Hope, Life, Obeisance and the Sydney Swans

spacer

photo: Quinn Rooney

A guy stepped off a train and shouldered his way Sydney-style through too much commuter traffic, words folding against his chest and re-opening themselves just long enough to be read: When men can be made to hope, they can be made to win. Footy season was only a week away when I noticed his sloganed shirt. All footy fans, in the weeks before the season, live in that brand of suspended hope that they and their team will be winners. By Round 8, it’s started to sort itself somewhat, between ideal and reality.

Swans supporters hoped like hell we would win Round 8. For all the buffed and tuned media chit chat, all the Zen non-attachment to past play, for all the refusal to give any leg up to an opposition still finding the top of its game again … reckon those boys hoped like hell they would win too. Sam Reid, very professional, called it the right mindset. The more maverick Rampe edged closer to the truth in calling the burning GF hangover motivation but was careful to camouflage his confession against the texture of individual goal setting. Smart boy that one; I like the way he plays the lines.

If hope is a cocktail of expectation and desire, wary supporters allow themselves to get more involved in desire. But players have to go as far as expectation. What it must be to get dressed in that each week in front of tens of thousands of people and wear it like you truly believe. Do many of us know what sort of muster that really must be?

Sitting down in front of the match on Saturday night, it occurred to me that part of picking a team and watching footy is the act of renewing interest in the business of hope. Weekly. Easy to lose sight of it day to day in this current version of world, but hello to the frame of the footy game.

Boys came out so hard. Early goals and early pressure, some kind of accurate thinking and doing. Kieren Jack looked the liveliest I’ve seen him in an age; Midge McGlynn looked healthy angry; Goodes looked pure and skilled, like the champion that comes out to run the really big race well. It was the kind of exposition that keeps the reader reading, the start that promised all versions of peregrination through hope and loss of it, win and loss of it.

*

I came home from a day’s work in the gallery a few weeks ago, the grey and chill of my inner city suburb, the low take-off of big big planes going who knows where, launching their unthinkable flights across hours of sky, setting off to find my Cygnet in someone else’s family home, carers that group around when Dad is away for weeks. A worker from one of the nearby rag factories was heading home the other way. She wore a vivid purple t-shirt emblazoned with huge fluoro type: YOLO. The sort of tee I would usually dismiss as annoying acronymic text talk, but caught on a traffic island between port-bound lorries and suburban Subarus, the stark reality overrode the glibness. You do only live once.

But in footy you live at least once each week. These players rise week to week. Yes, they train full time. Yes, they are paid their hundreds of thousands to engage diet and recovery and massage and practice. Lots and lots of practice. But mentally and physically, how they rebound each week for the match-day contest—it’s venerable.

This Round 8 was—

            Opportunity, here take it!

                        Ooh, missed it.            

            Opportunity, here it is again, take it take it!

                        Oh, missed … No! Got it, yep got it! Run!

Opportunity. Pass the bloody opportunity on!

Yep. Beside you! Score!

It felt like a stop frame of a whole life, played back at high speed. Over and over again. Contest after contest. On a loop. When those players fold in the frame at the end of a match—think Daniel Hannebery—I feel this overwhelming gratitude that they wring every bit of capacity from themselves and I vicariously glimpse what that type of intent can produce.

*

A Dad at a supermarket organised his kids into the car. He wore a maroon square cap with patch-stitched lettering: OBEY.

Obey the hope, the effort, the instructions, the culture. We as outsiders are told over and over, that a champion team is about everyone playing their role, that patterns and geometry are in place to cope with nearly every possible happenstance of a game. Some games look as if that’s just about true.

Everyone played in place on Saturday night. Reid swinging like a toddler who’s just learnt the manoeuvre. Rampe kicking pinpoint long like Mal and Marty used to. Kennedy, Mitchell, Hannebery and Parker miraculously side by side in perfect rhombuses most of the night long. Grundy and Teddy high. Smith low. No need for the scoring superstar. He has other roles he can play. And the Captain appeared on the horse for the ‘one last chance’ fairy-tale ending.

That’s the rare magic of life, or writing, or footy, or … when things just come together. Most often, it’s enigmatic, almost hands off. A certain preparation is in place. And every now and then, it combines with hope and you only live once in that inexplicable melange, and your team wins by almost nothing, but fiercely. It’s a lesson in being awake and obeying life force.

Thank you, Swans. I appreciate it.

Tiger Diary - 19.5.2015

spacer

Photo: Wayne Ludbey

Under the Invisibility Cloke

Nathan Buckley was born just 18 days before Damien Hardwick, but he looked less experienced, less healthy  and much older than the Richmond coach each time the cameras panned the Coaches boxes in last Sunday's game of 10 lead changes.

All his regrets and sadnesses about how the naughty umpy-wumpys over-scrutinise the wily, wingeing Travis Cloke are seated in his own regrets about his own premiership-less playing career. If Buckley doesn't start acting his age, his bitterness will bleed even deeper into his beloved Pies.

Bucks, you might think, may have had more success than Dimma, both on the field and also somewhat as a coach.

Not so though. 2 flags, 1 with the Dons and 1 with Port and another as assistant coach at Hawthorn leaves Dimma way out in front, despite the utterly superior class of Buckley as a player. 

The perennial victim, Mick the Malted Milkhouse taught Bucks (and T. Cloke) a lot of bad ways. Travis still prolifically uses many of these dark skills to get away with far more than he's ever pinged for, while Bucks looks on, thinking and feeling it could still be him out there. Pain and regret and Baggage!

Frankly I don't think Bucks will ever be a great coach at Collingwood. 

He will never coach them to a flag.

Malthouse (and Travis's dad David) both defected from Richmond to Collingwood with success.

Sheeds left Richmond to brilliantly succeed coaching the Dons.

Similarly, Leigh Matthews left Hawthorn behind to become the benchmark successful coach for the Lions.

Hirdy - well, it hasn't been so good for him staying on at Essendon, has it? 

Baggage! 

Buck off now Nathan, for everybody's sake. Just Buck off, before it's too late.

Tiger Diary - 25.4.2015

spacer

photo: wayne ludbey

BEST WE FORGET

Without the constraints of nominal direction and expectation at large to mess things up, the Melbourne Demons tonight let a game of Aussie Rules fall comfortably into their lap. For the Tigers, with a birthright to ascendant greatness, tonight's game asked little of the supreme overlords - just pass the time until you have won. 

Meanwhile, in the real world, the ascendent catch-phrase was "Lie Back and Think of England, Tiger."
An England that still finds truth in a game where the ball always bounces according to the symmetrical laws of physics.
Surplant please the nonsense about angles of incidence equalling all the vast angles of coincidence.

Gallipoli knows that for every dead Turk there were at least hundreds of dead surplanted Armenians.
No death was a good one - ANZAC, Turk, Kurd, Armenian or, or, or Crimean or Croat or Christian Democrat.
No death where there is no-one to bury you right can lie decent with time.

Pre-season: Swans in the Suburbs

The Cygnet and I have a packet of salt and vinegar chips apiece and are tracking the light towers down familiar suburban streets. We’re late arrivals after trapeze class. Neighbourhood cats have staked out the front porches to watch the passing parade. Creepers smell like sweet evening. Street parking is at a strange premium. This is our suburb.

The playground above Henson Park is full. Of kids in bare feet and adults in red and white. We slip through the high gates on Amy Street. The perfectly mown grass of the hill is yellowed by approaching sundown; it’s bespotted in rugs and kids and grown ups reclining on a Friday night and we follow the incline, down and onto the concourse to the wooden pews in schoolyard blue. One of the mums from our year is leaving for a girl’s night out with her first grader. She channels us to her husband and son on the boundary line.

And on the field, as remarkable or unremarkable as you like, boys in red and white striped jerseys, boys in blue and white striped jerseys, stars and kids and a yellow oval ball. The Swans have brought their final intra-club to the suburbs. There are Goodes and Reid. Jack, Parker, Kennedy, the Canadian. And a bunch of kids with numbers and hairdos we don’t know. Who’s who?

The Cygnet’s Under 6s coach, Bryce, is spruiking junior club raffle tickets behind us. He is one of the world’s great assemblages of atoms. We embrace with genuine warmth. He stays a while and we chat, about the club, players departed, academy pick ups, players returning. People still ask me what you’re up to he says. The Cygnet pretends he has not heard. This is the ground onto which we emptied the Under 6s when it was raining enough to close the official training oval. They got to know mud between these posts. Bryce recalls an overhead mark the Cygnet took at Concord in the rain.

Some of the blue and red men are chasing the ball and kicking it and … well I can’t see much link footy, or many solid marks, but there are familiar structures and faces and it feels good. The siren sounds and the men divide into their blue and red huddles, sit down on the field among the eskis and masseurs and Marrickville hops the fence for half-time kick to kick. There’s a veteran’s match at one end to boot! One stage and three shows. But only a couple of gentle clouds bear witness. Everyone else just wants a kick on home soil. Coach Bryce has to keep going. He’s promised himself a beer when he’s all sold out.

Can you long for something you have never known? As I climb into the George V Memorial Grandstand to unite with one of the O’Reilly boys, I’m feeling a deep phantom nostalgia for suburban footy—walking distance, the reveal of the ground at sundown, children frayed by exhaustion, rolling in twos down grassy hills, children with buns stuffed in their hands, tomato sauce pooling in the webbing between thumb and fingers. Wooden benches and plenty of spots. Magic hour among familiar faces with footy as rhythm section. I want a whole back catalogue of all that!

The planes rise like they always do over Marrickville on Friday evening.

Up in the King George V Memorial Stand, O’Reilly Max has a print out of the team lists. Monty Krochmal. Doug Hadden, George Hewett. Sounds like the country club! O’Reilly Max assures me that they’re the Sydney Uni fill-ins. But rookie Sean McLaren has the Samurai bun! Parker is busy. I keep seeing Jetta. And the new number 29. The captain wipes out Lloyd. I think we have five or six ruckmen. And Tippett’s in a black t-shirt on the concourse near a Dalmatian in a bow.

I see Bryce. An elderly woman calls him over and I realise I never bought tickets. I jump three rows and give him $10 for three of his finals stubs. Buy yourself a beer, Bryce. And as Rampe shanks a kick at the Sydenham Road end and a proportion of the team is bent in half, and as the shadows begin to claim the hill, the Cygnet says he’s hungry and we leave.

Sally, the junior club registrar is standing by the heritage gate, tongs in hand. We embrace with genuine warmth. Her son, the Cygnet’s former teammate, is in the Swans Academy this year. Can’t wait to say I drove him to games on winter mornings. I offer her a bag of second hand shorts and boots for the club, for Under 6s setting off down the road. The towers are lighting up, the footy is still going and I’m so happy I feel like crying.

We’re in the local pizza place waiting on our half/half when Sally calls. You’d better get back here. I think there’s an announcement you’re going to want to hear. She holds her phone to an indistinguishable noise. I think you’ve won the raffle. She saw them draw the winning ticket and there’s only one Mathilde in Marrickville.

Back through the Charlie Meader Memorial gates and I can see Sally. And Bryce. With a beer in hand. But there’s a race to cross. Got to get past Jack and Rampe and Grundy. Out of my way boys, I’ve won a jumper. Marty Mattner’s eating a salad roll on the side. Bryce and I embrace with genuine surprise and warmth. I claim my signed Swans guernsey and pose for a photo with the Newtown Swans Club President and the winning ticket seller. Heading back to the car, I’m waiting to get past Jetta, so close I could hold his beautiful arm awhile. But you don’t. ‘Cause he’s a guest at your place and it’s dinner time.

Pre-season: Swans Unlimited

I bought a new album today. It’s a precious thing, finding a disc you want to add to the shelf. Mainline is the work of Sydney hip hop collective ‘One Day’—four of Sydney’s leading hip hop lights working together so they could tour together. It’s intricately bold. Clever computer kids producing lyrical tunes with such deft rhythmical manoeuvres that solid musical ground is irrelevant. And I’ve always loved clever hip hop for the wordsmithery. Tonight, I’ve been cooking to the new album, just chopping and listening, seeing the poems come to view in thin air.

The swans have a new recruit. Someone there is making their own creative mark. Someone who has put their stamp on the pre-season like few others have.

I tuned into Swans TV some weeks ago to check on pre-season training. There comes a point in January when the mind starts to wander to Lakeside oval, to tanned bodies strapped into heart rate monitors, arms raised above heads, to skills and game plans and genteel Centennial park in the background—it’s a collective image that smacks of good potential.

In fact it was just inside the first week of January when Swans TV posted an interview with Marty Mattner talking about his new role as a development coach. Bless Marty, one of this Swan’s favourite players, we called him the general in the O’Reilly. That extended arm which urgently shunted players from side to side down back, the long left kick doing the rest. But he was a man of undifferentiated media offerings. Renown for the ‘Yeah, no …’ with which he began every answer and his quick delivery of stock standard phrases, Marty was a solid and tidy media performer.

Until January 6^th 2015, when an ambient sub-continental soundtrack took him in another direction. Accompanied by sitar and beats, Marty began his Swans TV analysis of the draftees and the integration process. It drifted in long sentences across happy footage and zoomed on stills … and so much focus pulling. The soundtrack was forcing Marty to talk in groove, his syntax following the build up of the track until the drum beat crescendoed somewhere around the one and a half minute mark and smoothed to a controlled summation of the importance of mentoring and getting things right from the start. I sat stunned at the end of the clip. Either Marty’s done a double degree in musicology and public speaking during the off season or Swans TV has a new editor.

The Community Camp golf day got a similar treatment. Buggies crossed in slow motion to the teasing pips of experimental electro. Skewed tee shots disappeared to the movement of an unlikely hint at melody. It was melancholy. And it was all slow motion—David Lynch on the Coffs Coast. Putt sequences were peppered with real-sound intrusions—Get in there! Has anyone heard Kansas sound genius Aaron Martin?

February’s intra club hit out had us back on the subcontinent. De-saturated images with upped blue highlights. No more slow motion. Real speed. Lots more coming into view—the coach prowling the back of the player pack and the finale, the focus pull along the boundary line, dissolving to black.

Only days later, the extended highlights—aka remix—was scored to rigorous rock. Full speed, full colour. A steadier frame. More of the locked-off shots, kicks completed. Something far more emphatic about this number. Some lovely climactic slow speed and then we were off again. All intensity and pressure and syncopation.

I’ve been feeling a bit gun shy about this change of Swans TV heart. It’s a bit sexy and very silly. It feels like an unfamiliar character who’s accidentally wandered centre stage when they should still be in the wings, a rookie accidentally elevated to the senior list before they’ve earned their stripes. It feels like a triumphing of brand and production and veneer over footy. I’m all for the collision of art and football; they are the two poles of my fascination planet. But this guy or gal is building a film clip portfolio with my Swans.

Ambient hip hop underscored today’s training highlights, gentle but sure beats with an introduced keyboard melody. There’s a story building at Swans TV. This is choreography not football. But just as I longed to listen to my new CD tonight, without visual distraction, so that I might make the visual poetry my own, I yearn to watch the boys create their artistry on the field, sans soundtrack, sans promotional lure.

I just replayed today’s training clip without sound. It’s Lars von Trier meets silent Buster Keaton. There’s vulnerability and effort. There’s isolation and co-ordination. There’s Marty doing the centre bounce. You can actually see the plain art of it.

Finals Diary: Week 3

spacer

The morning of the preliminary final, Sydney starts to show its colours. It’s contained. A fella sits in front of me on the train in a hand knitted red and white scarf. It could be coincidence, except my radar tells me it’s not. Leaving the station at Circular Quay, I spot a worker wearing a Swans jersey under his suit jacket heading into the AMP centre. Go Swans I say, just as we cross paths, and his concentrated day-face breaks into a childlike smile.

It’s my birthday. The sun is beaming. There’s half a day of work ahead. The gallery has a new show opening – an annual spring event which showcases new Australian artists; it’s in its final stages of prep. A couple of the Indigenous artists from way far north wander into the bookstore with shy English and Swans scarves. 

You going to the footy tonight? I proffer. It’s a universal language. 

Yes, they say in unison. Buddy. 

Ah, I add. And Goodesy and Jetts. 

And Buddy. 

It’s clear who they’ve come to see.

The Cob picks me up with a colour coded cake from the French patisserie. A wicked stack of vanilla dacquoise and crushed raspberry cream topped with a two inch high white chocolate rose, sprayed with pearl and studded with more raspberries. Celebration or consolation; either way it will work. I wonder how J the barista is doing. We collect the Cygnet and head to the last trapeze of the term. He catches a trick he’s been working on for weeks, the penny roll. 50 pennies worth. Doesn’t that Roo Ben Brown wear 50?

But it turns out to be a victory so comfortable that it warrants the sit back and relax. The cake is fine! We heat and sink the knife so it cuts perfectly.

Butterflies underlie almost everything in grand final week. Jitters that alternate between excitement and nerves. We’ve been through it before so it’s not the wide mouthed Gawd! of the first time. And it’s not the See! of the back up. It’s something else, an awareness of what it all means that alternates between background and full frame. My footy synaesthesia has taken hold once more. I filter my Instagram pics in increments of 24 for Rampe’s success down back. I notice my computer is 37% charged, an omen for the game of Goodes’ life. The Cygnet turned double digits on Tuesday, on the 23rd. 

These are the small adjustments of the week, which go some way to recognising the pinnacle. Saturday’s forecast to be 21 in Sydney – for McGlynn the man who missed out.

The Cygnet watched his first grand final at two days old. The Cob wheeled him to the maternity ward tea room to see Port beat the Brisbane champs. The Cygnet celebrated his first birthday the day the Swans won in 2005. A huge possie of friends gathered for an almighty grand final breakfast in Glebe, every one of them dressed in red and white, his cake iced by his aunty in a giant Sydney logo. It was champagne and toy cars in the afternoon as Leo Barry built up to that mark. The Cygnet was taken to the losing grand final at 2 years old. We paid with three years of allegiance to the West Coast Eagles, tiny yellow and navy socks on the line.  

And now it’s Thursday. We’re parked along the couch, the three of us, watching Marngrook. Gavin Wanganeen, the man who made me love the backline, is on the panel and Micky O is on his way. Suddenly Sydney are favourites and some out there don’t like it. They’re talking COLA and stars. They’re talking dollars and dickheads. The secateurs are out and the spring poppies are looking vulnerable. But they’re not talking negatives on Marngrook.

We’re going to sister-in-law’s for the big game. She’ll let us do prawns if we clean the bbq. They always put the Frenchie on dessert. Melissa messaged from Melbourne tonight: I can’t think of Saturday without my heart going boom boom boom. I’ll spend tomorrow trawling for red and white desserts. I’ll spend it at work, where my imagination will be pocketed for moments at a time on the MCG; Jetta in full flight, Rioli meters behind; Buddy seeking the arced white line of the forward pocket and slinging that leg across; Pyke to Kennedy or Pyke to Parker; Rohan running coast to coast; Goodes kicking the sealer. Breathe in. Breathe out. I can’t think of Saturday without a Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing going thump thump thump.

Finals Diary

spacer

The fans on the ad barrack confidently, bedecked in colours, arms raised, fists pumped, animated with all the slow motion intensity of digital editing. Browny calls the score with an overwrought performance: Don’t go quietly. He tells me they’ll take inspiration, passion and energy from me being there. He tells me to leave nothing in reserve. He tells me to go so there’s no mistaking my allegiance. He tells me that they can’t hear me from home.

Week 1

I wake on Saturday to rain in Sydney. The heritage bricks of my suburban footpath are oozing weeds and moss. We haven’t worn crisp clothes for weeks. The Cygnet has taken up cricket for the summer and the Under 12 players’ welcome is supposed to be on this morning with coaches and whites and sausages in the park. I lie in bed, throat sore, dry cough; too early to disembark. Would love a long morning in bed.

I flip the iPad to swans.com and the Cob and I watch a host of things on Swans TV just to hold the day at bay. Dew and Davis head to head, replicating three of Buddy’s best goals. When in doubt, the clowns. Then The Barrel: O’Loughlin and Lewie hosted by Bolton, all three around a barrel somewhere deep in the members’ bar - the elders of the club talking finals footy. Authority and calm, nerve Spackfilla from those who have been there, for those who simply watch on. Maybe I’m too sick to go this arvo.

Each year I try to feel the joy of finals, the renewal of September, the luck bestowed on us by supporters of teams not so lucky. But each year I feel unease, heading in. What if a season’s worth of  strength and self possession was all a ruse and the reality of finals strips us bare. What if a catastrophic domino train of injuries is about to befall the boys on the eve of the biggest game? Valiantly they will make it but destiny will have signed the cheque for the other party. What if they just don’t show up? I want to slink under the doona for the day, check the scores later on, watch a replay only from the nest of knowing.

The rain does not abate. The Cob heads off to a morning’s work. The cricket is cancelled. There’s time to make a birthday cake for sister-in-law, do the washing and hang it on the door frames, seek out the scarves and the binoculars, fry an egg for lunch. Until it can’t be put off any longer and the Cygnet and I are in the car on the long road out to Homebush. I suggest parlour games. He opts for the Klutz Encyclopedia of Immaturity.

Sister-in-law has bought the tickets for this first final –presents for all of our spring birthdays. Tickets in the pocket, a view we never have; we sit dead centre all season. The Cygnet and I arrive as the play siren sounds and the midfield gives its hands a final collective rub. It’s all new from this angle and it takes a while to reorient. Swans are kicking away from us and we hope for little action in the first.

It’s not only the view that’s unfamiliar. None of the Blood ‘family’ are there; no Gwen with her monotone calm and raised finger; no Connie with her frantic pessimism; no O’Reilly Max with his whiskey and his extra curricular commentary. There’s a lone woman in a scarf and headphones beside me, South African it turns out, introduced to AFL some five years ago by a Sri Lankan friend. She barracks beyond her years. There’s a family of four in front, parents book-ending two disinterested kids, the demolition of the Drumsticks as interesting to the smalls as the defensive pressure is to the olds. They’re all dressed in red and white. O’Reilly Max calls in the first break. He’s in the opposite pocket, watching us through his binoculars. I wave to no-one in particular and he assures me that Swans are looking the much better team and the scoreboard will come.

I can’t report on the game. The game was a kind of breath holding exercise. I never got past that feeling of wanting to hide until I knew which way it was going. ‘Bracing’ was the nose, the palate and the aftertaste. It occurred to me later on that sitting on the 50 arc in a final means it’s all or nothing, disaster or elation, you don’t get any of the down time of the link play through the middle. You’re on, or they are.

Browny’s right about allegiance. It brings indefinable things. It brings the butterflies that I didn’t have on Friday night when the Cats were chasing the Hawks. It brings instant, tender solidarity. The unison call of thank you as Rohan gets a free. A slice of birthday cake offered to my South African friend at half time, to have with her thermos of tea.

Of course, there is one moment that stands out. One slow motion moment, as charged as that ad, when time steps out of its regular gait and Lance arcs a kick from the impossible angle. O’Reilly Max watches it depart and we watch it approach. Perfectly off course. And then perfectly turning. I never shared a name with my South African friend, but we hold each other’s unfamiliar hands as Bay 116 collectively rises. A fella two rows down turns to the Cob and confesses: I don’t even go for you guys but that’s one of the best goals I’ve ever seen. There’s no mistaking - you can’t see that from home.

Week 2

The exhalation of a preliminary berth. I go to see the baristas D and J at the coffee shop on Friday. I want to congratulate J on North’s Elimination victory. I want to tell him that I’ve tipped the Roos. I want to assure him that I truly think they can do it.

D is behind the machine. With one of the girls.

How’s our North Melbourne supporter holding up? I ask.

Good, good, I saw him yesterday.

I think they can do it, I offer.

So does he.

J is in Melbourne. He’s gone down the week before and repeated the dose for the semi. I take my coffee and D and I share quips about a peaceful weekend.

The Cob, the Cygnet and I head south that night. The Frenchman and his Countess are off to France on Wednesday and we want to say goodbye over a cheese platter, a selection of pinot noirs and a few quiet moments picking citrus and violets, flying paper airplanes off the deck and looking out at night skies you can actually see.

We find the coverage on the highway, somewhere just short of the National Park. Gerard Whateley is brave. Professional that he is, I can hear the clipped unease in his call. Roos get off to a blinder. Thomas and run and goal after goal. We barrack only for our tips – the Cob and I on the royal blue, the Cygnet with the navy. We barrack for an allegiance which has been tested for a long time without significant reward (although I suspect they half love that, those Shinboners). We barrack for a brother’s right to stick the finger and for a (possible) changing of the guard and for the freedom to feel unaffected. We barrack until we lose the frequency, somewhere just out of Wollongong.

When we arrive at the top of the hill somewhere out of Berry, we find the Frenchman installed in front of the half time coverage. He’s still trying to love the game, to decipher it, understand it and care. We accompany him on the second half ; he is delighted by the see-saw but repelled by the spirit. A Frenchman shy of attitudinal biff?

But it’s a different story on the Saturday. I sit at his feet like the small daughter I was, taking him through the play. The out on-the-full, the holding the ball, the man-on-man and the zone. The captain of one team, the star of the other. The indigenous brilliance on show. I dissect free kicks and kick-ins, interchange and subs, vests and runners, hit-outs, clearances, disposals, bananas … You know, I sought zere were no rules, he giggles.

I could see him falling for something, his engineer’s mind putting the calculations together, something was being built inside of him. My only concern was that it is teal and black.

You know, he told the Cygnet over croissants on Sunday morning. I really enjoyed ze game last night. Your mum as taught me er lot. Really, it was ze best game I ave ever seen. The Cygnet didn’t say much. He had tipped the Dockers.

Week 3

I went to see D and J today. I haven’t seen J since the finals began. D was behind the machine. With one of the girls.

So, it’s the battle of the baristas this week, I began.

That’s cute, replied D.

We pottered through a conversation about whether to go, ticket prices and barcodes, booking times, Homebush versus the SCG. He delivered me a coffee and I took it harbourside. Sydney was perfect today. Blue skies sponged with the lightest cloud. Spring sun.

It occurred to me, allegiance is not as much fun when it has no opposition. I missed J. There was no tension in mutual back patting. I found out later that arvo from a colleague that he’s not working there anymore. D never said anything. It was almost as if he too needed to hold him there, a phantom banter mate to play with.

I’m ready for that hit of finals again, that edge to walk. I may well be in my living room this week; Homebush is far from my favourite place on Friday night. It’s my birthday and I’m leaning towards a great red, a French cake and my two boys. A highway of messages between friends and the gift of a win. Those Bloods might just hear me from home.