In the lead up to the big grudge match against the Premiers this weekend, an email landed in my inbox from the Sydney Swans Members Services, subject line: Mathilde, we need your help! I know it’s been 9 outings for no result but, at best, I am an unreliable right foot kick, no left foot to speak of. I’m a decent handball, but a fairly girlie mark. And my endurance is questionable. Has it really come to this?
As I read into the body of the email, I accepted that they didn’t want me on the field. They wanted me in the stands. With friends. In red and white. And, of course, the email was signed off with ‘Cheer cheer.’
Then days later, the Swans followed up with a special message to members from SwansTV, with a red-nosed Ryan O’Keefe urging supporters to get out and cheer for the team. Do we really need to be told how to behave, how to be good members, good supporters? What’s next, I ask myself, an app for it?
This correspondence from the Swans coincided with three consecutive days of bus travel between home and Circular Quay – a very Sydney total of 6 hours. I sat and read my book, trying not to listen to which Donna Hay recipe the blond behind me was cooking this weekend, or the ‘peanut butter bum’ encountered by the nappy changing Dad. I tried not to intervene in the disastrous game of Angry Birds the middle aged woman beside me was playing, her false fingernail reducing her touch screen to a percussion instrument, accompaniment perhaps to the ‘n ch n ch n ch n ch’ of the office dude with the paper bag and polyester pants. The combination of his gadgetry and synthesis gave me an electric shock. When I closed my book and looked up, I happened to notice a poster on the backside of the driver’s cabin.
It was a cartoon figure, a worm like creature with sunnies wearing a huge set of headphones. The Blaster - 'These doof doof blaster beasts bug you with noise blaring from their headphones and their way-too-loud-speakers. You said you'd rather hear nails down a blackboard than their second-hand music.'
Turns out it’s part of a series of posters aimed at making commuters more courteous on the buses, trains and ferries in NSW. All irritants are accounted for: the Blaster, Blocker, Bumper, Grubber, Hogger, Rubbisher, Shover, Splutterer and Yeller. Scanning the bus, my first thought was that maybe us humans really do need to be told how to behave. My second thought was that it seems to make absolutely no difference. And my third thought was … Collingwood.
Not the players necessarily, although the tags do sound appropriate if you say them out loud. But I was thinking of the supporters. You only need to be half footy literate to know the reputation of the Pie Army. They are the opposition supporters we especially love to hate: loud, loyal, parochial, unbearably smug when up and happy victims when down. There are almost 70 000 of them. And they travel.
But while the Pie Army may be at one extreme end of the supporter spectrum, Sydney supporters have often been lampooned for being poor barrackers. Only last week, a Sydney friend and co-mother at the Under 7s, who spent many years in Melbourne and had switched that weekend to cheer the Tigers in support of her black and gold son, reiterated that Sydney supporters don’t know how to cheer AFL style. They go silent when their team is down instead of rousing them into action. They cheer when the going is good and leave when the going is bad. In the O’Reilly stand, among the members, when the game looks gone, the rally does go out. But it usually only lasts three of four Syyyyyyydneys before the ghost is given up.
But it takes many types of tree to make the forest. We all barrack differently and the way a person barracks tells you an awful lot about them. We have our individual styles and out pet hates. We have the acts we pull out for different teams and for different time slots. And we have the various frowns and smiles we dish in the face of each other’s barracking personalities.
If I think on the O’Reilly boys, we have quite a variety.
The Cob has a gruff style. He berates as a default. He scolds. He emits disgust. It’s a way of defending his vulnerability. He turns off the radio and walks away from the TV, but he doesn’t leave live games early. For the really good times, he has a penetrating whistle and he bellows a mighty ‘C’mon Sydney’ into any gap in proceedings. It was the Cob himself, who made his mark among 72 393 people at Homebush in Round 21, August 2003. As the Pies overtook us on the scoreboard, he leant over the edge of the second tier balcony and yelled a primal ‘F*#K’ into the silence.
Then there’s the Delighter. He treats everything with the same wit and cheer, clangers and super moves. It could be his Scottish heritage. He wears his heart on his sleeve. His role is to get the meta narratives going, small returning gags and observations that give each game a shape and purpose, no matter how good or bad it gets. The umpires usually cop a spray from the Delighter. But it’s always in good humour. He is prone to silence from the end of the third quarter on. But it’s unlikely to be sulking, usually just the consequence of wearing himself out.
The Steadier has his place. He keeps a keen eye on the binoculars. It’s his job. His analysis is technical and mild, especially since his own Cygnet began to accompany him regularly. He is the epitome of fairness, the marathon runner, even tempered and measured.
The last of the regular O’Reilly boys, I will call the Headmaster. He barracks for a sound strategy and, this season, more often than not against a bad one. He barracks for fine play and demotes at least two players each week. He is dignified, solid. He is the person you want to be sitting next to when the tightness squeezes you to your limits. He never raises his voice. Unlike his wife.
His wife comes infrequently. But when she does, she comes in a leopard print faux fur coat, with seaweed snacks and a voice to kill. The midfielders definitely hear her before the centre bounce. She not only encourages feverishly herself, but she gets into the poor, long suffering members around her and berates them for being lacklustre. This woman is sass and feistiness incarnate. This is the woman who, on being casually told that Myles Baron Hay, then Chief Executive Officer of the Swans, was on the concourse at Homebush during half time one night, approached him and negotiated her dislike of the blinking boundary advertisements during play.
There are those for whom barracking is a kind of meditation. It is about endurance and forbearance and their countenance changes little between a 60 point loss and a 60 point win.
There’s G in front, who addresses the team collectively. Swans. C’mon Swans. Man up Swans. Stick with ‘em Swans. Her role is to mozz the opposition. She has chewing gum for all of their boots. G is as steady as she comes.
And then, there’s JDH two rows ahead, who greets every goal by rising to his feet and waving whatever is in his hand like a helicopter trying for lift off. Each one of the average 30 possessions it takes the Swans to score is released on that unwind.
The Cob and I knew that our contrary Cygnet had finally converted to the Swans only when he let out an almighty, deep throated scream one day … in favour of the red and white. He was unaware of what he’d just done. We looked at each other with pride.
*
This weekend, the Swans are asking us to be at the ground. They know how much we hate Homebush. They are asking us to cheer. They are asking us to make even our noses red.
It’s tempting, with a forecast high of seven degrees at Homebush on Saturday night, to stay at home and enjoy some pyjama barracking. Although I tend to think that it's possibly worse alone in front of the tele than it is in the crowded stadium. All sorts of primal survival fears surface in the solitude of the domestic cave, fears that can be abated by the shared experience of barracking the only way we each know how, altogether.
And if the occasion arises or demands, and we get far enough behind (or in front) and we get enough Scottish juice into us, we may all rotate in Asile 132. I may yet become the Blaster. And the Cob may become the Delighter. And the Delighter may yell.
Happy tipping!
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