I settled in for the Thursday afternoon tipping with Omar. He read me the fixture as I lay sprawled across our living room floor. Thursday night: Geelong v the Magpies. He, emphatic as usual, picked the Pies straight away while I ‘umed’ and ‘aahed’. After some patience with this hesitation, Omar put a hand up to the coin box on the almost unreachable mantelpiece and told me that heads was Geelong and tails was Collingwood. I nodded. He flipped. Tails. The Pies it was.
This is what has become of my tipping. I am lacking intensity around the fixture. I am relying too heavily on my team-mates. My work rate is down.
And I paid. The Magpies lost after leading by twenty something points at quarter time.
Discouraged, I packed the car with our Easter belongings, on a quiet and good Friday morning, and we headed off, down the Princes Highway.
The three best ways I know, to deal with a problem, are: a scalding hot shower, a washing up session or a road trip – whichever is most closely at hand. Road trip it was.
There was many a mile available for contemplation as Patrick took the wheel and the Eaglet piped out a positive bit of Justine Clarke ‘making the garden grow’ in the background. How would I re-grow my already precarious season? On a weekend when a bunny would be hiding plenty of goodies, I kept my eyes open for clues - things to look out for, things of note, roads to follow.
By Round 3, results are no longer a simple fork in the road. Every team, every tipster, has taken at least two steps down the road they’ve chosen, followed or wandered inadvertently down. And it looked like I was heading down the road that was on the wrong side of the ratio. How would I turn it around?
As we wound south, down the backside of Mt Ousley (or Mount Muesli as the Eaglet calls it ) towards the one strip wonder of Albion Park Rail, a possible clue appeared, dark and fleeting overhead, but I caught it just in time.
Harvey? Of course. Brent Harvey.
Roo Brent Harvey’s numbers have been down. He’s averaging just 17 possessions compared to his usual 30. There have been questions about whether the leadership challenges have affected his personal performances. Sounds like me! My numbers are well down, there are questions over whether my leadership role is affecting my performance, whether those around me are doing enough to help me escape tight tags, whether I am doing enough to escape the chasers myself. What a perilous proposition – being compared to Brent Harvey! – the smallest man in the most un-charismatic team in the competition. He stands at 172cm! Shit, so do I!
But perhaps he could provide the clues. He was heading into Round 3 on the back of a public scandal, at the helm of a ship that had nearly been sunk, leading a mob of ‘chicken hungry’ Roos on a quest for redemption. North was 1 win, 1 loss – at the crossroads. I had picked them for a Round 3 win. Those who have tipped with me before know that I am susceptible to the potential ‘emotional win’. I felt sure that those Shinboners would fight hard to restore a little pride after their semanus horribilis. They would justify the tens of thousands of dollars they had cost the club, defend the humiliation of a week of shame-faced press conferences. Sometimes you just need something to get your season going and then … it’s off! Yep, Harvey was to be my exemplar.
By the time I had come to terms with the parallelism, we were making the right hand turn off the Princes Highway. Trip over. Problem solved.
* * *
On Sunday afternoon, with the sting of chocolate in my back molars, the sting of the Swans’ apathy in the back of my mind and the Eaglet off meandering at Bomaderry Creek with Patrick, I settled in for four quarters with my notebook in hand.
Plenty of mention of Little Boris, even a ‘2 Bad Eggs’ sign behind the goalposts. Great. Extra fuel for my man Harvey’s men.
It was the Hawks who came out firing. Hodge and Mitchell zig zagged their way up and down the greens of Etihad like pinballs at the hands of a madman. Stuey Dew thundered in front of goal. Handballs arced effortlessly through a midfield that didn’t know how to stand still. Buddy and Roughy split the forward 50 in two and patrolled it with almost shameful ease. And where were those proud Roos, those amending Shinboners? Where was all that incentive? Splayed all over their half forward line, dropped at the feet of small forwards who had no chance, sandwiched in friendly fire that had them down a man, teetering on the toes of men who could not look each other in the eyes and raise a fist, tagged on the boot heels of my man Harvey! Little Boris had done them no favours. And, by the end of the evening, I was on 2 out of 7.
So, my very own obscene YouTube launch was now out of the equation. I would have to turn to other means. Other men would need to lead me to where resurrectionists tread. I would need to trade my man Harvey for a man who managed a real rise from slump – a Mitchell, fighting back from a night with Kirk or a Lloyd – booting 5 on the eve of his 31st birthday when almost all had him too old … again. Or I could turn to one of those connoisseurs of a three-pronged Round 3 failure rate – The Demons’ Bailey or the Tigers’ Wallace or … Harvey. Oh! It was suddenly clear. I had the wrong Harvey. Not Brent! Mark. Dockers coach, Mark Harvey.
This is the language the players use over at Freo. They talk about raising the bar, demanding excellence of themselves, lifting their expectations. And this is what the coach says: ‘We couldn't stay composed in our decision-making, either when we were going inside the forward 50 or just in general play. When we've got the ball, we're not doing enough. We're not hurting the opposition when we should be, and then when we do turn the ball over, we're getting punished quickly.’
Well, that’s hardly inspiring. But could it work for me? Could a bit of public scrutiny, a talking down to by the coach be just the ticket for my turnaround. It worked for Sam Mitchell. It worked for Matthew Lloyd. Can anyone give me a hand with that?
My only other options are a long rest on the laurels of a false buoyancy, Guru Bailey style: ‘The thing that I can say about our players is that they are committed to improvement. I hope they get some reward for their effort. I can see it coming … (there’s) the patience element … you can only develop them at certain speed. Too quickly you actually miss the journey. That's what we have to be careful of.’ I don’t want to miss my journey, man.
Or, I can rely on an inevitable swing of fortune … if you wait long, long, long enough, Tigers style. As the captain spells it out: "I guess everyone should just take a bit of a deep breath, and realise that we're only three rounds in. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves’. I’d certainly like to get ahead of myself, like the other 22 people are! And Cuz said it had to start this week. Hmm. Mixed messages.
* * *
The trip home gave no clarity. Just a lot of fog and rain so heavy we couldn’t see metres in front of us. What was that scene in Little Boris, where the chook (apparently) ended up as road kill?
There are no guarantees on form, on our ability to get ourselves going again, when the stocks are truly down. Sometimes it seems that there isn’t a thing you can do about it. No jargon, no turning point, no promise, no hope, no long glance in the mirror, no drawing board or scare or gauntlet thrown down will bounce you back up to where you want to belong. Sometimes, just like the Easter Monday traffic, you have to sit in it until it moves and find something to watch while you do. Richmond v Melbourne should be good.
* * *
The backpocket’s reigning champion, Peter, graciously reminded me this morning, from the airy, expansive viewpoint of his top rung on the ladder: ‘You cannot win it from here, but you can lose it from here’.
In fact, it seems you CAN win it from 0-3 down. And which was the last team to win the Premiership after losing the first three games of the season? It was 1975. It was the Kangaroos.
Happy tipping!
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