WHY I GO TO THE FOOTBALL:
It starts
Thursday night when the teams are released on the Carlton website. I study the
team and begin to see possible match-ups and before long another potential
victory flaps around in my brain like one of the Carlton flags at Optus. I
angrily chase away any thought of a loss, like a lion chasing a vulture from
the carcass. That night a simmering dream cradles me, a dream of footballs,
goals, screaming voices, whistles and shared victories over hated enemies. I
wake refreshed in the new dawn, vibrant, as if the energy of my youth had
returned. I wish to run out again as I did all those years ago early of a
Saturday morning to have a game, the day so cold exhaling drew personal frosts
around everyone’s faces, the dew was frozen on the grass and the leather
football threatened to break fingers and toes.
Then Friday
morning’s paper - the second most important paper of any good week (the morning
victory paper by far the best) – arrives on the doorstep and the butterflies
begin to waken, fluttering their navy blue wings to send ripples of expectation
through the bloodstream. Suddenly I feel like clicking my heels together and
the journey to work is almost joyful. Friday morning in the car I mentally tick
off who I shall pick in the football competition. Carlton is never considered.
They are always chosen victors – I’m loyal to my CFC monogrammed bones.
By 12 noon
the skin starts to tingle and my heart becomes an actor in a Shirley temple
movie and dances little soft-shoe shuffles up and down the stairs in my chest.
Memories slip past regularly: Memories of Wow Jones kicking a ball to the
original ‘woof!’ on a Saturday arvo’: The arms of Kenny Hunter reaching up to
pluck the ball before it reaches the pack: Johnno slamming another goal home
and Mike Fitzpatrick’s finger directing another player to fill a gap. So many
memories that I need to talk with other supporters even those who follow other
teams, though not Collingwood, they never have anything constructive to add so
much does 1970 still hurt, you can see it the grimaced faces, in their haunted
look at the corner of their eyes. They thought 1990 would ease the pain bit it
didn’t, nothing ever will. When lunchtime arrives at work we all sit and
discuss our different teams’ chances, each of us pretending a fairness and
open-mindedness that none of us posses come match days.
By 7.30
Friday evening my mind is full of the possibilities (who might star and who
might struggle, who I would have chosen and who I might have dropped) that will
be revealed the next day. By 11:30 that night I have a clear picture of my
father’s smiling face and twinkling eyes when Carlton led by four goals at
three-quarter time and the little jig he would do on the way to a pub after the
game. I remember the walk my brother and I would take from Royal Park station
around the zoo to the ground when we were older, me kicking a newspaper
football while he extolled the virtues of this or that footballer. He loved
talking about the players, players like Racehorse Hall in number 3 or gritty
Barry Gill in 21 or Wes Lofts the number 20 fullback who was rumored to know my
dad. I can even remember him explaining to me the virtues of Brian Kekovich in
the bleak years before Barass arrived.
By Saturday
I just have to go. Breakfast hurts and lunch cannot be faced. I can’t sit still
and I am unable to concentrate; my mind swirls with famous marks of Jezza’s or
Harry Madden’s giraffe-like run. My wife already knows this is not the time to
try and encourage me to garden: I’d do more damage on a day Carlton’s playing
than any help with plants and weeds and cuttings I might provide the rest of
the year. My mind just keeps wandering off – David Mackay flies through the air
taking another grab and Gag’s ducking head and poked out tongue bob out from
another pack or Maclure’s long arms wrapped around the pill crashes into my
concentration – so that I become a menace with secateurs.
In the
background the radio is on and the footy experts are whispering to me ‘go, go
you fool, you know you’ll regret it if you don’t,’ and then they pick against
Carlton and my blood boils and I can no longer deny the urge, at this point my
son (a mind reader like all children) tugs at my sleeve asking again, ‘so, we
going dad? Are we meeting up with my
uncles? Will Sean be there?’
I go
because the memory of my dad and pop beckons and my brothers have told me where
we’ll meet.
I go
because going to the football and seeing the Bluebaggers lose is infinitely
better than not going to see them and they win. Besides if I see them lose then
I can handle the pain of the loss but if they lose and I didn’t go a small
nagging voice inside my mind berates me saying ‘if only you had gone, if only
you had gone,’ it’s that thread that connects me with the Bluebaggers, a
hangover from that marvelous day in 1970.
I go
because football is this childhood pump that sits behind my heart thumping a
bass beat. It’s a baby’s tantrum, all legs and arms pummeling as it demands
it’s due. It holds me in thrall all season, forcing me to travel to the grounds
and walk in with the swell of people and voices and the special cry of ‘footy
re-cord!’ that is as Australian as the magpie chortle or a distant
coo-ee!’ Is there a bigger thrill than walking in with the crowd, expectation
rising up from the throng as supporters from both sides try to still their
beating hearts? Woven throughout are the voices, the young, vibrant voices
calling ‘footy re-cord! Get your footy re-cord!’
I go to the game because as the bounce of the ball draws near my heart
is stretched between the goal posts like a crucified villain, strung up and
stretched, ready for the drawing and quartering. Each goal they kick is a barb
that digs in deep, each of our goals succours a moment of relief. Only a
Carlton victory can bring me redemption.
I go
because I’m in the grips of a thirst, and beer at the football shared between
brothers and friends is the sweetest nectar ever poured into a cup (even a
plastic one).
I go just
to roll that record up like a sacred scroll and have my Carlton pen ready to
hand to my son because he now demands to keep the goals and points score just like
I did when I was 10 and my brother handed the record to me.
I go to see
that jumper, that navy blue jumper with the shining white monogram, that jumper
that is like family, so much does it reverberate within me. Whenever I see that
jumper I feel like a prodigal son coming home again after a terrible absence. I
remember the woolen jumper mum knitted for me when I was a kid, I remember my
son’s jumper stolen last year with number 14 on the back claiming his
allegiance to Fish. Past jumpers and present, even jumpers that I played in but
have nothing to do with the Blues, mingle in a never-ending stream of hope,
loss and past glories.
I go to see
the Bluebaggers win and because sharing a loss is easier than bearing it alone.
I go
because football is not a television sport – it’s a gladiatorial contest that
needs us supporters baying from the stands for it to have any meaning. Imagine
a Dominator bump without the crowd’s roar or a Jezza grab without the
astonished faces. Imagine missing the next magic moment and not being able to
say, ‘I was there the day Fev took ‘em apart.’ Football needs our voices, our
eyes, our hearts, or it will become a gasping fish flapping on the concrete
pier of television.
I go
because I barrack for Carlton and there is no grander place to be than in the
Heatley Stand as we kick home towards the social club and the goals start
raining down like the breaking of a seven year drought and the stands are
rocking louder than any concert at the MCG.
I go with
my son so that he will grow up as glad and mad a Bluebagger as his dad – just
as my dad did with me. I go to continue to dynasty, a line of Carlton supporters
that spills out both behind and in front like a deep, deep, navy blue sea.
No comments:
Post a Comment