it to be flooded with tourists like Thailand, but I do want a better life for Cambodians, and if tourism can help them achieve that, then I'd like to see it happen.
© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (December 2022)
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Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It is not a verbatim transcript.
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