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!

A NEW FEATURE

Exciting developments. We have a new voluntary contributor!

Bravo to our Melbourne based Lucie, who is close to the action down there and has noticed an important trend. Tonight, on this last day of autumn, Lucie begins her inspired new feature:

'What Dog is That Coach?

Here is the first entry. Two pictures - one is a giant schnauzer, one is Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse. Can you tell which is which?

You will be able to keep track of this feature, in full, on the website.


keep this space

BULLETIN - POST ROUND 9

space please

gerard ... or ... buddy?

Gwen in Row T calls it ‘abbadabba’ and it’s no coincidence that it’s a word closely related to ‘abracadabra’. Black footy magic. That’s what Round 9 was all about.

On Friday morning, the eaglet was plonked on the living room floor with one of his favourite pop up dinosaur books. This one is top shelf. (There are many, of varying calibres.) Out of the blue, I was reminded that the eaglet can get a fright, that causes him to unleash the shrillest scream, just from coming face to face with the 3D t-rex which emerges from page 11. This even though he’s seen it a good few dozen times.

Repetition doesn’t seem to nullify things for some. But I don’t handle it nearly as well. This year, adult life has taken on a repetitiousness that perhaps we assume we are destined for in growing up, having bills and children, cars whose tyres flatten, tasks and storage and proper jobs. I wouldn’t call it a flatline (yet), just lacking in deviations. I don’t handle it well.

It may come partly from growing up between two cultures and countries, frequent childhood travel and the always present obligation to be on both sides of the world. It may come from living under the flight path – constant reminders of my submerged wanderlust as the jumbos carve up the airspace above our hills hoist. It may be – as is often the case – the book I am currently taking to bed. I’ve been reading Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates, that great chronicler of mid 20th century American middle class lives and, more often than not, their disappointments.

I was talking to Gai about it shortly after the dinosaur incident. On the mundanity and repetition, she said, while possibly biting the inside of her cheek, ‘You just have to be zen about it.’ She’s right of course. [I wonder if Brad Johnson is managing to feel zen, after the repetition of his Round 9 after-the-siren miss – two in two seasons!]

But, then again, it was Friday night. But not any old Friday night. It was round 9 – blackfella round. A far easier solution than zen. Flick on the ABC and seek out some proxy highs. We’ve seen the Indigenous fellas play a good few dozen times but somehow their impact can still ignite my imagination just like the great carnivore that had the eaglet in a spin.

The Indigenous contribution is difficult to address without suggestions of exoticism or reverse racism. Adam Goodes collected some criticism when he wrote, on the 150th anniversary of the game last year, that the Indigenous boys were ‘born to play’. As if by association he had suggested the white boys weren’t. He didn’t. But the blackfellas do appear to be born to play. There, I’ve said it.

Over the course of last weekend, my imagination was thoroughly peppered by the skills of the best of the 82 Indigenous players in the League: Neon Leon Davis, Andrew Lovett, Magic O’Loughlin, Andrew McLeod, Motlop, Pearce, Wells, Betts, Bateman, Rioli … the return of Docker Des Headland and the beginning of Docker Hill. The list goes on and on. There is no doubt that they offer real dash and carry, biting side steps and dummies, a bit of twinkle and spin, a bit of cheek in their daring, a kind of rhythm in their bio mechanics that seems almost syncopated at times, when they need it to be. They bedazzle.

Martin Flanagan described some of the Bombers’ moves against St Kilda in the Age on Saturday:

‘They have Alwyn Davey. Did you see the "swoop" when he took the ball at his ankles while running at helter-skelter pace through a crowd of players in last Sunday's game? Or that other move, the backward sway with the old soft-shoe shuffle, that sent not one but two St Kilda defenders shooting past like people on a train who just missed their stop? Commentator Gerard Healey said it was one of the best sidesteps you'll see in footy.’

They are a delight to watch cause you know you’re going to get a bit of the t-rex factor. It’s unpredictable even though you’ve seen it before. Short and sweet – like many an Indigenous forward pocket – they’ve got something special. There, I said it. And I thank them for my weekend piece of it.

Undoubtedly, the highest of the highs of the round for me was the pride on display. How many of those Indigenous players actually said that they wanted to perform extra feats for this round? And they walked the talk. How many of them were encouraged to express their pride and an awareness of their supreme skills? How refreshing for this rightful cockiness to be unswaddled from a sense that we all have to be equal in order to be equal, no highs and no lows. That ain’t what made old t-rex so impressive.

There haven’t been any dinosaur books this week. Omar spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday mornings in the back garden doing his ‘morning Motlops’. He has spent Monday and Tuesday afternoons, a little white boy in the suburbs, being Wirrapanda and Goodes and Lovett and Magic – it always comes back to Mickey. He knows the way to his mother’s heart. I must remind him of Gavin Wanganeen.

And just to prove that I am not guilty of exoticism, that I have not completely succumbed to the stereotypical white girl fantasy of the black male, I am extending my understanding of the tolerance and diversity message and revealing my real crush of the round.

I am ready to admit, this week, my ‘fondness’ for Gerard Whateley.

He is the opposite of your Nathan Lovett-Murray, the opposite of your Lance Buddy Franklin, the opposite of your Aaron Davey. He is the anchor of ABC Grandstand’s football commentary team. He is the small, pale man with a beak of a nose, who wears purple and pink striped shirts, brown shoes with grey pants, coifs his hair into a spiked arrangement to conceal the beginning of baldness and speaks with the nasal twang of a private schoolgirl. He may not have emanated the same feats as Travis Varcoe on Friday night, but he was the man who called a pass between Bulldogs Cross and Hahn – ‘the accidental perfect pass’. I am easily charmed by a man who is good with words. Even thrilled.

Happy tipping!

doing his motlops ...

JUST IN CASE

you missed it ... The eaglet has been in the garden all morning, practising. He reckons he got one through from the Colourbond fence.

BULLETIN - POST ROUND 8

photo: Mike Bowers, © The Slattery Media Group

Can I actually stop myself from reading another one of Barry Hall’s articles in Friday’s Sydney Morning Confessional? It's like a car crash I can't turn away from. He’s referring to himself in the third person now.

Last Friday, there was Barry (or his ghost writer) defending his stats from the game against Geelong. He had five touches, four marks and one behind for the match. It was a defence he might have mounted in a manner as succinct as his stats. But he strung it out for 913 (disposable) words.

‘I understand how some writers rely heavily on the stats to help them determine who has played well and who hasn't and as a player you just live with that.’

Last Saturday night, at Stade Australie against old foes the Eagles, he had just one extra touch, took one more mark but kicked five goals. While I do wish Baz would leave his self-analysis at the club psychologist’s door, the big fella has a point. His fortnight does indeed support the old saying – it’s quality not quantity.

‘We said to him, “We're not worried about marks, kicks, handballs or goals, you're a better player when you tackle and chase”,’ said Roos. ‘I think he only had six kicks, but his tackling, chasing and pressure … all of a sudden the six kicks translate into five goals.’ Poor Baz – he just got lost in translation down at Kardinia Park.

More than any numbers, what struck me about Big Baz on Saturday night was that he seemed to belong again. How else do you explain the cuddles from Captain Kirk all night? That’s the trouble with statistics. The kicks and handballs don’t show you how you belong.

I have never been terribly preoccupied with belonging. It doesn’t bother me to be on the periphery. The view is generally better.

Last Saturday night, thirteen minutes into the final quarter, when all the action was in the centre, the periphery is precisely where I found myself. Nature had called and I had followed her siren cry, extracting myself from Row 18, jumping the too-deep concrete steps in twos until I was ‘backstage’ behind the concourse. No-one much around. The clopping of my wood-soled clogs drew attention from the teenage kid reconciling his Krispy Kreme stand. It’s quite a walk to the ‘ladies’ at Homebush. What was I missing, all alone?

Then, I noticed it. All the way there and back, across the endless poured concrete slabs – clop clop, clop clop – I could hear the tidal roar of the crowd, swelling and retreating. And it gave me as much of an indication of where the match was at as if my eyes were trained on it. It gave me as great a sense of being a spectator as sitting face to face with the 33 078 that I returned to.

This seemingly insignificant walk on the outskirts of the game was the final, lasting residue of the night for me. Kieren Jack’s match winning kick, ruckman Jolly’s 28 hit outs, Teddy Richards’ 9 marks, all of Goodes’ 26 possessions, Barry’s career high 5 tackles, Rhyce Shaw’s 11 run and bounces and the skipped heartbeat of a last gasp victory were all superseded by a walk to the toilet.

At home, I lay for some time with my nose in Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power and, by about 2am, I understood the power of my strange little Saturday night stroll between doors 131 and 134 - I had truly communed with Barry.

Sometimes it’s not until you remove yourself from the central focal point that you realise where you belong, or how you belong, or that you belong, in the picture. As Canetti says:

'There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognise or at least classify it.’

That might explain why Baz himself fell prey to the statistics. Fear of the unknown, of how he may or may not perform. He was chasing those stats himself. And, in return, the journalists, the supporters – none of us know what will become of Barry Hall next mark, next week, next year - we pinned him to his individual stats to hold the unknown at bay.

‘It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite. …. It is only in this moment when all who belong to the crowd get rid of their differences and feel equal.’

That might be what happened to Barry this week. He surrendered himself to his crowd – his team - and no longer feared the unknown of what he could or couldn’t do as an individual. Last weekend, his success may have confirmed for Barry that it really is OK to be on the periphery, just like Roosy says, that you won’t miss any of the action, that the aggregate disposals really don’t tell it all, that the tackles and the one percenters*, the much prized, team oriented stats which don’t however get published in Monday’s sports section, say just as much as the kicks and handballs and marks. He may finally have convinced himself.

Mark Twain’s ‘dim and uncertain’ (see Quote of the Week) can reveal just as much as the straight and narrow.The bad news, then, is that, if we follow the logic of Twain’s words, such a revelation for Barry seems to support the ‘ten thousand laboured words’ route rather than the lightning bolt.

So, just what does Slattery Publishing have in store for us in 2009? Barry Hall – Pull no Punches: the authorised and self-authored autobiography.

Noooooooooo!

Happy tipping!


*One percenter: Selfless acts by players such as smothers, knock-ons, shepherds, spoils and chases, which are often not recognised in official statistics but are invaluable to teams.

To nonetheless play around with the official stats click here.
And check this out.

THANK YOU

to the ladder technician for his weekly hard work.

BULLETIN - POST ROUND 7

The concurrence of Mother’s Day and some significant OUTS last week got me thinking about my place in the team.

I have never been much into Mother’s Day. I’m into mothers, but I’m not sure about allocating them one day a year for recognition of all the unscheduled, uncontracted, unpaid and non-negotiable hours of mind-numbingly difficult work. And I’m into days … although I actually prefer nights. But, this Mother’s Day combination got me thinking about the perfect gift.

Sunday cuddles, flowers, chocolates, breakfasts in bed, afternoon tea cakes … look, they’re all nice. But tell me a mother around the nation who wouldn’t prefer to receive the embossed card, in pastel hues, which reads:

‘You’re dropped.’

Not in the adolescent sense of the word, in the footy sense of the word.

I have been trying, on and off, for the best part of five years, to get myself momentarily but meaningfully dropped from my team. Playing in the centre is taxing. I’ve tried a number of different paths: sub par performances, sloppy skills, off-target delivery, inconsistency, a vehement defiance of the team ethic, long recovery times, a bad attitude to training … carrying a pot belly.

Despite some remarkably poor on and off-field incidents, I have been unable to get myself a team imposed suspension or an appointment with the tribunal. I wouldn’t mind a Tuesday night in Melbourne, in a decent frock, down at Docklands. I could head off for a nice glass of Cabernet Merlot after accepting my two week ban.

But it’s not me who’s off to Melbourne tonight. Oh no. Despite having a beastly head cold and persistent cough - de Hauteclocque (virus) – it is the tall, very mobile, centre half forward who is headed for the southern city, leaving me with the little tagger to myself until Sunday. Through the years, there have been other injuries: de Hauteclocque (back); de Hauteclocque (general soreness); de Hauteclocque (fed up). But I’ve still not seen my name in the OUTS. I have even considered worse (self inflicted?) injuries for my week off, coveting as I do a trip to Germany to visit my sister. Although, there are probably better ways to get there than radical hamstring treatments or hernia operations.

My team doesn’t take the Matthew Knights or John Worsfold approach with me – give ‘em a couple of weeks in the seconds, break the cycle, build their confidence, bring ‘em back for maximum impact. No. My team takes the James Hird approach to flatness – just keep playing ‘em. Hird suggested, during the early part of last week, that out-of-form forward, Scott Lucas, could ‘turn it around’ while continuing to play: ‘You can have a bad six weeks and turn it around. Just because you're 31 years old doesn't mean you're finished.’ Lucas may be the sort of guy who doesn’t handle rotation well. But I could be the kind of girl who does.

A rotation through Bendigo could be good. It could be very re-invigorating. I could do the deep-shaft mine experience at Central Deborah nearby (although I suspect, when they saw the words deep and shaft side by side, the Herald Sun would be all over that!!). I could enjoy the city’s famous vintage talking tram tour, have a spell in an original 1860’s Chinese joss house or sip a long black in the award-winning, architecturally designed Bendigo Art Gallery café.

Eagle, Ashley Hansen, was dropped to the reserves this week too. ‘He'll get some good form under his belt and be back in the side sooner rather than later,’ said the club. I too would be motivated by a weekend with Swan Districts versus East Perth at Steel Blue Oval, Bassendean. Swans are my kind of bird, steel blue one of my favourite colours.

I’m not alone in this. Even great Hawthorn back pocketeer, four time Premiership coach and current ABC commentator, David Parkin, was looking for a way out last weekend. He put his career on the line before Friday night’s coverage, saying he would retire if the Bombers won. He too was last seen near Bendigo.

What about my team? How would they cope with my absence? I have faith that the Nolan boys could do it without me – the weekend that is, not the future (I’m not seeking a trade, just a wee stint on the sidelines). The Bombers won. The Eagles won. My individual talents are not unsurpassable. It’d be more a question of team structure.

They’d be fine around the stoppages, in the clinches, with the contested ball. They’d make some solid forward thrusts, execute some good goal assist-goal set plays. The area for concern would be the loose ball gets – I’m not sure either of the Nolan boys could find anything once it’s two feet further than their noses. This may make them vulnerable to turnovers. But at least the little one has genuine pace to chase it on the rebound. They would miss my clearances, my carrying skills, and they’d miss my ability to ice the cake towards the end.

That said, no player is indispensable, irreplaceable. Look at the calibre of the INs from last weekend: IN Ling - the fiercest tagger in the business. IN Cousins - the on-baller who goes until he vomits. Who knows what might happen to the Nolan boys, if they had to cover my territory. You know what they say … about opportunity. When they looked at Paddy Ryder’s tapes on Monday morning, do you think the Essendon coaching staff were devastated that David Hille went down for the season?

I suspect any ‘dropping’ I am going to achieve will have to be self imposed, because my team operates a bit like Terry Wallace. They regularly threaten to release me, but it’s usually promises, promises. Terry, at least, should live up to that nickname – Plough – and do something about breaking up the clods in his field of Tigers.

And while Terry and his Tigers flounder, almost-in-the-same-boat Mark Harvey, has pulled up the anchor and got his boys sailing instead. Nobody got a week off. Nobody got relegated. Nobody got given time to freshen up physically or mentally. Nobody had the cycle broken for them. Harvey revealed that the surfing movie - Bustin’ down the Door - was the inspiration behind the Dockers' win over Carlton. Do you think Blockbuster Bendigo carries that title?

In any case, Mother’s Day is over for another year. I’ve got 362 more days of the game plan to execute. If any of you have any ideas for some good motivational viewing please hit the COMMENTS button below. And shortly before the second Sunday in May 2010, I will be posting a custom-designed, downloadable template of the ‘You’re dropped’ card on the web. I will be encouraging my team to print it. And you’re welcome to do the same for your mum.

Happy Tipping!