A SIGN?

Our esteemed tipsters will go to extraordinary lengths to stir the rumblings of the good luck Gods. The J@TS team sent their tips in tonight with this attached image which they referred to as 'a charm'. Their daughter/sister is only one and a half pavers away from Tyler, son of Roos, on the Woollahra Public Memorial Wall.

As if that is supposed to help? Do they not know anything about what is happening to the Swans right now: the hung boots of Mickey O, consecutive losses, the CEO retires, they are out of the 8 ... ? As for Mr Michael Rosenman of 1955 ... one guess who won the Premiership in 1955. Yes, Melbourne.

But I wish them genuine, human luck in any case.

BULLETIN - POST ROUND 12

I should have known the day would be arduous. The signs were there from the start.

I only came to full consciousness last Saturday morning when an errant fist from a snuggling Eaglet landed (accidentally)(with force!) straight on the globe of my right eye. It would have been before 7am. The blow triggered a kind of fireworks display in front of my eye, after which the eyelid of my closed (recovering) right eye delivered me a large, iridescent unfinished loop. This loop persisted for some minutes. It looked a lot like a capital C trying to lie down. Within ten or fifteen minutes, the image had closed itself into a complete circle and after an hour or so the light was completely gone. I searched suspiciously for it all day, closing my eye from time to time to see if it could be found … lurking. But only a dull headache remained.

I had a feeling of dread about going out to the big stadium with the bright lights. It felt like going off to the wedding of two people you just knew shouldn’t be together. You fill the hip flask and hope there is someone good to dance with.

Roosy had said during the week that, given the hoodoo, it was time to do things differently. So I decided to approach the adventure from the unusual place of complete despondency. I am usually optimistic and then brave in disappointment. Tonight I would be pessimistic and dignified in victory. It occurred to me that I was just like Odysseus, setting out to fight a war that he didn’t believe in.

* * *

Toby and I arrived at Sydenham just after 6pm for the long day’s journey into night … or out to Homebush. Track work. No trains. Buses replacing trains to Redfern. Our shuttle bus, drenched in the condensation of warm passengers on the umpteenth wet night in a row, snaked its slow, slow journey up King Street – that’s King Street on a Saturday night. We arrived at Redfern at 6.50pm.

A Homebush express arrived and departed. Out through the almost equinoctial pitch dark of early evening, it wound its way, its invisible way. We could have been on a train to anywhere, except for the unmistakable black and white of a foursome of ladies on the seats in front of us, their certain, smiling mouths full of bucked teeth, their tidy bandanas knotted around their necks.

We missed kick off.

We crossed the paved wilderness between the station and Stade Australie to the sounds of rising and falling calls. They didn’t sound friendly. It was like arriving at the wedding as a friend of the bride and realising it was mostly the groom’s mates, that you’d have to pay for your alcohol and it might not make it any more bearable. We crossed the threshold of Gate O. Would a big wooden horse fit through here?

We continued, my clogs clopping on the now deserted concrete slab of the ‘outers’. Aisles 140, 139, 138, 137. A Record. A television. Swans 0.1 Collingwood 3.1. Clop clop clop. Aisles 136, 135, 134, 133, 132, 131.

Into the battle. A quick cheerio to the troops and it was heads down. Collingwood were moving it fast. Kieren Jack answered with a goal. Collingwood kicked out again but Jack replied with another. It was like getting to the wedding and realising that there were possibly enough odd souls to at least make conversation for the night. And the dialogue continued for much. By the third quarter, it was looking like the marriage might just make it after all. It was looking like the battle might be won.

Then Mattner made that tackle and Teddy gave away that 50 metre penalty and Neon Leon kicked that goal and, with ten minutes still on the clock … it was over. The momentum was broken, the red and white top stopped spinning, the fragile balance of will and effort tipped by interruption, it wobbled it’s way to a halt. With each goal that followed, the black and white army leapt to their feet, their too tight guernseys revealing their pasty tums as they raised their arms into the air. It was like the bride had been insulted but the men were too pissed to notice or care and they just kept dancing with themselves. Wheel in the horse and let’s go home.

* * *

Patrick had arrived, during the second quarter, directly from a dress rehearsal of Dido and Aeneas with Nigel, the lighting designer for the opera and a card carrying Swans member since 1997, bless him. They had driven out ‘for convenience’ but had been forced, by Simon and Garfunkel, into a faraway car park which required … yes, a shuttle bus.

We took our places in a long queue for the shuttle bus that would take us to P5. Plenty of people, no buses.
‘Well how far away is P5? Couldn’t we just walk?’ pleaded Toby. There’s nothing worse than delays after defeat.
‘It’s 2.5km.’
‘Well how long would that take us? 8 km an hour … so what’s that? 20 minutes?’
It started to rain.

Water and heaviness. Three bodies under two umbrellas, the loss, galavanting Pies leaping like sailors, clicking their heels in the air, unfussed by the rain, tempers fraying over sparse buses and queue jumping. We concoct a plan to import a team of Russian hit men to face Adelaide next week – a 6 foot 6 terminator with one training session under his belt, squeezed into the Number 40 jumper of the 5”10 third gamer, Nick Smith, possibly armed threatening his way from one end of the field to the other. They must have had one of them in the Odyssey. They say, men in battle cry out for their mothers before death. The Russians were our same last gasps.

The bus for P3 and P4 came. The P3 queue flooded our own. A marshal was waving his red light saver, screaming at the driver:
‘You are NOT going to P3 and P4. You are going to P4 and P5. ‘
‘Well where’s P3?’ asked a woman.
‘Before P5.’ said the marshal.
They are not going to put a second team into western Sydney, are they?

The bus that came went round and round. Not even Nigel’s iPhone could decipher our non progress. He held it in his hand and, master of lights, tracked the white ones flying by in the dark – P something? To me, they looked just like the echoes of my battered eye that morning. They looked just like black and white neon. The windows became so fogged that the outside world slowly became nothing.

A tired two year old practised his goal umpiring manoeuvres. A pesky Pie intermittently roared hoarse from the front of the bus (to the tune of We Wish You a Merry Christmas).
‘You wish you had Daisy Thomas, You wish you had Daisy Thomas,
You wish you had Daisy Thomas, In your football team’.
He was no siren. Fellow journeymen and women fought over whose umbrella should be hurled at him. And the bus went round and round, circling P5 according to Nigel’s GPS, which we zoomed and zoomed and repositioned in incredulity. The bus lost in space and time, like one of those buses exiting the solar system in a younger reader’s sci-fi novel, its quest the mythical land of P5.
‘Next stop Hornsby!’ came a dry cry from the back.
It was just like leaving the wedding in a car with some strangers and realising that the driver was drunk.

We did finally make it to P5. And out of P5. We made it down Parramatta Rd and back to Sydenham to pick up the car and back to the city for Nigel and back to Toby’s and back to South Street and headlong into bed sometime early Sunday morning. Our odyssey was complete. Although we still don’t know it we’re going to get the bride, the prize. We have to fight the suitors in Adelaide next week.

The extended travels of Round 12 may be over, but we are only just over half way home.

Happy Tipping!

... and as for that one journey that IS ending, see below ...

MICKY O

Oh, oh, oh ...
Retire the #19 guernsey forever.
I have ten weeks to mourn.
I will wear black for ten weeks.

THANK THE LORD

Someone finally has some answers!!
Bless you, Mark - our first ever backpocket champ - for getting to the bottom of some of the pressing issues.
Too big to slip in the COMMENTS, so he gets his own post.

1. What is the difference between sweeping handballs and raking handballs?
the parabola of the latter is longer but it's upper cartesian co-ordinates are lower.
2. Is the Swans club psychologist still employed?
has he achieved redunancy?
3. Has Guy McKenna secured Israel Folau as GC17’s marquee player in 2011?
i have no reason to believe otherwise.
4. Will the Tigers change the sash from yellow to jade for the rest of the season?
jade would be too heavy, surely.
5. Are Tyrone Vickery and Nick Natanui aware of what happens to outspoken sportsmen with dread locks in this country?
i hope not, they may change what happens to that sub-demographic if they remain ignorant long enough. change only occurs thanks to ignorance of what seems obvious to everyone else.
6. Can Geelong use more than 500 handballs a match by Round 22?
yes, but to what end?
7. Wallace. Laidley. Should we start a spin-off tipping comp on which coach is next to go?
no. it's worse than leadership speculation this endless worrying about coaches and their tenure, tenacity and tenability. enough already.
8. They’ve done Indigenous All-Stars v the Rest. They’ve done VIC against the Dream Team. What about The Oldies - 200+ gamers v The Youngsters - under 50 gamers?
great. we really need more football. and more football gimmicks. not enough of sport generally in this country or others. and the next time someone has a shot at australia for being sportsmad. at least we don't have 3 daily papers devoted entirely to football. (which country am i thinking of?)
9. Can anyone catch Kirky on tackles for the year, no, the decade?
probably not. but if he doesn't improve in other areas he should swap codes.
10. Can anyone get Catherine T to come to an actual game?
yes, rahm emanuel is apparently able to get most people to do most things.
11. Will GC17 have a meter maid as its mascot?
no - it should have an airport security checkpoint operative; they had 6 there working through my bags at coollangatta the other day. fear is job conducive.
12. Where would that leave Western Sydney?
dunno but it's logo should include a supermarket petrol discount voucher - the emblem of the burbs
13. If they can’t have ‘the G’ have the AFL thought of moving the Round 14 St Kilda/Geelong clash to western Sydney?
sure, is it pratten park where they used to play rules in the 70s here; when, i venture to suggest, no one involved in the tipping comp was watching the aussie rules segment on channel 7 on sunday mornings - when north shore and east sydney ruled the roost. single camera sweeps over picket fences at north sydney oval and trumper park. that was football. contemporary rules, let's face it, is mainly athletics, and lovely but very different.
14. With stadium deals ‘killing’ them, have underdog teams with financial struggles considered selling ‘2nd Team Memberships’ to sympathetic punters of highly successful outfits.
dunno but long term it'll take more than the draft to create a seriously sustainable democratic and competitive competition. bit like the rest of the world really.
15. Could the Collingwood coaching position for 2010 be solved in a jelly wrestle – Malthouse v Buckley?
most certainly. and the proceeds from viewing rights could contribute to solving the problem identified in 14 above.
16. Have any of the commercial networks started formulating a hidden camera show for Ben Cousins to host?
doubtless they all have, and all the cable channels to boot; with a dispute around who plays ben cousins likely to frustrate a dream here and there.
17. Why didn’t we get to see the re-break of Chris Judd’s nose in a Channel 7 Saturday night special event?
because our society is dead against images that promote, endorse or encourage violence
18. How many more games will it take for the Weagles to win outside of WA?
1
19. Has Port’s Daniel Motlop considered the possibility that he was heavily voodoo pinned after ‘that You Tube video’. He suffered an ankle injury the following week and, after only 1 full game, is now out for 2 months with a broken ankle.
your knowledge astounds me. do his people believe in voodoo or something else? what's the local equivalent? i know nothing about this.
20. Could the Eaglet (with his morning Motlops) be a backyard sharman?
no doubt. is that a deliberate allusion to the famous boxing tent family or did you mean 'shaman'? (I did ... mean shaman - tm)
21. Do ex-Roo coach Dean Laidley’s wife and children really want him to spend more time with them?
yes, there's an other gentler, less footbally, less gaunt to the brink of metabolism laidley that greets them every christmas.
22. When will the League have its first Indigenous coach?
when xavier clarke retires. heard him commentating on the weekend. that seems to be a key part of the contemporary career path.

TIGER DIARY

running a little behind the 8 (ball) but much, much better late than never ... here are the tiger's thoughts.


Big week in Tigerland ...
God, we need another one of them like a fat tie.
Where has the dignity in football gone?
It actually hasn’t gone at all, even though everyone keeps saying BYE.
Michael Leunig asked one of the big questions on a calendar a few years ago –
“What is worth doing and what is worth having?”
He opined that “It is worth doing nothing and worth having a rest.”
The test cricketers lost their lovely rest day twenty years ago or more.
The Bye is the closest this country comes to having a siesta and I’m lovin’ it.
It’ gives so much more than a public holiday.
Week to week it’s football you can rely on to move you through the guff and ungarglable-away tedium.
It’s just so lovely having the intention there – but no game scheduled to detail-out on.
Breathing space and perspective.

Meanwhile the queue outside the Tigerland Lapidary Superstore for Jade Eternity Rings is snaking out of control.
Must have ...

MIDSEASON

Why do my own midseason review when Gerard has done one for me? (By the way, the crush has dimmed since he took that silly, moralistic stance on the Ben Cousins change-room finger to camera. Disappointing. It's so hard to find the full package these days.)

And so ...






On the Friday night of Terry’s last game, I was headed to dinner chez Richard the Tigerheart. I stopped at Woolworths Marrickville for a tub of pure cream to accompany the prune and pernod tart with which I planned to please Richard and his Tigress. I waited in line. In front of me, a track-suited woman (fancy tracksuit!) dumped piles of wrapped chicken packages and pressed meats onto the cashier’s bench and, as she fondled her gold buckled purse, she revealed immensely long, claw-like, false fingernails, painted in … tiger stripes. She almost roared goodnight as she left.

George answered the door. I delivered tart and cream and black and yellow striped candle I had found, by chance, that day (the Eaglet insisted it was navy blue and yellow and therefore rightfully his!) I confessed to George that I had just that moment realised I was wearing my electric blue clogs and a copious, red wrap. Oops. Bulldogs colours. He, a fellow Swan – we colluded not to mention it.

We sat around the table for three courses that night, a Swan, two Tigers, two neutrals and a mate in from New York, and I slipped my toes in and out of my clogs under the table. We all know the result that night.

The following morning, the Eaglet and I headed south to the country for the long weekend. At the south end of Rockdale, I slowed for a red light.
‘Look Mama, a fire truck.’
One of the pumper trucks from Arncliffe - poetry for a four year old. We pulled up directly adjacent and framed in the front passenger window, in bright white letters on fire engine red, the number 29.
‘Look Omar, it’s the Marty Mattner fire truck!’
Poetry for a thirty-five year old.

After two or so hours going south, you take the right after O’Keeffe’s Lane, Jaspers Brush, to get to my parents’ place.

*

Sometimes, during winter, I can’t help feeling that I am living in some kind of pervasive football aura. At times, a season grips me, draws me into a kind of supernatural orbit, weaves me unwittingly into itself and itself, in return, into my terrain. There are weeks when it feels like a form of synesthesia – the neurological phenomena in which the stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway involuntarily leads to experiences in another sensory or cognitive pathway. You may have heard of synesthetes who see numbers as colours, or days as shapes, or sounds as tastes or smells.

I suffer from a form of synesthesia, in which ordinary objects or daily decisions, usually requiring minimal cognitive and even less sensory engagement, activate images of football.

The links are not overwhelming or constant. They are not sought. They simply appear, like objects irritating your peripheral vision – not centre screen but you can’t ignore them.

And so, in winter … we don’t live in No 1, we live in Barry Hall. The redbacks on our front verandah are not merely venomous spiders, they are Bombers. I heat the Eaglet’s post pre-school MILO for 37 seconds on high – Goodes is near perfection. I cast 29 stitches onto my knitting needles rather than 30 – Mattner more aesthetic than Roberts-Thompson. I lay up a graphic design on a 6mm grid cause it requires Bolts’ solidity more than O’Keefe’s mobility. And I’ll use a 19 point font.

Where’s Wally is no longer a guy who is hard to spot in a crowd, he is a Swan. While the black swan on the side of my fruit box is not the emblem of WA. It’s Goodes or O’Loughlin. And I turned over every bubble-packed bike chain at the ‘Discount Variety Store’ looking for the right combination. When I was to find myself haggling at the splinter-ridden leg of some park table, trying to release the Eaglet’s orange ‘Destroyer’ in the just started rain, I wanted something I would remember, rely on – 3124 – the stoppage kings, Brett Kirk and Jude Bolton.

It extends beyond the red and white too, triggered by just about anything.

I bookmark my book at page 23, not because it’s the one before 24, but because it’s Lance and Rocca and it’s the Eaglet’s birthday and it’s Kosi and McLeod. The Peugeot in traffic is not a French car, but a Lion.


A GIVE WAY sign is the Saints and the DIP is the Tigers. The Pies only go ONE WAY. A green light would be the Dockers … if you added red, white and purple. A Greek salad IS a Docker if you use purple oregano. And a banana split is the Hawks.

The key thing about true neurological synesthesia is that it is involuntary. I have it, for sure.

Others have delicately suggested that it could be an obsessive compulsive disorder. Poor Eaglet – there is evidence both are hereditary. And it is certainly catching. Lucie is probably outside RMIT right now, filling her lunch break with the particular mugs of passing canines.

But the more I think about it, the more I reject the notion of this kind of winter behaviour as pathological. The more I think about it, look at the symptoms, the more I come to recognise it as … possibly … love.

Love, when everything is filtered through the image of the beloved, everything tinged by the hues of the muse, everything seen through the rose (red and white = pink) coloured glasses of admiration.

If it IS the case that this synesthetic winter caul is simply my passion for footy, that it is the passion spruiking my imagination and revivifying the paths I know, the tasks I perform, the colours I see – it’s pretty impressive really – to be still afflicted. Name me another 10 year old relationship that still causes such positive unsteadiness?

*

I’m sure that, if I were to pay close attention, I could sing these swirling signs into a seasonal narrative. After all, I live in a house on the corner of South Street and Crawford Lane. My living room ceiling is moulded in Swans. Our little family once tried to get to Bondi Junction using only streets whose names related to footy – we didn’t get further than Shaw Street.

If I persevered, would I navigate my way to a clearer sense of each season, making and reading and singing its songlines – the colours, emblems, numbers and trajectories of 16 teams – across my urban landscape. Would it make me be better at tipping?

I hope not.

As we left Jasper’s Brush on the public holiday Monday, the Eaglet noticed that 210 Strong’s Road had a black and white striped mailbox and on the adjoining fence, tail up in the afternoon sun, a Magpie lark.

Hopefully it’s just about the love and not knowing which way it all will go.

Happy tipping!






1. What is the difference between sweeping handballs and raking handballs?
2. Is the Swans club psychologist still employed?
3. Has Guy McKenna secured Israel Folau as GC17’s marquee player in 2011?
4. Will the Tigers change the sash from yellow to jade for the rest of the season?
5. Are Tyrone Vickery and Nick Natanui aware of what happens to outspoken sportsmen with dread locks in this country?
6. Can Geelong use more than 500 handballs a match by Round 22?
7. Wallace. Laidley. Should we start a spin-off tipping comp on which coach is next to go?
8. They’ve done Indigenous All-Stars v the Rest. They’ve done VIC against the Dream Team. What about The Oldies - 200+ gamers v The Youngsters - under 50 gamers?
9. Can anyone catch Kirky on tackles for the year, no, the decade?
10. Can anyone get Catherine T to come to an actual game?
11. Will GC17 have a meter maid as its mascot?
12. Where would that leave Western Sydney?
13. If they can’t have ‘the G’ have the AFL thought of moving the Round 14 St Kilda/Geelong clash to western Sydney?
14. With stadium deals ‘killing’ them, have underdog teams with financial struggles considered selling ‘2nd Team Memberships’ to sympathetic punters of highly successful outfits.
15. Could the Collingwood coaching position for 2010 be solved in a jelly wrestle – Malthouse v Buckley?
16. Have any of the commercial networks started formulating a hidden camera show for Ben Cousins to host?
17. Why didn’t we get to see the re-break of Chris Judd’s nose in a Channel 7 Saturday night special event?
18. How many more games will it take for the Weagles to win outside of WA?
19. Has Port’s Daniel Motlop considered the possibility that he was heavily voodoo pinned after ‘that You Tube video’. He suffered an ankle injury the following week and, after only 1 full game, is now out for 2 months with a broken ankle.
20. Could the Eaglet (with his morning Motlops) be a backyard sharman?
21. Do ex-Roo coach Dean Laidley’s wife and children really want him to spend more time with them?
22. When will the League have its first Indigenous coach?

... and one thing I’m sure of - a statement not a question - I will never stop loving Paul Kelly!






Not only has Coach Ian been grappling with keeping a team together, functional and even successful, but he has been giving middle-of-the-night thought to the future of the game. Adrian Andersen is not the only man with ideas on potential rule changes. Stuff the expanded interchange idea … Here are Coach Ian’s suggestions:

'I’ve been obsessing on two variations on Australian football.

The first involves the introduction of a second ball, simultaneously in play. The game would commence with parallel bounces halfway between the existing central circle and the wing.

The second involves reinventing the game as a three-team contest, played on a perfectly round field, with goals set equidistant around the perimeter. Teams would not defend a goal per se, but would attack a designated goal. The game would be played in thirds, with the target goal rotated each ‘third’. Each bounce would be contested by three ruckmen. The whole game would be an orgy of attack. No central corridors, complex zoning, strategic alliances and so on. Perfect for big round grounds.

A third variation involves an elaborate overhead rig and bungy cords, but I haven’t thought it all the way through yet.'

'In the mining areas of Britain the rat pit was an accepted sport, and matches were regularly held to see which dog could kill the most rats in a given time ... a very famous dog named Billy is said to have dispatched one hundred rats in eight and a half minutes ... needless to say, apart from the thrill of the fight a great deal of wagering on the result took place. One of these early dogs, famed for his prowess in the rat pit was also a very good rabbiting dog and the experiment of crossing this dog with a Whippet resulted in a strain of dogs in the Manchester area which were faster and more refined and became known as Manchester Terriers.'

from ‘A Standard Guide to Pure-Breed Dogs’ by Harry Glover

1. WHAT MOVIE WOULD YOU SCREEN FOR THE TIGERS THIS BYE WEEKEND?

'Born Free' - Anna
'The Combination' - Mic
'A Bridge Too Far' - James
The ‘Lorry one’ from the red Thomas the Tank DVD - Omar
'The Mighty Boosh - series 3'. They need some cheering up - Lucie
Andrei Tarkovsky’s 'Stalker' - Patrick
'Broken Hearts Club', about a gay baseball team that never wins a game ... plus some stuff about friendship.... - Stuart
'Salo' - Mark
'Deadwood' - Paul
David Attenborough’s 'Life of Mammals' - Mathilde
'Tiger Shark' (1932) dir. Howard Hawks - up until the weekend I thought Hawks could give the Tigers a lesson - perhaps not - Gai
The Way We Were - Peter
'Back to the Future' - Richard

2. TO WHAT SONG WOULD YOU CHOREOGRAPH THE SWANETTES' REVIVAL PERFORMANCE?

‘We are Family’, Sister Sledge - Anna
‘Last Dance’, Donna Summer - Mic
Verdi’s Aida Wedding March - James
‘Born to be Alive’. Still makes me laugh after all these years - Mark
‘Dance Dino, Dance Dino’ - Omar
‘Hero’, Bonnie Tyler - Lucie
‘I Need a Hero’, I think sung by Bonny Tyler, just cause - Stuart
‘Optimistic’, Radiohead - Paul
‘Oh Mickey’ - Mathilde
‘Swaneees, how I love you, how I love you, my dear old Swaneees’ - Gai
‘Money Can’t Buy Me Love’ - Peter
‘Tigerland’ - Richard
‘Shake a Leg’, AC/DC - Patrick

3. MEAT PIE OR SAUSAGE ROLL?

It’s not that simple - Richard
Pie from Paris Cake Shop - Patrick
Lamb sausage roll from my local deli or a chunky beef pie with mash, mushy peas, onion and cheese sauce from Harry’s - Stuart
Always sausage roll - Lucie
Ditto - Mathilde
Pie, always - Mic
Pie - James, Peter, Gai
Pie with tomato sauce - Omar
Ditto - Anna
Pie. Sausage rolls are never food. Pies can be - Mark
Science has proven a direct correlation between the meat pie and what is known as the ‘footy brain’ - Paul

4. IF YOU WERE A CAR, WHAT WOULD YOU BE?

Jealous of bikes - Lucie
French and flogged - Mathilde
Trebant - Anna
Alfa Romeo - Peter
1987 Range Rover Classic with the mighty 3.8 V8 the greatest engine ever built. I am my car. She is Betty! - Mic
Peugeot 504 - James
A Bristol. Hand-made, expensive and a pleasure to drive - Mark
A Toyota - Omar
Probably a useful, reliable Volvo. Next life a Jag - Gai
In America the ‘code’ for jeep is apparently ‘horse’. They actually changed the headlights from square to round because of this. I would be a car for whom the code is ‘turtle’ - Paul
An Aston Martin, cause hot spies love to drive me ... or the G rated reason is because they’re sleek and sexy, how I want to be - Stuart
Stolen, dumped and torched - Patrick
There are days when I feel like a crushed wreck on the bottom layer of a truck-load on the way to the scrapper. Worse maybe. At least its going somewhere! - Richard

5. WHICH PLAYER WOULD YOU GO TO A DRIVE-IN WITH?

Mickey O, of course, in the Trebant - Anna
Goodes - James
Brett Kirk - Gai
Jason Akermanis. If the film was dull, Aker’d be good for a streak - Mark
If that’s code for ‘who is the least likely to sexual harass a woman in a car during an outdoor movie’, I can’t think of anyone - Lucie
Daniel Giansiracusa (on the cover of the 2009 AFL Sticker album) cause I like the look of him. He looks a bit serious - Omar
Ryan “bubbles” O’Keefe, I love him so much - Stuart
Cuz. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas maybe ..... - Richard
Tom Harley. The thinking woman’s footballer. We could chat ... - Mathilde
Can I make a request for Chelsea the only female goal umpire? - Patrick
What about a player’s wife??? - Mic
Katherine Hull - Peter (FYI - she’s a golfer!)
Nahas could probably fit in the boot and I wouldn’t have to pay for him - Paul

6. WHO WILL WIN THE FLAG?

Reluctantly, Cats - Anna
Swannies! - Mic
Geelong - James, Mathilde, Paul
The Dogs - Mark
Geelong or the Saints - Gai
The Saints - Omar, Lucie, Peter
I hope the Bulldogs but think the Cats will probably do it. - Patrick
God - I’d forgotten there was a flag. The Tigers can’t win it, but they can still make the 8.... Saints I think. Another year that Geelong didn’t follow through? - Richard
Kylie or Lady Gaga - Stuart

and if the Panthers can do this ...

... could the Tigers do this? - tm

WHAT DOG IS THAT (PROSEPECTIVE) COACH?

This one might help Bucks' campaign to take over from Mick - Lucie.

BULLETIN - POST ROUND 10

Stan Alves: It is official, I can announce it - Fremantle have mastered the art of losing.
Gerard Whateley: All that you can hope for in life is to master one art or skill and Fremantle unquestionably have done it.
Stan: What about their supporters?
Sam Lane: So, Gerard, did you tip the Tigers?
Gerard: Yes. Without a moment’s hesitation. And I didn’t do it on judgement. I don’t want the angst involved in tipping Freo. I want nothing to do with them. Because if you’re emotionally involved in it, it ruins your whole weekend.
Stan: Can the Fremantle members claim their membership back on Medicare?

from ABC Grandstand’s Sunday Inquisition

Losses have many hues and I employ various (relatively consistent) corresponding responses.

Dockers supporters (and tipsters) would have been suffering the particular and extremely lethal ‘loss by a very small margin’ on Saturday night. Such a loss precipitates the dreaded ‘what if … ’, ‘if only …’ curve and may take a sleepless night or whole weekend to accept and digest. They can even last well into the week and haunt right up to the bounce of the next round. They have a heavy mental toll. Recovery is tough.

A walloping is best put behind you straight away. I don’t dawdle on these too much (unless it’s against Collingwood!). I focus on next week.

A lazy loss infuriates and can be relatively easy to shake. Disgust overpowers regret.

A loss to a rival stings a little but the emphasis is always on redemption. When do we play them again?

A(nother) loss to a bogey side confounds. When is probability going to square the ledger? They leave me grappling with self pity which always takes time to shake. Just when you think you’ve nipped self pity in the bud, invariably you get a recurrence. It’s the universe’s fault, not the team’s, and that’s harder to sort or justify.

A Saturday loss is different to a Sunday loss. A Saturday loss often means some degree of nocturnal turning, followed by Sunday – a naturally contemplative day. I am susceptible to bouts of pensiveness on the Sundays after Saturday losses. I find it hard to respond to the eaglet’s cheeriness. I am susceptible to bouts of cleaning on the Sundays after Saturday losses – an effort to restore some kind of order. After a loss, I find it helpful to saturate myself in post match press conferences in an effort to extract some sense. And let’s face it, Sunday’s journalism is never as comprehensive as Monday’s. I have to wait longer for counseling. A Sunday afternoon loss can be more quickly swept up in ‘getting ready for Monday’. There’s a sense of being closer to the next round than the one just being completed.

Recurrent losses rarely have the numbing effect on me that some claim to submit to. They can really start to affect life. There’s a cumulative effect. You can conquer them with humour if you’re brave … or Richard.

A loss after a string of victories can go one of two ways. It can be a wee stumble and nothing to worry about. Or … there’s always the nagging doubt that it is the beginning of the end, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the first wave of the turning tide. How will St Kilda fare this week, with their cellular memories screaming of 2004, when they were 10 – 0, went to the movies mid-week and lost to Sydney in Round 11 – the loose thread that unraveled that season?

A televised loss is different to an attended loss. An attended loss gives more scope for absorption - banter with the O’Reilly boys – a certain sorting out of what went wrong for whom and why – the walk back to the car or train, the trip home. Those transit spaces provide digestion time.

After a televised loss, there’s nowhere to go. Once the box is off, it’s just the silence of the house, the solitude of self or the potentially incompatible forms of regret that may or may not need to be shared with someone close. We don’t get much de-brief TV in NSW.

I boasted recently that, since my Swans membership is now 10 years old, I am able to respond to most losses with a greater degree of imperturbability. It’s not early stages of my relationship with the Swans anymore, when everything has to be positive and the slightest imperfection sends alarm bells ringing. I am in a long term relationship with this now. I know there will be ups and downs and lots of unsatisfactory indifference in between.

Last week it didn’t count for anything. The loss to the Doggies stung.

I’m not sure why. I was half expecting it. But a dangerous rhizome of hope had managed to penetrate the soil of my belief and I found myself ill prepared for the slaughter that unfolded on Saturday afternoon in the capital.

I watched the match, tucked under a doona on the living room floor with the eaglet. With each of the Doggies’ 13 unanswered goals in the second quarter, he pumped his tight little fist into the air. He had tipped Footscray.
‘Go the Doggies!’ he hollered. I chose to ignore it.
‘Go the Doggies!’ again and again like a displaced echo that I know my living room is not capable of. By fist number 10, I ordered him to stop, with just enough motherly authority to make it clear I was relatively serious, but not enough to seem like a bad loser.

You don’t need to teach children about the pleasures of winning. You have to teach them how to do it ‘nicely’ but you don’t have to teach them how to deal with the feeling. Parents spend a great deal of effort teaching their children how to lose. We drip feed them losses. We let them win for years, missing the obvious in a game of noughts and crosses, pulling back just short of a finish line, landing on Mayfair and their 3 hotels. We try to model and transpose our own bravery in the event of losses. Recall the footage, after the Tigers’ loss to Essendon, of the young child in the crowd crying into his father’s shoulder, his eyes eventually shielded by his father’s protective hand. Gideon Haigh remarked: ‘Terry Wallace is now guilty of something else – making children cry.’ When it comes to loss, you need to teach the child not only how to conduct themselves, but how to process the feeling.

Last week, by chance, I heard Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro speaking at the Sydney Writer’s festival. He mentioned, in passing, how we naturally make the world into a nicer place for children, how sad it is when children are not granted this bubble. Given the existence of said bubble, it is then the parents’ job to guide their children out of it when the time Is right. Boy, will Mr and Mrs Selwood have a job on their hands when the bubble finally bursts down at Geelong. Joel Selwood has lost only 4 games in his 55 game career. Will he be a good loser?”

But, in our house, it works a little differently. On Saturday night, the eaglet and I sat down to dinner.

‘I feel sad.’ I deposited into the silence.
No answer.
‘Did you feel sad when the Eagles lost last night?’
‘No, cause I tipped the Blues.’
‘But isn’t your team more important than who you tipped?’
‘No. I love my team anyway. So I just feel happy that I got one right. Anyway I’ve got the Bombers and they’re right, right up the ladder.’
‘But what if they lose to the Cats tomorrow?’
‘Well then I have the flowers ... and the sticks and the leaves and the branches …’
These are all fictitious teams which Omar created and has supported since his hands were big enough to hold a Sherrrin. The flowers wear pink guernseys and play behind trees – that’s why you never see them.
‘Oh well. I feel sad,’ I finished.

No matter what variety your team suffers, losses are upsetting. There is no happy ending. For me, the unease stems from the loop of satisfaction for effort and investment never reaching completion. One must find something else to close it. And the funk that follows a loss is the searching.

This is where the eaglet has developed a very functional model for dealing with loss. He leaves no space. Instead of dwelling, he fills the gap by inventing another investment instead, real or unreal, whatever it takes – a kind of eternal staircase to heavenly hope. It seems a dreamy kind of approach, but in fact it is alarmingly pragmatic. He has the blissfully one-dimensional and ignorant courage to add to his emotional investments at a time of loss, not recoil from them. In our house, the lessons are being taught in reverse. The bubble is opened up for climbing into.

Adulthood may correct us and convince us we learn more from loss if we are forced to inhabit the empty space, but perhaps the mind of a child is best applied to footy.

On Sunday night I received a distressed email from esteemed tipster (and Dockers supporter) Travis – a cry for help. He was no longer able to deal with the losses:

‘I'm not bouncing back anymore … Football means too much to me to support a team like this and it's been going on for fifteen years. Barely a scrap of 'stringing a few together (apart from the joy that was the second part of the 2006 season), and losing heartbreakers so often that I constantly feel like I've broken up with someone … I feel like I should turn my back on it altogether. Help me.’

I am not mother to you tipsters, but I am mistress and I feel a certain watchfulness over each of you. I sympathised with Travis. Apart from the hand of solidarity, I had very little to offer. However, on reflection, I am not unconvinced by the efficacy of the eaglet’s ‘prolonged investment model’™ … if you can. And it’s a big if.

I suspect ‘football’ has plenty of ways of manifesting the same bubble. I think the most common is called ‘focusing on next week.’ And it may well be the entire point of ‘fantasy footy’ and ‘dream teams’.

Shortly after the email from Travis, the phone rang. It was Tiger Richard, calling to celebrate his 8 tipping points and the Tigers’ big, heart stopping win. I explained that I was in the middle of dealing with Travis’ grief. 'But the Dockers have had four or so wins this year, haven’t they?’

It’s all relative.

Happy tipping, especially Travis ... and Richard!