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Steve Strevens is a Collingwood man. His freelance journalism has been widely published in Australia and overseas, and he is the author of Bob Rose: a dignified life. He lives in the Victorian Mallee and is currently writing a book about his love of the Murray River.
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KEEPING
THE FAITH Collingwood . . . the pleasure, the pain, the whole damned thing
STEVE STREVENS
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First published in 2005 Copyright © Steve Strevens 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 E-mail:
[email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Strevens, Steve. Keeping the faith: Collingwood . . . the pleasure, the pain, the whole damned thing. ISBN 1 74114 668 2. 1. Collingwood Football Club. 2. Australian football teams – Victoria – Collingwood. 3. Football fans – Australia. I. Title. 796.336 Set in 11/14 pt Garamond by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group, Maryborough, Victoria 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For all those Collingwood supporters who keep the faith
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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. Samuel Butler Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1
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CONTENTS Foreword The Collingwood Football Club 2004
xi xiii
1
Love and losses
1
2
Prelude to winter
7
3
None of it really matters
13
4
Opening bounce
28
5
Other people’s shoes
35
6
Kicking against the wind
44
7
Losses and gains
50
8
It’s war out there
58
9
Anyway, it’s our jumper
67
10
The traditional enemy
76
11
Injuries make a difference
85
12
Collingwood and the world
92
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13
Heroes and villains
103
14
Barrackers a-shouting
111
15
Hopers and believers
126
16
Footballus interruptus
136
17
You train and they play
140
18
True believers
160
19
The other side of the fence
169
20
The feminine touch
176
21
Being Eddie McGuire
187
22
Sounds and memories
194
23
The good old days
200
24
Keeping your feet on the ground
207
25
The football web
217
26
Turning back the years
226
27
Black and white blues
235
28
Final curtain
243
29
Keeping the faith
250
Acknowledgments
257
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FOREWORD When asked to write a foreword to Steve Streven’s latest book, Keeping the Faith, I felt quite honoured as I had read his outstanding biography on the life of the great Bob Rose, my ex-coach and a man so greatly loved and admired by all at Collingwood and in the football world and whose life was so well documented by Steve in that particular book. In this latest offering, Steve covers the 2004 season of the Collingwood Football Club from a passionate supporter’s view using humour, self-deprecation and lots of anecdotes of events and characters from each particular game, as well as a nostalgic look at associated games of a bygone era. It is obvious that from the time he started following the Magpies in 1963, after moving from South Australia to Swan Hill—a Barry Brice drop kick away from Nyah West which of course is where the Rose family originated—Steve has been one of the true black and white faithful. Steve explores what it means to barrack for Collingwood and tries to get to the heart of what it is that makes Collingwood unique, or whether in fact the Magpies are just one of many similar clubs. From my experience as an ex-player, I must add that Collingwood supporters idolise all their players xi
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and place them on a pedestal that takes a lot to shake down. Steve identifies the psyche of the ‘typical’ Collingwood fan but also discovers that, as he expected, there really isn’t a ‘typical fan’ but that they are people from all socio-economic backgrounds, that they come from all walks of life, and that they barrack for Collingwood for often hereditary reasons, but also for many other individual reasons. The one unique element that shines through in this excellent book is the shared passion of the Collingwood fan for the feeling of belonging to a club, a brotherhood bonded by pride, by shattering disappointments and exhilarating successes and an unwavering belief in the Collingwood family and the expectation of the next game and the next season. Steve questions why Magpie supporters are always there in attendance even in bleak times for the Club. He captures brilliantly the inner feelings of a true supporter and his or her eternal optimism and for that I think this book is appropriately titled Keeping the Faith. Peter McKenna
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THE COLLINGWOOD FOOTBALL CLUB 2004 Eddie McGuire—Club President Neil Balme—Head of Football Operations Mick Malthouse—Coach Nathan Buckley—Captain Playing List—Scott Burns, James Clement, Cameron Cloke, Jason Cloke, Richard Cole, Tom Davidson, Leon Davis, Alan Didak, Josh Fraser, Brent Hall, Brodie Holland, Ben Johnson, David King, Ben Kinnear, Zane Leonard, Paul Licuria, Tarkyn Lockyer, Matthew Lokan, Ryan Lonie, Nick Maxwell, Mark McGough, Steven McKee, William Morrison, Luke Mullins, Bo Nixon, Shane O’Bree, Simon Prestigiacomo, Guy Richards, Anthony Rocca, Julian Rowe, Luke Shackleton, Brayden Shaw, Heath Shaw, Rhyce Shaw, Dane Swan, Chris Tarrant, Shane Wakelin, Tristen Walker, Andrew Williams, Shane Woewodin.
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1 LOVE AND LOSSES
Brisbane v Collingwood— 27 September 2003—MCG I was devastated after Brisbane demolished Collingwood in the 2003 Grand Final. All those familiar feelings I’d endured at similar times over the years had returned. It was tempting to think it was another grand final demolition, but that was not the case. At least the year before we—I say ‘we’ as Collingwood barrackers think they are part of it all—were in with a chance of winning for most of the game, playing with a desperation not many outsiders thought we had. We’d struggled for most of that season but we seemed like a different side in the finals. The Magpies were tough and strong and their self-belief obvious. The victory in Adelaide against Port in the qualifying final that year was one of the club’s finest hours. Two weeks later Brisbane was overwhelming favourite for the flag. No-one gave us any real chance but every one of the players who wore the black and white stripes gave everything. Of course, even though we were always 1
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close, there were the usual stages of the game when I thought it was all over, when, with that familiar churning in the stomach, I just knew we were going to lose. It would not have been a real Collingwood final otherwise. And then, with only a few minutes left, all of us poor, demented souls could taste the victory. All we needed was a goal and we looked like getting it. Then that bloody annoying Jason Akermanis suddenly bobbed up. He had done nothing for the day and then arrived as a peroxide-haired angel of doom. He kicked the goal that mattered. We threw ourselves back into the last few minutes but at the siren, we’d lost another one. In fact, 2002 followed the pattern of most of the grand finals we had lost: at some stage during the game we had looked like we were going to win. But this latest one was an exception. As was 1980, when Kevin Bartlett ran around looking like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings with his wispy hair and bulging eyes, kicking goals from everywhere. And when Geoff Raines charged out of the centre and kicked long bombs to David Cloke and others in the square. That year we were nowhere near good enough. That year was a one-off. Or so I thought. When my son Zac and I settled in front of the television, we felt a confidence born from a decisive run of recent victories by a team confident of their destiny. We had toyed with the idea of trying to buy tickets but I didn’t really want to have to sell Zac to raise the money you need if you aren’t a celebrity of some sort, so we decided a private viewing would be best. The pre-match entertainment over, we munched on our pies and sauce and waited for the first bounce. Afterwards, the more I thought about it, the more I replayed the game in my mind, the more I realised that 2
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we didn’t give a yelp. We were amazingly bad, horrific, incompetent and all the other adjectives any of the commentators mentioned. I wasn’t sure the critics were right when they said some of the players lacked courage. I reckon that was a bit over the top. They may have played terribly but I don’t think they were afraid. Bad decisions? Sure. Taking their eyes off the ball at times? Indeed. Overawed at times? Absolutely. But afraid? I didn’t think so. Collingwood had been nigh on perfect for the previous couple of months. There was one consolation; at least it was over early. The way we played and the way Brisbane tore into us gave us three and a half quarters to get used to the idea of another loss. It had all started during the week when Anthony Rocca was suspended. I was at the MCG for the preliminary final against Port Adelaide, three rows back from the fence, and I could almost see Rocca’s mind ticking over as he cocked his elbow. Everyone around me knew what would happen. Two weeks at least was the consensus. One suggestion was four: ‘Two for the elbow and two for being dumb.’ Before the previous grand final we had waited anxiously to see what would happen to Jason Cloke—who was extremely unlucky to be suspended— and here we were again. Rocca got what he deserved at the tribunal and Pies fans everywhere groaned. I groaned too. Not out of sympathy for Rocca but because it was yet another wasted opportunity, and because most of the media commentators and the club seemed to feel sorry for him. ‘It’s a big penalty to miss a grand final’ was one comment, and ‘He’s a shattered boy, Anthony’ was another. 3
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‘So he bloody well should be!’ I yelled at the television during one news report. Everyone was so serious about poor old Anthony. ‘What about bloody us?’ I yelled again. After the tribunal had made their decision we all knew what was coming. There are many times as a Collingwood fan when you just know what will happen. As much as you try not to think about it, something gnaws away at you. It is almost as if the script has been written and all you do is follow it. Part of the script was our astute coach Mick Malthouse—he of the grimace and serious look—playing Jason Cloke at centre half-forward. Even though he’d gone forward a few times during the season, the move was never going to work. Poor old Clokey—suspended for the 2002 Grand Final and then asked to play a position where he had no hope of doing well. Then I thought I was being too hard on Mick. After all, he had done wonders for us. He obviously knew what he was doing and he had created a real team in every sense of the word. He was forgiven. Sort of. Yet I reckoned Mick was the only person in the country who didn’t think Cloke should have been moved to the back line about five minutes after the start. But no, Mick left him there, flailing around like a big, blond barramundi looking for a river. It seemed almost belligerently obstinate of our coach. After the final siren I walked around the garden for a few minutes while Zac went to his bedroom and listened to some mournful, and hopefully therapeutic, music. I had a couple of cans, sat under the cottonwood tree in the evening glow, and reflected on why I felt like I did. I remembered hearing once that the shrinks say 4
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there is a perverse sense of growth at such a devastating time, that everyone needs a bit of adversity in their lives. They obviously don’t barrack for Collingwood. They can sit, smile, and dish out all the platitudes they like but they do not suffer like the rest of us. They do not have nightmares about Harmes and Hopkins, or Akermanis for that matter. They do not ache inside from what their football team does or from the knowledge that in some way you knew they were going to do it. They’re wrong. There is no growth at all during those times. None whatsoever. Only despair. So why do we barrack for Collingwood? Most of it is hereditary, passed down from generation to generation. Some families have all barracked for the Pies since the club was formed. Admittedly, a few traitors have picked their own team and gone off to barrack for the likes of Richmond and St Kilda. Or even Geelong. Risking their family inheritances. Others have been attracted by the glorious history of Collingwood, barracking for them because everyone else they knew did. Or because everyone they knew hated the Pies. There are probably as many reasons as there are supporters. My mate Geoff Wilson, a lawyer in Melbourne, told me once that our personalities guide us to Collingwood. He said that we all enjoy a bit of torment every now and again. That we gather and stay true because we still dream that whatever the odds we will overcome them. And if we don’t, we know that at least we’ll be there. ‘That’s just who we are,’ he said. ‘Like love, it’s better to have tried and lost than to not have been there at all.’ I told him he’d spent too much time listening to the shrinks. 5
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Brisbane (20.14.134) d Collingwood (12.12.84)
6
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2 PRELUDE TO WINTER
For me it all began in the late 1950s when my father (God rest his soul) decided to relocate his family from the green of the English countryside to the outback of Australia. ‘Not going to the city,’ he said. ‘Cities are all the same’. He got that right. So off we sailed to South Australia and a place called Glossop in the Riverland district where Dad had secured a job as a ‘ten-quid Pom’ on a fruit block. For my first ten years I’d lived on a diet of village cricket in the summer and soccer with West Ham in the winter. Dad took me from our home near Cambridge to London a couple of times to see the Hammers play. He would walk along the pathway on the terraces at Upton Park, calling out ‘room for a little ’un!’ to the cloth-hatted men standing closer to the touchline. Invariably someone would yell back and I’d make my way down to the fence and watch the game from knee level before being returned to my father and the smell of safety when he wrapped his old duffle coat around me. 7
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When we reached the other side of the world there was none of that. Just a strange-looking game that had us hooked from the moment we saw our first quarter when a workmate of Dad’s took us to a match about a week after we arrived. I watched this breathtaking mayhem unfold. No structure, no rules, or so it seemed, and no organisation. No backward steps either. I went to a small school with one teacher and a number of kids who were not that keen on Poms. My only friend was Jimmy, a little blackfella who also had his problems with being an outsider. Besides getting the cuts regularly from the teacher who delighted in thumping us for anything at all, Jimmy and I would take it in turns to be belted up by the other kids at lunchtime. We would try to hide in the gum trees and peppercorns that grew tall and strong from the hot red dirt in the yard, but they always found us. On the weekends Jimmy’s grandfather—a huge, glistening black man called Clarence—would take us fishing in the Murray River and teach me where the cod and yellowbelly hid. He’d show me snakes and lizards and different birds that filled me with excitement and wonder. He’d cook yabbies in a black pot over a gum-leaf fire and the smell of the boiling crustaceans and the eucalyptus smoke would linger with me for hours. Clarence had played football in Adelaide and when the fish weren’t biting he taught me how to kick and mark on the nearby mudflats. As practice, Clarence would let go with some of the biggest torpedoes ever and he’d make Jimmy and I run to fetch them. It would take me three kicks to return the scratched and faded footy. He’d smile to himself as the ball arced through the sky towards some distant landing point. The further it travelled the wider his grin became. I think he did it for 8
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his own pleasure, lost in the memories of his talent and wishing he could have still played. Clarence and Jimmy barracked for Port Adelaide, the Magpies, so I did too. Looking back I can’t believe I actually liked that team at all. I had a brief flirtation with Norwood because one of the other kids followed them but the ruggedness of the Port players was different and besides, Jimmy was my mate. A month or so later I found I could play the game. The other kids could see that as well so it wasn’t long before they stopped belting me and invited me to play with them. Sadly, as much as I tried to support him, things never changed for Jimmy. In the summer we moved again—to Victoria—and as far as football and all that surrounded it was concerned, it may as well have been another world. We went to Swan Hill, Bobby Rose territory in the Mallee, and although he’d left Collingwood by then and was coaching in Wangaratta, Bobby was still spoken about in reverential tones. We were still in England when the Magpies had last won the flag back in ’58 and although I transferred my allegiance from Port to Collingwood when we moved from South Australia, I didn’t follow them intensely until 1963 when Bobby came back to Victoria Park. When he returned I knew things would be OK and that the Magpies would be mighty forever. A month after the grand final, as I moped around the garden while my wife looked out the window at me, shaking her head and suggesting that I should grow up, I was still thinking about Collingwood. Thinking about the long years of torment we’d suffered, the agony, the ache of losing. Sure, there was 1990 but you can’t live on 9
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one memory for long. Perhaps that might be the trouble, I thought. Perhaps we were content with that one flag stuck in the middle of forty-five years. Surely not. Not in my case anyway and not in the case of all those I knew who barracked for Collingwood. Gradually, the pain receded, lodging in the back of my mind, not constantly and insufferably at the front. Christmas came and went while New Year’s Eve brought the usual headaches and the usual promises. I spent a number of summer hours mowing lawns, dreaming about drilling goals from the boundary, and taking speccies by leaping higher than the roof at Telstra Dome. The cricket and tennis wound down and then suddenly it was the middle of January. By then I had spent enough time in the garden, enough time fishing in the Murray River, enough time worrying about the year before. I was ready again; ready to face whatever the new season had to offer. I’ve had them since I was young; distracting feelings that arrive periodically while I’m waiting around for winter. Actually, if I was honest, distracting feelings are with me nearly all the year. They sneak up on me at the most inopportune moments. For instance, I’ll be talking business to somebody and my mind will be in the Sherrin Stand at Victoria Park or at the Lexus Centre, or walking across Punt Road to the MCG. On other occasions my wife will be telling me about some important date that’s fast approaching and I won’t be there. Well, I’ll be there physically but not in spirit, so to speak. I’ll have drifted off into some other world where football rules and the gods are all Collingwood fans. Where I have a weekly meeting with Mick Malthouse to convince him I can be of assistance. And he listens. 10
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Then I’m brought back to earth with a resounding thud as the words ring in my ears. ‘You’re not listening to me!’ Despite protestations of innocence, my guilt is palpable. I am then told there are things in the world more important than football, a sentiment with which I heartily agree. This inevitably leads to a small discussion on the merits or otherwise of her speaking to me again and whether my stated belief in matters of importance other than football is actually true. None of this, you understand, is my fault. The blame lies entirely with football and Collingwood. Anyway, flights of fancy are part of football’s fascination, no matter what age you are. On the other hand, there are realities to be considered. Supporting any football club is not easy. Supporting the Collingwood Football Club can be downright difficult at times. Collingwood supporters are different—something most people will acknowledge. At once they are faithful, fickle and fanatical. I should know. They have expectations of their club that are sometimes, indeed most of the time, unrealistic. These expectations raise their heads with each approaching season. In my case, I become deeply concerned about what might eventuate but even though it can be painful, it also means that the footy is about to return. Despite the 2003 debacle, I was full of optimism before the 2004 season. I asked myself what could be done. How could I help? My imagination ran to thinking that maybe if I turned up at training in a tracksuit the club would invite me to jump the fence and give the players a bit of advice. After all, most fans are experts. When I was not dreaming I knew it was going to be a defining year for Collingwood. How would the team come back from those grand final defeats? How bad 11
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were their mental scars? For that matter, how would any of us come back? I resolved to be ready for whatever torments the year brought. No matter what happened I promised myself to remain calm and controlled, to try and spend more time on this planet and less time flying around somewhere in the ether. After all, it is easy to barrack for a side when they are regularly winning but when the losses mount up it is a different proposition. And we’d only lost one (very big) game. Very badly.
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3 NONE OF IT REALLY MATTERS
The first interest I had in a pre-season was 1964, the year Bobby took over from Phonse Kyne. Murray Weideman was replaced as captain and headed for the bush after the new coach had a discussion with him about the Weed’s training methods. There was an air of expectancy around the club with everything in readiness for the reign of King Bobby, as he had been known in Wangaratta. At the end of the previous school year, I had been informed by a teacher in a less than formal manner that school wasn’t my strong suit and that I should seek other avenues for my life. I must admit they may have been right in what they said. I thought I was clever enough (perhaps too clever) but I couldn’t seem to understand why the teachers couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see my point of view. Funny, that. My reports were always saying things along the lines of ‘If he showed half as much enthusiasm in the classroom 13
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as he did on the sports field, this boy would go a long way.’ But what did they know? Football was life as far as I was concerned. Well, football and cricket. In summer my brothers and I would spend hours in the garden and then at night I would practise my long, panther-like run-up along the corridor, a sliver of worn floorboards that ran down the centre of our old weatherboard house. The delivery stride usually came in the kitchen where my mother would yell at me in frustration as I burst past her, appealing raucously to some imaginary umpire standing behind the wood-fired stove. Then in winter it would be screamers taken towards the swinging light off the back of the lounge, pretending all the while that it was Barassi’s back, or Silvagni’s shoulders. That brought more of my mother’s vitriol. About three weeks after my sixteenth birthday everyone had got completely sick of me so I joined the navy. Actually, they had got sick of me earlier but applications take a while to be processed. Suddenly there I was down on the extremities of the Mornington Peninsula, out in the big world and learning about life in ways totally unimaginable six months earlier. I scoured the sports pages of the newspapers, reading everything I could about Bobby and the boys, following their every move. I wished I could have been at Victoria Park watching them prepare for the year. But the service of Queen and country didn’t allow for that so I stayed at the depot, marching around in squares, learning how to tie knots and being screamed at by hairy-arsed instructors who delighted in making young boys of sixteen quiver. I couldn’t understand much of what they were screaming but I gathered it was not encouraging. 14
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As I tied and marched and quivered, I dreamed. Even when forced to throw a hammock over my shoulder at 2 a.m. and double-march around the depot in temperatures below zero, I allowed myself to drift off to where the world was perfect, to where Gabbo, Tuddy and the rest were invincible, to where Bobby didn’t scream, only encouraged, and to where I could see the Pies as premiers. Bobby worked wonders that year but after the grand final Collingwood supporters everywhere were left to ponder what might have been if Neil Crompton hadn’t wandered downfield with the changing rovers. Pre-seasons didn’t change much for a long time after that. I ventured along to one or two when my ship was in town, and watched as the players stretched and ran and kicked without appearing to strain or tax themselves unduly. Then fitness became all the rage and training changed dramatically, with time trials and skin fold tests becoming the norm while a couple of laps and a couple of smokes were phased out. Instead of starting in February the teams all began not long after the previous season finished. However, all the pre-seasons in the world, early or late, hard or easy, could not help the Pies to a flag. Bobby had more than enough problems in his time—at the start of the year and at the end. After every failed final series, he always thought the new season would be better, and flung himself with vigour into the preparation, as did Tommy Hafey when he followed. But still there was nothing to show for all the work and all the talent and all the time and money spent on improving.
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Thinking about coaches and losing made me wonder how Mick Malthouse would cope after the previous two years. It’s not often that you lose two grand finals in a row, one ending in tears, the other with disparaging remarks about a couple of your players. Was Mick destined to join Bobby and Tommy in their own special place in the history of Collingwood? One of the first football articles I read while waiting for the start of the season was in early December when pre-season training began. In it, Mick stated that he had not discussed the grand final with the players. He reckoned there was no need, that the media had done it for him. He had a point, but I thought that he might have been less than frank with the reporters. Surely he would have mentioned it somewhere and at some time? If it was true, then I had to trust his decision because none of us are privy to the inner workings of any club, let alone Collingwood. He must have known what he was doing—mustn’t he? Now, as I wandered around Victoria Park watching the summer training, I thought that perhaps he owed some sort of explanation to the faithful sitting in the stands and the other supporters who, at this time of the year, were renegotiating the connection between their love of the club and their sanity. They would have liked the chance to say something. Plenty, actually. As the players trained in separate groups, Magpies addicts dotted around the ground watched them intently. A few gathered round the players’ race in the old Ryder Stand, waiting for autographs. An older man, armed with a notepad, sat on the dirty wooden planks high above, among the cobwebs and the swallows that swooped persistently across his line of vision. 16
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In the Sherrin Stand behind the goals, a couple of kids wearing small, torn Collingwood jumpers and dirty jeans, raced up and down the concrete steps, their yells echoing through the emptiness. Scraps of paper swirled around the battered seats and the wind blew where it liked. Looking around, I could see the old place was falling apart. The oval was in superb condition but some of the signs on the stands that bore club legends’ names had dropped off, and a few bricks had fallen out here and there. Weeds had established themselves where the tramp of a thousand loyal Collingwood factory workers had made indentations in the asphalt walkways, and a few gratuitous platitudes were scrawled in thick black ink along the walls. The move to the new facilities at Olympic Park was not long away but I wondered if the old spirits around the place felt in some way rejected and forgotten. There was still a magnetism about the surroundings and I could sense the reason most of the watchers were there. Perhaps they had nothing else to do. In the Bob Rose Stand sat a foursome—two ladies and two gentlemen. They were well dressed and wore hats to keep off the occasional drops of rain. Rugs, thermos and a packed afternoon tea were evident. I could imagine them here during the year, the finals, or even closer to the first game, but at the start of January? They laughed when I asked them the obvious question and said they were on holidays and what better place to spend an afternoon? There is something distinctly optimistic about preseasons. Everything is fresh and new. A bit like spring with its blossoming trees and new growth, only the wrong end of the year. Each club hopes that the new season 17
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will bring better times, perhaps a place in the finals and for a few there is even the dream of a premiership. Those expectations were nothing new to Collingwood. Each season they expected, almost demanded, that their team would at least play finals footy. It was no different this year. But what was fresh and new about the Maggies? What could we look forward to? Not a great deal, was the answer. One new face was Guy McKenna, who took Terry Daniher’s spot as an assistant coach. Rumour had it that Mick and Terry had a big falling out about team selection for the grand final. Daniher apparently wanted Cloke in the back line. His loss was offset by the addition of McKenna who was not only a great player and student of the game, he had also come to understand Mick and his ways during their time together at West Coast. I hoped that was true. There were many theories about Mick and his personality, and to have someone who had spent a great deal of time with him could be a big advantage. Or a problem. As the weeks passed the number of onlookers at training grew. Some of the more disgruntled members told me they had renewed their pledge to the club and those whose hearts were heaviest after 27 September overlooked their frustrations and started to read the training notes and the injury lists. Talk around the traps was of how the younger blokes were progressing, and whether there was anyone new who would make a difference this year. The answer was no, there was no-one. There were no big name recruits—clubs can’t simply go and buy players and the only one we really wanted was Nick Stevens. Typically, Port Adelaide was obstinate about 18
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that. But surely the younger players would have learned much over the last year, if not two, and would be better this year. Hopefully. Anyway, the players on the list were not all that bad. After all, for most of the second half of the 2003 season Collingwood looked like they were a big chance to win the flag. Indeed, before the grand final they were favourites. In the aftermath, it appeared everyone had forgotten that. It was strange how a two-hour period on one Saturday afternoon could make so much difference to the way people thought. Yet that was what everyone focused on. No-one, including me, really cared about anything else. It took a few months off football for everyone to see things a bit more clearly. I knew that to be so emotional so early in the season was wrong, although it was difficult to be otherwise. That’s why we needed the Mick Malthouses of the world to be dispassionate and to look at things objectively. All the mugs like me who hold delusions of black and white grandeur mixed simultaneously with contemplation of suicide, were not capable of such thought. Perhaps Mick was right after all. Perhaps everyone should focus on the rest of the season and not just the last game. Perhaps they should try and see what was coming, not what had gone. Along with the sweating, grunting, weight-lifting, sprinting and general exertion of bodies, pre-season also brought its share of rumours, assorted distractions and off-field activities. One topic of conversation concerned Mick and Bucks taking eight senior players on a weekend away to formulate plans for the season. I wasn’t sure why it would take eight players to work out the plan. To me, and I suspect to many more, the plan was simple. 19
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Train harder, play smarter, don’t become involved in incidents that will always result in suspensions—that sort of thing. To be fair the trip was about more than that. The leadership group would be chosen from the eight. Those at the camp were trying to become better leaders and to learn how best to help the younger players at the club. It was at that time that Mick had his contract extended which all, by and large, greeted warmly. He may be cantankerous at times but no-one doubted his football knowledge and his enthusiasm for the task. I also read about the conflict between the club and the family of the late Darren Millane about retiring his number, and that the black and white stripes at Victoria Park may be heritage listed although no-one was really sure. Then there were announcements that the club had posted a record profit, the fact that a rugby team was helping us with tackling, as well as numerous other stories with varying degrees of interest. Some of those included the usual stories about footballers and pubs, footballers and women, and footballers and just about anything else. Sex was prominent. Yet, for all the stories, there was still a certain emptiness to life. Training, practice matches and even the pre-season competition mean nothing. You’re just waiting for the real thing to start, expectation mixed equally with trepidation, hoping this could be the year but wondering if your heart will be broken again. That’s the lot of a Collingwood supporter though; has been from the time horses drew carts up and down Johnston Street right through to this age of cyberspace. Each year you go through the same rituals. The only variation is the degree of pain. There are some exceptions—1990 for instance—but even that year had its 20
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share of drama. To divest yourself of the pain you talk. Pubs, cafes and workplaces have always been where supporters gathered to vent their spleens or discuss how good or bad the boys played but nowadays you can also do it from home via the Internet. On the Collingwood Rant, an online site that follows the club, Sly, as clever and as opinionated as he was anonymous, ranted in true Collingwood supporter fashion. Season reviews, season previews—you name it, Sly spoke about it. Although there was much he disagreed with and had formed opinions on, he was still emotionally tied to the Magpies. For instance, although he believed some of the coach’s match-day strategies were bizarre, he balanced that with the thought that at least Mick had the team in successive grand finals. Sly was one of those who had just returned to the club. Supporters too, need an off-season to freshen up. He told me he was so depressed after September he had ‘stayed away from all things Collingwood’. I asked him why and he was concise. ‘That’s Collingwood for you—following them takes up six months of your year, which, in turn, ruins your other six.’ Football is just a big cycle, isn’t it? It never seems to finish. An endless year of passion, faith and angst, all rolled together—pre-season, real season, off-season, pre-season and then back to the real season again. At any point in the cycle, there it is, staring you in the face. Admittedly, there are times when you have a bit more tolerance. Practice matches for instance. Those are treated with differing degrees of attention. If you win, it augurs well for the new season and if you lose, well it didn’t really matter much. 21
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Whenever I think of practice matches, I think of the Escort Cup. When I actually use those words to describe the pre-season games, I am looked at rather quizzically. For a reason that escapes me, the name is stuck in my mind. And my mind, according to some, is stuck in the past, so the way the pre-season competition constantly changes its name makes it difficult for someone like me to keep up. The latest sponsor is a moneylender rather than a smoke. Both can be bad for your health. The days of the Escort Cup were good days—made better by the mists of time—when games were played in usually wet and muddy conditions in front of almost empty stands at Waverley Park. Commentators awarded a television to the best player in the match—sometimes deserved but at other times, hilariously not. When Kerry Good kicked a goal to win the 1980 Night Grand Final for North Melbourne, after the final siren heard by everyone at Waverley Park except the umpires, it was another reason to think that God wore any jumper other than one coloured black and white. Things were not so good after the Eagles dispatched us unceremoniously from the Wizard Cup in round 1. The press castigated the Pies. Agreed, it was probably justified but they just could not wait. After all, there is nothing better than being in a position to flay Collingwood with words if you can. My justification of the 129-point thrashing was that the Eagles were so far advanced they seemed as though they were ready for the finals in September, let alone a pre-season game in February. When Mick Malthouse coached the Eagles to their premierships he was renowned for bringing them up slowly. You would read how he was holding them back so they would be ready for the important part of 22
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the year. I hoped he was reverting to those practices with us. Anyway, the game wasn’t important—although it would have been had we won. At least it was out of the way and we could get on with doing well in the practice matches. Sydney headed down to Victoria Park the next week and, apart from about 6000 desperates like me turning out on a Saturday afternoon, that game was also disappointing. Then it was off to Alice Springs to play the Port Adelaide mob. Although we lost that too, it was a far better showing. I imagined that Port would be feeling cocky after nailing us but, hey, they might not be feeling that way when the real stuff started. In a reflective moment one evening, I asked myself if I was making excuses for our four straight losses. I wondered if the media was right after all and we were destined to have a very ordinary season. No, I answered myself, of course we’re not. Melbourne was next on the agenda and still I thought that Mick wasn’t showing his hand. Walking down Lulie Street that sunny Friday afternoon was sad really. It was the last ever game at Victoria Park and even though it was only a practice match it was still significant. I’d seen the Pies play there quite a few times over the years but not as much as I would have liked. Living in the country put paid to that, especially if you played footy yourself. In my playing days, of course, football everywhere was played on Saturday afternoons and there was only the odd time when the country and city games didn’t clash. The first thing I saw when I walked around the Johnston Street corner was a spread of white canvas appearing in the distance above the cars parked in the sloping bluestone gutter. On closer inspection it proved 23
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to be a tent selling memberships—for Melbourne. What sacrilege! To make matters worse it had encroached right across the footpath. It annoyed me a little. Sure, let other clubs take advantage of being involved closely with Collingwood. Let them feed off us if they must, but this was going a bit far. A stream of Pies fans passed by casting curious looks in the direction of the blue and red festooned tent, yet only a few Demons supporters ventured inside. I thought briefly about how hard it must be supporting a team that had no real home, one that was broke and always struggling for members. Still, that was their problem. After a disdainful stare at the tent, a rather large gentleman who was obviously not of Anglo-Saxon extraction ushered his young son through the gate towards the social club. After being stung ten bucks for entry, he patted his son’s head and said in a passionate voice, ‘Geez, I hope we win today.’ The youngster, who was not quite as large as the Collingwood jumper he wore, smiled up at his father in agreement. Being one of the crowd brought its own particular comfort. The pock-marked wooden seats around the fence near the players’ race supported old men and women who had obviously sat there for years. They stood and cheered as the players ran out for a warm-up, and as Mick strutted back towards the rooms behind the players, one of the ladies called out to him. A raucous, ‘We love ya Mick’ floated through the late afternoon sun towards the grey-haired coach. Mick answered with a smile and a wink, both of them genuine. Further around, at the Yarra Falls end, a gaggle of 24
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youngsters ran around on the expanse of grass behind the goals. They laughed and scragged each other in what was clearly the outing of their week. They jumped on each other’s backs, taking speccies and trying to reach the net that kept footballs inside the ground rather than being kicked out of the stadium and pinched, and which had almost detached itself from one of the goalposts. On the concrete area in front of the social club a barbecue had been fired up and the faithful stood, grasping cans of beer and sausages in bread, talking about how good it all was. It was a rare day at the footy, standing with your mates enjoying a few drinks without being ushered towards seats or told that you couldn’t drink here or you couldn’t stand there. No wonder everyone was happy. There was something rather endearing about the ordinariness of it all. Something about the way the old wooden stands and the concrete steps fitted perfectly with the personalities of those who stood there. This was how it used to be. This used to be Saturday arvo at the footy. In the Sherrin Stand, a few spectators had perched themselves in the old sponsors’ boxes; the only time they’d ever get to enjoy them, such as they were. I compared these boxes to the new ones at the MCG and Docklands and as I watched and listened to the yelling during the match, I smiled at their enjoyment. A minute or so later I turned around when I felt some eyes on me. His unkempt black hair was long and fell casually onto the club jumper he wore over the long-sleeved club skivvy. Three-quarter length black and white pants ended just above socks, black and white of course, which filled 25
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the gap between the pants and the white runners that bore black flashes. Knotted around his neck was a club tie that flapped against his chest. He must have been about sixty and the only thing about him that wasn’t black or white was a large gold cross that swayed gently some two inches below the ear to which it was fixed. ‘G’day mate,’ I ventured. There was no answer, just a blank stare. ‘Reckon we’ll win today?’ I queried. Still he stared at me, his eyes searching for some meaning. I didn’t press him any further yet he stood there for a minute more and looked at me disconcertingly. As well as checking out the football game, I glanced at him a couple of times before he said in a gravelly voice, ‘Buckley’s good at home.’ With that he took two steps back, turned and walked away. He was right. Buckley was good at home, except that this wasn’t home anymore. Yet to the black and white man and thousands like him, it would be home forever. Would he make the move into the new home Eddie had built a few suburbs away? I saw him again later, amongst the detritus behind the goals as the game was petering out. There was a slight look of recognition as I walked past him. ‘Buckley’s good at home,’ he said again as he stuffed a couple more aluminium cans into a bulging green rubbish bag. Buckley had played well in the time he was on the ground but Melbourne had beaten us. I wasn’t as disappointed as some of the critics—or were they pleased? It appeared that everyone wanted to write us off. This may or may not be what would happen, although 26
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the least they could do was have the decency to wait until we had been flogged by a few sides in the real competition. After all, we’d won thirteen out of the last fifteen meaningful games we’d played; only Brisbane had beaten us. Could we have deteriorated that much without having really played anyone? There was not much to like about the pre-season. Injuries had already caused a great deal of angst among the faithful as well as those wishing to dismiss us and now James Clement might be blind in one eye. I headed toward the season proper with mixed feelings. Not sure of what was to come and not expecting too much. Not as confident as some, but hopeful—and fearful of what I might have to face.
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Round 1 Richmond v Collingwood— Friday 26 March—MCG The start of the real season is always a special time. Commentators say things like, ‘it’s back’ and ‘it’s on again’ and ‘isn’t it good to be here’. It’s almost as if the few weeks before never happened and it’s proof that they didn’t count for anything important. Which is true, really. Except if you’re Collingwood. Then everything counts for something. Then you are either happy with a few wins or busy making up reasons why you lost and pretending it mattered little anyway. We always look forward to a good year, always expect something positive. This must be quite different from anyone who barracks for teams such as Richmond or Footscray (they’re still Footscray to me). How do they front up each year? That’s how it was that Friday afternoon as I made my way to the Cricketer’s Arms in Punt Road, a pub where Magpies devotees traditionally gathered before each game at the MCG. The bar was humming as I shouldered 28
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my way through the crowd but the beer garden was quiet. An attractive young woman in a Collingwood jumper that served as both her top and skirt was arranging glasses behind a bar at the back of the yard while a few not so attractive young men watched with hungry eyes. I had arranged to meet my nephew and his son before the game. Shane spent a few years on the Tigers’ list back in the ’80s but injuries had stopped his progress. His one claim to fame was belting Mick Martyn in an Under-19 grand final. Shane turned up shortly after I arrived with young Harrison decked out in Richmond colours. I was a bit worried that I would have to choose sides if any trouble started. I asked Shane what he expected for the year. ‘Not much,’ he answered honestly. ‘Just getting pissed off a lot.’ I glanced around as the publican, who stood at the doorway, asked his mate what he thought of the new murals. ‘Not bad,’ nodded the bloke as we both scanned the cricket game painted on the wall above the bar. A small RIP for Fitzroy was noticeable, as was a larger one for Bobby Rose complete with a very good image, and a colourful drawing of Dermott Brereton marking at full stretch. Thankfully, the back of Dermie’s head was on show. Egalitarian, I decided about the publican. He probably needed to be. Not so accommodating were the Magpies fans who had descended on the beer garden in a matter of minutes, like so many black and white locusts. Someone had taken the time to hang a Richmond Supporters Club banner along one of the walls and decorated it with black and yellow balloons. A rotund gentleman with a cigarette symbolically burst each of the yellow ones to the raucous 29
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cheers of the onlookers and a curious glance from Shane and Harrison. I looked around for Sly, who had agreed to meet me for a couple of beers before the game. It wasn’t long before he arrived, resplendent in all black. The back of his sleeveless shirt bore his name and a bandana was tied just above his small ponytail. Sly was born in Australia of Greek-Macedonian parents. He told me he’d been following Collingwood for as long as he could remember, about thirty-three years, which was his age. His older brothers all barracked for Collingwood so he followed suit. It was probably a wise choice. To barrack for anyone else in that household could have created problems for the youngest of four. Like Victoria Park, the Cricketer’s was another of Sly’s homes away from home. When he first came to the pub he knew only a handful of people. Now he had a family of friends. They all did. ‘We come here,’ explained Sly, ‘and it’s just a warm feeling, being with all these people. We find something here.’ It was an eclectic crowd. Sly pointed to a psychologist, a lawyer, a couple of businessmen, along with quite a number that he didn’t know but whom he said could be regarded as the ‘typical Collingwood supporter’. Thinking about ‘typical Collingwood supporters’ was fraught with danger. Just looking at Sly and a few others would have been enough for some to confirm the stereotype but when I talked to them I found more than I expected. Sly, in particular, was intelligent, articulate and had more than a rudimentary knowledge of the game. By now a few well-dressed women, seated near the door into the lounge, were soaking up the atmosphere, and stuck right in the middle of the garden were three 30
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or four Richmond supporters. Sly dismissed them with disdain, describing them as appearing to be ‘half-man, half-ferret.’ I asked Sly what the beginning of the new season meant to him. He told me that it felt like coming out of hibernation. That suddenly life had meaning again. He then thought for a while. ‘I’m a lot more worried than I should be,’ he admitted. ‘When we were down the bottom and fighting our way up there was a lot more optimism. Being up the top I feel anxious that we stay there.’ Another problem he considered was that Collingwood could be losing their workingman’s club ideals. ‘We’re so much more commercial these days,’ he lamented. ‘I know we have to be but somewhere, somehow, we have to keep our traditions as alive as possible.’ He went on to say that Collingwood used to be hated by the opposition clubs because they were so good. Now, he suspected, they were hated because of Eddie more than anything else. He started to shout as the hum of the crowd suddenly went up a few decibels. Over at the door, Joffa, icon of the Collingwood outer, cheerleader and public figure, had arrived. He waved an acknowledgment to me and, estimating the time it would take to negotiate the distance between us, I decided to stay put for a while. The noise developed into a constant roar as the liquid intake increased, and there was still an hour or so before the first siren. A few metres away, a small impish figure with long hair, a four-day growth and no teeth watched me through eyes that had contained a sparkle a few minutes earlier but now were almost blank spaces. Then the smell of what he was smoking drifted across and as I recognised it, he smiled. Shane, who had been standing alongside me, 31
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shook his head and turned to his son. ‘Come on Harrison,’ he said, ‘we’ll go over to the ground.’ A sensible decision considering what would happen if his wife found out what their son could have been passively smoking. Intriguing place this, I thought as I watched my relations disappear safely. Outside, across the sliver of bitumen they called a road, was a brothel. A few doors further down was another while on the other side of the wall that surrounded the beer garden, yet another. When I mentioned that this was perhaps a bit unusual the bloke I was talking to was quite indignant. ‘Jesus,’ he sneered, ‘the pub just up the road has got topless barmaids and strippers!’ I battled my way through the crowd as Joffa was about to start his traditional pre-match speech. As I held his elbow when he clambered onto a table that threatened to tip him off at any given moment, I wondered what was happening in the super-boxes across the way, or at the president’s dinner. Joffa had trouble making everyone quiet but stood up like some sort of black and white pastor about to address his flock, and the gathering, while certainly not hushed, at least paid him the courtesy of reducing the noise level considerably. Except, that was, for the few brave Tigers supporters in the middle of the crowd. After the requisite amount of abuse though, even they wanted to hear what Joffa was going to say, even if it was only to heckle him. Joffa was a ‘Collingwood six-footer’ and sported rings in both ears. Some said he was Eddie’s conduit to the masses and was being used. I wasn’t so sure. I thought he was too smart for that. Actually, I thought both of them were too smart for that. The speech was a mixture of sarcasm and truth. 32
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He touched on what the Pies would do to the Tigers and how Mick had been bluffing during the pre-season. I didn’t think many in the crowd believed him but I was sure they all hoped he was right. The high point came towards the end of the five-minute monologue. ‘Let’s be sorry for Richmond,’ Joffa yelled. ‘After all, they’ve got Caroline Wilson, we’ve got Eddie. They’ve got Wayne Campbell, we’ve got Nathan. They’ve got Danny Frawley, we’ve got Mick. They’ve got Richo, we’ve got Andrew Williams.’ That brought the house down. Poor old Andrew Williams. Every club has one or two players who always cop it from the supporters and at Collingwood, Williams was the one. It was not his fault that Mick kept picking him when nearly all the football world wondered why. After the speech the sound of ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’ reverberated through the air. The crowd poured out along Punt Road where it mingled with a similar crowd wearing black and yellow, emerging from the Richmond Railway Station. The open air muted the passions a touch but there was still obvious excitement as both armies surged across the parkland towards the gates. The game didn’t live up to the expectations of those in the Cricketer’s Arms, nor any other Collingwood supporters for that matter. This was not the way the season was supposed to begin. Watching the faces of those who expected so much but received so little was distressing. The cries of anguish and howls of disgust when things went wrong, as they often did, made me feel uncomfortable. I was howling as well and, sheepishly, I wondered if anyone was looking at me and listening. Not that it mattered, as 33
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I felt a sense of comfortable anonymity. As the game wore on, our disappointment grew and I wondered whether Mick, sitting impassively behind the glass, was as frustrated as the rest of us. Afterwards, as the Cricketer’s Arms filled up again, the pain was evident. There were more Tigers fans in attendance than before the game—they thought the season would bring them joy and were not worried that their celebrations could be a touch premature. Analysis of the game was in some cases close to the truth but in others more a venting of the spleen. But that’s what makes you feel better while you’re still feeling terrible. Later, I walked from the pub across the deserted MCG car park, past the darkened, shadowy gum trees to the silence of the Fitzroy Gardens where I sat alone under the stars as possums scurried along the path to the sanctity of their trees. An old man rummaging through the bins produced a black and white scarf and draped it ceremoniously around his neck. As I unlocked my ute, the finals looked a long way off.
Richmond (14.13.97) d Collingwood (8.9.57)
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Round 2 Collingwood v Footscray (aka Western Bulldogs)—Saturday 3 April—MCG I used to have a soft spot for Footscray, mainly because Collingwood would win easily nearly every time we played them. Perhaps it was also because they were underdogs and their home suburb was full of migrants like my family were. Another reason was that when I was a kid in South Australia one of Dad’s friends worshipped the legendary Neil Kerley. He loved the sort of man epitomised by Kerley and he told us stories about a similar bloke from over the border in Victoria called Ted Whitten, who was supposed to be twice as tough and twice as mean as anything the South Australians could put up. Being totally unaware of the reality, I imagined Ted Whitten to be as tall as a tree and twice as hardy. I imagined him to breathe fire and to smite players down with a single blow. He was, I thought, ruthless, like a black knight. Terrible to others but a hero to his own. I guess I wasn’t far out. 35
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As I grew older, straight after I looked in the paper for the Collingwood scores I glanced at Footscray’s to see if Ted had played well. He usually had. At one time, I thought about trying to find out if he’d damaged anybody each week but realised how silly that was. I met Ted once, when he was older and retired. The fear he struck into the hearts of opponents had been replaced with a tenderness I often found in the strong men who tamed the Mallee. An occasionally brutish exterior, hiding an unacknowledged sentimentality. I was with my son at the back of a sports store where Ted was waiting to do a promotion for the company he represented. We were the only people there. He shook my hand and I heard the bones disintegrate as if they’d been made into bonemeal. He was going to shake Zac’s hand as well but instead just ruffled his hair. I was glad of that but I reckon it took two minutes for Zac’s head to come to a complete stop. I had read somewhere that Ted had actually played for Collingwood as a young man. He had won a best and fairest wearing the Magpie colours in a Sunday amateur competition but had been told by Phonse Kyne to come back when he’d built himself up. Since I found that out, I often wondered about a hypothetical Magpies career for Teddy. What would have happened if he had played alongside Bobby Rose, Thorold Merrett and the like when he was young? What would it have been like to have Murray Weideman and him in the same side? What would he have done for us in 1964, 1966 and 1970? While waiting for the game against the Dogs to begin, I wandered around the Great Southern Stand, tested out a few different seats and stared across at the space left, like a toothless grin, where the members used 36
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to be. I thought about what my old man used to say. ‘It’s change, but is it progress?’ They were two very different things according to Dad but I thought he would approve of this. I’d arrived early, which was my habit. There is very little to do for the three or four hours between gate opening and the first bounce. Each time I’m early I think how stupid it is, that I should only get there a few minutes before the start. There were two reasons, I told myself: firstly, I could always get a better seat and secondly I might miss something. What, exactly, I’m not sure. Perhaps it was a habit from years before, when there was more than one game, when crowds arrived early and talked to each other with no aggression, without swearing every second word, and without using mobile phones. I had time to muse about footy not being the same since the demise of the seconds and the Under-19s. Then it was a good day out for every club’s followers. You could watch the kids as they progressed or fell away and you sort of knew them without having to travel halfway around the state to get some idea of their ability. Besides, the lesser players all felt as though they belonged to a club. Nowadays they are lost somewhere in the middle. That’s what I thought anyway; a real day at the footy should have curtain-raisers. Yeah, I knew about the money and all that. And I knew the people who dine in the boxes and tip in the most dollars don’t care about anything but the main game. Yet the people in the outer care. And there are more of us. On the way to purchase a pie and a bottle of water, which judging by its price must have come from the fountain of youth, I stood aside for a young man in a 37
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wheelchair who was being pushed into a special spot near the walkway. I introduced myself and he smiled. ‘Bazza,’ he said. ‘Now and again,’ he informed me when I asked if he came to the football often. ‘It’s been a bit difficult for me for a few years but over the last couple I haven’t missed the Robert Rose Cup game.’ Quite a number of wheelchair-bound people attended this game. Even though in some cases it was a strain, it was important to them. Robert Rose became a quadriplegic because of a car accident on Valentine’s Day 1974. A cricketer on the verge of playing for Australia, Robert was also a footballer at Collingwood when his father coached the Magpies. When Bob left Collingwood to coach Footscray, Robert followed him via Prahran in the VFA. A short time later came the accident that would change a number of lives. I had come to know Bob Rose and his family while writing Bob’s biography and knew what people such as Bazza meant to him. Bob had helped to set up these annual games as a way of contributing to their assistance. Even though Bob Rose was a Collingwood man through and through, Footscray held a special place in his heart. He offered to resign when Robert had his accident but the club wouldn’t listen. Then in the second game of the 1975 season one of his players, Neil Sasche, went down in a tackle playing against Fitzroy, coached by his brother Kevin. Sasche never walked again. Twenty-five years later, when he was approached to help the Para-Quadriplegic Association after Robert passed away in 1999, Bob declined. It was only three months after his son had died and his emotions were too raw, it was all too close. But it wasn’t long before he 38
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knew he had to help. The Robert Rose Foundation was then set up and through that the Robert Rose Cup began, played each year between Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs. Bazza had been a quadriplegic for almost ten years and had been inspired by the deeds of Robert Rose. His father sat nearby as we talked, silently watching over his son and ready to tend to him if and when needed. ‘Car accident,’ Bazza said understatedly. ‘Shit happens, doesn’t it?’ Bazza had not wanted to go to the football after the accident but his father had shown him cuttings from old papers about Bob Rose and his son. Eventually Bazza relented and the relationship between the two men became even closer. Bazza admitted that it was his dad and the Rose men who helped him put things into perspective, as much as was possible. ‘It was bloody difficult,’ he admitted, ‘but if those two could do it, I reckoned we could.’ Bazza once played suburban footy and had always followed Collingwood, although they had at times tested his patience. But after his accident, he reckoned that patience was one thing he had learned a bit more about. Bazza told me his favourite players were Scott Burns and Paul Licuria. ‘Buckley is on his own with skill and that,’ he reckoned. ‘But those other two are fighters, and I like fighters.’ He grinned. ‘I love these days, coming here, but it’s not that important is it, footy?’ The question didn’t need an answer but it made me think of all those who would have disagreed. I couldn’t imagine being Bazza, or his father. I didn’t know how I would cope. I left Bazza while his dad organised a drink for him. A straw protruded from the 39
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bottle he’d removed from a backpack and he guided it to his son’s lips. I wondered about Bazza’s patience as the game unfolded in much the same way as the one against Richmond finished. I wondered if the Bulldogs were better than everyone thought. If that were true, what could they expect from the year? Any improvement would be welcome out west. It was only the second game of the season yet when Collingwood finally hit the front there was euphoria. Even though the Bulldogs came back with a couple of late goals it didn’t dampen our enthusiasm. It was a little bit early to be carried away, I thought, but that’s what it’s like as a Collingwood supporter. You get carried away. As the game appeared to be safe—if any Collingwood game can be seen that way—I headed around to where a group of Footscray supporters were looking decidedly downcast. I watched them for a while and then asked one of their number how he thought the year would pan out. ‘As usual,’ was his reply, ‘ordinary.’ Frank was a largish middle-aged man wearing a few days’ growth and a battered Footscray jumper. He said he had seen the good times and the bad at Footscray. I wondered aloud when the good times were, apart from 1954. He must have thought I was one of his mob. ‘You remember, surely, we might not have won too much but there’s usually something that brings us back each year.’ I knew what he meant so we talked about Terry Wallace who had done a good job with a limited list and whether Mick Malthouse was any different when he coached at the Western Oval. ‘No,’ said Frank. ‘Grumpy as buggery all the time.’ 40
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Then the discussion turned to imponderables and why it was that we all keep coming back, week after week, year after year. He said he didn’t know about me, and wasn’t sure why he did. ‘I tried staying away from games once,’ he said. ‘It didn’t work, I was worse than if I came.’ Frank was not the most eloquent of conversationalists but he made his point well. Football was the same as everything else in his life. Perhaps it wasn’t always what he wanted; perhaps it didn’t turn out the way he would have preferred, but he made do with what he had and enjoyed it the best way he could. It wasn’t all about winning, he told me, (which was just as well) but more about being a part of something. ‘It wouldn’t be the same, would it?’ he asked, ‘if all of us didn’t go to the footy.’ I watched the rest of the game with Frank and his friends even though he knew by then I was the enemy and even though it looked as though Collingwood would run away with it. Then the Bulldogs came again, along with the familiar feelings of desperation in the pit of my stomach. All I wanted was a win. All I wanted was some degree of hope that we were on the way back. And here they were going to throw it all away again. No matter how many times it occurs, I never get used to it. Wanting to win so much makes it doubly hard to accept that you’re not going to. Then Mick did the unthinkable—unthinkable for anyone but Mick that is. With the game in the balance, he decided to take Buckley off the ground. There must have been some reason, although I’m sure not one person inside the ground could have guessed what it was, judging by the fury of some and the total bemusement of 41
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others. Ah, Mick, I thought, while you’re around we’ll never wonder if our hearts are still beating. Buckley’s replacement, Jason Cloke, was then instrumental in creating the goal that made us safe. Sarcastically, Frank said it was all thanks to the foresight of Mick Malthouse—how lucky we were to have him. Happily making my way out of the ground I saw Bazza. ‘Good, eh?’ he asked as his father manoeuvred the chair through the crowd, some of them making way while others almost knocked him over in their ignorance. ‘Yeah,’ I answered, ‘but we’ve still got problems.’ He sensed my mood and looked at me with a halfsmile. ‘Not really mate, not really.’ I glanced up and his weary grin widened. ‘Might see you around again,’ I said. ‘Not sure about that,’ he replied. Bazza’s dad explained that a few of them listened to matches in the accommodation house he lived in but he found it hard to spend a whole day outside. His resistance was low and he tired easily. Bazza butted in. ‘It’s not that bad,’ he chided his father whose eyes reflected his disagreement. His dad shook my hand firmly. ‘It’s been a good day for Barry,’ he said. ‘He might not get out again this year but he’s with them in spirit every week.’ As Barry and his father headed off towards the car park, I thought again about Bob Rose and Robert. Even though they were gone, they had left an enormous legacy. That night the club paid tribute to the first inductees of the Collingwood Hall of Fame. Eddie spoke, Nathan spoke and the legends on the stage were obviously overcome. The spirits of those who had passed on were close at hand. The names rang through the room like bells. Coventry, Pannam, Collier, and, of course, Rose. 42
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I considered how lucky we were to be of Collingwood blood. What would it be like to barrack for Footscray or St Kilda, with only one premiership and a handful of finals appearances? Or worse still, a club like South Melbourne or Fitzroy who had been swallowed whole by the football version of economic rationalism. I made a mental note to remember this in the hard times that were ahead—that despite all the trouble and pain we suffer, how magnificent our club was.
Collingwood (15.16.106) d Footscray (13.19.97)
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6 KICKING AGAINST THE WIND Round 3 Brisbane v Collingwood— Thursday 8 April—The Gabba By the time the match against Brisbane rolled around, it had been a big week in football, as Eddie was fond of saying. A week when drugs followed sex as the prime concern of those in football and I wondered whether the rock ’n’ roll would soon follow. I also wondered what would happen if Collingwood players were caught in the mire. What would Eddie do then? In his role on The Footy Show he had often talked about other clubs and their problems, and while he was nothing less than professional, conflict of interest accusations would escalate if Pies players found themselves in bother. Could it happen? Nah, not to us. During the week Eddie sent out an edict, heavily disguised as a media release, to attend a briefing at our new home at Olympic Park. The park was to be named after a luxury car whose makers were tipping in millions of dollars to the club over a long period of time. Whatever they say about Ed, there is one thing they can’t 44
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dispute—the man knows how to make a dollar. The complex housed a huge gym, a swimming pool, and an indoor running track amongst other things, while the oval outside was to be fittingly named in honour of Bob Rose. While all this was happening there was talk about the upcoming clash being a ‘grand final rematch.’ Immediately the words of an old and popular soccer chant came to mind: ‘What a load of rubbish.’ There was no thought of that at the clubs, I was sure, but the ads on television and the stories in the paper and on radio all alluded to it. The focus was whether Collingwood would put up more of a fight this time or whether the result of their last meeting had destroyed them. It was all fairly dramatic but not unexpected. The match was played on Maundy Thursday, traditionally a time when the rich gave alms to the less well off. Perhaps Leigh Matthews and his boys might be in a benevolent mood, I thought as I decided where to watch the game. There was no hope of going to Queensland and I had talked to Sly and the boys but not many were going to the Cricketer’s Arms. As one of Sly’s mates said, most of them were going to sit at home and watch and pray. Any number of Collingwood supporters would be doing the same, I imagined. A few hardier souls headed off to Brisbane to support the team along with the ex-pats who lived up there, but most wouldn’t want to venture out. Watching and praying was what Mick was going to do as well. He almost admitted to the praying part when he reinstated Rhyce Shaw. He told the media that he was throwing the gauntlet down and he wanted to see 45
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whether Shaw would pick it up and run. Metaphorically speaking of course. Had Shaw really taken his eyes off the ball in the grand final as some of the Lions players said? If ever there was to be a test of character for him, this was it. Mick reckoned it was only one game and the season could not hinge on the result. He was right of course, but plenty disagreed with him. However, all those who were predicting gloom for the Pies were forgetting a few pertinent facts. Collingwood had played in the last two grand finals and over the three finals series in which Brisbane had won premierships, they had lost only once. That’s right, to Collingwood. I wondered how Mick and Eddie would handle things if we were flogged. A win or even a close loss would be acceptable. If we capitulated, however, the howls from the commentators and from those who made the club what it was—the faithful—would be long and loud. However, I was getting ahead of myself and, after stocking up with the necessary items—which included large chocolate eggs—Zac and I sat in front of the television and waited. As the advertisements took their usual interminable amount of time to finish, we talked about Brisbane and Fitzroy. We reminisced about the day in 1996 when we journeyed to the MCG to watch the Lions’ last game in Victoria. Not because we barracked for them but because of the special significance of the day. While he was growing up, I tried to show Zac the rest of the football world by taking him to matches played by various teams at various grounds. From memory his first outing was an Essendon v Melbourne match at the MCG and he decided on the day he’d barrack for the Demons. 46
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At half-time, when Melbourne was well behind, he asked quietly if he could change his mind. I assured him it would be okay for the day but advised that loyalty, in footy and in life, was paramount. We also made the trip to the Western Oval for the Bulldogs’ last game there. We stood in the drizzle in the outer behind two old ladies wearing red, white and blue ponchos who sheltered Zac between their ample bodies each time the rain fell heavily. That was the game when the Bulldogs players came out and tried to intimidate young West Coast ruckman Michael Gardiner. It didn’t work and the Eagles ended up winning convincingly. After the game Zac asked if he could be part of the ground invasion the police could not stop. When I gave my approval, he leapt the fence and charged away like every other youngster who had ever wanted to feel the difference between the grass in the backyard and that of an elite football ground. Mick Malthouse, who was coaching the Eagles at the time after leaving Footscray, was booed loudly as he walked off the ground. Zac told me later he had joined in and I asked him why. He wasn’t sure but thought that the sound and the feeling surrounding him had affected his thinking. I told him he shouldn’t treat people that way but then I admitted that I couldn’t blame him as it had happened to my own thinking plenty of times. There was a certain sorrow connected with that day but Footscray were only moving. The Fitzroy game gave us both a closer look into a different aspect of the modern-day world. Despite the way it was promoted, Fitzroy would soon be no more. That game was the final disaster for Fitzroy as they were thrashed by Richmond. Their club song played and played at the end and the tears from longtime supporters were all too real. 47
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It was not only their football team they had lost; it was a part of their beings, a part of their souls that could never be replaced. Even though in many cases their allegiances continued with the new northern team, there would always be something missing. Brisbane would never have the old Brunswick Street Oval. There would be no old back lanes where kids could kick the footy. No corner pubs with faded photographs and men who had sat in the same spot at the bar for fifty years. Then again, they had three flags if they wanted to claim them. As much as I exposed Zac to the realities of life and other teams, he soon forgot about all of them. Collingwood had him. Not that he was free of his father’s influence. Or, indeed, his mother’s, grandfather’s or a myriad of other black and white fanatics. No, he assured me one day, this was his choice. He had a couple of cousins who barracked for Essendon and I had a brother who was committed to Geelong so there were a few distractions. There were also a couple in the family who barracked for Carlton but we didn’t talk to them much. Each of us had our moments. Each of us knew what it was like to have everything you believed about your club thrown into doubt. The Lions, especially Lynch and Brown, thumped us. They were not benevolent, they were frightening. Why didn’t we have players like theirs? Why didn’t we get Spider Everett when we could? And Fraser Gehrig. And Joe Misiti. Why was Nick Stevens not at Collingwood? Sly had told me that it was one thing to have the grandeur of the Lexus Centre facilities but it meant little if you couldn’t attract any top players. The only thing to do after a mauling like that is to lick your wounds. So I consoled myself by making 48
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excuses and by blaming. It started with the coach. If questions were being posed about the team then to me it followed there should be questions asked of Mick. In return for giving a slice of your soul to the club, you are entitled to ask questions. Whether you ask other fans what they think or, like me, scream the questions into the non-responsive sky, doesn’t really matter. It is an aspect of that tacit agreement. After I finished thinking what I would have done in the coach’s box and on the ground, I wondered about those who were at home watching and praying. I wondered if their televisions were still intact and if their cats and dogs had run away. Or whether they, like me, wanted so much to believe that they were blinded to the reality of how bad we were.
Brisbane (21.11.137) d Collingwood (12.5.77)
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7 LOSSES AND GAINS
Round 4 Collingwood v Fremantle— Sunday 18 April—Docklands One of the things I admired about Mick was his ability to put a positive spin on just about anything, including a side decimated by injury. Immediately after selection for the game against the Fremantle Dockers, Mick informed the media that this was what coaching was all about. That nothing pleased him more than having his back to the wall with a heap of young kids to coach. He must certainly have been happy then. Buckley was out for that game, Tarrant was out, Davis was out, and Wakelin had a fractured cheekbone (although no-one was held accountable). Then again, this was Collingwood and for every person who thinks we are looked after by the umpires and the tribunal, I’ll show you a hundred who know we are not. ‘This is coaching at its best,’ Mick was quoted as saying. ‘This is when a group of young players come into the side and you’re just looking forward to seeing them perform in a pressure cooker situation.’ 50
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I wondered if he really meant that. Mick was not given to saying things he didn’t mean but, although he professed to enjoy watching young players making their way into the sport, he hadn’t really followed up. This year anyway. Mick, I thought, why have you waited until now to pick them? Wouldn’t it have been better to blood them when all the big guns were playing? We played the Dockers at Telstra Dome, a place I didn’t quite understand. Sure, I knew what it was for but where did it fit in? All the other suburban grounds had evolved over time; so too the MCG. This ground was simply plonked in a space they found near the city, almost like it had landed there after travelling through time, a bit like Dr Who and his Tardis. It was too clinical for me—no history, no feeling about it—so I spent a couple of hours outside, wandering around, waiting for the gates to open, studying it, trying to find a spark to kickstart my emotions. On one side, the water of the bay reflected in the huge glass blocks of flats that rose from the banks. Many of these were empty, the developers’ greed outweighing the desire of those with the money to buy. I imagined them full, occupied by colonies of humans who would pour out each morning like ants. Some would head off to work on trams whereas others would drive the modern vehicles I could see parked beside gnarled wooden wharves whose bollards were soaked with stories of the sea. Some of the glass buildings were arguably attractive but others, such as the one with more colours on its walls than a child’s plasticine ball and which looked like a giant Rubik’s cube, seemed to miss any architectural point completely. Overlooking everything were cranes silhouetted against the sky like giant steel stick insects. 51
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On the other side was the city skyline with the railway station in the foreground. Old trains stood idle there, rusting rolling stock put aside with the faded passenger carriages that once steamed or dieselled to most places in the state. Red brick buildings, their painted names almost invisible from the ravages of time and weather, stood empty, almost sighing as they waited to be executed by the wrecker’s ball. And in the middle of it all stood this huge sports arena constructed as part of the race to modernise everything. I recalled the sentiment of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’—in living life every day, some things will get lost while others will be gained. With the circumnavigation complete, I wandered over to the gates closest to the wharves and peered through the darkness. I had not imagined that it would be dark but when the roof is closed only the lights from the many bars inside are visible. It had the feeling of a forbidden place. Also peering in was a group of supporters, Collingwood of course. They discussed the selected team with the knowledge of those who had spent many hours at Victoria Park. Their discourse was lively. Every second word was a profanity and each time they spoke of a player of whom they disapproved, they tried to emulate the baked bean farting scene from Blazing Saddles. A bit like punctuation marks. At the opposite end of the ground an older, perhaps wiser, group waited in line to make sure they could beat everyone to their favourite seats. ‘Never had a half-decent centre half-forward since Weideman,’ proclaimed an old gentleman the size and age of the fabled Weed. ‘Rubbish,’ said his wife, smaller, grayer and quieter. 52
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‘What about Carmen?’ ‘You’re bloody kidding,’ he replied, not as a question but an accusation. ‘Rocca?’ The Weed look-alike didn’t bother with an answer, he just cocked his head to one side and stared incredulously. The wife declined to take the conversation further. I left as well. I stood on the walkway and watched the trains pull into the station. I heard the pneumatic whoosh as the doors opened and hundreds of black and white barrackers emerged and made their way across the overpass. The Record sellers had set themselves up across the overpass, like barbed wire entanglements in front of trenches, ensuring they wouldn’t miss anyone getting through the front line. As they all hawked their wares, one voice was noticeably different from the rest. Kerrie was unlike any other Record seller I’d ever seen. Her rendition of ‘Reeecccooooord’ was as good as any but she looked totally different from the norm. An attractive thirty-something, she epitomised the changing times in footy. The Victoria Park sellers had been mainly old blokes with roll-yer-owns hanging from the bottom lip and whose throaty entreaties to purchase you could barely understand. Kerrie had her own ways. Standing on a box behind a pulpit-style bench, she had little piles of change ready for any note that could possibly be tendered. ‘Gotta be organised,’ she smiled. Typical woman, I thought, encroaching on a man’s place in the world. ‘I love it,’ Kerrie told me. ‘Love the people, love the footy and best of all we count the money next to the rooms so I get to perv on all the boys’ legs.’ I left Kerrie to her sexist ways as she attended to the long line of waiting purchasers. 53
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Inside the ground felt like a trendy boutique bar, whereas suburban grounds were old corner pubs complete with brass foot rails and tiled walls. It was comfortable, no doubt, but there was something missing. There were plenty of good facilities—even an Internet cafe if you needed it—and the fact that you could see every part of the ground very easily was a bonus. Yet the closed roof gave a feeling of artificiality. I thought of muddied grounds and windy days and standing in the rain, freezing. In the queue to get coffee, I was asked if I was worried. ‘Mate,’ I replied, ‘I’m worried every time they take the field.’ The enquirer nodded his agreement and headed off with his caffe latte. Me, I just wanted an ordinary cup of coffee. Black, with a bit of milk, I asked the girl, who was only aware of shorts, longs, lattes, cappuccinos and the like. As I explained it, she cottoned on and accommodated my strange request. I felt her eyes following me as I walked away. Footy had changed. The game started and the silence after Fremantle kicked the first goal was stark, a bit like being in a huge house where no-one is talking. Just as noise is confronting in the enclosed arena, so too is silence. I sat next to Pearl, a lady of blue-rinse and pensioner age who told me that she often went to the football alone. ‘My husband won’t come,’ she said. ‘He gets so frustrated and can’t handle it when we get beaten.’ I said that he and I had something in common. Pearl grinned and produced a self-sealing plastic bag in which she had an assortment of lollies. ‘Lifesaver?’ she offered. ‘Not until the last quarter,’ I replied, and she laughed, but only politely. Pearl said that she’d catch trams home to Abbotsford afterwards and cook tea for her husband but if 54
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Collingwood lost, the meal would be eaten in silence. After some losses it wasn’t eaten at all. Why cook it then? I queried. Pearl was taken aback, as though insulted. ‘Never really thought not to,’ she said. Frustration ran in Pearl’s family but at least she vented hers in a dignified and calm manner. ‘Goodness me!’ she exclaimed when the umpires paid a ridiculous free against the Pies. The supporter a few rows behind wasn’t so calm. He ranted and raved in an apoplectic manner, standing and waving his finger at both players and umpires, obviously believing that they could actually hear him and, what’s more, would take notice. The worse Collingwood played, the worse he became and if it wasn’t for the halftime siren he would have exploded. During the break I wandered down to the second level and found that if there was one thing to take your mind off your team playing badly it was a visit to any of the bars—the Cougar Bar especially. Curiously, everyone inside was in good humour. I mean, gazing at well-endowed young women in low-cut tops is one thing but your team getting a belting is quite another. Why is this? It used to be that at half-time at Vic Park the bar was a place where anger and cans were the norm, not three-quarter coats, long knitted scarves, cocktails and champagne. There appeared to be no anxiety, no anger—didn’t anyone care? And if I wanted a disco I’d go to a nightclub afterwards. Footy had changed. When the siren sounded to signify the umpires’ return there was no rush to get back to the seats. When a pair of man-mountains tried to barge their way through the crowd, another one ordered more beer and announced that he was buggered if he knew why anyone 55
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would be in a hurry to get back and watch Collingwood losing. He had a point. The second half brought more of the same. More lollies from Pearl, more apoplexy from the red-faced man a few rows back and more ineptitude from both Collingwood and the umpires. Old red-face started to trot out the ‘white maggots’ line until he realised they were dressed in orange and changed his mind. Some of the crowd’s commentary amazed me. Their moods changed every few minutes or with every passage of play. Abuse and disbelief were rife as players made elementary mistakes, followed by lavish praise for unexpected gallantries. In the seats behind Pearl and I sat a father whose son was too young to understand what was happening. ‘One finger means a point, Josh,’ said the dad as Rocca played on from one metre out and missed his kick. ‘Is it time to go, Dad?’ asked Josh a short time later. ‘Not yet, son.’ Josh continued the inquisition. ‘Dad, why did he miss that?’ ‘Not sure, son.’ ‘Dad, did Rocca mess that up like you said he would?’ ‘He did, Josh, he did.’ ‘Dad, is that one finger again?’ ‘Jeez, Josh, it is. Now please watch quietly!’ ‘Dad, is Collingwood going to lose again?’ Dad by this time was starting to feel the strain. His replies were more and more curt. Pearl and I grinned at each other as Josh told his dad he wanted to go home. He didn’t know why but he sensed that something was going wrong and he didn’t want to be there. As with the previous games, there was always a time when the Pies looked as though they would do better. 56
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The flash of hope was quickly extinguished. We looked slow, we lacked vitality, our decisions were always wrong and we took the third or fourth option rather than the first. We didn’t appear to be hard enough or intense enough; we allowed the opposition to push us off too easily. We looked frozen at times, afraid to try anything. And Mick took the kids off. Old red-face left early, straight after Josh and his dad. Pearl stayed to the end. ‘Don’t think we’re good enough,’ she said wisely as she left. I wondered if her husband would eat tonight. ‘Probably not,’ she smiled. ‘I think I’ll get some fish ’n’ chips on the way home.’
Fremantle (12.16.88) d Collingwood (7.12.54)
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8 IT’S WAR OUT THERE
Round 5 Collingwood v Essendon— Sunday 25 April—MCG I once knew a man called Don Moore who was in Japan when the USA dropped the second of the atomic bombs that hastened the end of World War II. A prisoner of war, Don had endured the atrocities known only to those who spent time in Changi, on the Burma Railway and in the coal yards of Nagasaki. Don saw mates of his beaten to death and was himself once forced to place a bamboo pole behind his knees and to squat to hold it in. Japanese soldiers hit him continuously but he dared not move. Don stayed like that for hours and every so often a guard came by and, ‘on behalf of the emperor’ would jump on his shoulders, dragging him downwards. His knees were dislocated but somehow he managed to fix them, although one leg remained permanently shorter than the other and he walked with bent legs. Don never gave in. Not many of his mates did either. A lot died and many suffered unbelievably but they would not give in. 58
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After a couple of years on the railway he was taken to Japan to work in the port city. A few months later Don found out that he and the others were listed for extermination. An old Japanese man who worked with the prisoners had told them they were to be killed in a week’s time. Three days later Don was working in the mine when the bomb was dropped. That evening, as they were preparing for the night shift, they were told that there would be no more work. A few days later the guards put down their guns and informed them that the war was over. Don then saw the devastation. ‘About six of us went to the dockyards to see if we could find some of our old mates but we were turned back by the police.’ He remembers seeing no roads, no buildings, no suburbs. ‘Everything was flat, just rubble. Occasionally you’d see something sticking up out of the rubbish but mostly nothing. ‘Imagine,’ Don continued softly, ‘standing on a hill at Doncaster and looking around you and there’s nothing right across to Port Phillip Bay.’ One thing Don did notice was the remnants of a church. ‘It was quite strange. I was only a youngster and I had no real idea of what the Japs were like so I was astonished to find out they had churches.’ Don died a few years ago but not before he had embraced his past. He established links with young Japanese students who came to Australia to learn about their country’s participation in the war. To learn what their ancestors had done. When I asked Don why he was one of the few returned POWs who didn’t hate, he simply grinned widely and replied, ‘Hating’s not for me, and anyway you can’t stay bitter forever.’ I reckoned Mick Malthouse would have liked Don 59
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Moore. He would have admired someone who endured the tough times but could see past them to the future, someone who did not give up. He would have liked Don’s persistence, his strength of character and mind, not to mention his courage in the face of adversity. He might have used Don as an example. I reckon Don would have liked Mick as well. He never said as much but he was always concerned with the bigger picture. Concerned that although you never forget where you have come from, you always keep an eye on where you’re going. Don also knew what was important and what was not. When I learned that Mick had taken the team to the Shrine of Remembrance on Friday for a private dawn service, I thought Don would have approved. I could see him nodding to himself when Mick said that it was not about motivation, it was about education. Mick knew that better educated players are better people and better people usually make better players. Don told me once that football and war were often talked about together when they shouldn’t have been. He thought that clichéd phrases such as ‘fighting in the trenches’ and ‘It’s war out there’ were incredibly trite when you were talking about what was still essentially a game. Leading up to Anzac Day all the talk was about Collingwood having no hope, even though in previous years the game had always been a good contest. I wanted that to be true again. As someone who had played in the previous encounters, Nathan Buckley said during the week that there were mixed emotions on the day. ‘You’re focused on what you’re there for but at the same time there’s a sense that you’re a part of something bigger.’ 60
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It is that ‘something bigger’ that I needed to understand. Like so many others Jack Thompson was a young bloke when he headed off to war. He was the smallest in his family at 5 foot 7, but he had a couple of taller brothers, one of whom, Sam, married an even taller lady. Those two produced a son and named him Len. Len Thompson went on to become one of Collingwood’s all time greats, the winner of five Copeland Trophies and a Brownlow Medal. Len was also the reason Jack barracked for Collingwood. When he went to war, Jack had been a Port Melbourne man and had played for their seconds team. He was a real knockabout sort of fellow by his own admission and in peacetime played for the ‘Bridge Stars’ in a Sunday competition called ‘Fags for Fivers’. When scouts invited him to train with Port he agreed but told them ‘it won’t be for long, I have to go away’. Jack said that he would never know if he was good enough to go further because when he came back it was too late to find out. That didn’t matter to Jack. He was alive and that was a bonus. Like Don Moore, Jack was sent to Malaysia and when Singapore fell he and thousands of his mates were marched across the island to Changi prison where he stayed for six months before being sent to the Burma Railway. ‘There is nothing that compares to war,’ Jack said, ‘but footy was one of those things that kept us going.’ In some quiet moments, when memories of home were needed, Jack remembered sitting with a few of the other soldiers and talking about their football heroes from both Port Melbourne and Collingwood. The Colliers, 61
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Gordon Coventry and Jack’s favourite, the prince of fullbacks, Jack Regan. ‘Two or three fellows I’d played with were prisoners as well so it was helpful. You had to keep those thoughts in your mind otherwise you’d never get through.’ Funnily enough Jack remembered that there were other enemies, even over there. ‘The other eleven teams all hated us Collingwood blokes, even on the railway!’ He also remembered that before things got really tough over in Changi there was a six-team football competition played in the prison. ‘We killed a couple of pigs and got their stomachs for the footies.’ Bobby Skilton’s father played as well as a couple of other league players, not to mention all the suburban and country footballers. The final was umpired by 1933 Brownlow Medallist ‘Chicken’ Smallhorn. ‘Football and war,’ Jack said with a grin, ‘they was real then.’ When Jack went away he considered himself something of a smart alec but when he returned he had learned a lot about life. On returning he worked as a truck driver, which eventually led to a position in a union. That in turn led him to becoming assistant national secretary of the Trade Workers Union. ‘Looking after the inner-city suburbs for a start,’ Jack said, ‘the workers who stood on the terraces each week and paid their money to watch football.’ Those men were important to the country, said Jack, as well as to their football clubs. When his nephew joined the Magpies, Jack became a firm barracker. Football was a big part of his life before he went to war but it had lost its life-and-death importance by the time he returned. ‘It was still a great game,’ said Jack, ‘but we knew how to treat it.’ 62
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Collingwood still meant a lot to Jack, although it also still meant arguments. ‘Everywhere I go,’ he said, ‘hospitals, doctors, all want to argue when they find out you barrack for Collingwood.’ Even at eighty-three years of age, Jack Thompson’s memory was clear. ‘Hope no-one has to find out about war,’ he said quietly. ‘Hope they can play this game each year without any worry—that’s what’s important. And that Collingwood win, of course.’ The game had no special meaning for Jack except that he thought ‘all the fellows would be glad that Anzac Day isn’t as closed as it used to be’. And that everyone thinks about the day. And that they understand the reasons they can enjoy all the things they enjoy. As the Anzac Day match grew closer and anticipation increased, I wondered what was happening at the club and how the build up was, so I rang Gavin Brown. Surprisingly, I was put straight through. Brown’s name is synonymous with courage so who better to ask about the match, and, as assistant coach, he should have some insight. He had played in the first Anzac Day clash in 1995 that finished in a draw in front of almost 95 000 fans. ‘It was an amazing experience,’ he said. ‘Apart from a grand final, there’s nothing like it.’ Brown reckoned that, like a grand final, it was not just another game. ‘The spotlight is on you; all eyes are on you,’ he said. ‘It’s a big day and you want to play well. Some players respond to that, others don’t.’ Brown told me that as far as he was concerned it was difficult to relate football to war, apart from philosophically. ‘Basically we have no understanding of war at all,’ he said, ‘but we try to understand what the day means to servicemen.’ 63
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What about courage, I asked the man who threw himself around the football ground with no regard for himself. Is it the same in football as in conflict? ‘Courage is about overcoming fear,’ he answered. ‘Noone who is not afraid can be courageous.’ During the week, Brown said, Mick spoke to the younger players about the significance of the day; he knew the lessons history could teach. Then before the game, he would mention it again, after which it would be gone. Some of it might be stored somewhere in the mind and maybe it would help without anyone knowing. As for the team, Brown was convinced the Magpies would still be a force during the year. ‘We’ve had injuries to key players which haven’t helped, and even though the others might not be quite ready, sometimes you have to play them.’ He had a point. At times footy clubs can seem to be a long way off the mark when in reality they’re not that far off it at all. For instance, he reminded me, in the last two years we had played in two grand finals with blokes that hadn’t played many finals and most of them stood up. He’d convinced me. I actually agreed with him. We were not as bad as we looked, which was just as well. As he said, ‘All you need is for a few things to start clicking and things can turn around very quickly.’ Now, as the sounds of ‘The Last Post’ drifted across the stadium I could feel what Browny had felt. The silence—apart from one idiot (and there’s usually one)— dropped over the MCG like a shroud. Players stared impassively either at the ground or straight ahead. They could not have been anything but moved. It must have been difficult to snap out of it and play. The Essendon barracker standing next to me was shaking 64
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with emotion, as was I. We looked at each other after the teams broke away and shook hands. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it.’ I laughed at him and he laughed back. He was about my age and we began talking—not only about football. He had served in Vietnam. ‘Army,’ said Dave. ‘Navy,’ I replied. With those two words we knew we had a closeness that not even the result of an Anzac Day game could spoil. We reminisced about playing football while we were away. Dave said that he’d never been much good but managed a kick or two in some scratch games they’d played. I told him about being away on a destroyer and pulling into different ports where there was always a game of something to be played. The ship’s company was divided into those who were on duty, those who wanted to play, those who didn’t care much and those who preferred to go ashore and spend time in the bars. The numbers who wanted to visit the bars were more often larger than any of the other options, which diminished the numbers available for sport. Therefore, the sport lovers played everything. We played rugby against the New Zealanders, we played our own football against our own people and once, in Borneo during the Indonesian Confrontation, we travelled in bone-rattling trucks to a British garrison where we played soccer. The ground was surrounded by jungle and gun-carrying guards who would every now and again dash off into the trees from where we would hear sporadic bursts of gunfire. We lost the game 15–nil from memory; the loss coming for many reasons, not the least of which being we couldn’t play the game. The Anzac Day game lived up for the most part to expectations—if you barracked for Essendon. For us 65
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Collingwood people it was a different story. Sure the Pies tried hard and the game was a good spectacle. But we lost. Again. So now we were one win and four losses—the worst start since 1999 when Tony Shaw coached us to the wooden spoon. As usual, Mick looked at the position sensibly. After all, he observed, we were only five games into a season with seventeen left to play. He insisted that the result was a valuable lesson for his side and that it would not damage morale. ‘There’s light at the end of the tunnel,’ he said, ‘and if you focus on the negatives constantly you end up being a negative club.’ I agreed with him and I was, indeed, positive. Positive that I was concerned about playing Port Adelaide on Sunday, followed by Carlton the next week and St Kilda after that.
Essendon (17.10.112) d Collingwood (11.13.79)
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Round 6 Port Adelaide v Collingwood— Sunday 2 May— AAMI Stadium One of the many, many reasons that I love Collingwood, is the way other people envy us. They might hate us as well, but most other clubs would give anything to be as powerful as the Magpies. Not Carlton, of course, nor Essendon perhaps, but I reckon most of the others harbour some jealousy. Take Port Adelaide, our next opponent. They reckoned they were more black and white than us. Their president said that Collingwood and Essendon should not have a mortgage on the Anzac Day game. Who did he think he was kidding? The whole point about Anzac Day matches becoming a huge success was what Kevin Sheedy and Gubby Allan intended all those years ago when they got together and formulated their plan for this annual match between their clubs. And could anyone imagine Geelong and Hawthorn filling the MCG? Or Melbourne? Or Port Adelaide for that matter? 67
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I wanted to write to their man and tell him to come up with a few ideas of his own and not be so concerned about what we were doing. But I didn’t. I thought I might put pen to paper after the game. It might be more prudent then, depending on the result. On Thursday night, Eddie began The Footy Show with his usual opening. Once again he was spot on, it had definitely been a big week in football. It had started with the disgraceful display by a small section of Richmond supporters at the end of the game against Adelaide. The abuse hurled at coach Danny Frawley and televised across the nation was bad enough, but the spitting went beyond the pale. Even for Collingwood supporters. Victoria Park was known for some—okay, many— terrible acts by fans. Swearing and abusing and even spitting at times, amongst a host of other despicable acts. But it was all directed at the opposition, I’m sure we never turned on our own like that. Which somehow makes it all right. When I spoke to Sly about it later he said that he had given opposition players fearful sprays over the years and heard many that were much worse than his own. But spitting on your own people? ‘Disgusting’ he said emphatically. After Sam and the Footy Show panel had finished with getting stuck into the spectators, they turned on Eddie and the Olympic Park trust who were complaining about the naming of Collingwood’s new training ground. Now Ed has been known to push the odd barrow or two. And, if we’re being truthful, he might even admit to having performed a few brazen acts and to having behaved bullishly over the years. But no-one can tell me 68
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that the park people did not know he was going to name the centre. Rubbish. It had been in the news for months. What annoyed me most, and, I suspect many others, was the thought that anyone would have a problem with Bob Rose’s name. Poor old Bob would have turned in his grave if he knew there was any consternation about it. He would have been the first to say not to use his name if it was going to cause trouble. In the midst of all this fuss we had to get used to the fact that we were staring at the almost impossible task of making the finals let alone winning a premiership. Mick had said during the week to anyone who would listen that the club’s standing at the bottom of the table was insignificant. There was not wholehearted agreement with that out in Magpie land but he refused to buckle. ‘What we are trying to do and what we’re trying to achieve is slowly coming together. You can’t keep changing the side because of the cries from the media and from the supporters.’ That got me thinking. Supporters, I considered, were divided into two groups: those who agreed with him and those who did not. After a deep reflective period of some thirty seconds, I considered I had a foot in both camps. It’s all opinion around the edges and if the coach’s selections or moves work he’s a hero and if they don’t he’s a dickhead. I remember an old full-forward once telling me exactly that. ‘You’ve got about six inches,’ he said, ‘the width of the post. Ten goals one and you’re best afield. One ten—well, you work it out.’ With all this in mind I headed off to Adelaide to see what would happen in Mick Malthouse’s hundredth game in charge. 69
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As I drove my old ute the 500 or so kilometres across the Mallee I was reminded of all the football clubs that have disappeared from country Victoria. Most little towns once had an oval, now nearly all dry and abandoned. One had goalposts reaching plaintively for the sky, their useful days long gone and their paint peeling and cracked. A few sheep scratched aimlessly around them for feed. In the old days football competitions in the Mallee changed quite regularly as some towns either formed a team when new people came to the district or couldn’t field one when people left. Teams were created, moved, disappeared and reformed quite often. And all within thirty miles of each other. It didn’t take much to gather a team together as there were often only a handful of families needed. Quite a few had five or six sons who played the game and whether they were good or not wasn’t the point. Football was a social gathering as well. In the ’50s and ’60s it had stabilised but now many clubs were long gone. Steadily reduced by amalgamations each year until where once there were ten teams, now there was one. Sometimes there were none. Young people moved away, pubs closed down, and footy teams went out of existence. The advent of better roads and better vehicles made the world a smaller place. I knew what had happened—I lived there. I played football there. I knew the way small farms became unviable. I understood that economics made survival extraordinarily difficult. None of it changed the sadness. The world at work, I mused, how do we make sense of it all?
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Was it Rex Hunt who called Port Adelaide’s home ground Moron Park? Outside the ground I couldn’t quite remember, although when I got inside I was tempted to agree with the sentiment. They—being the rest of the football world—reckoned that Victoria Park was bad. It was, but this was something else. Still, I suppose that being in a minority was a good lesson. That’s what I told myself anyway, as I battled to ignore all the name-calling. A small number of Magpies supporters had made the trip, all of whom were dismayed to learn that Josh Fraser would not take his place due to illness. That was not a good start, although our confidence was high. We had been in this situation before and we always played well against this lot. I comforted myself with that thought as I settled in a few rows back from the congestion. There was plenty of room around me and it was safer that way, especially since I was wearing my Collingwood cap and windcheater, both of which were a few years old. There were lots of empty seats at the ground. Why couldn’t Port draw the fans? They were supposed to be the legendary team in South Australia but they couldn’t fill the stadium. Strange that. The game started amid jeering and abuse that took me by surprise although the team was not obviously affected. When Collingwood led by almost three goals I was glad of the space around me as the natives were, to say the least, restless. The one-man euphoria did not last long. Port kicked the next seven goals and reversed the lead. During the half-time break Port supporters filed past me on the way to do whatever it was they were doing, most of them glancing at me sideways, wondering why 71
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I was there. To be fair, some of them had been okay, with one lady even trying to start up a conversation. She’d flown to Adelaide from Melbourne to see her mother and had a Port scarf around her neck although she wasn’t that interested in the footy. At least not until they kicked a few goals. I told her that I had once lived in South Australia and, for an extremely short time, barracked for Port. ‘The real one?’ she asked. ‘Port Adelaide,’ I answered insistently before I realised what she meant. To some there would only ever be one Port Adelaide, the one before the club joined the AFL. Was it difficult, I asked her, being a Port Adelaide supporter in Melbourne? ‘It is when we lose,’ she replied. Then on reflection she added, ‘When we win too.’ Being alone in the crowd at half-time gave me a chance to reflect on the last couple of games. When I watched St Kilda or Sydney or Brisbane play, every player seemed to run forward hard; Collingwood did not. In this game it was more apparent than in most. Why didn’t we run towards the goals? If there was a strategic game plan then it was lost on me. I told myself that if I was patient, in time all would be revealed. Unfortunately, the virtue of patience is not something Collingwood supporters can boast about. It was one of those games when you could sense what was going to happen. With a minute left on the clock before half-time we had a chance to kick a goal. We didn’t, and the ball zoomed down the other end and with twenty seconds left, they scored. It was the same before three-quarter time. This was turning out to be ‘one of those’ games. We lost Johnson with concussion, Cameron Cloke staggered from the field with the club doctor after bravely standing 72
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his ground, and Prestigiacomo limped to the sidelines. Scotty Burns had left the ground earlier so that meant, including those who missed the match, we were without four of our top six players. As valiant as the Pies were, as hard as they fought, they could not cover all those losses. The crowd sensed as much as well and prepared for victory with superior, condescending glances in my direction. Stuff ’em, I thought. I stood and cheered, yelled, and generally made an idiot of myself trying to be heard. Those in my vicinity gazed on me with a degree of what was probably incomprehension, mixed with hate of course, but I would not have had it any other way. I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me, us. I wanted them to realise this was what Collingwood was all about. Down. Gone. Beaten. And they still kept going. Nothing else mattered to me then, except the fight. So what if Cloke never played in the back line again. Who cared if Woewodin did not chase hard enough. Did it really matter if we turned it over all the time? Forget that we had run into four open goals and missed, and that we’d let the opposition score late goals in nearly every game so far this year. Those things could be fixed. Spirit is another thing altogether and Collingwood had it in that last quarter. What would have been going through the minds of the Port Adelaide players? They certainly appeared worried. So did the mob in the seats around me. There was a tangible air of disbelief as Collingwood drew level late in the last quarter. Could it be Port were going to lose again to the dreaded enemy? The Pies made countless mistakes but they never gave in. Even though we lost, it was a day to be proud. 73
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Everything we expect of our club was on show. They gave and gave and gave. That is why we love them. That is why we ache at times and why we sweat blood with them. At the end of the game Port had snuck home with a couple of late goals and the crowd around me took up the chant, ‘Eddie’s a wanker.’ The woman I had spoken to at half-time looked embarrassed and climbed three rows to apologise. I dismissed her concerns, ‘Don’t worry about it, I reckon Eddie will wear it as a badge of honour today.’ As I buffeted my way towards the exit I absorbed the insults with a smile. I listened to the self-congratulations of those who could see no further than their own bias. I didn’t say anything but if I were a Port Adelaide fan I would have thought twice before getting too carried away. Beating Collingwood seconds at home when you are supposed to be one of the best teams going around was nothing to be proud of. Collingwood, on the other hand, had found a spark. Mick and the rest of us could look to the future. Perhaps this was the turning point. Yes, we were now one and five but in a few weeks, we would be, could be, should be, about even. We had our top players returning and we were on the way back. Grand final? Perhaps not. I managed to leave the car park unscathed and headed quickly out of the city. Soon I was in the country with about five hours’ driving ahead. There was no traffic to speak of and as the headlights of the ute cut a swathe through the darkness, my mind wandered back to the game and the gallantry and the uselessness of another honourable loss. The hours and the miles sped by and later, when I was starting to fall asleep, I stopped, walked around 74
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the ute in the cool night air and bellowed ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’ to the stars.
Port Adelaide (14.17.101) d Collingwood (12.12.84)
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10 THE TRADITIONAL ENEMY Round 7 Carlton v Collingwood— Saturday 8 May—MCG Whenever I feel calm and serene before a Collingwood game I also start to worry. Not that it has ever happened before a game against Carlton. Carlton, together with Collingwood, has broken my heart so many times that I have doubted that it could ever be repaired. They have also been smug—particularly a succession of presidents—which has added to the pain. That is why I wanted to beat them so much and for this game, I felt confident—calm and serene almost. That serenity dissipated a degree or two after I spent some time studying the record of our clashes and found that Carlton was the only club who had beaten us more times than we had beaten them. It was close, mind you; only ten matches the difference in 230 or so. The total scores for and against in those matches pointed to us being about twenty points in front. I was astonished at the closeness. In matches of importance, however, it was different—grand finals particularly. 76
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There is a school of thought that Essendon is the club we hate more than anyone else but they are latecomers. They have only been high on our hate list since 1990. Carlton is the team for whom we reserve our most intense passions. In the last couple of years we have not had much to beat. When we thrashed them by over 100 points two years ago, Bob Rose was sitting with his brother Kevin, who had known plenty of bad times as a committee member and as president. As the massacre took place, Kevin turned to his brother and said, ‘You almost feel sorry for them, don’t you.’ Bob’s response was quick, quiet and emphatic. ‘No you don’t.’ Not that Bob was a vindictive man; it was simply that he had suffered at the hands of Carlton more than most, 1970 in particular. The story of that grand final with Hopkins, handball and half-time champagne was something that Bob blamed himself for until his death. Not that there was any champagne, they were simply unfounded rumours. Then in the 1971 season Carlton did it again. At Princes Park in the last game of the season, the Pies were seven goals up at half-time and Carlton ran over them just like they had before. In 1970 I was in Canberra, ensconced in a small room with about fifteen other sailors who, like everyone else in Canberra it seemed, all barracked for Carlton because Alex Jesaulenko had been recruited from there. The first half was accompanied by severe gloating from me as we watched the small black and white television. In between demolishing numerous cans of beer, I was convinced that at last our time had arrived. That what I and all other loyal and true Magpies fans had waited for was about to happen. 77
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Being truthful, I remembered being concerned about the kicking. While we replenished our liquid stocks at half-time, I had laughed at the others and said that if we had been kicking straight we’d have been a lot further in front and that they had no hope. Little did I know that McKenna was hurt and it was Tuddenham who had inflicted the damage—to both of them. As the second half produced stories for the history books, I was considerably quieter, especially when fifteen other young men jumped from their chairs as Jezza launched himself into the stratosphere courtesy of Jerker Jenkin’s back. I knew what was coming. When the final siren sounded, no-one in the room really knew what had happened, except that their team had won. A couple of hours later they had almost forgotten about it. Their support was a matter of convenience. How could they be like that, I wondered. I knew what had happened. We had managed to do it again. I learned that day not to become carried away with anything. That life had a habit of making you pay when you least expected it. I learned something else too. That somewhere there must have been a list of things that would happen in the world. Somewhere near the top was the edict, ‘Bobby Rose shall not win a premiership.’ Those thoughts were banished on that autumn day outside the MCG; instead, I was enjoying the buzz of humanity. The atmosphere outside the G before a big game is like no other, and this was a big game. That’s even allowing for Mike Sheahan who had written in the paper during the week that he favoured the Docklands stadium over the MCG. I simply didn’t understand 78
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how he could say that. There is nothing at all like the MCG. An hour or so later as I settled down for what I considered to be the game that would restore our standing in the football world, that atmosphere had reinforced just what a Collingwood–Carlton game means. Mick had said that this game wasn’t season-defining as such and he still wasn’t concerned with being on the bottom of the ladder. ‘I don’t concern myself with ladders or what’s taken place previously or what’s going to happen in the future. The most important thing is ensuring we get better each week.’ It was a sentiment with which I presumed the club’s supporters agreed. Not the bit about being bottom of the ladder but the importance of improving. The problem was in ascertaining whether it had happened. Looking back, this disaster was all set up. The previous week had given Collingwood confidence while Carlton was a shambles after a 100-point drubbing by Melbourne. We were favourites, Carlton the underdog. After playing in the last two grand finals, we were not in the right place on the ladder, Carlton was. In addition, they had a premiership reunion that night, many of which were gained at Collingwood’s expense. What else could the footballing gods have done to make sure Carlton would win? The feeling in the crowd changed dramatically as Carlton began their run home and all the old ghosts returned. I heard one man say it was because we lost Buckley. That was true but Bucks had been off the ground for some time when the debacle began. What really got up my nose was that Carlton would have seen us falter and all the old players watching would have sensed that we were gone. The Collingwood crowd sensed it as well. 79
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I mean, no-one really tries to lose but perhaps they don’t try hard enough to win. I didn’t want to be critical because not many of us have been out there in the heat. But really, it wasn’t as though we just played badly for the last half of the last quarter, we had played badly for most of the day and we were still twenty-seven points in front at the fifteen minute mark. How does a team manage to lose from there? Another voice I heard said that it was not easy to stop momentum. Shit, I thought (not out loud as I was fearful of getting belted), perhaps it is, but we have had enough experience in being run over that we might have figured out a way of stopping it. Apart from those half-reasonable sentiments there was not much else that was complimentary to the players, the club or Mick. Yet, funnily enough there were no explosive outbursts. If there were, I didn’t see them. Mostly there was simply stunned, disbelieving silence. The only disquiet all day was during the brawl at half-time, although to call it a brawl was a bit rich. It started with a few words and then developed into a pushing and shoving match where tempers unravelled and testosterone started to pump through the bodies. There was bloodlust in the stands at the same time. There is nothing like a bit of physical action to get the hearts of some in the crowd working overtime. Eyes were rolling, arms were waving, fists were clenching and pulses were pulsing. It continued for quite a few minutes after the players disappeared into the rooms. As for the actual football, some Collingwood and Carlton supporters didn’t seem to care too much about what was happening on the field, they preferred to abuse all and sundry as if it was their right because they’d paid at the gate. 80
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That’s what Manny told me anyway. He sat beside me, taking up more than his fair share of the two seats allocated to us. He jumped up, annoyed at some of the more vocal outbursts. ‘Jesus Christ, there’s some fucken dickheads around!’ he exclaimed in a voice still tinged with an old accent. Manny arrived as a youngster from Italy with his parents during the 1950s. The family had lived all over Victoria, ‘picking and that’, until finally settling in Melbourne. He told me that he had always loved the Pies as a kid and it was reinforced as he grew older. ‘They gave me something to focus on when the wife took me kids away.’ I didn’t ask him to elaborate. After all, that was private. Manny didn’t seem to care though. ‘It was hard for a while,’ he continued, ‘especially during the nineties when we kept losing.’ I thought he meant the family breakdown was hard but that was closed as far as he was concerned. He still saw them every now and again but ‘the wife’s got another man and the kids are married and gone away’. This year football was hard once more for Manny. He cupped his heavily stubbled face in his hands when he sat down again. ‘Stuffed if I know what to do,’ he growled sadly. I presumed he meant with his life but he could also have meant with the team, although it was doubtful Mick would have listened to him—or anyone for that matter. On the ground it appeared none of the players knew what to do either. In that last quarter no player looked eager for the contest, apart from those in dark blue. There appeared to be no stimulation from mates; no sort of gung-ho attempts to change the course of the game. 81
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Perhaps it might not have worked—probably wouldn’t have—but, as Manny said, they should at least try. Everyone could see what was happening and what would eventuate. How things had changed from the celebrations when Leon Davis kicked the first goal of the last quarter, giving us that lead. Everything was wonderful then. ‘Bloody celebrations,’ Manny exclaimed. ‘They should do that when they’ve won, they’ve got fucken nothing to celebrate.’ When the Blues began their comeback I sensed what was going to happen. So did Manny, who had elbowed me in the ribs every time Collingwood kicked a goal during the first three quarters. Accidentally, of course, and all of them accompanied by an apology. ‘Shit, mate, I’m sorry. Too bloody big aren’t I?’ I didn’t answer; just smiled in acceptance. Manny was a simple man but not simple. Nor was he a Rhodes Scholar. Rather, he was an overweight, unshaven, financially troubled, ordinary bloke who had problems with his life but who still loved his kids and his footy club. Manny questioned what was happening on the ground, at the club, and in Mick Malthouse’s mind. He had answers for none of them. In fact, he could not work out exactly what his questions were, let alone the answers. ‘I, I, what, fucken can, we,’ he stammered and stuttered as we watched what was unfolding. Manny had been at the MCG in 1970. ‘Bloody Crosswell,’ he said both in admiration and hate. ‘Shit, he was good that day. Hopkins, we knew about him from a couple of weeks before.’ ‘Jesaulenko?’ I asked. ‘Nothin’ I can say, is there?’ said Manny, his heart quite obviously aching, even almost thirty-five years after the event. 82
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‘They reckon it changed the club,’ he continued as he swept his arm around in a huge circle. ‘It changed a lot of us poor bastards too.’ Manny winced when Carlton hit the front. He screwed up his unshaven face. ‘Mate, we’re stuffed I reckon, stuffed.’ I threw my hands in the air and asked why we put up with this sort of thing. Why we continue to turn up each week. ‘Faith,’ said Manny simply. ‘It’s a faith.’ He was right and, like all other faiths, it tested the commitment of its followers. We left the G together, both silent, both unhappy. We walked across the park to the Cricketer’s Arms where we had a couple of beers, also in silence. I spent a few minutes thinking about the great mysteries of the world. Who really shot Kennedy? What happens in the Bermuda triangle? What are the secrets of Roswell? And, how the bloody hell did we lose this? Manny raised his head from his hands and asked me if I had any ideas about the season. About what would happen. He wasn’t after an answer as such, he just wanted to tell me what he thought. He still thought it was all stuffed. Last week, he said, he had been optimistic; two losses that were close and it looked as though it would all be okay, and then this. He placed his empty glass on the bar and shook my hand before he walked off to catch a train. I watched him as he waddled through the traffic towards the station, head down, black and white jumper tight across his chest and stomach but with shoulders stooped as though he was carrying a heavy object; a heart perhaps. I headed for the ute, in much the same state. 83
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Carlton (13.11.89) d Collingwood (11.14.80)
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Round 8 St Kilda v Collingwood— Saturday 15 May—Docklands I didn’t go to the St Kilda game. I couldn’t, even though I harboured ludicrous thoughts of winning. Of how we’d struggle gloriously to defeat the Saints and set the groundwork for a return to the top half of the ladder. Of course, it didn’t happen. The result was what it was always going to be. That was why I stayed away. I needed to have a spell, some space. I needed to save myself—sort of like a breather in the middle of a long journey—so I could handle the rest of the season. I could not divest myself of all my emotion this early. I had made up my mind at the start of the week after weighing up the options available. The choice was between a masochistic trip to Melbourne and my nephew’s thirtieth birthday party. It turned out to be an easy choice, although I’m not sure that Sunday morning would have felt much different in either case. In the meantime I attempted to look at our position objectively. 85
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First there were the injuries. We had heaps of them and any team that loses five players from its top seven is going to struggle. No Bucks, no Presti, no Burnsy, no Josh and no Brodie Holland. Critics talked about lack of depth and it was true, the Magpies didn’t have a list like Brisbane. They didn’t have a list like St Kilda’s either but where had St Kilda been in the last few years? To me the criticism was a trifle harsh because when you have players out from the top of your list, those on the bottom replace them, so of course you won’t have the same output. Perhaps with one or two, but not five. In the last two years, we had done well but the club’s critics said Collingwood had overachieved. They said that things fell into place. What did that mean? Did every other team decide that they would help the Pies by losing, or were Collingwood actually a good side? Now, as the critics predicted, we were in strife because of injuries and they were all turning on us, being thoughtful and wise as though they had known about us all along. Criticism because of injuries was totally unfair; criticism because of depth was partially valid, while criticism because of playing badly was completely warranted. Josh’s party was held in the bar at a club that just happened to have a television set at one end and a huge screen at the other. How convenient. While the early arrivals enjoyed themselves at the bar on Josh’s largesse, I sat on a stool and watched him receive the other guests. Tall, with blond hair that fell wavy and long onto his shoulders, he looked like a surfer, although finding surf in the middle of the Mallee would be unlikely. Josh was a farmer waiting for rain. In fact, he had waited four 86
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months for rain so he could put his crop in. It did not look like coming. Josh had a choice between following his own path and returning to work the land, as his father had and both grandfathers. The sensible decision may have been to break the line but the red Mallee dirt was in his blood. The dryness, and after that the smell of the rain mixed with the soil. The paddocks stretching endlessly towards sunsets inflaming the sky with colours unimaginable. And the stars that cover the blackness of the night like a sparkling lid. A third generation man on the land, the only thing I didn’t much like about Josh was that he barracked for Essendon. Oh, there was one other thing—he kept laughing at me. I turned my attention to the TV screen as the ads finished. Josh handed me a pot, quickly followed by another after I gulped down the first as the Pies lined up. Mick had his players in very strange positions. One thought sprang immediately to mind—Mick had lost the plot. That, Josh said, was very likely. St Kilda had four talls in their forward line and we had one of our best defenders—Shane Wakelin—on the bench. To say it was strange was, in the immortal words of the Monty Python crew, stating the bleedin’ obvious. Mick had a reputation for innovations that were out of left field and for thinking outside the square but this—really! I was frustrated. I began talking to the television, then to myself. The other guests at the party, or those that didn’t know me, looked on and whispered to each other behind their hands. I stood up, walked around, sat down, and tried to initiate some self-control. Josh walked over with another beer and when I told him 87
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what had happened he looked at me with a big grin and started laughing again. It wasn’t bloody funny, I told him. To which he replied, ‘You’re all funny, you Collingwood people.’ He was right. That is how others look at us a lot of the time. But is it any wonder when Mick makes moves like that? I stood up again and asked myself, and anyone that cared to listen, why everything was so complicated. Had footy changed that much? How far outside the square are you allowed to think before they come and take you away? I went in search of food and came across large plates of party pies, small pizzas and other tasty odds and ends. I nibbled on a few and stood away from the crowd at the bar, not wanting to engage in any meaningless football conversation. To pass the time I meandered around the poker machine room where all eyes were transfixed by the spinning spools. They did not notice me standing behind them, contemplating the worthiness of them unblinkingly watching their money disappear into slots of shiny chrome. The distinct lack of excitement forced me to return from whence I came. Back in the bar, Josh came over with the necessary and asked me how the footy was going. He looked serious but shortly after I started explaining, I could see the glint in his eye. He did the right thing and headed back to those who were more inclined to laugh with him. After he left I thought about Mick and the defeat that was rushing towards us like a train. It appeared to me that the game plan, if there was such a thing, was totally at odds with where the team lined up. I imagined myself as a young player trying to work out what Mick was doing. It is said that Kevin Sheedy drives players mad 88
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with his plans for them. I reckoned that Mick would be about the same. There was one important difference though—Sheedy had a team that could handle it, Mick did not. I tried to be sociable and stood in the middle of a group of farmers talking about rain, stubble crops and the price of sheep—none of which enthralled me. I stayed to be polite and watched the television over the top of their heads while they conversed around me. Occasionally I was asked what I thought, to which I answered, not a lot. Two of them decided a couple of young nubile women displaying more flesh than should be allowed would be better conversationalists and slinked over to their side. I watched them as the girls shifted their hips in coquettish fashion and the blokes made sure their eyes feasted on all visible body parts. It was a welcome relief from the torture on the screen. While Collingwood was clawing its way back from total humiliation, my wife informed me in her inimitable style how much of a pain in the arse I was being. She was as correct and observant as always. I decided that Josh should keep buying me more beer so I stayed close to him. At one stage he wrapped his big farmer’s arms around me, lifted me off the ground, and told me that he was really sorry that we had been flogged again. I didn’t believe a word of it and told him so. ‘Just trying to make you feel better,’ he slurred. Apparently, there was no other Collingwood barracker at the party, which I found rather incredible, seeing as there were about a hundred guests. There were a few Saints fans who appeared when their team looked like winning. It’s interesting how that happens. I knew I shouldn’t be too hard on them, it must be difficult to front up 89
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each year and put up with what the Saints dish up most seasons. This year they deserved repayment for all those years of toil watching their team being belted. Funny how I never heard from some St Kilda supporters when they were down the bottom. With Collingwood, despite their fortunes, you always know they’re around. One St Kilda fan watched a small part of the game with me. He said that he was never quite sure when to let his emotions run free. ‘No point, really,’ he said. ‘I don’t own up to being a Saint too often.’ At the party it seemed to be the Magpies fans who didn’t want to own up. Perhaps they didn’t care as much as me. Perhaps they were not brave enough or proud enough to be ridiculed. Perhaps they had some brains. When the dancing began I watched the gyrating, contorting bodies and, ignoring the electronic thump of the jukebox, my mind wandered back to the 1966 Grand Final. I didn’t know why especially, but it had been the last time St Kilda had beaten us in a significant match and defeat was on my mind. I was at sea off the coast of Vietnam and listened to a scratchy broadcast of the game on the ship’s radio system. The commentator’s words were difficult to hear above the constant backdrop of a distant roar. Not the crowd, mind you, but the noise associated in those days with receiving transmissions from so far away. It must have been Radio Australia. Halfway through the last quarter I had to go on watch. Donning my overalls and sticking my gloves in my back pocket, I climbed down the many ladders to the bowels of the boiler room. There, in the heat and oil and noise, I suffered, while thousands of miles away my team was also suffering. 90
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I returned to the mess-deck four hours later, already aware of their fate. ‘You should’ve heard it,’ one of my mates told me. ‘It was sensational!’ I didn’t bother with an answer. I simply took myself onto the upper deck to be alone. I sat with my back against the bulkhead, felt the sea air on my face and the gentle undulation of the ocean. As the whipping noise of a helicopter’s blades faded, I savoured the sound of the waves as they whooshed under the steel belly of the ship. I gazed at the reflection of the moon as it danced across the phosphorescent sea, and I thought of home.
St Kilda (21.12.138) d Collingwood (13.13.91)
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12 COLLINGWOOD AND THE WORLD Round 9 Collingwood v Adelaide Crows— Friday 21 May— Docklands Around the time of the Adelaide Crows game it seemed the world was going mad. Prisoners in Iraq were being abused and photographed while the Melbourne underworld was slowly but surely getting rid of criminals excess to their needs. The media was becoming slightly hysterical over radio personality Rex Hunt smuggling a few forks onto a plane and a number of rugby league players in Sydney, after a night out on the town, were justifiably compared to Neanderthals. Johnny Howard’s government was proposing a budget with tax cuts that would hand money to the already wealthy, Steve Bracks’s government was embarrassed about speed cameras and George Bush’s government was trying to explain away the images of its soldiers that had been displayed across the world. Meanwhile, at Collingwood, in amongst the losses and the concern and the excuses, membership rose to record levels. It did not matter to Collingwood supporters where 92
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they were on the ladder; if you barracked for them you needed to show it. Many other clubs’ membership waxed and waned, dramatically in some cases, according to their on-field fortunes; Collingwood’s was mostly stable. I had arranged to go to the match with my lawyer friend, Geoff Wilson, and a few of his mates who called themselves the Collingwood Club. Actually, it was nothing like a club, just a few like minds who enjoyed each other’s company before and after games, all thinking they knew more about the game than the rest. We had agreed to meet in Geoff’s office in the heart of lawyer land at the bottom end of Lonsdale Street. While waiting for the appointed hour I walked around the area. Within a couple of blocks I found the Magistrate’s Court, the Supreme Court, the Appeals Court, and more than a few food courts. Outside the Magistrate’s Court a group of people, a large percentage of whom wore Collingwood scarves, jumpers or hats, occupied a fair slice of the footpath. They smoked and talked in hurried and hushed tones, raising their heads only to purse their lips and exhale smoke away from their companions. They fell silent when a white covered-in truck pulled out from underneath the court building. Large padlocks on the back door told its story and a tiny window cut in the side provided a tantalising glimpse of freedom. The top half of a face appeared at the window and watched as the group all waved and blew kisses towards him. When the lights turned green and the truck drove away the group turned and scuttled off towards the footy, the prisoner apparently forgotten. I took the lift to Geoff’s office, accompanied by a woman who rushed in, almost dropping her files, as I held back the doors. I smiled and asked her if she 93
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was going to the footy. She looked at me, startled, and hurried away when the lift reached her floor. The guests arrived a few minutes apart and in Geoff’s conference room we enjoyed beer and sandwiches and discussed the few positives to come from the St Kilda game. Stu, a small union man in the plumbing industry who had played reserves footy for Collingwood in the ’70s, sat next to Sean, once the head of an international taxation unit but who had slowed down about eight years previously when his wife presented him with quads. Lenny, head of maths at a private school, was at the end of the table with the tall, eloquent barrister, Greg, sitting opposite. Greg said that the Magpies needed some continuity with team selection and players on the ground. He reckoned that once the team became settled again, they could still have a good year. He was close to the mark but I made a note to myself not to engage him if I was ever arrested. His confidence might be slightly misplaced. While we moved on to talk about Collingwood teams of the past, I slipped the top off a stubbie and mentioned how amused I’d been with the comments from our new assistant coach Guy McKenna, who said in one of the papers that we needed to improve defensively. ‘That’s what I like about our coaches,’ said Geoff. ‘Insightful comments and really in-depth analysis.’ McKenna had also said that he didn’t think he was doing his job too well at the moment. Like Mick Malthouse, McKenna said that roles given to some defenders were educational. Lenny reckoned that might have been true; actually, it was obviously true. ‘Nevertheless,’ he asked no-one in particular, ‘can’t we educate at some other time?’ His point was valid. Why educate them when we still had a winning chance? 94
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The conversation then changed eras. We discussed at length the various ways we had lost past grand finals, each of us giving a version of where we were at the time, and which one hurt the most. 1970 won in a landslide victory. I asked why it was that Collingwood supporters tended to talk about their losses rather than their wins. The answer came quickly. ‘Because that’s all we’ve had,’ Geoff told me. ‘What about 1990?’ I countered. ‘True,’ he replied, ‘but we were lucky that year.’ Ah, the self-flagellating nature of a true Magpie. As we talked, discussed and argued, two more people walked in. One was a large older man with big glasses perched precariously on his nose and hooked behind ears that stuck out of his bald head. The other was younger and swarthier. Geoff introduced me to Mohammed and his father, Mustafa. Mohammed managed one of the most popular restaurants in the legal precinct and was as passionate as you could possibly be about Collingwood. His customers knew that and, as many of them barracked for other teams, let him know, in no uncertain terms, of the fluctuating fortunes of his club. While Mohammed and the others talked about the upcoming game, Mustafa told me about his early life in Egypt. He had grown up in Alexandria and after the ArabIsraeli war ended in 1973 he decided to move. His English was not the best but he managed to make me understand. ‘War,’ he exclaimed. ‘Always another war. I not know if they make war or peace or another war, so I try to come to Australia.’ 95
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His application was successful and soon he was ensconced in the high-rise Collingwood flats. He obtained a job at General Motors and to round off his Australianness, he barracked for the Magpies. ‘It because of the name, Neil Mann,’ he explained. In Egypt, apparently, ‘Neil’ means ‘Nile’ and the biggest thing in Egypt is the river, so, naturally his team was Collingwood. ‘Also, I love the black and white,’ he added. ‘It beautiful.’ Mohammed also found himself drawn to Victoria Park. When school finished he would head off to watch training and generally hang around. Billy Cook, the old property steward, soon found jobs to keep him occupied and to stop him from becoming a nuisance. Mohammed became a fixture around the place and was even handy when the brawl erupted during the 1990 Grand Final, standing close to the stretcher as one of his heroes, Gavin Brown, was carted off. ‘I would’ve gone in if I was needed,’ he told me. I believed he would have, even though he was only fourteen years old. In 1990, while Mohammed was tending to the needs of the Collingwood grand final side, Mustafa was on a bus from Alexandria to Cairo, arriving at the Australian Embassy at 1 a.m. to ask the result of the game. ‘They thought I mad,’ he laughed. They were probably right. When he returned to this country he found that members of his family had spent ridiculous amounts of money on Collingwood jumpers, scarves, beanies and such like. He didn’t appreciate their spendthrift attitude but it did give him an idea. ‘I think I sell them cheaper and still make some money.’ Mustafa then made a few contacts and began selling his merchandise from his small shop in Johnston Street, 96
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just near the corner where the crowds walked down to the football ground. ‘Every home game I make lots of money,’ Mustafa remembered wistfully, ‘and everyone bought them cheap.’ A few years later when the Magpies moved their home games to the MCG, Mustafa moved with them, selling his goods from a stall outside the ground. However, in the manner of huge corporations everywhere, the AFL banned him. He was not an authorised seller and his merchandise also was unauthorised. ‘Same things,’ shrugged Mustafa, ‘only not the little tag.’ The tag that read AFL Endorsed Product or some such thing. Mustafa retired shortly afterwards and spent his time at home with a garage still full of unauthorised merchandise. ‘What can you do?’ he shrugged his ample shoulders again. ‘What can you do?’ Although he had made his home here, Egypt still held a special place in Mustafa’s heart. ‘Australia is my step-mother,’ he explained. ‘I love my step-mother, I respect her, she has given me lots and she has done everything for me. But Egypt is my mother.’ Mohammed was keen to move and he ushered his father out of the office. He had missed only one match since 1990 and he did not want to miss the start to this one. Various children had turned up by this stage and after four trips in the lift to transfer everyone we all headed off down Lonsdale Street. There was something quintessentially and wonderfully Melbourne about us, a group of friends heading off to the footy—five Aussie men, two Egyptians and eight kids. As we waited for the start, Geoff and I discussed how Mick Malthouse and the team had so far avoided any 97
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real scrutiny from the press. Peter Rohde at the Bulldogs was under pressure while Danny Frawley had redeemed himself a bit after a couple of wins. Adelaide’s Garry Ayres well and truly had a problem. All these teams, however, were above us on the ladder. Mick’s coaching had not received the attention usually reserved for bottom-of-the-ladder coaches. To us it meant that everyone understood what the problem was: that Mick was not a bad coach and that Collingwood was certainly not a bottom-of-the-ladder side. The only problem with those thoughts was that we were on the bottom and even if Mick wasn’t concerned, the fans were. Our seats were right on the fence at the fifty-metre arc, close enough to hear the players breathing and to see what actually happens in those close encounters of the football kind. As we sat down, Geoff said that he hoped Mick went with a comfortable structure. Not necessarily comfortable for us (although we would feel better with some normality) but for the players. Simple stuff, like Cloke in the back line, Wakelin not on the bench, and our best players where they played best. To our relief Mick did just that but in the first quarter the Crows kicked away to a four-goal lead and just after the restart led by over five. The only noteworthy event in that first term was the performance of the umpires. It reminded me of one of the funniest comments the legendary Jack Dyer ever made. When asked once, many years ago, for the definition of a grand final he replied, ‘Forty players, 100 000 umpires, and one galah.’ On this occasion there were three galahs, one of whom was an absolute prize-winning, gold medal galah. I had never been one to bag umpires but I made an 98
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exception here. They really deserved it. I wondered why there could be only one person in amongst 38 000 or so who could not see a blatant free kick. I shook my head at the umpire’s incompetence while a few seats down from me a mini revolution was taking place. Four Collingwood types were highly amused by the antics of a fifth, their companion. He was on his feet and screaming almost incoherently at Scott McLaren who was, in his eyes, the main culprit. His diatribe was neither funny nor fair—embarrassing, really. The umpire was so close he must have been able to hear the invective. What do umpires think when that happens? I wanted to say something but I chickened out. I was too old and my days of fighting long gone. I’d chickened out once years before when Zac and I went to see the Pies play the Crows at Victoria Park. We sat in the Sherrin Stand and each time the ball came down our end when the Crows were attacking, a grizzled middle-aged character ran down the steps, stood at the fence and screamed at Tony Modra. ‘You’re nuffin but a fucken poofter, Modra!’ Then he’d race back up to his position near the roof of the stand and rest until the ball came back. Zac looked at me each time and grinned self-consciously as the crowd around us roared their approval. It was wrong and it was vulgar and it was Victoria Park at its best and worst all at once. It was not the sort of thing an eight-year-old country boy should hear, but it was also part of my son’s worldly education. This screamer calmed down a bit during the second term as Collingwood began to regain some ground and he was reasonably happy at half time when we were only eleven points behind. He appeared satisfied with both performances—his team’s and his own. 99
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Geoff and I went our separate ways at the break. He checked on the kids while I checked out the Cougar Bar again. I wanted to see if Telstra Dome had changed footy as much as I thought. When I rode up the escalator (that’s right—escalator—in a footy ground!) a rock band was playing which made me think it had. I wanted footy and footy atmosphere as I knew it, not a nightclub. Maybe I, along with countless thousands of others, would eventually have to change my expectations of what constituted a good day at the footy. I left the area and went in search of Mohammed and his dad. I found them in the continuous circle of food outlets, bars and toilets. Mustafa greeted me with his thoughts on the game so far. ‘Those umpire, they no good.’ He shook his head. Mohammed agreed. He was a keen student of the game and could tell what was right and wrong, but I was not so sure about Mustafa. His understanding of the rules was rudimentary but then again, you didn’t need to be too clever to work out what was happening. They headed back to their seats, confident that the Pies were going well enough to win. In the second half the umpires realised there were actually two teams on the ground and when the Magpies started to gain some momentum, victory loomed as a distinct possibility. Collingwood ran and tackled and harassed and then went again. They also gave the ball away constantly. Yet in the middle of it all there were glimpses of what the team could be. Guy Richards was terrific in the ruck and the usual on-ballers were hard at it. Then there were Tarrant and Wakelin. Tazza was exceptional, a John Coltrane amongst the saxophone buskers. Wakes was almost as good. Cloke—surprise, surprise—played his best game for ages because he was left in the back 100
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line and Paul Licuria was as prolific and as wasteful as ever. After one of his many mistakes someone behind mentioned that ‘Licuria’ was Italian for ‘turnover’. A bit harsh I thought, especially when it had not been long since they were bagging Ben Johnson, who had been much worse than Licca over the years. Anyway, to me it was Mark McGough who now deserved the title of biggest waster. Halfway through the last quarter the Pies were in control but couldn’t quite put Adelaide away. Inaccurate kicking again saw us fritter away chances like a philanthropist bestowing his money. The umpire hater along from me had not changed his attitude towards the umpires, he simply had less opportunity to declare his opinion because we were actually receiving a few frees. With five minutes to go we were nine points up and attacking. Could we hang on? Would we throw it away? Then from a kickout a pack formed on the wing and the ball bobbed straight into the hands of Andrew McLeod who slotted a goal from the angle. All the familiar fears were suddenly back. The collective groan almost shook the stadium. Geoff and I looked at each other; no words were necessary. After the centre bounce the ball was suddenly back in Adelaide’s forward line where Wakes made a courageous spoil and the umpire called for a ball-up. He took almost a minute to sort out the mess, one of the very few sensible decisions made all night. A few seconds later the siren sounded. Geoff and I hugged each other and sang ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’ with gusto, as did the umpire hater and his mates. The team joined in a circle in the middle of the ground as our song pumped out repeatedly. Surely there would be more education in those few minutes than all the blackboard lectures and 101
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motivational speeches in the world—the young players would experience the feeling that only those involved in an emotional victory like that can understand. We were back! The rest of our group gathered as the crowd dispersed and we headed back across the overpass. There was a distinct buzz and a spring in everyone’s step. Kids were jumping up and down, older supporters were patting each other on the back and laughing, and the song was sung in every conceivable key. No matter how it was achieved and how awful it looked, a win was a win was a win. Mohammed was almost in tears. ‘We’re OK now,’ he said. ‘We’re on the way.’ Mustafa wanted to know how good we would be when all the players came back. He waved his arms around. ‘This good, hey? This good.’ ‘It is, Mustafa,’ I answered. ‘It certainly is.’
Collingwood (9.14.68) d Adelaide Crows (9.11.65)
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Round 10 Kangaroos v Collingwood— Saturday 29 May—Docklands Watching training at Victoria Park is an experience not to be missed. It is an education for anyone who has ever played the game, especially if you get close enough or it is quiet enough to hear the instructions of the coaches and the voices of the players. It is fast and clean and generally upbeat. The balls fly around and rarely hit the ground. It’s a reminder that football is a simple game and one that doesn’t change dramatically no matter where it is played. Coaches, for instance, don’t sound much different whether they are coaching AFL or in the bush. The delivery might vary in intensity and some of the game plans are more subtle but footy is still footy. Alan Jeans’s famous saying about sausages still being sausages no matter how you treat them, is very true. The other thing about Victoria Park on training days is the way your imagination can run wild. One time I went to training and arrived early. I tried to control myself but 103
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to be in the place where most of my fantasies occurred was eerie. One of the groundsmen took Zac and I into the rooms where we were humbled and inspired by the old lockers bearing names of legends, the worn seats and the tradition that oozed from the walls. After we finished the tour, the groundsman handballed me a football that I twirled in my fingers. I went back onto the ground and walked around the half-forward flank for a few minutes and with Walter Mitty firmly in my mind, dobbed long, raking drop punts from in front of the social club. I ran to the Yarra Falls end and boomed a torp from about sixty metres through the sticks into the adoring crowd. No matter the kicks spilled off my foot and travelled only about thirty metres. No-one was watching, except my incredulous son and an equally bemused groundsman, but thousands were there in my mind. The place was packed and they stood, cheering. I raised my arm in subtle acknowledgment before I left the arena. I thought about that day when I ventured back before the North Melbourne game. I hoped the groundsman was long gone. Zac was at home studying so I was partially safe from ridicule. I sat around from the race behind a middle-aged man who was reading the newspaper intently. Occasionally he glanced up to watch the on-field activity for a short time then buried his head back in the paper. Charlie was as interested in the issues of the day as he was the football. A night shift worker in an engineering factory for many years, he had been retrenched a few years previously. ‘The old man worked there before me and I went in as well when I was about fifteen.’ Since then he had not been able to find a job anywhere. ‘Not much point now,’ he said. ‘Too old for most jobs, even labouring.’ 104
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I asked what he was reading, which he answered by simply pointing to a picture of John Howard. Charlie and I talked about the next election. ‘Not much good about any of ’em,’ he noted. ‘There was a time when everyone around here would vote Labor without a thought, but now I don’t know.’ I asked Charlie if he felt let down by politicians. ‘Nah, not really,’ he replied. ‘The world is the world isn’t it, and if you worry about politics too much you’d go mad and end up like them, all bitter about themselves and tryin’ to get what they can.’ The refugee issue worried Charlie more than anything else. He confessed to being unsure of his feelings. ‘When you have a look around you know why they all want to come here.’ ‘If people were honest they would tell you that they are worried too,’ he continued. ‘None of us want to see people hard done by, but they have to be fair dinkum. There are some that are and some that are not, and finding out which is which is left up to the bureaucrats or the pollies. Bugger all chance of them being right.’ I changed the subject. ‘What do you think about Saturday?’ I asked him. ‘Go OK, I reckon,’ he said. ‘They have done some good work lately and a couple coming back will top ’em off nicely.’ We started talking about the old days at Collingwood, when footy was different and when Victoria Park was the centre of the universe. That is what Charlie told me anyway. ‘Dad got me a membership the same time he got me the job—1960. Been a member ever since.’ ‘Who’d you like, Charlie,’ I asked, ‘over the years?’ Charlie’s favourite players were those who had skill. He loved to see players do things not many others 105
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could. ‘Greening was unbelievable, so was Carmen, and then there was Daicos, of course.’ Of course. Charlie’s favourite time was the 1970s with Len Thompson, Peter McKenna and the like. It was also a difficult time when losing grand finals became even more of an art form than it did under Bobby Rose. ‘Most people reckon ’70 was the worst loss,’ Charlie reflected, ‘and it probably was, but ’77 wasn’t far behind.’ Tommy Hafey arrived at Collingwood that year, after the club had won its first wooden spoon under Murray Weideman. Hafey’s training methods and the players’ belief in him saw the Magpies go from bottom to top in the one season. After good wins in both finals, they faced North Melbourne in the grand final. However, after leading by twenty-seven points at three-quarter time, they were forced to have Twiggy Dunne level the scores with almost the last kick of the day. All that, said Charlie, would have been academic if Phil Carmen had been available. Carmen was suspended in the second semifinal after being sucked in and belting a Hawthorn player. Charlie was amongst the crowd for the replay and watched every second even though he knew deep down that they were no chance. ‘Still,’ said Charlie as he got up, folded his paper and announced his departure, ‘it doesn’t matter now. We’re still here, life has gone on and when we’re gone, there’ll be two other blokes sitting somewhere one day talking about Collingwood’s grand finals.’ It might have been my imagination, but as I watched Charlie head towards the railway station, all around Victoria Park there was a sense of rebirth. A sense that we were on the move in more ways than one. That the bad days of the early season were gone and that with 106
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one win against the Crows everything was moving forward. After being on the bottom of the ladder for weeks, the only direction they could go was up. Typical, I thought. We go from the depths of despair to the highest peak of ecstasy with one win. But how easily, with one loss, we could return. During the week of the game against North, Mohammed told me he had been invited to Glen Archer’s testimonial. He went along but for a reason known only to him, shaved his head beforehand. After the evening finished he headed off to a nightclub dressed in his suit and wearing his Collingwood tie. To his amazement and delight he heard people whispering, ‘There’s Rhyce Shaw.’ Mohammed thought that was a huge compliment. ‘Really?’ I said with just the slightest hint of sarcasm. ‘Nothing wrong with Shawy,’ replied Mohammed. ‘Only Williams and Kinnear.’ Mohammed had the same opinion about these two as everyone else—except Mick. Like Williams and Kinnear, there have always been players at Collingwood who have been regarded as suspect, who always seem to cop it from the supporters when things go haywire. I never really had it in for anyone in particular although there were many who suffered my wrath at times, interlopers mainly. I didn’t like Michael Richardson much and I couldn’t see the point of recruiting Dermott Brereton and Todd Curley. However, I had a number of heroes. Peter Daicos was one, for his sheer brilliance. Those miraculous goals he kicked were, according to some, just luck. I always thought it interesting he seemed to be regularly lucky for a two-hour period on a Saturday afternoon. I could watch Len Thompson all day and marvel at his artistry and cleverness. Then there was Tuddy for 107
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obvious reasons; Bobby Rose, although I never saw him play, for his toughness, his skill and his demeanour. I always enjoyed the antics of the Faginesque Billy Picken who talked to himself when he was going for marks. I liked that; I thought it was so idiosyncratic it would have disturbed the opposition. Micky McGuane was another favourite. But most of all I loved Peter McKenna. Those long loping leads when he arrived at a point the precise moment Barry Price’s kick thumped onto his chest; the stooped-shouldered stance over the ball before the few steps; the controlled follow-through that launched the ball straight and true towards the goals; the unhurried, unflappable air of gracefulness. Villains on the other hand, are harder to find. Sometimes they are the players you love the most. Collingwood fans, in most games, understand that their team fights until the end. They usually give it everything. They try hard, they run and they tackle and they harass and they go at it again. They may lose but they are never defeated. Yet there are many times when frustration is almost overwhelming. Like when the supposedly good players constantly give the ball back to the opposition after battling so hard to obtain it. Then there are players like Alan Didak, who does things only Alan Didak can do. There are times in football when as an observer you simply shake your head with amazement. Times when you have to look really closely because you don’t believe what you have seen actually happened. Peter Daicos was the best at it, and he did something astounding almost every week. In the game against North, Didak did some of those things as well. Not the smother that resulted in a goal, or the run-around goal he kicked himself. Not the couple of marks he took, or the way he put his hand into 108
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a pack and almost beckoned the ball out of the conglomeration of grasping fingers. It was his kick when running along the boundary amongst three Kangaroo players. He spotted Rocca about thirty metres away at right angles to his run. I saw him look at Rocca and drop the ball onto a caressing foot that gave the Sherrin the exact amount of weight. From the moment the ball started on its path I just knew that it would get there at the perfect time. It did. It travelled upwards and along for thirty metres and then dropped slowly, tantalisingly out of the opposition’s arms until it finally lobbed like a floating feather in big Ant’s arms. Now, if only he could do that a lot more often. Then, when he missed a sitter from twenty metres out straight in front, I ripped at my hair. How could he do that? And of course there are always the biggest villains of all—umpires. At the North Melbourne game, I spent some time in one of the bars, chatting to a man who had been following the Kangaroos since they were still called the Shinboners. He had a weird sense of humour, laughing at his club for their history and my club for theirs. His point was that the Kangaroos were poor and their past was more about failure than anything else. They were fighters, he said, while Collingwood were much the same, except they were rich. ‘We both have problems holding it together in the bad years,’ he said, ‘but you blokes know there are better times ahead.’ North had been a reasonable side over the past decade or so but I asked him how difficult it was to stay faithful during the period before and since. ‘Oh, well,’ he sighed. ‘It’s just like you I reckon; that’s how it is.’ Then he laughed, more in self-pity then anything else, I suspected. ‘Even though I know what the future holds I still get worked up.’ 109
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One thing we both agreed on was how terrible the umpires were, only this time, after half-time, they favoured the Pies. I wondered why it was that in two consecutive weeks we could go from almost being umpired out of the game to being the recipients of some rather generous decisions. There was lots of talk later on the radio about what a good run Collingwood had received from the umpires. No-one mentioned that it was about time. No-one said that for too long Collingwood had been subjected to the worst umpiring in history. The wins over Adelaide and North had given me a feeling all was not lost. Players I normally despaired for had turned into butterflies, emerging from their chrysalis of constraint. I turned away from their shortcomings and marvelled in their new-found expertise. There were defining moments in football seasons. Moments when you look back and say, that was the turning point, the day our season changed. I hoped that time had arrived.
Collingwood (13.14.92) d Kangaroos (9.11.65)
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14 BARRACKERS A-SHOUTING Round 11 Collingwood v West Coast Eagles— Friday 4 June—Docklands I had read once that Collingwood supporters were offensive by nature; that they wouldn’t change even if they could. I found those comments offensive as well as ill-informed. How dare they say those things. Then, in a discussion of somewhat heated proportions about the relative merits of different football teams, I was informed Collingwood had the most rabid, feral, uncouth, disgusting fans in the league. I asked the particular person how he came to that assessment. As I expected, he could not answer without prejudice. ‘Ah,’ he sneered, ‘you’re all the same.’ I scoffed although I knew what he was getting at. There has always been a perception that certain sections of Collingwood supporters are in some way of lower human value than the average. Was I all those things? I wondered. Was my lawyer mate, Geoff, perhaps? Was Eddie one of them? We were all biased, no doubt, but not what was generally called ‘typical Collingwood supporters’. I had 111
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always hated that term, mainly because once you begin to generalise about people, you most often come unstuck. I found the Jim Laughlin Memorial Hall in the back streets of Richmond, alongside a couple of warehouses and two empty and desolate houses. The windows of the houses were broken, their doors nailed shut, a few graffiti messages were inked across their walls, and papers and junk mail a couple of months old fluttered around the tiny front yards. The real estate was worth a fortune but nobody lived there. Developers and wreckers would soon move in and construct apartments or new houses for those who could afford them. I smiled to myself. Some might say this broken-down part of the street was an eminently suitable place for the Collingwood cheer squad to make its banner each Thursday night. As I stood outside, attempting to find a door that wasn’t locked, shrieks of laughter emanated from inside. I bashed loudly enough for the laughter to cease, then a few footsteps stopped as the door was flung open. A small boy invited me in, not knowing who I was, or indeed, what I wanted. He was as trusting as kids of that age often are. The noise came from three youngsters who were conducting their own game with a football made from wound-up tape. Two of them played against each other while the third was the umpire. There was no real system to their amusement, just three kids enjoying themselves. The two playing were, to put it kindly, hopeless. The umpire, much to everyone’s amusement, was giving a good impression of Scott McLaren. A sickly green banner with ‘Richmond Italian Pensioners Club’ hand-painted in white fluttered on the wall as the footballers ran by. Photographs of old Italian 112
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men and women hung below colourful streams of frilly bunting draped around the walls. A brass etching of the Last Supper, hanging next to the obligatory crucifix, had fallen at an angle. The refrigerator in the corner had a long chain wound round it three times with a padlock that Houdini would have had trouble opening. The occupiers of the hall must have thought they could lose something of importance with this lot in there. Apart from the boisterous antics of the kids, nothing else was happening. No-one could do anything; they were waiting for the leaders to arrive with the keys to the steel lockers opposite the fridge. So they sat around, talking and watching the three energetic kids, one of whom, a small gaunt boy who had obviously overcome health problems, sat down for a rest. He lifted his foot and examined the toes protruding through his footwear. ‘Look,’ he laughed. ‘Me sock’s broken!’ I sat on a table next to David and his wife Jan. We swung our legs in unison under the laminex. Their daughter, Courtney, stood alongside as we watched their son, Nicholas, the umpire. I asked Courtney, a girl emerging into womanhood, if she would attempt to have any more rings attached to her ear. Her father laughed and said there was no room. Courtney laughed too, even though she rebuked us both. Half an hour later the door opened and in walked Louie, the banner making co-ordinator. Louie carried a large artist’s satchel from which he produced the letters that would form the banner’s message. The voluminous black paper backing, which had been made the previous night, was unfolded and laid out, almost covering the entire floor. ‘Let’s get into it,’ said Louie, so everyone took off their shoes and the letters were placed in their correct positions. 113
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Louie walked around adjusting things here and there. He was an intriguing person; short, stocky and quiet. He had assumed the mantle of banner co-ordinator rather than being voted in. Louie had been in the cheer squad for over eight years although he went missing for a couple. That was during the great cheer squad controversy of the mid-1990s when the official and the unofficial cheer squads made themselves extremely unpopular with both the opposition fans and, more importantly, their own. Louie worked for the Salvation Army at the after-hours shelter in North Melbourne. He cooked, did a bit of cleaning and made sure the homeless people that went there for refuge were looked after. ‘I make sure they are comfortable, make sure they don’t get into fights and the like,’ he explained quietly. ‘They have problems and we just take care of them.’ I asked if he would prefer to have another job. Louie shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I like it there, it’s good and the people there need me.’ Maureen had turned up by this time and checked that everything was going smoothly and that everyone was working together. Maureen was a revelation—a Sherrin amongst the plastic supermarket footballs. That’s not to disparage the others, but she was not what I expected to meet there. Her age was a secret but she had been around Collingwood for ‘a long, long time’. She remembered the 1964 Grand Final vividly and it had hurt ever since. Maureen worked in the finance and accountancy department of the Telstra head office and was surprisingly erudite. It wasn’t long before I told her I was sorry but I had something to say. ‘I know, I know,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m not your typical cheer squad member.’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘you’re certainly not.’ 114
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I had been grappling with the whole ‘typical’ thing for some time and Maureen continued my education. ‘It’s all about perceptions; we have members from all walks of life, and our club and our cheer squad is representative of society, don’t you think?’ I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement but I agreed anyway. While talking to me Maureen fielded myriad questions. She was like a mother hen, fussing around her flock giving words of assurance here, encouragement there, and all the time with a smile. Liaison was not the right word for what she was doing, even though she said that was her title. It was more like ministering. Making everyone feel comfortable and assured so they knew that things were fine as long as Maureen was around. In the cold echoing hall that smelled of mustiness and history, there was a distinct sense of community. There were 300 members to the cheer squad and to some, Maureen said, it was the whole point of their social being; it gave them a focus and a trust in others. To a certain few this was the extended family they did not have, while to others, such as the banner makers, it was even closer. They were together—some families, all friends—doing something that gave them purpose. ‘We’re no different from the other cheer squads,’ remarked Maureeen. ‘There are families everywhere doing this sort of thing.’ Maureen and I watched Louie open the locked cupboards and stood back while boxes and boxes of tape, large and small, were removed. Three-inch-wide tape for the top part, David told me, and two inch for the bottom, otherwise the players may not be able to break through. I grinned to myself at the thought. Nathan Buckley with a twisted neck because of the banner did not bear thinking about. Once the letters 115
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were all laid out and Maureen and Louie checked the spelling, they gave the go-ahead. The air was filled with the peculiar sound of tape being ripped from its roll and stuck to the crepe paper. The rips were long and short, loud and intermittent. The noise began with a snarl and ended with a snip as the correct length was cut. ‘Nearly done,’ encouraged Maureen to the tapers before she turned to me. ‘Aren’t they good?’ she asked without really wanting an answer. I put my shoes back on and headed off, telling Maureen and Louie that I would see them at the ground. ‘Be early,’ Louie said. ‘Make sure you’re early.’ Maureen smiled goodnight. I headed along the street into the darkness, past the empty houses, past the deserted warehouse, thrusting my hands deeper into my pockets against the cold. I drove to Victoria Park where a players’ night was taking place. Inside the social club rooms tables and chairs were set out as though for a wedding or an important function. Bottles of wine with white linen cloths around their necks were served and most in attendance were dressed for the occasion. Waiters placed tureens of soup in the middle of the table and the guests ladled their plates full. A roast beef main meal and a mud cake dessert followed. I sat alongside an old couple from Naracoorte on the South Australian border. The ex-farmer told me that he and his wife came across each week to the footy. ‘Well,’ he answered slowly when he saw my amazement, ‘I’m retired and I’ve got nothing else to do.’ He added that it was only about five hours’ driving. Two young ladies at the table compared which players’ bodies they liked best, and which opposition players they disliked most. Brodie Holland won the first 116
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discussion with Paul Licuria a close second, followed by any other Collingwood player you cared to mention. The Cornes brothers and Akermanis tied for first place in the second debate. The youngest of the women said she liked going to Telstra Dome because she could get close to the fence and hear the sound of the clashing bodies. ‘Oooh, yeah,’ agreed her friend as she wriggled her shoulders. All the while, on black and white couches on a raised stage, Jarrod Molloy conducted interviews with Rhyce Shaw, Josh Fraser, Ryan Lonie and Guy Richards. Everyone laughed at their jokes while buying raffle tickets and asking for autographs. A hundred or so had paid for the privilege of attending. Nights like this were important to the wellbeing of the club. Meanwhile, back in the hall at Richmond, Maureen, Louie and the gang would be laughing as they put the finishing touches to the banner. They’d devour a few pizzas before departing. Louie would go one way, Maureen another. David and his family would drive home, while the kid with the broken sock would go in search of something to keep the cold from his feet. Although I’d had many misguided illusions and dreams about my role in Collingwood’s history, being part of the cheer squad had never been one of them. There was not enough glory in that for me, it wasn’t quite illustrious enough. No grandeur in making or raising a banner, I thought. In the make-believe world I sometimes inhabited, being the one they cheered was much more inviting. I worried that I was being snobbish; that I was the same as all the others who disapproved of these people. If I was honest, I needed first-hand experience, not to just presuppose I knew anything about them. But the main reason I went with them to the West Coast 117
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game was the chance to feel the surface of Telstra Dome. Once I had done that, my fantasies would have an extra, more realistic dimension. On Friday night Louie greeted me warmly in the footballers’ race. Two long metal poles lay at his feet next to the folded-up banner. Louie had been there since 5 p.m. while others arrived intermittently after that. Maureen was the last to turn up but greeted everyone enthusiastically. Louie was his low-key self. ‘This is sort of like our game,’ he explained. ‘If we don’t do it right, or if something goes wrong, it could affect the players.’ Shortly afterwards the team emerged from the rooms for their warm-up. Cries of encouragement rang forth. The players smiled back in thanks. As they strode past it struck me how young most of them looked—a lot of them were just kids. Looking at them from the stands they appear as pawns in a game, yet up close I wondered why we all expect so much of them. When they hit the ground, it was the signal for Louie to bark his instructions. There was a distinct keenness to participate, which had many hands not only making light work but also getting in the way. Louie gently told a couple to stand back. The banner was then rolled up and left lying on the concrete, a black and white monument to idolatry. Louie produced a piece of paper and read out the positions, almost like the reading of the team on Thursday night. Firstly, he named those who would hold the poles, then those to hold the ropes, and finally those who would place the square metal spiked plates that would hold the poles on the ground. I was on a pole. Maureen opened two large metal security boxes and issued us all with black and white jackets. ‘We must look as though we’re a team,’ she smiled. 118
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The whole procedure was like a military manoeuvre, or perhaps like the tactics of the team, which was reinforced when Louie called a couple of members aside for a private chat. I eavesdropped. Louie told them he was not happy with their performance the previous week and that they needed to lift their game. The two felt suitably admonished and promised they would try to do better. Now satisfied, Louie issued us with ground passes and gave the word. The rolled-up banner was lifted triumphantly and we marched onto the ground. I found myself smiling with excitement and a strange sense of importance as the crowd watched our every move. I looked around the amphitheatre and took in the atmosphere. As we walked onto the grass, there was a murmur through the stands, some of them no doubt commenting on the feral Collingwood cheer squad. I knew better. When we reached the appointed spot the banner was unfolded, the staked metal plates placed in the correct spots and the ropes attached. Then Louie gave the word and the whole thing lifted impressively into the Tesltra Dome air. Louie ran around the other side to make sure everything was still together, then like an orchestra conductor, waved his arms and the banner fluttered back down to earth. Chrys, the official cheer squad photographer, had taken her shots and now stood near the gate to signal when the players emerged. A few minutes later she waved to Louie who yelled at us to lift the banner, which we dutifully did. Up it went, black, white and magnificent. The players gathered before it, kicked a few footies through the paper and then charged, straining to break through. As soon as they had disappeared, the broken 119
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banner was folded up, the remnants of paper gathered and we all ran off, our duty done. Back in the race, the jackets were returned to Maureen, while Louie looked pleased. ‘Well done, everyone,’ he smiled. ‘That was good.’ There were grins and pats on the back all round before we all rushed back to our seats in time for the first bounce. My seat was next to Joffa, famous wearer of the gold jacket. Joffa was once a member of the unofficial cheer squad and had been known as one of those who caused a few problems. We hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks and he greeted me with a firm handshake. That was Joffa to a tee. For all the talk about him he was, in his own way and when he wanted to be, quite charming. By Joffa’s own admission, the old cheer squad had its moments but ‘times have changed and we’ve had to change with them’. Joffa reckoned he had mellowed. His memories of the Victoria Park days were vivid. ‘I loved it,’ he remembered with a sardonic grin, ‘but I can understand why some of the visiting teams and their supporters didn’t.’ The unofficial cheer squad, Joffa said, was known for all the wrong reasons. ‘Getting drunk, swearing, fighting, getting hauled over the fence by the cops and getting chucked out—we did it all.’ When Eddie called for the whole thing to be sorted out, Joffa was one of the first in line to help. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it’s a bit more sterile, they try to control us and we still get the stick!’ We were surrounded by at least 200 cheer squad members, as well as a couple of rows of seats that were taken up by black and white floggers of all shapes and sizes, and signs saluting favourite players. 120
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It wasn’t long after the start of the game before the chanting began. Joffa had surrendered his job as official chant leader to Peter, a taxi driver from Geelong. There were many surprises in the Collingwood cheer squad and Peter was one of them. An intelligent articulate man who wanted to talk about world affairs more than football, Peter had a disease in his legs that made it difficult for him to walk, but it did not dampen his enthusiasm or his commitment to the Magpie cause. His face contorted and the veins in his neck bulged as though they might burst at any moment. Long, slow intonations of ‘Collllliiiinggggwwwwoooooddd’ rang forth. Then when West Coast missed an easy goal there was finger pointing and a hundred voices in unison crying out, ‘You stuffed up, you stuffed up!’ All the chants were trotted out. ‘We are the Magpies, the mighty, mighty Magpies!’ followed by ‘Collingwood, clap, clap, clap.’ Then, ‘We are black, we are white, we are bloody dynamite!’ which had been reworked from ‘we are fucking dynamite’ because, Joffa said sarcastically, people do not swear these days. Most of the chants were taken from English soccer, which showed the worth—or worthlessness depending on your point of view—of satellite television. The ubiquitous ‘ooh ah’ chant got a run with Josh Fraser but the one I liked best was ‘Richard Cole, my Lord, Richard Cole’ to the tune of ‘Kumbaya’. It’s amazing how people react if their team is not performing. When the Pies were behind early Joffa was quiet. ‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’ he asked dejectedly. ‘Long way to go, Joffa,’ I told him as we kicked a goal. I grabbed a flogger and used it like a plumber’s plunger only the other way around. It was a bit like Bob Marley’s head on a stick but I thrust it in the air 121
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with enthusiasm. By half-time the game, and Joffa’s mood, had changed. Joffa grabbed me by the arm. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go for a smoke.’ He knew I did not partake but I went anyway. Outside the ground fans quickly surrounded him. Most of them wanted to know what he thought about Rocca who was carted off the ground just before half-time with an ankle injury. I told Joffa I was concerned about Big Ant, he agreed but then turned his attention back to the fans, some of whom wanted a picture taken while others simply wanted to be in his presence. Joffa treated all with due deference. It was a far cry from the days when he was regarded as part of a problem at Collingwood. Being a minor celebrity had its obstacles though: the constant exposure and the notoriety, not to mention the television cameras never more than a couple of metres away, waiting to pounce on anything that could be considered even remotely controversial. As more and more people gathered round him for some words of wisdom, I headed back inside where Chrys, the photographer, was studying the back of her digital camera with her husband Chris. ‘How do you know who is yelling at who?’ I asked about their names. Chrys laughed. ‘We don’t fight much.’ Her name was Greek. Chrysanthi; she spelled it out. She had been in the squad for eight years and her photographs were posted on the club’s website and, at the end of the season, put onto a CD. ‘All the money helps us keep going,’ she explained, although she also said that the club was wonderful with its support and supplied the squad with almost everything they needed. Chrys also organised laminated copies of banners for milestone games and gave them to the players and 122
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their families. Added to that, Chrys was the representative for meetings with other cheer squads. ‘We have an association,’ she explained. ‘We all have the same problems and if we can help each other out, it’s good for us all.’ She told me about the problems the Carlton cheer squad was having making a banner properly. ‘Louie and me went over there one night and gave them advice. Now they don’t have any trouble.’ I was staggered. Carlton! ‘Chrys,’ I said, ‘you were going well till you told me that.’ I was staggered. I knew most supporters made friends with other people but with other cheer squads? And Carlton! Chrys laughed and laughed. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean but, hey.’ Hey, indeed. When West Coast made one of their few forward forays, a tall, angular figure in a long waterproof coat who had spent a considerable amount of time in the bars before and during the breaks, swayed past me. ‘That’s Trenchcoat,’ Joffa told me with a chuckle. Trenchcoat carefully made his way down to the fence where he stood with his finger pointed at the boundary as the player lined up the goals. Silently, he tried to emit some sort of transcendental curse with his long finger and his eyes on the kicker. Trenchcoat called the goal umpire a prick after he signalled a major and made his way gingerly back to his seat. Later, during a lull in proceedings, he jumped up and tried to get a chant happening. ‘Gimme a C,’ he yelled in his deep voice. The crowd yelled back, ‘C.’ 123
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‘Gimme an O,’ yelled Trenchcoat, more slowly than with the first letter. The crowd responded appropriately and waited for the ‘L’ to come. It did in due course but it took a while, as did the rest of the letters. It must have been a good five minutes before Trenchcoat managed to get to ‘D’. The crowd by then had lost its enthusiasm and only a handful were answering and even those were quite sedate. Trenchcoat must have considered he had achieved his aim as he sat down, a contented look on his face. Joffa was keen for the match to be over. At one stage he produced the gold jacket from his bag. ‘It’s over now.’ ‘Geez, Joffa,’ I replied, ‘there is a bit of time left. Be careful.’ ‘You’re right,’ he said as he held onto the jacket. Then he became worried, as we all were. All year Collingwood had given away late goals. Nerves were fraying all around the ground as we tried to lose another game we should have won comfortably. Then, a couple of minutes before the final siren, Tazza got his hands on the ball and slotted the defining goal. Joffa leapt up the steps to the back of the section, donned the famous jacket, and wandered back down to me, slapping high fives to strangers and friends alike. When he reached me his face was beaming. I delved under the pile of floggers and extracted the gold sign, ‘Game Over.’ We sang the song over and over again—Chrys and Chris, David and the family, Maureen, Louie, Joffa and me. Trenchcoat as well, even though he was always a few bars behind. Hundreds of passionate, emotional fans enjoying their moment in the sun. Joffa kept slapping me on the back. ‘Told you it was over, din’ I?’ 124
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He put his arm around my shoulders. We both laughed. I wanted to try on the gold jacket but I was afraid of the exposure. All those who were critical of the cheer squad might have thought I was one of them. But that wouldn’t have mattered because at that time, on that evening, in that moment, in their celebrations, I was one of them.
Collingwood (14.9.93) d West Coast Eagles (11.9.75) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
COLLINGWOOD
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15 HOPERS AND BELIEVERS
Round 12 Melbourne v Collingwood— Monday 14 June—MCG I concluded early in my life that if there was one thing that was certain about this game it was the uncertainty—if that makes sense. You could look at it from any number of aspects and everything came back to the shape of the ball, the vastness of the playing arena, the fragility of form and luck, and the umpires. And the fickleness and blatant unfairness of the video reporting system, followed closely by the fickleness and the blatant unfairness of the tribunal. All were discussed vigorously after the West Coast game; the first of them by me trying to justify the dismal season and the other—the umpires— by all and sundry. Collingwood supporters have always been considered to be even-handed and totally fair with their considerations about football. Well, by their own. We have always understood that some things would fall in our favour and others would not. That week though, we lost all sense of reason. That was the week Chris Tarrant 126
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was crucified by the tribunal when clearly innocent of the striking charge laid against him. I rang Joffa and asked him what he thought. I could almost see him shaking his head over the phone. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘I’m just speechless, ya know?’ ‘I know, mate,’ I replied. ‘I know.’ I talked to Sly and he was much the same. ‘What do you expect?’ he said. ‘It’s the whole thing, isn’t it. They are just after us.’ Joffa and Sly were not alone. It seemed half the world was talking about the unfairness of the decision to suspend Tazza for two weeks. Then again, the other half was basking in the fun it gave them to see the Magpies persecuted. Since Tazza had come back from his hamstring injury we had started to look a bit better and had won a couple. Now we’d probably go backwards again. Unlike Joffa, Mick Malthouse wasn’t speechless. At a press conference he gave a long answer to the tribunal question. He said his moods varied between anger, frustration and most of all, bewilderment. Mick, I wanted to yell, confused is exactly what the rest of us felt as well. Confused, not only about the tribunal but about the Magpies in general. About the way they played and the way he was coaching. I had a chat to Tony Shaw during the week. I wanted to know whether supporters like me actually knew anything about the game and if our questions were valid. I imagined he would have been given plenty of advice when he was coaching and when he led the team to a wooden spoon. I didn’t ask him that though. Instead, we talked about why it was that even during the few weeks we had been on the bottom the stadiums were still packed. ‘They’re special, Collingwood supporters,’ he said. 127
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He reckoned some of the best examples of dedication were the club trainers. The passion they had for the club, their commitment to the players, and the fact they did it for almost nothing continually amazed him. ‘They got there as early as they could after work,’ Shaw said, ‘and never left until an hour or so after the players had gone.’ He remembered that in the last few years he was at the club as a coach, about four or five trainers had died and he wondered if he was a bad omen. Then he realised when he came to the club as a youngster these same trainers were then middle-aged men. ‘You see them around each and every week and you tend to forget that they are getting older,’ he said, ‘and of course you’re getting older yourself.’ As for supporters in general, Shaw said they were mostly good. ‘There are always a few idiots, but you learn to deal with them.’ He also talked about players who rejected overtures for autographs because they were too busy or simply couldn’t be bothered. ‘There are a few exceptions but most of those blokes never succeeded in their careers. These people put you on a pedestal because of what you do and you have to cop that. And we owe ’em anyway; they pay the bills or at least a fair amount of it, so the least you can do is give them a bit of time.’ Then I asked him why Collingwood was so successful. ‘We’re not,’ he replied forcefully. ‘Surely we are,’ I countered. ‘How can we not be with all those members. It doesn’t matter to them whether we are bottom or top.’ He reckoned it was a matter of accumulation over the years. That we had all those supporters in the early days and that their families had stayed on. He said 128
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success was all about premierships and one premiership in fifty years did not equate to success. I was saddened by this. I thought that success could be measured in a number of ways—off-field support as well as on-field success. To me, one measure of success was continued support when the club was down. I thought that for players the premiership might be the only success but for us it was about the season stretching out as long as it could into springtime. That at least we could boast about usually being around at the end of the year while most other clubs had failed dismally. Since 1897, when we joined the VFL, we had played in the finals seventy times. In racing parlance, a good run for the supporters’ money. We had played in forty grand finals, counting the 1977 draw. Okay, so we had lost twenty-five of them but that’s one every two or three years. Other supporters were kidding themselves if they said there were no prizes for second. Or third, or fourth. Bloody oath there are. I knew I still wanted that big prize. Naturally I craved the ultimate but if that wasn’t going to happen I wanted the Pies to play each year as long as they could. When we lost it was better to be up near the top of the ladder and in the finals, than down the bottom. As I walked towards the Cricketer’s Arms before the Melbourne game, the rain began to pelt down. The wind howled across Punt Road and the small laneway adjoining the pub was full of swirling papers. Above the wind the sound of a tin echoed as it bumped and bounced and stopped and bounced again in time with the gusts. The days of the gathering at the Cricketer’s were supposed to be numbered. The big shift to the Lexus Centre was about to happen and to support the move and to 129
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make sure everything went smoothly with the supporters, the official unofficial place to be on match day was going to be there. But for now it was still the Cricketer’s. Inside, the bar was packed and the beer garden was almost full. There was a smattering of red and blue amongst the crowd with one gathering of four people by themselves, and a couple split in their loyalties—she in the Demons colours, he in the Magpies. It made me think of the headlines about the soccer violence at Euro 2004 in Portugal. The segregation of the fans, the rioting in the streets of England after their team lost and the violence in the crowds during the matches. What would those people make of the Cricketer’s Arms? Sly said hello and I spoke to the boys wearing ‘Richard Cole—The Chosen One’ T-shirts. The club welcomes supporters to raise money so they can sponsor players, so Sly and his mates had pooled their resources at the start of the year to sponsor Cole, and were in no doubt the Magpies, with Cole starring, could overcome their poor start to the year and make the finals. I took a quick straw poll. What would be preferable? To make the grand final and lose three in a row or to not make the finals at all? There were mixed answers. No-one could imagine surviving another loss but neither were they keen not to have that chance. Before we could discuss it further, the sky opened and sent everyone scurrying for cover, not that there was much. While some stood against the walls and watched the water drip from their hair onto their noses, others headed for the bar where they squeezed in and where the club song belted out from the loudspeakers every few minutes. Sly and his mates stayed out in the yard, taking refuge under a tree. The trouble was that the tree was 130
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very thin, very sparse and very short on leaves and branches. Sly grinned and took out a handkerchief, which he said was his bandana. He folded it neatly and tied it around his head. ‘That’s better,’ he said. The bandana, like his head, was sodden quite quickly. Sly was dressed completely in black. He told me he had worn the same clothes for the last three games and even though he wanted to change, he couldn’t. It was an omen. It was like the time as a young kid of eight that he wore the same pair of black cords to each of Collingwood’s seven victories in a row. ‘They were completely buggered,’ he said. ‘Torn and worn out, but I loved ’em.’ On the morning of the eighth game he went to put them on and found his mother had thrown them out. ‘I really turned it on,’ Sly remembered as the rain trickled down my neck, ‘and she told me I was stupid and what bloody difference would it make.’ He shook his head solemnly. ‘She just didn’t understand.’ Needless to say, Collingwood lost. I headed across towards the ground, through the swarms of black and white and red and blue, through the muddy puddles in the car park, through the avenues of leafless trees, through the food caravans, to the gates of the Olympic Stand. It was a good old-fashioned footy day, slippery underfoot and the ball would be greasy. Swirling wind, cold, miserable, but wonderful, nevertheless. There were no banners; the AFL had said that they could fly apart in the wind. Instead, the cheer squad stood in lines like American cheerleaders and waved floggers as the players ran out. How depressing it was. Tony Shaw had said he would like a fifty-metre chain tied between Jason Cloke’s leg and the goalpost, so he 131
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could run around like a kelpie on a long lead punching the ball away whenever he could. Cloke had been doing exactly that in the first half and the Magpies looked the goods for a season-changing fourth win on the trot. At half-time, I ventured down the old concrete steps and, crushed in a maelstrom of supporters, waited interminably in a line for a pie. After devouring that, I stood in another queue for the dunny where the floor was awash. Ha! These were the days. It was there I met Bert, a printer who had followed Melbourne since his father introduced him to the sport at birth in 1964. He reckoned that forty years was too long to wait for a premiership although we both knew it could be a lot longer. All Bert’s memories consisted of years of problems; he knew nothing about the time when the Demons won flag after flag, except when he listened while his dad and uncles talked about the Golden Age. I told him I knew how he felt; after all we had to wait for thirty-two years for our redemption. Bert agreed but added that we had a number of things to keep us going during that time—all those grand finals for a start, even if they were losing ones. ‘Us Melbourne followers are hopers,’ he said. ‘You lot are believers. ‘It’s totally illogical,’ he said. ‘Everything else in life that hurts us or turns out bad, we stop doing it. With footy we just keep going. There are certain times when Collingwood players contrive to make even the most simple action difficult. Everyone who has followed the Magpies for a reasonable time understands that. We see it far too often. And so it came to pass. Collingwood were five goals up when Leon Davis found himself on the end of a string of handballs. Instead of calmly kicking a goal from straight in front and 132
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not far out, he decided in his wisdom to throw the ball across his boot and attempt something that you try when training has finished to impress your mates. As the ball sailed out on the full I felt a strange sense of foreboding. We were not good enough to play around like that. I sat and watched the rest of the game in dismay, not totally focused on the debacle occurring in front of my eyes but rather hoping something, anything, would happen to change the inevitable. It didn’t. As Melbourne ran over us their supporters gloated. I walked down to see how Joffa and the others were coping. Due to the MCG reconstruction the two cheer squads were separated by only fifty metres or so, and even though the image of the Melbourne lot was preconceived and stereotyped—just like us, only different— Joffa still thought everything that was said about them was true. Upper class, university educated, range rover-driving twits. John Cleese would have a field day with them. Meanwhile our cheer squad, mostly lower (or at best middle) class, mostly state school educated, mostly hardworking labourers if they had a job, stuck by their team. ‘Where have you been for all these years?’ they screamed across the stands to the Demons supporters. ‘Where were you when your club was down the bottom?’ There were some good ones. ‘Get back to the snow’ and ‘Go and sew some patches on yer jacket, ya dickhead’. The slinging of insults back and forth made me think about soccer. To me, it was almost impossible that it would ever become a major threat to our game. Not because it wasn’t a great game itself but because of its culture of dramatic reaction to perceived injury, the preconceived celebration of goals, and because of the supporters. In Europe, a confrontation like this one might mean flares and knives and bashings and 133
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broken bottles and blood. Here it was just words. I remembered when there were a few punch-ups at Victoria Park and in the pubs along Johnston and Smith streets, but all in all, considering the intensity of the sport, there was precious little violence. When it did happen it was spontaneous, not premeditated like it was in soccer. As I was ruminating on the different codes, the mob of upper-class twits raised a banner. ‘Finals Over’ it read, an obvious reference to Joffa’s ‘Game Over’. Joffa stood up and gave it to them with both barrels. It was back to the days of yore and it made a couple of coppers wander down to see what all the fuss was about. The potential for trouble dissipated quickly as Joffa simply could not be bothered with ‘those morons’. Disconsolately, I wandered through the park where a number of fathers kicked the footy with their sons. One kid in a Demons jumper was yelling out, ‘Here goes Neitz’ and leaping with all his might to reach the ball his dad had kicked just above his head on purpose. I smiled and said that he had a certain style. ‘Keeps him happy for a few minutes,’ replied his dad. Another father, in a Collingwood jumper, was doing it under sufferance. His youngster wasn’t yet old enough to hurt for more than two minutes after the match and all he wanted was his father’s attention to the matter in hand—a kick-to-kick in the famous footy gardens. When the ball snuck past him after his son accidentally got onto a torp, I grabbed it and drop punted one back onto the young fellow’s chest. I stayed there for a few minutes thumping the Sherrin back to the would-be Buckley as his father and I talked up our end. It gave me a sense of perspective I wasn’t all that keen on owning up to, and distracted me from the loss. 134
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‘Come on, Dad,’ the young bloke urged as we held onto the ball and talked too much. ‘It hurts, doesn’t it?’ he asked me as he answered the call. He was correct, it did. Yet I knew it hurts more as we get older. It is only when you realise what could have been that you understand how much you care. And how little you can do when other people are being cavalier with your happiness. That is the most frustrating part— we have no control over our agony. I was tired of kicking the ball, and tired of being rational. I didn’t want to be calm or analytical or philosophical. I wanted to hurt. Martyrdom was much more noble than dismissing the loss just like that. As I turned to go, the footballing dad let fly with one that sailed over the head of his son, who turned eagerly to chase it. ‘We’re no different to all the others,’ the dad said. ‘Everywhere you go, every ground, I reckon you’ll find us—only wearing different jumpers.’ He was right; of course he was right. But it didn’t make it any easier.
Melbourne (12.10.82) d Collingwood (11.7.73)
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16 FOOTBALLUS INTERRUPTUS
The mid-season break—19 & 20 June It’s a strange feeling. A Saturday afternoon in the depths of winter and your football team’s not playing. So what do you do? I mean, you’ve built up all this intensity since early in the year, followed along passionately through the highs and lows (okay, in this case, just lows) and suddenly it stops. The main articles in the papers are about other teams, television news cameras are at other grounds and radio stations have nothing of interest in the afternoons. In a normal situation you have something to look forward to—a game on the weekend—so there is a point to the week. Right now it was different and I could see a weekend of pointlessness ahead. I could do some gardening, I thought, which would make me popular but rather less than satisfied. I could fix a few things around the house that were desperately in need of attention but I felt ambivalent about that. It’s all very well to attend to those things in the off-season 136
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but during the season football should be there to use as an excuse. I decided to do nothing strenuous. Instead I tried to generate some interest in other teams. I read about the Lions’ visit to Geelong and how it would be difficult for them to win down there but it was of no concern to me. And as for the game in Western Australia between Fremantle and Port, well, it may as well have been on the moon. Really, who cared? Then I decided that I might watch a bit of Richmond and Carlton on the television on Saturday night but my interest in that waned in about five seconds. So I did what any self-respecting Collingwood supporter would do. I went fishing and thought about how bad we had been in the first half of the year and how we needed to improve dramatically. While I was sitting on the river bank listening to a screeching flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos doing a passable impression of Rex Hunt in one of his more excited states, the players were up in Queensland, resting and recuperating. (Well, that’s what we were led to believe.) The year before they had also gone up north, to Darwin, and had come back with an entirely new focus. Hopefully this year’s trip would have the same miraculous effect. I wouldn’t have minded being in Queensland, resting on the beach with a degree of anonymity a group of footballers could not find. But I wasn’t there, so I continued with my reflections. After seven rounds we’d only won one game and were effectively out of contention for the finals. We had improved a touch since then but still had only four victories from twelve matches. We’d had a terrible run of injuries but more importantly many of those who had taken the injured players’ spots had either not improved from the year before, were young and inexperienced or 137
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had severe deficiencies in their game. Then there was the coaching. Not that I was bagging Mick—far from it. He and the whole football department were much closer to what was happening than any of us. But maybe that was the problem. Could the gut reaction of those in the crowd to moves and selections and interchanges and the rest of it be closer to the mark than the views of those who study such things in minute detail? Maybe they couldn’t see the big picture. The more I thought about it, the more frustrated I became and as the fish weren’t biting either I went home. I rang Joffa to see what he was doing. ‘Nuffin, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m bored so I’m just going to sit at home and contemplate where we’ll end up.’ I took him at his word although I was not sure he meant what he was actually saying. Deep down, did he really want to think about the end of the year? Was he counting on the break rejuvenating us in the same way as it did in 2003? It was, he said in his inimitable style, a time of hope, a time of new forward thinking to emerge. A time when the club could turn the season around. Both of us agreed that on the off chance we did make the finals (still a mathematical possibility) and had a full list, we could do some damage but while our hearts were talking, our minds were saying the opposite. We needed some realism in our thinking. Everything would need to go our way for the next few weeks if we were to make the finals and without a game on the weekend all we could do was wait for the turnaround of fortunes to begin. The weekend came and went and on Monday morning my thoughts returned to normal. There was a match coming up. I could read the papers again with interest, 138
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I could watch the news. We were the only game to be played on the following weekend and the focus was all on Collingwood and Sydney. I was amused that even though, according to the critics, we were down and almost out for the year, we were still big enough to warant a game by ourselves. It proved how important Collingwood was to other teams’ welfare and how we could help out with finances by drawing big crowds. It was yet another reason to be proud of our club. Joffa convinced me to go with the cheer squad to Sydney. On the train. In theory I wasn’t all that keen but the weekend without football must have affected my thinking. And he was insistent. ‘Mate,’ he implored, ‘it’ll be fantastic.’ I didn’t know about that. Four days in close proximity to the Collingwood cheer squad would have filled some people with fear and trepidation. The thought scared me as well but in the end I agreed. Somehow I felt the Pies would get back on track. We really needed a win. Especially if I was spending four days going to a footy match.
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17 YOU TRAIN AND THEY PLAY
Round 13 Sydney Swans v Collingwood— Saturday 26 June—Telstra Stadium Kathy, the organiser of the Sydney trip, told me to meet the cheer squad at Spencer Street Station at 6.30 p.m. on Thursday evening. That was a wise move, I thought. Trying to get that lot to meet at any given time and in any given place could be a problem, and the last thing she wanted was people turning up as the train was about to leave at 8 p.m. I arrived at the appointed hour but Kathy was late. She had been delayed helping her friend Frankie, who was also making the trip, find some clothes. Frankie had parked her car near the club building and, while attending to some duties inside, a rock was thrown through the window and her clothes were stolen. Remarkably, she was still in good spirits, even laughing sarcastically at the suggestion that there could possibly be any crime in Collingwood. She would be bitterly disappointed if the culprit was found to be one of her own. 140
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The police, someone asked her, what about them. ‘Yeah, and what could they do?’ she replied. The rest of the squad rallied round and a collection was taken up so Frankie would have something to wash with and to wear for the weekend. ‘We look after our own,’ Kathy told me. Joffa and I waited on the platform amongst a huge pile of floggers, the banner rolled up in an enormous plastic covering, a trampoline for the mascot, Jock McPie, to bounce around on before the game and numerous signs. A continual stream of people asking all manner of questions approached him. ‘Joffa, when’s the train coming?’ ‘Joffa, what time will we get there?’ ‘Joffa, where do I put my bags?’ He answered them all as any good leader should—calmly and patiently. Not that he was the real leader, more like the spiritual one—if the Collingwood cheer squad could have such a thing. He was only annoyed with the announcement the train was delayed by an hour, news that was greeted right along the platform with disconsolate looks and grimaces. People were becoming decidedly impatient when, finally, it snaked in, screeching to an ear-damaging halt in front of us. At night, railway stations have their own distinct feel about them, a sense of emptiness outside each of the small gatherings waiting on the platforms. Here, the neon lights of the city lent an air of indifference to the many and varied personalities waiting to board—farmers and their wives, kids on holidays, backpackers young, old and in between. In amongst all the normality one stood out. He wore a long black coat and a tall black top hat that contrasted starkly with his pale skin. Black leather gauntlets covered part of his forearms, his wrists and three-quarters of his 141
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fingers, the ends of which had long nails filed into points. His black boots were under his black trousers and the frills of a white shirt poked out of the top part of his coat. He stood impassively, his hands resting on his black guitar case upon which was written ‘Inquisitor’. In a heavy Germanic accent, the dark one informed me that he was travelling to Sydney for work. I nodded at the guitar. ‘Got a gig up there, have you?’ ‘No,’ he replied without so much as a blink. ‘I am a bodyguard.’ I was tempted to ask if he wanted to sit with us. After all, we had a couple of spare seats and he would have fitted in perfectly amongst our eclectic lot. The others thought he was a bit weird so I decided against it. The club had organised a match day sponsor to help reduce the cost of the weekend; the more support the Pies had in Sydney the better. One complete carriage was allocated to us with the compliments of the club and Sorbent. Each of us contributed to the trip, even though the cost of travelling and accommodation was heavily subsidised. Naturally, the jokes flew thick and fast when the news got out that a toilet roll maker sponsored us, but it was nothing that we hadn’t heard before. In fact, the more you heard them the more like flattery they became. No-one ever made jokes about other clubs, or at least, rarely. Why not? Because we were better than they were. That’s what Joffa said anyway; because we were always in their minds. Because we were successful and even though most of the jokes were about losing grand finals they were often jealously voiced by those who barracked for North or Footscray or St Kilda or Geelong. Over the years we absorbed the jokes, and far from becoming meek and mild, we stood taller and prouder 142
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every time we heard one. It meant we were important. Was it Oscar Wilde who said the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about? While we waited, we told the jokes to ourselves, laughing at them as well as feeling sorry for other clubs’ supporters who would never have a sponsored train to take them anywhere. After Kathy and her helpers stuffed the last of the floggers in the back of the carriage, The Footy Show crossed to us with Billy Brownless dressed up like a mummy—albeit a much larger one than has ever been found—with toilet tissue. He interviewed Joffa who gave a rallying speech that concluded with a carriage full of laughter and encouragement for the Pies. The other passengers on the platform looked on with a mixture of interest and astonishment as a large magpie wandered down to our carriage to wave goodbye when Billy and the television crew left. As the train lurched forward, the diminutive, oliveskinned Kathy got to work. Flicking back the mass of jet black hair gathered into the longest and thickest ponytail I had ever seen, she handed out instructions in a manner more composed than I would have been under the circumstances. Posters were stuck to the windows, balloons blown up and attached with streamers to the luggage racks. All black and white, of course. Kathy had told me that, to her, Collingwood was a religion. She proved it by asking for a day off from work ‘for religious reasons’. Her application was granted. As the train sped along, its sleek form cutting through the night, my mind drifted back to the days when I travelled between these two cities quite often. In the navy, joining a ship or going on leave often entailed a train trip, which were much slower then. Most 143
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of the hours were spent trying to see how many cans of beer we could consume and how many young women we could chat up. We would wander along the passageways and peer into the dog-box compartments where our uniforms attracted the attention of the girls but infuriated their parents. Occasionally there would be sleep, sometimes in the seats or on the floor with our cylindrical kit bags for pillows, and for the smaller sailors, in the wrought iron luggage racks above our heads. I was much older now and hopefully much wiser, although I doubted it sometimes. There were no carriages with dogboxes, no extreme consumption of alcohol and my days of naval uniforms and their effect had long since passed. An hour later, returning from the buffet car with a couple of cans, a small figure flopped in the seat next to me after first retrieving his false teeth from his bag. ‘They stick a bit so I have ’em out unless I’m talking a lot,’ was Mick’s explanation. Mick was Kathy’s partner. Small and wiry, with a slight bow to his legs, he looked as though he could have been a jockey in a past life. A goatee beard did not hide his smile, and his eyes sparkled mischievously. He had graduated to the esteemed position of Cheer Squad Property Manager but for this trip he was in charge of the banner, as Louie couldn’t make the journey. Mick had been in the squad since 1972 when he was six years old and his uncle started taking him. In those days there was a lot more freedom. ‘Then we could throw torn-up phone books and put what we liked on the banners,’ he remembered wistfully. ‘It’s a lot more politically correct these days.’ Then he laughed. ‘It’s still good but the world of footy has changed a lot and we had to change with it 144
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or keep getting arrested.’ He thought there was a lack of humour now and what was funny to the cheer squad was not funny to the AFL or the players. Or Eddie for that matter. Mick was at Victoria Park the infamous day Magpies great, Des Tuddenham, returned as coach of Essendon. ‘It was terrifying for a kid,’ said Mick. ‘Supporters jammed in and there were fights everywhere. Then some Essendon blokes struck a match to our floggers at the Yarra Falls end. It was bloody funny and bloody stupid and bloody annoying at the same time.’ It took quite some time to put the fires out. Floggers were then banned and have only made a limited return. Collingwood had always been special to Mick and he felt that the club was always trying to help others despite what was said about them. ‘We’re like the big blokes looking after the little ones,’ he said. ‘Everyone wants to play us so they get good crowds.’ ‘Sort of noblesse oblige,’ I commented. ‘Er, yeah,’ he replied, looking at me inquisitively. Mick was convinced the year could not be written off just yet although it would be difficult if we couldn’t beat the Swans. But the previous two years meant that they had a store of good recent memories, despite the end results. ‘We didn’t really expect it and if you take two games out of the two seasons—the grand finals—we’ve had two bloody good years.’ I asked how he would feel if we lost and could not make the finals. ‘We’ll all be disheartened and sad and pissed off but we’ll go on,’ he replied. ‘We’re all in this together, us, the players, Eddie and his lot, all of us.’ With the train rolling on, Mick lurched back to his seat, slipping his teeth into his bag while I turned to stare out of the window. All I could see was a reflection of 145
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myself so I pressed my face against the cold glass and watched the trucks on the Hume Highway, their headlights cutting through the darkness as they thundered towards a deadline. Then I sat back and listened to the clickety-clack of the wheels and the steady thump of the motor. Occasionally the train would pass a country road crossing where red lights flashed and the sound of bells came and went in what seemed an instant. At 1 a.m., the talk died down and the lights were switched off. A half-hearted attempt at the club song ended more like a lullaby than a rallying cry. I tried to sleep but each time I dropped off the door opened or someone spoke, or a light was switched on with its click louder and more distinctive than it would have been in daylight. When we pulled in at a station somewhere in the middle of New South Wales, those who smoked gathered round the door waiting for the electric lock to be switched off. Mick and Joffa were at the front of what appeared to be half the passengers in our carriage, all with smokes dangling from their lips and lighters in their hands with thumbs poised above them. When the door opened they leapt onto the platform with the lighters flaming while they were in mid-air. ‘That’s better,’ they exclaimed as the smoke hit their lungs. To be shunted back on the train after about five drags was too early. It was even worse when a conductor approached and said there had been a complaint about someone smoking cigarettes that were not the kind available over the counter. The group was infuriated. ‘Bloody hell,’ exclaimed Mick. ‘Anything happens, it’s just got to be us.’ It turned out a young couple had enjoyed their particular brand and then boarded through our carriage— 146
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ergo, our fault, our druggies, and our club. Mick said that the cheer squad had learned to live with the seemingly endless accusations but it still annoyed them. Eventually I nodded off and a little after 5 a.m. the sound of chatter woke me. Pulling back the curtains, I saw gum trees silhouetted against the fading darkness. The sun was still an hour or so away but the light was hiding the stars and the world was stirring, although in our carriage it was a case of the walking dead. There was stubble on chins, creased clothes and some hair looked like the owners had stuck their fingers into electrical sockets. But by now we were on the outskirts of Sydney so no-one was too concerned about their appearance. I made my way to the buffet car for coffee and met the dark one from the Melbourne platform. He nodded a greeting, still wearing his top hat. I wondered if he slept in it. I also wondered if you get a sore neck from sleeping in a top hat, seeing that you probably had to sit more upright than normal. The dark one took his coffee and slipped away. The lady behind the counter asking me ‘You right, love?’ brought me back to reality. Back in the carriage and balancing my coffee gingerly, I watched as Mick and Joffa swayed up and down the walkway, obviously hatching a plot. ‘Trying to find a spot so we can have a smoke,’ they whispered to me. There were no more stops so they put their clandestine operation on hold until we reached Central Station, where we arrived two hours late. The club had organised a bus to pick us up from the station and deliver us to our motel but with the number of photographers, reporters and television crews there, we were occupied for some time. The driver waited patiently while we attended to the press, after which we grabbed 147
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all the paraphernalia from the train and loaded it into the bus. Then we drove round and round in a few circles of the streets before heading down Parramatta Road. Known colloquially as the varicose vein of Sydney, the narrow corrugated road is a never-ending succession of car yards and food shops—first Chinese, then Thai, then Vietnamese, Portuguese, Greek and any other nationality you care to name. At the junction with the Hume Highway we became stuck in a long line of cars waiting to turn, which was nothing new, as all we had done so far on the trip was wait. We waited in Melbourne, we waited for the bus, we waited at stop lights, we waited in traffic and, after we eventually reached the motel, we waited outside as Kathy went in to register us all. We stood on the footpath, this motley band of brothers, and tried to entice the passing traffic to wave or beep. Hundreds of cars and trucks, buses, motorbikes, the whole shebang, drove past and only a handful acknowledged us. I noted to Joffa that if we were on Doncaster Road in Melbourne, nearly all would make some sort of gesture to us, fair or foul. It appeared the Sydney public’s attachment to football was tenuous. Kathy re-emerged with the keys and distributed them. I thought a shower, a locked door and a few hours’ sleep was the best thing for me. Joffa had the same idea and as we were in the same room, we tossed for the shower. He won. As he removed some clean clothes from his bag, he placed his reading material for the weekend on the bed. I was curious as to what a bloke like Joffa would read so I picked it up. It was an American book, Inside 9/11. I must have looked surprised as Joffa remarked, ‘Interesting, that.’ I thought the same. 148
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When we were decent, we ventured into the sunlight in the motel yard to regain our thoughts before hitting the beds. Joffa was born and bred in Preston and had grown up with Collingwood in his blood. He had followed the club closely since he was a child in the late ’60s and he told me that everything they said about us was true. ‘The good and the bad?’ I asked. ‘What was bad?’ was his reply. Well, everything that the other teams and supporters thought about us, I supposed. ‘Probably,’ Joffa admitted. ‘I imagine we would have been quite intimidating if you weren’t Collingwood.’ Joffa thought the demise of Victoria Park was equal to the loss of your soul. It was a place where you retreated when you felt surrounded, a castle where nothing and no-one could harm you. ‘We had this sense of invincibility there,’ he said, ‘and the passion was something to be seen.’ Joffa said that passion was never more evident to him than when he went to the footy with his mum and sat near a collection of other older ladies who specialised in verbal clashes with anyone who was around. ‘It was amazing,’ he said. ‘I knew that it was OK for men but these women were unbelievable. Since then I’ve understood that everyone can be overcome.’ Joffa reckoned passion was not determined by a win and loss ratio, it was a constant, especially in the cheer squad who travelled everywhere supporting the team. ‘We have to go,’ he said. ‘It is something that we just cannot miss.’ Joffa’s philosophy was clearly defined. He emphasised that the cheer squad was not just a match day 149
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thing, it was a family thing, and it was a kid thing. ‘And if kids don’t get to see the passion in us they won’t get to understand Collingwood.’ Standing there in the sun we talked about suburban home grounds and how much atmosphere had been lost with their downfall. ‘Take Victoria Park,’ Joffa explained. ‘When you look at the concrete and the steel and the signs and all that, you think about those who have gone before you . . . sometimes you don’t know how to explain what it is but you know you feel something when you walk in the place.’ Joffa had not been a school person; instead he’d left early and worked at a variety of jobs. ‘Customer service, rock smasher, labourer, lots of things, ya know.’ He admitted to never really looking at tomorrow, just at what was happening at that moment. Especially Collingwood victories. ‘That’s what matters,’ he told me. ‘Sometimes after a win I lie in bed thinking, Why can’t I live to 200? This is so good, why can’t it go on?’ He summed up his feelings. ‘You might have had a prick of a week, you’re behind in your rent, you’ve had an argument with your woman, there’s no money for food, and yet when Collingwood wins nothing else matters.’ I remarked that it was too deep for me. Joffa laughed, ‘You know, ‘he said, ‘they reckon there’s hate for Collingwood out there but it’s more than that, it’s a deep, deep resentment.’ He then told me that he thought over the last few years he’d come to see a lot of supporters out there with psychiatric problems stemming from the Pies. I suggested some would say there are a lot inside the club with the same problems. Joffa bellowed with laughter. ‘You’re talking to one now.’ 150
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The philosophical discussion stopped abruptly as Mick walked over. There had been a breakdown in communication about the use of the bus and the bottom line was we were stuck without transport. The poles for the banner couldn’t come up on the train but Mick had expected he would be able to move everything to the stadium in the bus and pick up some poles on the way. Mick’s best-laid plans had gone remarkably awry although he thought he had a solution as the motel had a bus but no driver. We had plenty of willing drivers but none with the required licence. There was nothing else to do but ring my mate, also named Mick, who was not only much bigger than the other Mick, but who also had a bus licence. I’d played footy with big Mick in Sydney many years previously. We lived in Paddington (before it became known as the gay capital) after I had left the navy and Mick was wondering what to do with himself. Mick barracked for Footscray and I, in my overlording patronising way, tried to get him to change to the Magpies. Mick never flinched. Footscray was his team and it stayed that way. Mick was like that—obstinate. We played in what the papers called the ‘Foreign Legion’ South Sydney team, which attracted players from all over the country. Most had been touring Australia but had reached Sydney and stayed. The players generally lived together, all single, all eagerly devouring what a city like Sydney had to offer in the ’70s. There were many discussions about football amongst us and I tried to convince everyone that Collingwood was the best club around. There were also plenty of discussions about politics as we sat crosslegged on the floor of our flat, wearing flared, floral jeans, listening to Jim Morrison, partaking of illegal 151
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substances and discussing the relative merits of Gough Whitlam. The club was run by a one-legged bloke named Jack Armstrong who stood up for his players no matter what. In one game I was decked behind the play which enraged Jack enough to clamber over the fence, hop as fast as he could to the offending player and poke him in the stomach with one of the crutches. It also enraged Mick enough to come flying over the top of the pack trying to belt the bloke who belted me, only to miss and belt the goal umpire instead. Luckily everyone thought it was an accident. I wasn’t so sure. Mick and Jack just grinned. Training was never arduous, especially when one of our coaches decided to make us train without the ball. We had to do circle work with just voices, imaginary handpasses and imaginary kicks. It was going well until Mick walked off. ‘This is fucken stupid,’ he exclaimed. Mick was perceptive, if nothing else. During one match, Mick had a free kick awarded against him and wanted to know why. The umpire simply instructed him to give the ball back, a request Mick refused, not all that politely. A fifteen-yard penalty was quickly followed by another and another. After the third Mick suggested to the umpire that if he wanted the ball he could ‘go and fucken get it’. Mick then sent a magnificent torpedo right over the grandstand and out into the traffic. The game was held up for ten minutes while the ball was retrieved. Mick was reported for time wasting. He got two weeks. But big Mick had mellowed and was happy to help us out. He hopped into the driver’s seat while little Mick and Kathy entered through the back door. I jumped in the passenger’s seat. We headed off to the hardware 152
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store where little Mick purchased a couple of poles. We all had Collingwood jumpers and shirts on so the man in the store started talking about footy. ‘Who are you playing?’ he asked. We didn’t flinch at all; we didn’t even question his knowledge of what was going on around him. We simply answered, ‘Sydney Swans.’ ‘Oh, yeah,’ was the comment. ‘I’ve heard of them.’ As we talked, little Mick asked if the man could shape the ends of the poles so we could fit them into the spiked bases. ‘No worries,’ was the answer. With every saw cut he stopped for another chat. Time was precious and little Mick kept looking at his watch, giving hints. We were worried that we wouldn’t make it to the stadium in time to put everything away. The assistant, though, wasn’t concerned with time, he just wanted to talk. It appeared he also wanted to make sure the joints on the bottom of these pieces of wood would last a thousand years. All we wanted was a couple of quick cuts and he was acting like Leonardo da Vinci with a sculpture. Eventually he finished and big Mick drove us to the stadium where little Mick slipped inside, found the right place to go, and we unloaded. Later that night big Mick and I took a nostalgic tour of the city before he dropped me back at the motel where the sleep I had craved for thirty-six hours was at hand. I felt quite refreshed on Saturday morning, even allowing for the night with big Mick, and I joined in a chat about what the Magpies would do for the rest of the year. I asked little Mick what he thought of the trip so far. ‘Terrific,’ he said. ‘Bloody lot of work so I hope the game’s good.’ 153
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It was more than a lot of work. It was a huge commitment, not to mention a logistical nightmare. Mick and Kathy would have done well in the military. Mick laughed, ‘Yeah, it is big, but it’s what we do.’ I told him not to undersell himself. That it was one thing to come and support the team, yet quite another to do what they had done. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yeah, I ’spose,’ he replied, not fully convinced he was doing anything special. We then headed over to the Western Suburbs Australian Football Club for a lunch, organised by the Sydney Collingwood Supporters Club. The Sydney Magpies had been established for a couple of years and had about a hundred members, mostly Sydneysiders rather than ex-pats. Rod, the president, told me that it was strange being a Pies fan up there. ‘No-one knows us if we walk down the street in club colours.’ He said that not many locals knew much about the game, despite the protestations of the AFL, although the situation was improving. Rod first became interested in 1970 when he answered an ad for boundary umpires in Sydney. He was immediately attracted to the game and as his first ever girlfriend was a girl called Colleen Wood, the rest was easy. ‘Sometimes we struggle up here not knowing what’s going on,’ he said. ‘But we keep at it, it’s part of our life.’ I asked him if it was difficult to remain enthusiastic when they were so far away. ‘Mate,’ he answered, ‘this is Collingwood we’re talking about. How could it be difficult?’ The members there were enthusiastic to say the least. Joffa was treated like royalty, a notion we found quite strange. The highlight was an interview between Joffa and Craig Davis, the ex-Magpies star and now the AFL’s man in Sydney. Joffa was surprisingly adept at his role, 154
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but then again he knew his footy, as you would after ten years as a self-confessed ‘rugged, suburban centre half-forward’. He asked Davis interesting questions about his career, the meaning of football to Collingwood and the men he played with. Davis brought a rousing cheer when he said that he barracked for Collingwood, despite his son leaving the Pies and heading back to the Swans. ‘Always have and always will.’ Three hours later we headed off to the game but not before Joffa had donned the gold jacket and we had all sung a boisterous rendition of the club song. Telstra Stadium was imposing with its swirling, circular walkways on the four corners—if you can have corners on a roundish building—and as we walked amongst the trees dotted through the surrounds I looked up at the huge structure and thought how different it was from that other stadium bearing the sponsor’s name. Inside, after first dropping the floggers and small signs at our seats, Mick and a few of us made our way to the race to assemble the banner. We were all nervous. ‘We just gotta win this,’ said Mick as he threaded the poles into the banner. While they were occupied, I went for a walk around the area. Everywhere, there were small plays going on in preparation for the bigger play—the match. Interviewers were rehearsing their questions while the cameras were being moved into the correct places. The whole television production team stood in a large circle with what appeared to be scripts of how the evening would unfold. Small trolleys were wheeled here and there; security guards tested their radios while Mick and the others made the necessary adjustments to the banner. 155
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At the end of the race, I gazed towards the sky and marvelled at the wonderful sight. The waves of the stadium’s roof formed a frame for the black sky that contained nothing except a pefectly shaped crescent moon hovering over the centre circle. When the players walked out for their warm-up I wondered how they concentrated in such an environment. How could they concentrate on the match while all this was going on? Then on closer inspection it seemed that they were concerned only with their job. There was no banter between us and the players; the cheer squad were intent on their job, the footballers on theirs. The crowd built up quickly. There was a family behind us that had come from the west of the state, another from the north. Yet another group comprising Asians, Indians and Italians told me that they knew nothing about football but lived in Sydney and simply loved the outing. Meanwhile, out on the ground, Mick’s poles held together well, although he didn’t raise the banner and put it down again as is normal. ‘We’ll leave it up, just in case,’ he said wisely. Collingwood started well. Joffa turned to Mick and me. ‘I reckon we’ll win this easily.’ We looked at him and in unison told him to shut up. When the ball was up the other end, we amused ourselves by watching the antics of the goal umpire. We nicknamed him ‘Wizard’ after the logo on his orange shirt and verbalised our amazement as he stretched and loosened every part of his body. He stretched his hamstrings and he bent his legs to stretch his quads. Then he rotated his neck to make sure everything was 156
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loose in case he had to make a mad dash across the goal. It was fascinating to see such an athlete at work. At half-time a security guard came over to advise of a complaint lodged against us for bad language and terrorising the umpire. I was astounded. This again was a case of ‘get into the Collingwood cheer squad’. When the other umpire came to our end, he laughed and joked with us while he did some stretches and, out of respect, we were silent when he had to do his job. During the break Joffa went outside for a smoke and was besieged by people wanting a photo or an autograph. He didn’t understand why but I did. He was one of the faces of the club. He had been photographed with Eddie and he was the closest any fan might get to someone of importance, especially in Sydney. The game was typical Collingwood. We surged to the lead, we looked like we would win and then Sydney came back. We lost. ‘Why?’ Joffa cried out as the siren sounded. ‘Why?’ No-one had answers. Had the gods decided that we’d had enough pleasure to last a couple of years? Were two grand finals enough? Was it time we all went back to agony? That night, some of the group went out, but most went back to the motel. After all, it was only four hours before the bus came for us. The first thing Joffa said in the darkness of the morning, sleepy, sad and his eyes only just opened, was that at least we still had our faith. ‘It might be all we’ve got at the moment but we must keep that.’ The bus collected us at dawn and deposited us at Central. In one of the cafes, Mick ordered eggs and bacon with mushrooms and a latte which came with a serviette wrapped round the glass. ‘Christ,’ said Joffa laughing. ‘You’ve bloody turned on us. You’ve come to 157
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bloody Sydney and turned on us. Why can’t you have a normal coffee like the rest of us? We’ll have to kick you out, you’ll give the squad a bad name.’ Mick told him to piss off and tucked in hungrily. The train was late again. There was an air of disappointment in the carriage but Kathy put the balloons and the decorations back up. There were a few chants during the day and a lot of sleep and the smokers were even keener to get off the train at the stations. Courtney, the young lady with the piercings I met while making the banner for the match against West Coast, told me all about her tattoos and said that while I was asleep she was going to draw pictures of elephants on my glasses so that when I awoke I would think I’d gone mad. I assured her that I already thought that. In the afternoon, the discussion turned to boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives and tattoos. One person had a tattoo removed when she changed men. ‘Shouldn’t get names,’ she warned the others seriously. As the train rattled closer to home, we debated favourite and best players. We picked teams from different eras. We talked about the marvels of Peter Daicos, the bravery of Gavin Brown and the tragedy of Darren Millane. Joffa admitted that he cried when he heard that news. We also talked about those who we didn’t really think fitted in. Names like Allan Davis, Dermott Brereton and Sam Kekovitch were bandied around. Then there were those who were typical of us—Micky Gayfer, Phil Manassa and Billy Picken. We criticised Mick Malthouse but said that we wouldn’t swap him for anyone. We examined the playing list and discussed who should stay and who should go. We spoke about who the club should have recruited. Mick and I said Nathan Brown but Joffa said he didn’t 158
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think he’d had a good year. We told him that was the second ridiculous remark he’d made on the weekend and that he should shut up. Joffa roared with laughter. Then we discussed what the Pies would do with the rest of the season. I listened while the women talked of the admiration they had for each of the players, although at times they also hated them. They applied the rationale of maternal love to a football club to explain why they would spend a weekend this way. None of it sounded unreasonable. None of it was anything less than believable. Somehow it seemed that the winning and losing was not the only point.
Sydney Swans (13.7.85) d Collingwood (11.13.79) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
COLLINGWOOD
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18 TRUE BELIEVERS
Round 14 Collingwood v Hawthorn— Saturday 3 July—MCG I was confused. Coming to terms with the way I felt about football’s place in the world was difficult. I asked myself whether I should be a little less enthusiastic about the game and a bit more concerned with other matters. Instead of imagining being a football star should I imagine world peace? I didn’t like John Lennon much but I didn’t want to be dismissive of the world’s problems either. In order to ascertain whether or not my mind was in the right place I spent hours reading the front part of the papers. All week, the more I read, the more confused I became. Firstly, George Bush and the other wonderful men who ran the USA, and their allies, decided to give Iraq back to the Iraqis. How generous of them. The handover was treated with great ceremony. I wasn’t sure what the ordinary Iraqis thought of that but no doubt someone asked them. Then Saddam Hussein was brought to trial. Nasty man, Saddam, and he deserves everything coming his way. 160
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Bill Clinton released an 800-page book about his life which was not well received by the critics but which made him an absolute fortune. There was also a story about the English soccer star, David Beckham, and his wife, the money they earned and where they were positioned on the World Rich List. Over the page were much smaller photographs and stories about the famine in the Sudan and Tanzania. Then our Prime Minister started banging on about an election and everyone was guessing dates. Meanwhile, the Leader of the Opposition was trying to extricate himself from accusations he was a bully and a womaniser. And there were the usual reports of politicians taking junkets and using taxpayers’ money unwisely. It was all too much. I realised why I read papers from the back page first, why I lived where I lived and how lucky we all were. I also knew why a small matter like Collingwood struggling to make the finals was, well, unimportant in the whole scheme of things. Yet it was important. It was something that mattered. If Collingwood didn’t matter then nothing else could matter. Maybe I was drawing a long, long bow, so I rang my learned friend Geoff Wilson, the lawyer, and asked him if I was crazy. ‘Bloody oath,’ was his first utterance. ‘A complete stark raving looney.’ Then he said the conversation was too serious and too important for the telephone. A deep philosophical discussion was needed. We met in Mohammed’s cafe where we chatted while men and women in wigs and robes drank coffee with other men and women in suits who would later convey messages to their clients, the men and women in jeans and jumpers. 161
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Geoff sort of understood me. He, too, was concerned with the world but thought that if you could change the smaller things then the bigger ones would follow. Moreover, that as long as you had a perception of what was happening and you felt concerned, what you were concerned about didn’t necessarily matter. It was the ability to feel that was important. My head was hurting. We moved on to why Collingwood mattered. I remember being told once that belonging and caring for a football club sometimes replaced the need to care about the bigger picture. True, more so of Collingwood than other clubs, because Collingwood has that intangible power of attraction. A flame for footballing moths as it were. ‘There’s a sense of belonging when you barrack for Collingwood,’ Geoff said, ‘that replicates a sense of belonging that people either have or don’t have in their ordinary lives.’ I knew that, I told him. ‘That’s true of all clubs, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘It is but somehow it is different with us,’ he replied. Geoff said that when Collingwood supporters met, an immediate bond was formed. That when two Richmond or St Kilda supporters met, he was sure they did not embrace each other in conversation like Collingwood supporters. ‘That’s part of the reason other people hate us. Because they don’t have that and they’d like to.’ Geoff was in fine form. ‘You have to remember that Collingwood was a working-class Catholic suburb and this connectivity we enjoy continues because it’s what they had in the early days.’ As we had mentioned Catholics he went on to say that the talk about religion and footy was not something to laugh at. He pointed out that religion was an avenue 162
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of support and fellowship and community, as well as worship. Therefore, the comparison was not as tenuous as it may have sounded. I wondered if it was the same for the elite barrackers as well as those further down society’s scale. ‘I don’t know of any elite people who barrack for Collingwood,’ he answered. ‘I know of people who have made enormous amounts of money who barrack for Collingwood and live in the elite parts of the city. ‘That’s another thing about us,’ he continued. ‘Everyone can share this club without worrying that they don’t fit in; that’s Collingwood.’ Geoff left me with two questions. ‘One: Does this feeling of connectivity exist more for Collingwood barrackers than anyone else, or is it that there are just more of us? Secondly, if it exists more for us, then why?’ I didn’t know. I had no bloody idea, to be honest. If it was simply numbers then the supporters would fall off in the bad times. But they don’t, so it must be Collingwood. I looked up at Mohammed and watched while he wrote ‘Pies’ in the froth on a cappuccino for a Collingwood barracker. I was going to ask if he, like me, took everything too seriously but he looked up and smiled with satisfaction at his handiwork so I didn’t bother. After all this thinking about big picture stuff, I really needed to go to the footy. So at midday on a pleasant Melbourne Saturday afternoon I was outside the MCG about to watch Collingwood play Hawthorn who were bottom of the ladder; a football match due to start at 2.10 p.m. What more could I want? How normal was that? No philosophy was needed; this was just a good old-fashioned day at the footy. As long as the players 163
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were ready, this would be the day we started our climb up the ladder. Admittedly, we were only playing Hawthorn but it was a start. As long as we won. My mate Roddo barracked for Hawthorn and tried to infiltrate my family by hanging a small brown and gold beanie on Zac’s crib the day after he was born. The insensitivity of the man! During the 1980s he gave me a hard time when the Hawks were winning everything and Collingwood was being belted by nearly everyone else. Rod organised a membership at Waverley Park when they were first offered and we ventured there a number of times. On one occasion I used his ticket when he was out of town and watched while Hawthorn crushed the Magpies. Buckley was in his second year I reckon and this huge, unshaven character with beanie and scarf who demolished pies two at a time, spent the whole match talking to Zac and I, eating food, and yelling at Bucks to do more. One time the ball was kicked towards Bucks who was on the wing and while the ball was still a metre or so above his head, he was screaming at him, ‘Do something, Buckley, bloody do something!’ Once the ball moved down the field, he would turn his attention back to the junk food he was munching on. He was a lot calmer when he was telling us about his takeaway shop in Coburg, and how he had specials each time the Pies won, but when Bucks came near the ball he was demented. Zac and I saw him again in the car park when his multi-colored Valiant wouldn’t start. I offered to help but he told me his mate Stavros was driving over. Roddo will always barrack for the Hawks although his interest has waned somewhat. Another mate, Michael will always follow Melbourne. Both of them say, magnanimously, they enjoy good football games, not always 164
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involving Hawthorn or the Demons. They reckoned that as they got older, it didn’t matter as much, that they were more mature. I told them that was rubbish; they were making excuses. Roddo insisted it was true but did admit to being a little more interested in the games where Hawthorn played. Both of them became a lot more interested when their teams were doing well. Two seats along from me was a fellow who stood and barracked as though Collingwood had been sailing along all year with no worries. He had no apparent doubts about the quality of the Pies. He was critical of the opposition and the umpires, praiseworthy of everyone in black and white, and ran a commentary as he watched. I’m not sure he meant to, but he managed to speak to me in the nanoseconds between disgorging everything else that was on his mind. I listened intently and concluded that it wouldn’t have mattered to him where we were on the ladder; he would have been the same. It wasn’t long before he got on my nerves and, as the crowd wasn’t all that huge, I moved further around to where an Italian lady was becoming quite incensed at the umpires. I had no idea why—I thought they were doing a creditable job for once. Umpires were the bane of her life, she told me. ‘I wanna strangle them sometimes when they unfair to us,’ she said, waving her arms around. ‘They pick on us all the times. Never good. Pick, pick, pick.’ She told me to guess her name when I asked what it was. I was right first time: Connie. Connie had lost her husband a few years previously and a friend had asked her to go to the footy. ‘Footy,’ she had exclaimed to her friend. ‘What this footy! Bloody stupid footy!’ 165
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She was eventually convinced and has not missed a game for about five years. ‘Collingwood people the best,’ she assured me. Connie worked at her church and helped with older people, looking after their needs, both spiritual and more practical. She did not need payment, she said. Nor did she need acclamation. ‘No-one knows what I do,’ she said softly, ‘except my priest and my God.’ Connie told me that leaving Victoria Park was no good. ‘That home,’ she said. ‘Home is very important.’ She was right. Home was important. More so to some than others. Allan McAlister once told me a story about home. Allan’s passion for Collingwood has always been evident, especially during his ten years as president, which included leading the club to the flag in 1990. One evening after training had finished and the players were all in the showers, he took his customary walk around the oval. It was a blustery mid-June evening, cold and bitter. In the seats at the front of the Bob Rose Stand he saw a figure. He called out and asked what this person was doing there. The plaintive, trembling voice came back, ‘I’ve had a terrible day. My wife’s gone and it’s all wrong so I just thought I’d come home for a while and think about things.’ It confirmed to McAlister everything he thought true about his club. He had long thought that hate for Collingwood was because of its ‘us against them’ attitude of the early days. ‘They were on their own in this real working-class, poverty-stricken suburb and they had to be strong and stick together against everyone else,’ he said. ‘Then we became a touch arrogant in the ’20s and ’30s and that didn’t help.’ I asked McAlister whether Collingwood was the same as when he was there. 166
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‘Perhaps there’s no less passion, but everything has been made sterile. These days it’s not like footy on the old grounds, now it’s a bit like going to the opera.’ He said nearly everything had changed, including the actual game. ‘Not that it’s bad, it’s just different now.’ We beat Hawthorn by over ten goals, which indicated the poor old Hawks had big problems. The club had never boasted a huge supporter base and, except for the 1980s, had been a mediocre performer. Their fans debated each year whether to renew memberships. As I left the ground I watched the morose faces of the Hawks supporters and wondered how they would keep up their enthusiasm. ‘Next week, maybe,’ I said to the man next to me. ‘Yeah, mate,’ he replied. ‘Result won’t be much different but I’ll be here again.’ I asked if he ever considered giving it away and staying home. ‘I believe in ’em,’ he told me. ‘Bit stupid, isn’t it?’ Outside the Olympic Stand, a huge mob converged in what was known as the ‘Winner’s Circle’. Joffa and a few of what he called the ‘True Believers’ started it around the same time as the Cricketer’s Arms pre-game rituals began. Originally, there were only three or four people celebrating a Collingwood win but now there must have been 500 or more, standing in a circle fifteen deep, chanting, singing and making sure the world knew the Pies were around. Anyone could join in and many did. It was ritualistic and in another time could have formed the basis for an SBS documentary from some foreign land where we don’t understand what is happening. I spied Joffa at the front. He had told me earlier that today’s address at the Cricketer’s was to be the last one. 167
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The move of pre-match rituals to the Lexus Centre was going ahead. He wasn’t sure that everyone would support it but they had to try to make it work, for the club’s sake. He said they had made speeches remembering the times they’d spent at the Cricketer’s and everyone drank to the pub’s health, a win over Hawthorn, and Collingwood. They did that numerous times. As I watched the Winner’s Circle—this contorting, yelling, ecstatic, black and white covered mob—I realised I had almost forgotten the feeling after a win. When the circle broke up and everyone went their separate ways, I enjoyed the walk up the hill towards the hotels. I laughed at the cars honking their horns as they made their way out of the carpark. I smiled at the cops directing traffic and waved to the tram drivers. Birds were singing, the late afternoon sun was shining; everything seemed to be full of wonder and fulfilment. The world could do what it liked; Collingwood had won.
Collingwood (20.20.140) d Hawthorn (11.9.75)
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19 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE Round 15 Collingwood v Geelong— Friday 9 July—Docklands Going to the footy in a suit and tie is not my idea of comfort but when Kevin Rose asked if I would like to be his guest at the president’s dinner before the Geelong match, I accepted. Even before I wrote a book about him, Bob Rose was a hero of mine. If a hero is someone who makes you wish you could be like them, then Bob Rose was that person for me. Not because of his football ability, because I never saw him play, but because of his sheer humanity. Funnily enough, when people think of Collingwood, they tend to think of brashness, of overt confidence and arrogance and, at times, of uncouth behaviour. Bob Rose was the antithesis of all that. At once, the demure, self-effacing man was everything Collingwood is not, and everything it is. He is still thought of as the archetypal Magpie—the greatest of them all. The Rose family has their own special place in the history of Collingwood with five brothers all donning 169
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the black and white. I met most of them when I was researching Bob’s life. Ralph and Bill were the lesser known of them while Kevin was a lot more prominent in his role as player and, later, administrator. As footballers, all of them lived in the shadow of elder brother Bob but Kevin told me the pride they felt in his accomplishments and the honour they felt in being his brother, was beyond words. I felt a bit sorry for Colin, the fifth Rose brother, who never played a senior game although as brother Bob’s runner, he was close at hand in many of the Magpies’ triumphs and tragedies. Whenever I thought of Bob, I thought of a lesson I learned as a youngster in England shortly after the Manchester United soccer team was devastated in the Munich air disaster. In the aftermath of the crash, Harry Gregg, their goalkeeper, instead of ensuring his own safety, went back into the wrecked plane to help his team-mates. A week later, a couple of my classmates were going to be left out of a soccer match because there were too many for the team. Our teacher didn’t make the choice herself, rather she faced us and asked which one of us would be like Harry Gregg—who would think of others before themselves. I’m still not sure why, and I don’t think it was altruistic, but something told me to return to my desk. To me Bob Rose was a typical Harry Gregg. As I stepped from the lift into the Limelight Room at Telstra Dome, a long line of Collingwood beauties greeted me, one of whom told me where to sit. I was then accosted, firstly by a lovely young lady bearing a drinks tray, followed soon by another with canapés and other tasty morsels. This was the life, I decided, as I munched on some round Japanese-looking thing. Among the guests dining with us were a couple of Collingwood legends, Mick Twomey and Des Healey. 170
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I turned slightly and through the glass wall I could see the peasants arriving in the bleachers. This was definitely the other side of the fence. When I craned my neck a little, I could see the cheer squad behind the goals. I was pleased to be enjoying the ambience of the packed room, just for a change of scenery. One of the waiters told me that it was always packed for Collingwood; for other clubs it varied but for the Pies it was always the same. I had heard stories about these functions; how the people who attended were neither real football fans nor ardent Collingwood followers. I wasn’t convinced that was true and the cheers at the sight of Collingwood on the television screens around the room were as loud as any I’d heard during the year, while the talk was as fanatical and as optimistic. The memories of past deeds were even clearer than those of anyone else I’d spoken to because around the tables sat the people who were actually involved. We talked about barracking for the Pies. Kevin said there were only subtle differences in supporters from any walk of life. Certainly, they might show it in different ways, and in the case of those with whom I shared the room, have the wherewithal to support in a more affluent way, but their feelings were all the same. ‘There’s no difference in our passion,’ Kevin admitted, ‘no difference in the way we feel about the club, underneath we’re the same as all the others.’ I asked if there had been a change in the supporters from when he first played at Collingwood. ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘They don’t wear hats like they used to but they’re still fanatical and they’re a lot more comfortable now.’ 171
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Nostalgia is comforting and some people always have the ‘good old days’ on their minds. However, memories are funny things and what we saw as young people changes with age. Conditions at the football are a classic example and what Kevin was saying was completely true. Supporters have it a lot better these days. They don’t have to stand on four or five beer cans at Victoria Park to get a decent view of the game or wade through the mud on the terraces. Now they can have a reserved seat waiting for them at the Dome or the MCG. Kevin waved his arm to indicate the crowd and the luxury. ‘The vast majority likes this; when we expect big crowds they don’t have to queue up and get locked out, they have a good comfortable seat.’ Supporters’ expectations, he said, had changed as society changed. Everything had become more expensive which made it difficult for families but, he continued, most of them would prefer to watch a game with their children here than at Victoria Park in the old days. ‘We get criticised for forgetting or not caring about the ordinary supporter, that everything we do is for the corporate dollar. Well, it is not.’ He said that club presidents and board directors were supporters too and that they were constantly aware of the fans, perhaps more than anything else. ‘We drop 10 000 members, we’re back with the others,’ he said, ‘and we also lose a million bucks.’ When he explained it, everything seemed clear. ‘If we don’t have the corporate dollar and these functions, we don’t survive and the supporters would suffer because the club would suffer.’ I pointed out that some clubs have suffered already; those that couldn’t attract the top sponsors and the top money. 172
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Kevin agreed. ‘Collingwood hasn’t suffered yet because we can attract the sponsorship dollars but we cannot afford to assume that it’s always going to happen.’ After the speeches finished and Eddie hurried away to call the game, we moved out beyond the glass wall and took our padded seats as the teams finished their warm-up. I asked Kevin how we would go. ‘Oh, well, we should be OK,’ was his understated answer. His prediction was looking good at half-time as the Pies had managed to eke out a three-point lead in what was an extremely hard and close game. As we made our way back into the room where party pies and coffee, tea and scones awaited us, I asked what had gone wrong this year. My opinion was that injuries had killed us. ‘Not sure that’s the case,’ remarked Kevin. ‘They certainly haven’t helped but our problems are deeper than that.’ As usual, what he said made sense. ‘We didn’t have any real injuries last year and every player played well for most of the second half of the season. We haven’t played well this year; the younger players haven’t stepped up. And with injuries, good teams can bring in someone who’s played forty or fifty games. We bring in kids who haven’t played.’ What Mick Malthouse was trying to do, Kevin explained, was to have a playing list that was even and where the young players had games under their belt. What about the expectations of the supporters, though, I asked him, especially after the last two years. ‘That’s how we keep them happy,’ he went on. ‘Give them hope of a flag while we’re winning, that we remain competitive, and when we are not winning, give them hope that we are building a side.’ 173
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I wanted to know more about the move from Victoria Park. Was it true, I asked, that the move to Olympic Park would only upset perhaps a couple of hundred people who watched training—apart from finals of course. That the shift would have a positive effect on the many rather than a negative on a few. Kevin agreed. ‘With the new facilities,’ he said, ‘the players should get better, which means better results, a better club, and hopefully, happier supporters.’ Some guests took advantage of the club’s generosity and stayed in the bar watching the second half on television. A woman behind me who had partaken liberally of the sponsors’ products was barracking hard for Geelong. She was also adding to the fragility of my already frayed nerves. ‘Come on, boys,’ she squealed, ‘come on, let’s do it.’ I’ll bloody do it in a minute! I thought to myself. Her husband was as bad. ‘Yeah, it’s easy boys, easy.’ His sanctimonious voice was as irritating as that of his wife. Nothing I had heard all year had annoyed me more than these two. And in a Collingwood area, no less. And it looked like we’d be beaten again. Kevin must not have heard anything of the barrackers behind us, as he made no sound. Either that or he was immune to all the advice and abuse that floated around in those environments. He stood up and sighed softly at the final siren. ‘Oh, well,’ he said shrugging his shoulders. He couldn’t say much else in public. In private, it may have been a different story. The pain was as evident on his face as it was on those of the crowd. Despite everything Kevin Rose had been through in his time with Collingwood, losing still wasn’t easy. ‘But we’ll go on,’ he grimaced. ‘We’ll be back, we’re Collingwood.’ 174
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We watched the 50 000 fans, in all their guises— happy, sad, furious, silent and all moods in between —make their way out of the stadium. As they headed home, I asked him if Collingwood mattered the way it seemed to, was it as important as some thought. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, emphatically. ‘It matters to half a million people around the country. Listen to talkback radio and you’ll know why Collingwood matters. And whether we are winning or losing it will continue to matter.’ Kevin was just seven years old when Bob left home to play with Collingwood. He followed his brother when he was fifteen and, since then, the club had been a constant in his life. He grinned. ‘I’m still here at sixtyfive, that’s what it means to me.’
Geelong (12.22.94) d Collingwood (9.11.65)
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20 THE FEMININE TOUCH
Round 16 Collingwood v Brisbane Lions— Saturday 17 July—MCG Football and women. What a combination. When I played in Sydney we had what I thought was the first female trainer ever. I was obviously mistaken. In any case we all thought she was great. Rub-downs on the massage table with exotic lotions, and injuries that travelled up the leg and across the thigh were commonplace with some of our less reputable players. Being reasonably attractive made her a target for some but Mandy was good about it; she always laughed at the less than subtle approaches that were made to her. While she was never one of the boys she was always quick to have a beer and a joke after the game. Mandy left us when she moved back to Western Australia. About the only thing she didn’t do was come on our footy trips. I wondered about Mandy over the years, especially when women started to become more and more prevalent at football clubs. I thought about her when the 176
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biggest stories in footy were the alleged indiscretions of certain St Kilda footballers. Collingwood players had troubles as well. Our midseason trip to Queensland had got a bit out of hand and caused Eddie a real problem, although he didn’t see it that way. He was accused of not telling all on The Footy Show as he had done with other football stories. There was a lot of accusing and counter-accusing but in the end Ed carried on as normal. Sam Newman, though, charged into the pack headon. He accused the women in the sex scandal of being loose with the truth. He went one step further and said that all women were liars and schemers. That did not go down too well, naturally enough. I watched, listened, and read about the scandal over the next few days and, with a couple of exceptions, most of the opinions voiced were those of males. I wondered what women in the street thought about it. The Women in Black group had been formed some five years previously, with the specific aim of having women who barracked for Collingwood get together to enjoy themselves while following the Pies. I rang to find out their opinions on all the kerfuffle and they invited me to join them on the Tramcar Restaurant for their pre-match function. It was with some trepidation that I ventured forth to meet thirty-five women on an antique tram in South Melbourne. A mate of mine told me that ‘sheilas’ were something to be wary of, if not afraid. These days, he said, emasculation was more likely than subjugation in the event of any disagreement. I told him not to be so bloody stupid. Lois, the organiser and president of the group, greeted me warmly. Tall and willowy with long blonde 177
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hair, she would have been quite a stunner in her youth and still could turn a few heads. I joined the others waiting at the tram stop as the wind whipped down Clarendon Street. The tram was late and even though the night was bitterly cold everyone was quite patient. Except for me. ‘Why doesn’t it turn up?’ I asked no-one in particular. ‘Geez, they’d better hurry or we’ll run out of time.’ These questions were met with a soft chiding; echoes of my mother and my wife. ‘Be patient, it’ll be here, don’t worry.’ After ten minutes or so, the reddish brown tram turned up, rattling down the street and rolling to a stop in front of the reddish brown tram stop. Through the window, I could see the reddish brown upholstery with old-fashioned light fittings, old drapes, velvet seats, and wood panelling. It looked distinctly like something out of Moulin Rouge in Paris. Stella, an exuberant young lady obviously born for the role, was the host. She leaned theatrically out of the tram’s doorway and introduced herself. A couple of Marlon Brando-like cries of ‘Stella, Stella!’ reverberated through the night. It was me trying to be clever although it didn’t work all that well. Stella laughed. ‘Heard it all before,’ she called out as she seated us and made a couple of disparaging remarks about men, which were, to my way of thinking, in bad taste. The women laughed like drains. I sat with Maria; just across the aisle were Robyn and Gaye. Maria, who freely admitted to being fifty-nine, had barracked for Collingwood for as long as she could remember. Her brother had barracked for the Pies and she followed him. ‘After my family, the Pies come next,’ she told me. ‘It’s a bit stupid to say, I suppose.’ 178
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I told her that it wasn’t stupid at all. In fact Collingwood was like a family. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she replied. ‘A bit like a child, I can criticise them but I still love them.’ Maria admitted to yelling, screaming, and waving her arms around at the footy. She didn’t swear although she admitted to the ‘occasional “shit” or something’. She also said that when she got home sometimes she was embarrassed. ‘Did I really say that?’ Are there differences between men and women supporters, I asked around the table. Robyn, younger than the others, thought so. ‘Men are worse than us most of the time, they go a bit too far.’ Gaye, an elegant, intelligent woman, chimed in. ‘We care more about the players, we have maternal instincts. In general we’re more emotional and more passionate about life. We care more about injuries, for instance, even the opposition.’ Robyn looked at her. ‘Nah, I don’t,’ she laughed. Stella and her helpers served the wine along with the entrees; the women indulged liberally. While sipping on her red, Robyn said women tended to be more interested in the players whereas men were more about the team. ‘So you treat them as sex objects?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ ‘Speak for yourself,’ came the collective cry from the others within earshot. As the waitresses served our main course and topped up the glasses I asked if women were treated differently in the football world. I wanted to know if they thought they were a novelty or were they seen as serious football followers. Gaye answered first. ‘We are starting to be looked at a bit better but there is still a long way to go.’ 179
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She also said that the marketability of women was something that needed to be understood. ‘Who makes the decisions about things?’ she asked. ‘Who is the biggest influence at home?’ I then broached the subject of sexual allegations. Robyn said that the whole thing was shocking and sordid but ‘it won’t turn me away from football’. The others agreed. They agreed, too, that footballers should make sure they are not caught in those positions but it could be difficult when the women are being so blatant. Both sides contributed, they said, and both should know better. ‘Footballers need to watch themselves,’ said Maria. ‘After all, they are celebrities whether they like it or not.’ I took the bit between my teeth and asked about Sam Newman. ‘What about him?’ was the dismissive first answer. ‘He’s a joke, isn’t he?’ was another. The consensus was that Sam was not worth getting upset over; that he was not funny, not anything at all really except a silly old man. ‘They talk about us,’ came a comment from the other end of the tram, ‘but mutton dressed up as lamb—have a look at him.’ The laughter told the rest of the story. By now, the wine was having an effect. Not that anyone was drunk, it was just that laughter was increasing both in amount and volume. Voices were louder and tongues were considerably loosened. ‘We don’t need recognition,’ remarked Gaye. ‘If we are seen as a bit of novelty, we don’t care. We do not need men to tell us we are good, we know we enjoy ourselves and we know how to keep things in perspective.’ I wanted to know if women really knew anything about football. It was an ill-considered question. ‘Of course we do,’ came the chorus of replies. 180
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Gaye posed a question to me. ‘Do you need to have played football to know about it?’ My answer was guarded. ‘Not really,’ I said, ‘although it does annoy me when I hear women urging players to have a go when they’ve never been in battle.’ They all agreed they could not know about that part of the game, although they did suggest there were plenty of men who didn’t know either. They also thought that men were sometimes a bit condescending when both sexes were involved in discussions about football. They were right on both counts. By now we were chugging down Acland Street in St Kilda, gathering stares from pedestrians and toots from cars. It was turning out to be an entertaining evening with the only problem being that the scenery was wasted. Everyone was so busy talking and eating and drinking they didn’t have time to look. In fact we might as well have been stationary. I raised the subject of favourite footballers. Burnsy, Licca and Bucks all got a run. As did Josh and Brodie. Gaye chose James Clement. I thought she might—a thinking footballer. Generally, the favourites were those who would stay and sign things for kids, those who took the time for others. Those who were not full of themselves, as Maria put it eloquently. It explained a lot. Injuries, coaching, tactics—none of it mattered too much to the women. All they wanted to do was go to the games, support the team and get on with their lives. ‘It means a lot to us,’ said Maria, ‘but it means nothing at the same time, if you know what I mean.’ Dessert had come and gone and when Stella appeared with a large tray of Baileys, she brought squeals of delight. I didn’t want my drink but Maria insisted that 181
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I take one. ‘I can have another that way.’ She had more than two; most did. As the Baileys was heartily consumed, the discussion turned to the Nip/Tuck night the women had planned for the following month. Plastic surgeons were the guest speakers and liposuction experts would tell them how they could fix the bits they didn’t like. It would not be a place for the faint-hearted—or men for that matter. They urged me to book in but I declined. Terri, the woman sitting behind me, informed me subtly that I could afford to lose some pounds. Observant, she was. Then she started laughing and said it was nothing compared to what she needed to get rid of. ‘Jesus, they’d need a big container!’ All the women bellowed with laughter at the thought, while my mind boggled. A self-deprecating woman who was highly intelligent, Terri asked if I wanted a reserved seat as she had brought her friend’s ticket along, just in case. I thought about the weather forecast and accepted her offer. I became Terri and she became Mary. As the tram adventure was about to cease, Lois led the women in a rousing rendition of the club song, all sung in tune in soprano voices rather than the guttural flat tones I had heard at other times. When we emerged we found that the tram had stopped early, that another tram was late and we couldn’t get right to the Hilton Hotel. Stella was not forthcoming with any good ideas so we had to walk through the gardens. Typical public transport, I growled. ‘Come on, grouchy,’ said Maria, taking my arm. We headed off down the street, thirty-odd women laughing and not caring that the rain was starting to fall, and one bloke not at all happy. 182
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The view of the MCG from the car park hill was breathtaking. Below was the gaping hole where the Members’ Stand had once been. The game had started and in the distance the players appeared as ghostly figures surging through the lights and the rain. In some ways it was a vision of how the game would have once looked. A few minutes later, Terri and I made our way to our seats as the rain started to belt down. ‘Go Pies,’ she yelled as she sat down. The rain and hail and wind almost made me wish we were at the Dome. Almost. Terri had been a member of Collingwood women’s groups for years and was now the treasurer of Women in Black. The friendships were what she valued most. ‘We have women from right around Australia as members,’ she said, ‘and, even though we might not see each other very often, any time we get together it’s like old home week.’ A girl about five years old smiled across at her. Terri smiled back. ‘She’s been coming here since she was about two weeks old,’ she told me. ‘Her parents bought her a membership when she was born. She’ll grow up with us, it’s a big family.’ Terri continued her barracking in a boisterous manner. Nothing out of place mind you, just that everyone knew she was there. Her husband barracked for Footscray and went with her just once. ‘Never again,’ he said afterwards and he had been true to his word. I asked how her husband put up with the constant disappointment of the Bulldogs; what made him stay loyal to what always appeared a lost cause. Terri said it was for the same reasons we did what we did—because that’s the way it is and that’s the way it stays. ‘Anyway, it’s only during the games that it actually 183
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hurts.’ She was right. Barrackers of all persuasions believe that something good will happen each week, otherwise there would be no point to any of it. ‘And just because a team is not the best doesn’t mean you don’t like them,’ she said, defending her husband’s choice. ‘A bit like people,’ I offered. ‘A bit like people,’ she echoed. ‘Yes.’ Terri and I talked about footballers and women. ‘Let me tell you,’ Terri was emphatic, ‘I reckon that most of the time it is the women that cause the problem. I have been to functions where they paw over these young players like you wouldn’t believe.’ She went on to say that problems would always arise in those circumstances. ‘It certainly doesn’t make it right and it shouldn’t happen but you can understand why it does.’ Terri was in her element, roaring encouragement with an occasional stream of invective directed at the umpires or at the opposition. I advised her to settle down. ‘Why?’ she asked. I didn’t really have an answer. In between yells, Terri continued. ‘We are no different to men these days. A lot of us have high-profile jobs, we struggle with staff and money, we have concerns day-to-day, so we go to the footy and yell and scream and let it out, then on Monday we head off to face the week again.’ There was something about Terri and her barracking that was entertaining—not offensive, not aggressive, not even mildly rude. This was more than could be said for some others around us. We were sitting in the social club members’ area and it just did not stop. The comments were from a bygone era. The passion was as evident as the stupidity. I said to Terri that it was one thing to 184
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be over the top but crass, ill-informed, eight-year-old girls giving intricate dissertations on whether someone is trying, was quite another. The kid’s father sat impassively alongside his daughter as she screamed out such pearls of wisdom as ‘Malthouse, you are useless!’ and ‘Rocca, you’re gutless!’ It became too much for me so I turned around and stared at the father who took one look at me and began screaming similar comments to Woewodin and Cole. Terri grabbed my arm and urged me to calm down, which I did, sensibly. It made me understand why Mick is not inclined to talk to supporters, and why players or officials with any brains would avoid those sorts of people. I wanted to scream at them to watch the bloody game and admire the way the Lions played, but I didn’t. It was reminiscent of Victoria Park, only in more salubrious surroundings and nowhere near as funny as it sometimes was there. In a world becoming more and more sensitive to abuse of any description, what was once humorous was now offensive. Towards the end of the game, Lois joined us. I wanted to know what her thoughts were on our dramatic decline. Lois said she thought the team had not recovered emotionally from the previous years; that expectations on the young adults were too great. ‘We have tried to make them responsible, and we shouldn’t. We should have addressed the things that needed to be addressed and we glossed over them.’ I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. ‘It is probably me as a woman but these young men may not have been nurtured as they should have been after such a let-down.’ I said my goodbyes and thanked the ladies for their kind hospitality. I wondered what they were going to do 185
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with the rest of the night. ‘We’re off home,’ said Lois. ‘We have to get on with the week, kids to get to school, husbands to work, there’s houses to clean and work to be done. We’ve got no time for reflection or feeling bad.’ I didn’t want to know that. If you couldn’t feel morose or reflect on the days when Athas Hrysoulakis ruled the half-forward line, what was the point? But then again, I also wanted to know how these women managed to control themselves. Maybe what they said was right. That it mattered and didn’t matter at the same time. I meandered off through the carpark in the rain, stomping through the puddles and watching the water and mud splash up my legs. I murmured the words to Dylan’s ‘Girl of the North Country’ and hoped all the women had ‘a coat so warm, to keep them from the howlin’ wind’.
Brisbane Lions (16.13.109) d Collingwood (11.7.73)
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21 BEING EDDIE McGUIRE
My immediate thought on Monday morning after the Brisbane game was—so what happens now? Knowing, essentially, our year was finished, I felt as though I had read the last page of a novel and prematurely found out the ending. If the rest of the year was to be a litany of losses then I needed to prepare myself. If, on the other hand, we were going to win a few games then that needed some thought as well. The latter was my preference as I had already spent a good deal of the year feeling mournful and sorry for myself. On occasions, I had moped around quite stupidly, to quote my devoted and long-suffering wife. She may have had some justification for her comments but as all Collingwood supporters know, the highs and lows of a football season are similar to death and resurrection. I wasn’t sure whether I read that somewhere or I made it up but anyway, that was how I felt. One night I was sitting alone pondering the awfulness of the two 187
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and came up with ‘the Passion of the Pies’. I thought it appropriate because umpires crucify us, after which we rise again and move forward. Accomplishing the recovery takes a varying amount of time. A bad loss or a complete capitulation can take nearly the whole week to get over, while an ordinary mid-range kind of beating is usually over and done with by Tuesday at the latest. What a way to gauge our lives—degrees of misery. Pathetic really. There was one salvation, however, some small degree of satisfaction in the wreckage of the year. As we were out of finals contention what would all the Collingwood haters do with their energy? No doubt it would be disappointing for them with no-one to mock or laugh at, no jokes to make up. No looking up record books to remind them of how many times we had been beaten. Poor things, I almost felt sorry for them. Withdrawal symptoms might drive them mad with a bit of luck. We would have September off, but so would they. I had spoken to Joffa during the week and he told me, by his reckoning, we should get rid of about ten players. ‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Not telling you at the moment,’ he said. ‘We’ll see what happens later.’ Joffa said that we could talk about umpires and players’ weaknesses; we could become annoyed at the salary cap advantages or the injuries and suspensions. We could talk about almost anything else you liked but it all boiled down to the fact that we were just not good enough. His point was that if we won a few games everyone’s opinions might change. That would not hide the problems but it might give some players another chance. It 188
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could also mean that we could end up doing the same as last year. A couple of grand finals had hidden the fact that we needed new blood and didn’t have any. That would have to change. The biggest question for me now was how we, as supporters, kept up our enthusiasm. Players were playing for their futures as well as their pay packets and so were the coaches. But what did we do when the season was basically over? It turned out there were a number of issues to keep the world interested in the Collingwood Football Club, despite the win–loss record. For instance, there was Eddie’s conflict of interest. I couldn’t make up my mind if it really was as bad as some said or if it was a figment of twisted individuals’ collective minds. I admitted to myself and to other Magpies followers, though never to any others, that he just might have done the wrong thing by withholding the news about our trip to Queensland. Regardless of opinions, the football world is all about perception and it wasn’t difficult to see why Eddie’s critics said what they did about him. In some ways I felt sorry for Eddie. The microscopic scrutiny of his life must be hard to deal with. But, like questions regarding Mick Malthouse’s performance, it goes with the job. Not that I ever heard Eddie complain, in fact he usually welcomed the attention. Generally, his critics were those whose loyalties lay elsewhere. But wouldn’t they love him at their club. Eddie was first and foremost a fan. It was obvious when he opened a photographic exhibition by Paul Dunn who captured the spirit of the cheer squad over the previous couple of years. During his speech Eddie 189
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remembered the first day he went to Victoria Park and how the experience of seeing a cheer squad member had stuck in his mind. He also spoke of how he was affected by the roar of the crowd, the black and white sea of people and the songs on the tram on the way home. His memories were no different from the rest of us and the adage about knowing where you have come from applied to him particularly well. For all his social mobility, part of his heart will always be with the mob in the outer. Eddie announced that the club was to buy the whole exhibition of photographs and hang them in the Lexus Centre. Everyone greeted this with enthusiasm. The thought crossed my mind that photos of this lot hanging in such a place was a little incongruous. Joffa and little Mick, Kathy and Maureen and the rest might feel a touch self-conscious. Then I thought again. They, along with the cheer squad members from down the years, were as big a part of our heritage as anything else was. Even though there were many things about Eddie that made me grimace, there were far more that I admired. I was impressed with the way he treasured the history of the club and the way he wanted each player that came to embrace Collingwood’s history and tradition. As someone once said, if you don’t know where you have been, you probably don’t know where you are going. None of us should wallow in the past. Instead, we should understand and enjoy our memories but be aware that the world will always move forward. My old man told me once that it’s not the fact that you don’t want to move on it’s just that you don’t want to throw away what you had. This, combined with the whole Lexus Centre experience, raised the question of the club being confused about its identity. Some champions of the working class 190
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were accusing Collingwood of losing its place; that the once definitive working-class club was now the definitive corporate club. They were forgetting how the Magpies had grown. I could not see such a transition in the other clubs. After all Geelong was still Geelong; Richmond was still Richmond and the interstate clubs didn’t count. Collingwood, however, had gone from Victoria Park with two medicine balls and a skipping rope to this place of grandeur, and had not lost identity but simply changed with the times. To me they had always had the power, it was just that it was now being used differently. The young supporters of today would have immensely different memories of barracking for Collingwood. I wondered if Eddie ever had any problems with Mick Malthouse. Did he ever question him or did they ever talk about football, Eddie being a journalist and all that. So I rang another journalist, the Herald Sun’s Mike Sheahan. It was a spur of the moment thing. To my surprise the switchboard put me through and he answered. After a few pleasantries, I asked if some in the press really disliked us or just Eddie and Mick. ‘There’s an element of truth in that,’ he agreed. ‘There’s a bit of a love/hate thing with Eddie. He has such a high profile that there will be enough people who hate him whether he has done anything wrong or not.’ He talked about the ‘Eddie Everywhere’ syndrome that annoyed some Collingwood people, let alone those from elsewhere. Sheahan didn’t hold back. I asked how he thought Mick was going. He gave me a bit of background into their relationship, which had been quite testy at times. ‘We were close when he was at Richmond and then later at Footscray,’ Sheahan told me. ‘We’re similar in ways; a bit to do with our Irish background, both 191
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opinionated, we both think we know everything and we both get shitty when we’re criticised.’ Sheahan went on to say that, because he thought he had been publicly embarrassed, Mick started belittling him. ‘Things like challenging me because I haven’t played the game at the highest level, so how could I know anything?’ He added that Mick thought he was intellectually superior to the rest of the football writers and people did not like that. ‘And he’s abrasive too.’ Why was it, I asked him, that Mick and Eddie had not been scrutinised at all, while other clubs were constantly on the back foot? ‘I think a few are scared of them,’ he said. ‘Some are mindful of the fallout that could follow. What’s the point in cutting your throat professionally?’ That was sensible. With the power that Eddie and Mick held perhaps doors would close and phones would ring out if they were bagged too much. As Sheahan said, it was much easier to say nice things, although, he added, in his case he valued his professional integrity so if questions needed to be asked, he asked them. He was certainly fearless and warmed to the subject, so I changed it. ‘Do people just hate us,’ I asked, ‘or is it something we do?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘your supporters are feral.’ I sighed, hopefully not audibly. That old feral supporters thing again. He did admit that it had changed in recent years but the perception was created when Victoria Park was in its prime and when he was an impressionable youngster. ‘We really hated you lot then.’ I thought about the years when I was an impressionable youngster. Then, I could think of nothing better 192
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than to be known as a Collingwood fan. We walked around mocking all those who couldn’t make the finals. Until September that was. Perhaps that was the arrogance Sheahan mentioned. The last thing I asked was, ‘What has happened this year?’ Sheahan reckoned that everyone knew the answer to that. All the injuries and suspensions had hurt, but there had been very little improvement in the lesser players and the better ones had not played well. Added to that Mick had made some incredible moves on the field. ‘And you can never really ask him about them because he goes off you very, very quickly.’ The last thing Sheahan told me was that he considered Mick Malthouse a very good coach and Eddie McGuire an excellent president, despite a few reservations. I was relieved to hear we were in good hands.
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22 SOUNDS AND MEMORIES
Round 17 Footscray v Collingwood— Saturday 24 July—Docklands There is something special about listening to football on the radio. At times, it can be irritating because you can hear the crowd roar before you know what is happening and the commentators have to try to keep up with the action as best they can. This necessitates leaving out some of the game, which you don’t know about because you are not there, and everything appears to be more dramatic than is actually the case. But at the same time there is a certain magic as the match unfolds in your imagination. When I listen to the radio, I pace. Up and down, around and around, here and there. When I’m listening at home my wife might wander past and look at me as though I have St Vitus’s dance or something. Generally, she continues on her way with a small, but noticeable, shake of her head. She doesn’t understand. It is difficult to just sit there, as anyone who listens to radio will agree. It’s different if 194
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you are doing something but then, of course, you lose concentration which makes it even worse. I often listened to matches with my father. In the early days of simple transistors, I brought him back a radio from overseas and he used it constantly. When I was home on leave Dad and I would sometimes go fishing, taking the radio with us. It would sit on the bank of the Murray while we sat in the shade of gum trees and waited, in vain mostly, to snare a cod or a yellowbelly. Even though we never caught many fish, we listened to the radio while we talked about all manner of things; from the taste of oranges warmed in the sun to the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon. On one breathless summer night we sat in the garden and listened to the sound of a young Frank Sinatra as his voice gently wafted from the radio to fill the night air. During the season, Dad listened to the football. He reckoned he barracked for all sides but deep down I knew he was a Collingwood man. He would become as frustrated as the rest of us at their losses but was almost nonchalant when they won. Dad was neither football visionary, coach, nor master tactician but when he first saw the game in the late1950s he spoke of seeing how time and space could be used similarly to soccer. While he liked the bravery required in the game (the way any of us do), most of all he enjoyed the artistry of some players. He always said that the mere shape of the ball meant spectacular success and disaster were always close at hand. Those who could read the ball were his favourites. When my brothers and I played, he and my mother would drive all over the Mallee to watch. He never had much money but looked after what he had. His grey EJ Holden was his pride and joy for thirty years. 195
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Occasionally, when the trip was going to take a while, Mum would pack a thermos and sandwiches and they would stop on the side of the road for a break. While watching us play Dad would have the EJ nosed into the fence, listening to the ABC broadcast on the car radio. There was no Rex Hunt in those days; or rather the commercial stations didn’t reach as far north as the towns surrounding Swan Hill, so it was the incomparable Doug Heywood and Doug Bigelow and later the smooth voices of Peter Booth and Tim Lane. At home on Saturday nights he watched The Winners and compared what he saw with what he had heard during the afternoon. Many a time there was a distinct difference. Dad’s radio was in danger many times during the years when he listened to Collingwood matches, finals especially. On those days, like the Magpies, his highs were Everest-like but the alternatives didn’t bear contemplating. When we listened to a match together I would yell at the radio as well. It affected us both. Dad is no longer with us but his memory is always close. The radio has returned to me and every now and again, I turn it on and listen to the strong, scratchy sound of a football match. I had the radio on for the Footscray—aka the Western Bulldogs—game but I listened to Rex Hunt and the team; the ABC had become a bit dry for me. I wasn’t sure whether Dad would have approved. The game was accompanied by a severe bout of anxiety. I felt worse than I had felt all year; to maintain any credibility we needed to win. A talkback caller asked what home ground advantage meant these days. I had read during the week that the Bulldogs had won just four 196
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of their last seventeen home matches at Telstra Dome. Really? I could not understand why anyone would bother with those statistics. Perhaps I had it wrong but I would have thought home ground advantage went out years ago. In Melbourne, there are only three grounds. The only reason they have home matches designated in Melbourne is for the president’s lunch and to decide who wears the white shorts. Other callers talked about why following clubs was important to them. One named Brad said that being a Collingwood supporter was a way of life for him and that Magpies people were different in that anyone who was a real supporter was always and without exception, completely passionate. ‘Collingwood people know who their players are, know the opposition too,’ he continued. ‘Some of the others don’t even go to games.’ Wally, who was next, agreed but in an understated way. He reckoned the Pies would win, ‘but then again, Collingwood has turned losing these games into an art form.’ At half-time Collingwood were struggling but not as much as the Bulldogs who were, according to the experts, clearly unenthusiastic. I thought it was touch and go as I grabbed a pie and a beer and walked around the garden thinking about what Collingwood needed. I yearned for a player who was hard and nasty. Where had that gone, I wondered. We had a few of the other sort; we used to call them receivers but now they’re ‘outside players’. We needed more ‘inside players’. I also knew that probably sooner rather than later, Bucks was going to slow down, Presti was going to be found out and Wakes was nearing the end of the road. What would we do then? 197
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The broadcast resumed and with it the feeling of helplessness. Robert Walls said our midfield was dominating and in the space of a few minutes it rained goals, each one received by the faithful as though they were lifting pots from the end of a rainbow. Admittedly, the Bulldogs didn’t kick straight but who cared, it was a change from us kicking badly. Eight goals came in the first half of the quarter. What bliss, what ability, what a team! According to Rex and the panel, the final siren was greeted with a roar such as they had not heard for ages. Collingwood fans everywhere were patting each other on the back as though they had played themselves. The Bulldogs fans began to leave, heading quickly for the exits and the start of another week of misery. I felt sheer unadulterated joy. I thought about the way a win can change the whole meaning of football and supporting. Even though the season was over as far as finals were concerned, each win made us all grateful for small mercies; made us happy for at least a week. There had been a discussion beforehand on whether the game meant anything besides the order of draft picks. How wrong they were. ‘We want wins,’ I said to the radio, ‘that’s all.’ If we didn’t give everything to win all the time then everything I had ever felt and loved about Collingwood would be lost. All the times we had fought against the odds would amount to nothing. As supporters, we would lose faith if we knew or even suspected the team wasn’t trying or that Mick wasn’t playing his best side. Later, still basking in the reflected glory of a win, the words of a young kid came to mind. ‘Say it ain’t so, Mick, say it ain’t so.’ After the broadcast finished and the last of the callers had hung up, I turned off the radio and sat in the 198
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silence. I looked at it for a minute or so as it sat inanimate on the garden bench. I imagined what Dad would have been like that afternoon—angry, quiet, and at the end, exultant. He would have smiled and said that he knew we weren’t as bad as everyone said. I sipped at a beer, leaned back in my dilapidated wicker chair and looked into the sky through the encroaching darkness and the stars that blinked in the heavens. I drank a quiet toast to Dad before I went inside and warmed myself by the fire.
Collingwood (17.13.115) d Footscray (8.18.66)
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23 THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Round 18 Collingwood v Richmond— Saturday 31 July—MCG Our lives are full of recollections. To paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel, preserve your memories because they’re all that’s left you. The AFL’s Heritage Week started me thinking about the past. I knew what heritage meant but it was the literal meaning that made me pause—‘what is handed down, especially when it’s worthy of preservation’. The first thing that crossed my mind was that worthiness, like beauty, was in the eye or mind of the beholder. So I thought of my heritage; what I had inherited. The memories I had preserved were many. My first glimpse of an Aussie Rules game; the size of the men I watched as they changed. The first smell of liniment each season; my black friend Jimmy being hunted out of the changing rooms, ostensibly because he was being a nuisance. In later years, I suspected that was not the real reason. Jimmy may have been a nuisance but so was I. 200
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Other indelible memories included my first, heartstopping glimpse of the MCG grass; the braveness of Bobby Rose after his three grand final losses. Of course, there was the artistry of big Thommo, the sheer bullish bravery of Tuddenham and the clinical precision of Price and McKenna. Then there was the Artful Dodger, Tony Shaw, and the aristocratic brilliance of Peter Daicos. Of course, our heritage also contained some demons. Not only the grand final defeats either. John Greening being carted off on a stretcher in 1972 sprang readily to mind, as did the two wooden spoons and the losses, any of them, against Carlton. One thing that stood out was the memory of how the game was played then—man-on-man, when you actually had an opponent. When you ‘stood’ someone and when the teams were published as they would line up. Then there were the match-ups to consider. Would Southby beat McKenna, would Thommo counter Nicholls, who would Tuddy run through apart from one of his team-mates? Then I thought about what my son would inherit, apart from the heartache and the glory of barracking for the Magpies. He would never again hear the roar of the crowd from the Social Club stand at Victoria Park. He would never walk along Lulie Street after a victory. But, did it matter all that much? Did he care? I thought that most of the younger brigade would be glad those things had disappeared. They were used to comfort and technology and all the mod cons of the world. I tried to think about what would happen in fifty years. Would they think differently to us then, would they respect what we had left behind? In years to come, 201
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would Zac think about Telstra Dome as I did about the MCG? Would he care about the Lexus Centre as I cared about Vic Park? Would he remember the running midfields that never touched each other or Billy Picken and his battles with whoever he played on? Would he wonder what on earth I was talking about when I talked about the uncomplicated days when curtain-raisers were played and when you could take umbrellas into grounds? About World of Sport and The Sporting Globe? And where had all the duffle coats gone? Ah well, I sighed, more in contentment than disapprovingly, the world moves on. Eddie had seen to it that we wouldn’t be left behind. During Heritage Week I spoke to Collingwood historian and sports editor of the Sunday Herald Sun, Glenn McFarlane, whose grandfather, Charlie Dibbs, played in the famous four consecutive premierships. Glenn’s mother was Charlie’s eldest daughter and brainwashed her son into the Collingwood tradition. Glenn said that he didn’t have a choice of club even though his father barracked for Fitzroy and would not change his allegiance for anyone, his wife included. Although Collingwood ran through the family blood, Glenn didn’t know much about his grandfather. ‘No-one really talked about it much,’ he said, ‘so I never learned a great deal about him.’ When he was still a youngster he decided to write to Harry Beitzel at 3AW to see if he could find out more. He received a letter back from Harry and Bill Jacobs with all the information he wanted as well as a Collingwood jumper as a prize for the letter of the week. As a journalist Glenn always found Collingwood games hard to cover. His first grand final as a writer was 202
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in 1990 and he admits trying to keep everything in perspective during the quarter-time brawl was difficult. ‘I was agitated, to say the least.’ We talked about the Collingwood heritage and agreed that even in tough times there was always something to keep us going. He cited 1982 as an example. It was a bad year with Tommy Hafey being sacked, but then there was an unexpected win at Waverley and everything felt magical again. ‘That’s the thing isn’t it,’ he said. ‘If we are down we know its only going to be for a couple of years while some other clubs have no real hope.’ Glenn said that Charlie would be amazed at football now, the Lexus Centre and Eddie in particular. ‘He was a football stitcher and earned a meagre bit from playing the game,’ said Glenn. ‘The whole thing would be too much to comprehend.’ You would expect that sentiment to be shared by anyone from those days. One thing hasn’t changed though. The spirit is the same and we still hate being beaten. All the heritage talk started me thinking about the game against Richmond and how we owed them one. The Tigers were in disarray again, although they were not the only ones. It seemed to be another week, another club, another coach sacked. I thought it funny, as well as alarming, that here were these clubs each with thirty-odd players, football departments numbering about the same amount, assistants by the score, yet everything that happened was the coach’s fault. And to some degree that was right. After all, the coach is the one who generally makes the big decisions. Plus it is easier to sack one than a large number. That’s not to deny Collingwood’s upheavals, but at least they have been at respectful interludes of a decade 203
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or so. Not every second year as it appears with some. Then again, perhaps these clubs have such pressures on them that problems surface easily, whereas with other clubs they do not. I decided to take a different route to the ground so I walked along Swan Street toward Punt Road. The Lexus Centre had officially opened during the week so I started there. The news item said 250 movers and shakers were invited to the bash. I wasn’t invited; Joffa wasn’t either. Not that we were movers and shakers, except in our dreams. We didn’t expect an invite, in fact we laughed about it. But we did wonder how many ordinary supporters were there. A short distance further on was the ground that was once to be called the Bob Rose Oval but had been named the Edwin Flack Oval after the first Olympic gold medallist. Bob would have thought that was great; he was always looking to defer to others. They still named something after him—the changing rooms. I reckon he would have been quite amused at his name being on a white concrete box structure with a few windows. There was also to be a statue erected in his honour. At the other end of the street and around the corner was Punt Road Oval, home of Richmond. I looked in through the fence for a short time and thought how lucky we were, in the whole scheme of things. Making money was no problem and in charge was one of the most loved and hated men around. Whatever problems we had, I was grateful we were not like a lot of other clubs. Now, if only we could win another flag. I watched the mob stream out of the Cricketer’s and head towards the G. During the week I’d heard about a punter who had bet $500 on the Pies making the eight at 204
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odds of a hundred to one. As I watched the supporters swarm across Punt Road against the lights, I wondered if he was among them. If I could pick him out, I thought I might ask if he had any more money to throw away, perhaps I could help him. Apparently he’d also bet the same amount on the Pies winning the flag. He was given a thousand to one for that one. Conservative bookmaker, I thought. As the fans passed me, I heard one complaining about his wife and her expectations that he would pay her at least a similar amount of attention as he did Collingwood. ‘Bloody ambitious,’ he laughed to his mate. The comment made me think of a story I’d heard concerning the Blackburn Rovers manager, Don Mackay, whose wife said she would feel better if there was another woman involved because then she would know what she was up against. But, she said, how do you compete with a football? It wasn’t a classic game as such but at least we won albeit by new boy David King’s lucky goal in the dying minutes. With all our missing players, Richmond could have beaten us although at times we appeared to be a class above them. Typically, in the last quarter we had a significant lead and then fell behind at the death. That’s one of the countless admirable yet frustrating things about the Pies, they give you hope. It’s almost as if an instruction is issued to new players when they receive their jumpers and their boots, not to mention their contracts—you shall always give hope. Then sometimes the hope is replaced by a feeling of utter hopelessness as we conspire to lose another match. Here though, we kept on. Determined, aggressive, not giving in, it was what we all wanted to see. 205
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It was what we knew was true of the Collingwood legend. It was our heritage.
Collingwood (15.13.103) d Richmond (14.14.98)
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24 KEEPING YOUR FEET ON THE GROUND Round 19 Fremantle v Collingwood— Friday 6 August—Subiaco Oval During the week that Collingwood travelled to Fremantle Mick Malthouse talked about his lack of comprehension about the time it took to travel to Proxima Centauri. It equalled, he said, his lack of comprehension about some of the umpiring decisions he had seen in the game against the Tigers. That was typical Mick. In some ways I thought he could have been living on the planet himself. His lateral thinking sometimes caused him problems with credibility. His mind was constantly racing with all manner of plans and sayings. I loved it because it meant that he had the capacity to think about more than football but I understood others might look at him and wonder. Nevertheless, I still knew that in amongst all the gems that sprang from his lips, there was a distinct ability to coach. He reminded me—not in looks but in philosophy—of the Hakowi Indian Chief in the old TV show F-Troop, with his ‘wise old Indian sayings’. 207
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I’ve always thought how lucky Collingwood has been with its coaches. From Jock McHale onwards they have mostly been at least as good as any others and in certain cases better. Bobby Rose, although remembered for losing three grand finals, was one of the most successful—given that matters other than premierships can measure success. Tommy Hafey’s reign was just as heartbreaking as Bobby’s but he took us from bottom to top in his first season so he must be considered successful. Tony Shaw floundered at times and while you certainly could not exactly call him a successful coach, he did encourage many young kids who developed after he left. Then there was Leigh Matthews. He reminded me of a Petty Officer I came across in the Navy. Not because this man could play or coach but rather because of his eyes. It was the stare. While most of the other senior sailors used the old fire-and-brimstone yelling and screaming technique, this man simply stared. If you did something wrong he would make you stand to attention while he went about his duty, occasionally stopping in front of you, jutting his head forward and penetrating your soul with his eyes. After that, his every wish was your command. Leigh’s stare appeared much the same. If I played for him I know I would be doing what he demanded. Mick Malthouse has a similar stare to Leigh Matthews, although I suspect Mick’s mind to be somewhat more cluttered. Coaches are a different breed. While some of them have positive outgoing exteriors, many of those universally admired have a demeanour bordering on anti-social. Even those who don’t really have that personality try to appear that way. Mick Malthouse never had that problem. 208
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Mick likes to think of himself as a teacher, and he is a good one most of the time. The young players all seemed to look up to him and listen to his thoughts on football, life and anything else to do with the world. I thought he should write a book containing his thoughts, a bit like Chairman Mao. There he could talk about proverbs, quotes from ancient philosophers and dispense homilies to his heart’s content. I liked his single-mindedness. At times it had driven me crazy but his thoughts on matters other than footy have shown a depth to the man. As a teacher, he has always struck me as being a cross between Mr Chips and a mad professor. Mick was of the opinion Collingwood had a thin list. He was right, of course, although there were those who said it was his fault. After all, he had been heavily involved in recruiting and drafting for the past five years. There was a feeling around the supporter networks that Mick was to blame for everything. That was totally unfair, but did it go with the coach’s territory? The complaints went back to the beginning of the year when Collingwood did nothing in the trade periods. Nothing. We drafted a couple of youngsters but they were not going to help us go further than we had over the last two years. Why, I wondered, is it that at the start of each year we hear that some gun player is Collingwood bound? That it is a done deal. Yet they all end up somewhere else. On paper the team, even though weakened substantially, looked fresh and exciting and new and full of expectation. I hoped that Mick didn’t frighten the young blokes. I wished he would let them play. That he wouldn’t take them from the ground if they made a 209
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mistake. That he would trust them. His record in that area, however, didn’t fill me with confidence. A great source of entertainment for me, apart from football, was listening to Mick’s interviews with the press. They were interesting to say the least. Mick didn’t answer many questions directly and never appeared comfortable. Perhaps that’s why he rambled on about trees, planets, philosophy etc. Apart from taking players from the ground, one of the issues he was constantly questioned about was his use of players in positions where they rarely played. His answer was always the same: ‘I’m the coach, I’ll do what I want,’ or words to that effect. All, of course, delivered in his sharp tone and with the stare. Mick’s problems seemed to lie with everyone bar the team and the officials. He would argue with the AFL, the press and anyone else who dared to put their head up over the safety of their trenches. That was typical of Mick, sensitive to everything in the world except critics. I had heard he was a lot more personable than his public demeanour indicated. If that was true, I wondered if he understood that questions were not necessarily criticism. I could understand his reaction though, having listened to grabs from press conferences. No-one would want to answer some of the questions put to him, especially at times when his resistance was down. I wanted to ask Mick some questions earlier in the year but hadn’t. Now, I decided it was time, so I emailed him. The questions were innocent enough. One was inquiring what sort of responsibility coaches had to supporters, if any, and vice versa. Another was asking whether he considered that supporters knew anything. Yet another asked if he talked to his players about media speculation and, if so, how he explained it. And whether Collingwood 210
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people were different from anything else he had come across in footy. I didn’t expect any answers but at least I was happy that I tried. I guess he was busy—still, better no response than copping one of his media sprays. I felt like I needed to get back to football basics so I accepted an invitation and headed for Gisborne, an hour or so out of Melbourne. The Gisborne Football Club was holding a ‘Back to 1990’ night and, as they were coached by Mick McGuane, it was reasonably easy for them to organise. Peter Daicos was going, as was Allan McAlister and Joffa. I also scored an invite. Joffa and I drove up from Melbourne in the ute. On the journey we talked about many things, football amongst them, until the conversation turned to life, how it treated people unfairly and how some had all the luck—good and bad. Joffa told me about some of the old blokes he looked after in his work with the Salvation Army and how there were families who had known nothing else but poverty and hard times for generations. And how some families have a run with sickness and death while others all live easily to old age. ‘Buggered if I know what to make of it,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t make much sense does it?’ A crowd of about 200 had gathered at the footy ground in the upstairs social rooms. Gisborne was a country club that had been down and almost out but took the plunge and appointed McGuane as coach. It had worked out well with successive premierships—all with the loss of only a couple of games and with mostly local talent. Their success was highlighted with their approach to nights like this. 211
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A number of the crowd followed teams other than Collingwood but that didn’t matter. They were there to enjoy themselves and to listen to legends of the game. This sort of night transcends all boundaries, a burly fellow wearing an Essendon beanie told me at the bar. ‘We all have our differences and we all hate each other at times but there’s nothing like listening to blokes who have played the game no matter where they’re from.’ As well as a number of Magpies fans, in our group was a Richmond supporter, one who barracked for St Kilda while another followed Carlton. We introduced ourselves but within seconds had forgotten about names. Not that it mattered. We talked, sensibly for most of the time, about what it meant to occupy different rungs of the ladder. Apart from the usual jokes about each other’s club, the Carlton man said that as long as you had some time at the top you could put up with a year or two of poor performance. I agreed with him. The Richmond bloke grinned. ‘It’s OK for you lot, I suppose.’ The common denominator for them all was Gisborne. The Essendon beanie man interrupted. Underneath it all, he told me as he picked up five pots in his leathery grasp, we’re all the same. I wondered if Mick Malthouse would see it like that. A video of the 1990 Grand Final played on a big screen and was stopped at the quarter breaks while the guests spoke about the highlights, how they felt and what it all meant to them. Their passion and their memories were still obvious but what struck me was the way they knew every kick, every handball and every small knock-on that had taken place. Occasionally ex-players are asked by fans if they remember small incidents in games long forgotten. 212
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Usually they do not. This was different. This was as fresh in their minds as it had been on the day. They had gone from footballers to immortals in the space of a couple of hours in 1990. I suppose you don’t really forget things like that. Afterwards I spent a few minutes talking to Daicos about kicking. I had spent many an hour in my backyard, dodging the apricot tree as I kicked imaginary left foot banana goals from the third row of the stands at the MCG and occasionally from the bar at Victoria Park. Zac did the same when he was younger. I watched him from around the corner near the barbecue while he pretended to be Buckley or Burns or Didak. At the same time he commentated to himself with all the emotion necessary. My commentary was all in my mind but I didn’t tell him that. I wondered if Daics used the same technique as us to bend the ball around the Hills Hoist without hitting the washing. After he stopped laughing he said he wasn’t disappointed with Collingwood missing easy goals, it was just by how much they missed and from where. I listened as the master explained what they were doing wrong. It was fascinating being told about how and where a ball bounced. About what happened when you kicked it with certain parts of the foot and the way your weight helped or hindered. About how the ball acted when there were different pressures in it. Daicos made it sound like a living thing and that he was in control of it. He also said he loved taking his kids into the crowd and barracking with unbridled passion whenever he could. ‘It’s the only place where you can hug or kiss a total stranger and they think nothing of it.’ A few beers later and after a rendition of the club song led by Joffa in the famous jacket—punctuated 213
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by booing from the non-believers—we headed back to town. ‘Geez, we’re lucky,’ Joffa said as I dropped him off, ‘not just with football but everything.’ I drove away thinking about how football makes people’s lives a bit more bearable while also making them a bit more unbearable. It was a conundrum; a lovely, warm conundrum. I looked up to the heavens and wondered what Chairman Mick was thinking about in the lead-up to Friday. As a Collingwood supporter there have been many difficult things to bear over the years. Losing to Fremantle has recently become one of them, especially over there in front of their crowd and with their bloody stupid anchors all over the place. The worst thing is their song. How anyone managed to come up with that is beyond me. I reckoned some of the aliens inhabiting Proxima Centauri had left the planet and gone to live in Fremantle. Watching the pre-match on TV confirmed my suspicions. Listening to a game on radio I can picture what they are doing and to a certain extent, control what I see in my mind. It’s totally different watching the game on television. Firstly, you have to put up with all the inane comments from interstate boundary riders and then you can see nothing of what’s going on away from the ball. No structure appears, no pattern of play down the field. It is frustrating. You can’t see what the players are trying to do. At least at the ground you know where they all are—even the opposition. On telly, they suddenly appear out of nowhere and all you can do is yell at the screen. That’s one beef. Another is the advertising breaks overlapping the action. The replays I’d like to see are 214
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destroyed by bloody ads. One thing television does, though, is show you the things players do up close. You don’t see that at the ground. I watched the game by myself for the most part. Zac went off to watch a movie on another television in another room. He had heard me swearing at the telly when Collingwood were missing goals like they had hundreds to spare and told me to settle down. I asked why, in none too subtle fashion and he wandered off. I thought about the relationship between fathers and sons and settled down. The things that make us love the club are closely aligned with the things that make us so frustrated. We play with abandon one week, don’t go hard for the ball, appear as though we are not overly interested and then in other games we fight like a thousand samurai. In Perth we were almost in a foreign land with no friends (except for Neon Leon—he had his whole family there). Every critic wrote us off yet we turn around and win. I understood about the vagaries of human conditions and biorhythms and such like, but what on earth was happening? Perhaps it was simply the very nature of the game, the nature of Collingwood. The game finished on television with Eddie having apoplectic spasms of overblown enthusiasm, but I forgave him. I was in a similar condition, punching the air of a darkened lounge room while the redgum logs of the open fire glowed more brilliantly than I had noticed for a while. Outside the stars shone brightly and the world seemed wonderful. These days make everything worthwhile. There are those, of course, who reckon Collingwood fans are sick. That we carry on alarmingly at these sorts of events. 215
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Well, perhaps we are but deep down do these critics have soul; do they understand what it means? What else is there that can make you feel like that? In the paper after the game there was a schedule of what needed to happen for the Pies to make the finals. Talk about dumb faith. The ‘what-ifs’ were bandied around as though it was a realistic consideration. Basically it amounted to Mick Malthouse going to Proxima Centauri and bringing some aliens back to infiltrate the other clubs and make them all lose while we were winning outlandishly. Even the great hope of Collingwood people would not be stretched that far. All the combinations, all the permutations, all the crossing of legs, worshipping at the feet of statues and prayers to the great football gods had amounted to nothing. We couldn’t make the finals. We knew that but hope and eternal springing are always in the minds of football followers—Collingwood especially. And perhaps that’s the fun of it all. Perhaps that’s the point. Instead of sticking hot pins in our eyes for pleasure, we follow a football club.
Collingwood (14.22.106) d Fremantle (11.7.73)
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25 THE FOOTBALL WEB
Round 20 Essendon v Collingwood— Friday 13 August—MCG Internet sites about football have multiplied like rabbits. The most humorous ones are those where the fans rant and rave about the players who once were their heroes—‘once’ being last week or the week before when they played a reasonable game. Every site has contributors who bag their own and in the case of Richmond, one site is actually named eatourown.com.au—a fascinating study for the shrinks. I suppose in some ways it is a vehicle for venting frustration and anger, although reading them makes you wonder about the thought that goes into some of the postings. There is also fun to be had on the chat room sites where you can start an argument amongst fans you don’t know—infiltrators and insurgents behind the enemy lines, so to speak. It probably helps those fans purge themselves so they can start afresh. After all, how do you prepare for the summer if you are not cleansed? I sent a few emails. 217
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One was to a Bulldogs supporter who had wondered how long the club would hang onto Peter Rohde as coach. The answer was ‘not long’—he was duly sacked and Rodney Eade appointed. I asked if he was happy now that he had his wish. Yes, he said, but he was also sad that Rohde had been ditched. There was no future with Rohde but there was with Eade. I said there was always a future; that’s one thing, like time and age, we can’t control. He replied by saying that he couldn’t see the way forward with the old coach; he could with the new one. ‘Hope is what we all live on, even you Collingwood blokes.’ It was difficult to disagree. Then I sent a message to a Hawthorn woman. ‘Hawkluva’, she called herself. At the start of the year, the expectations on her club were almost as big as those on mine so I asked her how she was dealing with them. She told me she had never really believed they would do any good. All this, of course, was no match for our own sites such as The Collingwood Rant and Nick’s Collingwood Page, where Sly and the boys had it out with each other and where they wrote articles that at times personified ranting at its absolute best. Collingwood365.com was another of my favourites. Joffa had a weekly column on that and at times wrote very well but at others let his cheer squad demeanour and reputation somewhat cloud his typing. Then there was the best of them all—alandidak.com. This site was like comparing the first Apple computers to the file server at Cape Canaveral. I emailed them and asked what it was all about. A reply came back quickly and we agreed to meet. I found ‘Minty’ outside the MCG and followed him into one of the bars downstairs underneath the Great 218
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Southern Stand before the game against Essendon. A short, roundish sort of bloke, Minty was a sales rep who loved Collingwood. When asked about the origin of his nickname all he would say was that the story began when he was twelve and only surfaced when he was very drunk. His four mates—Kruger, Loges Mk1 and 2, and D-Bomb—were involved in various businesses and they had one thing in common—a love for the Pies. It had all started when they had flown to Adelaide for that famous final when Collingwood beat Port against the odds and afterwards had drunk for quite some time. Didak had kicked a couple of goals during the match and the boys kept yelling out, ‘Who’s on Didak?’ Later on, every time Loges Mk1 ordered a beer he asked the bartender to call him Alan Didak. Then on the plane home he asked the air hostess to say things like, ‘Here’s your seat, Mr Didak.’ Later in the week, sitting around the pub one night someone suggested they start up a website. Minty’s brother, a Richmond supporter, IT expert and developer of the eatourown site, helped them out and that was that. Aside from the questions about different teams in the same family, there was a degree of togetherness in the whole planning of the exercise. It had grown from there. All it amounted to, the boys agreed, was five blokes in their thirties doing something different. ‘Maybe it was our deprived childhood,’ said Minty. ‘It started as a bit of fun and we don’t take ourselves too seriously.’ That was just as well as the site ran a competition about who had the biggest head. The contestants were Scott Cummings, Bert Newton, the Moon and Minty. On the latest count Minty was miles ahead. He suspected 219
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that his mates had logged on a number of times and voted for him. Kruger said they always stood at the footy so we headed up to make sure we got a good spot. Leaning against the fence Minty told me they were going to petition the AFL to weld circles onto the steel bars to hold their beer. He wasn’t at all confident those in charge would comply. Standing at the footy for them began at Victoria Park where they gathered at the Yarra Falls end, and where all the conveniences they needed were easily accessible. Kruger said that within a few metres were the bar, the barbecue and the toilets. Standing, they considered, was better because they could talk and move around more easily. ‘It’s a lot more communal,’ said Kruger, ‘a lot more convenient.’ While we were chatting Loges Mk1 arrived just off the plane from Sydney wearing a suit and tie and carrying an overnight bag and a laptop. His wife had presented him with a baby two weeks before but he simply had to come to the footy before he went home. He shrugged his shoulders and grinned when I asked why. Then Loges Mk2 turned up. ‘I’m the bloke that runs the show, so anything you need or want to know, just ask me.’ The comment caused an outburst in which he was poked, pushed, prodded and told to ‘piss off’ quite loudly by all present. Then he asked if everyone was right for a beer before being sent away for five of them. Standing at the footy is different. If you can forget about back pain it is the way the game should be watched, most of the time. It has a suburban feel, a country feel, it reminds you of how it was in the old days. Not that 220
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sitting is bad, far from it, but standing has a certain sense of belonging. The rest of the crowd looks at you as if you are invincible. Minty gave the umpires a terrible, although deserved, spray a number of times during the first quarter, mostly when everything was quiet. The crowd turned as one and stared at those who were standing, wondering what sort of people we were. None of it deterred Minty, although a small space cleared around him until the heads turned back to the action. Essendon kicked nine goals and a had a forty-point lead at quarter-time. We had a few beers during half-time when things were looking decidedly bleak, in both the football and the weather. Minty told me how, in the early stages of the development, Didak came to the Carringbush Hotel in Collingwood to meet them all. Although he appreciated the attention, he was also a touch embarrassed, especially when the Didak Medal was introduced. ‘That’s when everything took off,’ said Minty. The medal is run along the usual lines with the group asking a celebrity tipster each week to award the votes. Traditionally, Didak always receives a vote— deservedly or otherwise. Didak had been missing for a few weeks with a broken jaw but had returned for this game, which was lucky for me as I had suddenly become a celebrity and was asked to be the tipster. It’d be hard to give him three votes if he didn’t play. The presentation of the Didak Medal was the highlight of the previous year. About 250 people turned up and paid good money to be involved in all the fun. ‘Where else would that happen,’ asked Minty, ‘except Collingwood?’ What it did show, said D-Bomb who had been very quiet, was that everyone wins out of a bit of fun. ‘There 221
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is still a place in this world for being a little on the wayout side.’ To help offset costs and, presumably, to give fans a sense of ownership, the club sets an amount that groups need to raise before attracting benefits. Minty and the boys had raised enough money to sponsor Didak three times and, as two tickets are allocated to sponsors for club functions, it meant all of them could go, including Minty’s father. ‘Wives, too?’ I asked. ‘Well . . .’ the voices trailed off. Minty and his dad had been going to the footy together for over thirty years. One of the first matches was the 1977 drawn Grand Final when Minty hid under his seat because he couldn’t bear to see the Pies lose. He didn’t even come out when Twiggy Dunne kicked the goal. Thankfully he had grown up a bit since then although his mates were doubting that while he was screaming at the umpires. In 1990 Minty, unlike many in the crowd, refused to sing the club song until the final siren sounded. Then he and his dad hugged each other, both of them in tears. I asked Minty what Collingwood meant to him. He showed me a tattoo on his ankle that indicated his feeling. He hadn’t told his parents about it though. His mates laughed at his reticence. Here was this midthirties man, married and living away from home who was worried about what his mum would say. Being a Magpies fan also meant revelling in others’ dislike of their club. They told me about a poll taken on talkback radio during the week—‘Would you rather an asteroid hit earth and kill everyone or would you rather see Collingwood win a flag?’ The asteroid won in a canter. 222
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‘That’s what we love,’ Minty said. ‘Would they do that with any other club? We thrive on the hatred.’ His brother the IT expert turned up during half-time and we talked about Richmond. He laughed mockingly at his own club and the way they always seemed bent on self-demolition. He was happy with the new coach though. That had given supporters hope. ‘I’m not sure that Terry Wallace can do much in the first year or so,’ he said, ‘but all we can do is hope.’ Minty told me hope was a constant; no matter what happened. ‘Last year we really thought we would win the thing but when it didn’t happen we rang each other the next day and starting organising this year.’ The game by now was a lost cause even allowing for Collingwood’s usual fight back. The rain still fell, the crowd still yelled, the umpires were still bad and Minty still screamed. Didak had a few touches in his short time on the ground, much to the enjoyment of the boys. He had his first kick in the ‘Rhyce Shaw’ pocket, named in memory of the previous year’s grand final incident. ‘Well,’ explained Minty, ‘there’s the Punt Road End, the Members End and all that so why can’t we have the Rhyce Shaw pocket?’ Why not indeed. Towards the finish we talked about the expectations of going to a game and thinking your team’s going to put up a fight. Usually that’s what happens with Collingwood but Loges Mk1 said, half in jest, the fun goes out of it when the umpires are against you. Then, added Minty, for all the good intentions in the world and the attempts at temper controlling, the blood rushes headlong to the brain and the mouth engages. The evening was full of mates and laughter, all the 223
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while concentrating on the football game. ‘We come to have fun,’ said Minty, ‘not to go over the top.’ The five of them go everywhere together. Once, they attended a seaside wedding to which they took headphones and listened throughout the ceremony. Kruger said that the only problem was ‘we couldn’t jump around’. At the final siren they drank Crownies on the beach as the bride and groom slipped away. Minty had quietened down considerably by game’s end. He knew what was coming and, as he could do nothing about it and as he had nothing different to say, he was almost silent. It could possibly have had something to do with losing his voice. On Sunday, he had another go at the umpires on the website where volume was not needed. He wrote about how frustrated he was while Loges Mk2—the big one—did much the same. However, they would be back next week. As we all would be. The thoughts that sustain you from week to week are those you think about as you walk away from defeat or victory. The things you talk about; the hope and expectation you feel shortly after every loss. Phoenix-like, it rises in your belly and flows through your veins. There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s just how it is.
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Essendon (18.13.121) d Collingwood (13.9.87)
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26 TURNING BACK THE YEARS
Round 21 Collingwood v Port Adelaide— Friday 20 August—MCG Apart from a few events in the swimming, the first week of the Olympics was generally boring—at least to me. I was watching the less than enthralling volleyball match between Romania and Kazakhstan when, instead of doing the sensible thing and switching off, I tried to come up with analogies for the athletes, their events, and AFL football. It wasn’t long before a few sprang to mind. The cyclists, who were worth watching, were like Port or West Coast, shielded from the public eye with no-one really understanding them or knowing what was going on in their camp. Footscray, North and Richmond were like weightlifters, shooters or archers. Nobody really expected too much from them, they did everything under extreme hardship and unless they were successful, no-one really cared. They just toiled away making up the numbers. Collingwood, I decided, was like those athletes talked about a lot and who were expected to win gold 226
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medals. Those whose stories and photographs filled the sports pages, but who came up short. When that happened we analysed them and offered excuses but still kept writing about them. Collingwood was Jana Pittman! The more I watched the Games the more I became aware of the number of athletes who had changed countries, some in the hope of better performance. I wondered if football supporters thought about changing teams so they could taste success. Take Richmond for instance. Like the Magpies, they had a long, proud history but they had an army of fans that diminished dramatically when they were not performing well. The club lurched from one crisis to the next, each one accompanied by a change of coach. I rang my nephew, Shane. He said that even though his support waxed and waned considerably, changing clubs was something no-one ever really considered seriously. ‘How can you?’ he asked, resigned to the fact that he was stuck with them. Indeed, how could anyone change their allegiance? Some things in life just are. You are born with certain genes that dictate what colour hair you have, your agility, aptitude to scholarly pursuits and all the rest. Supporting football clubs is a bit like that. For those who are serious about their clubs it is in their genes. It is part of you. For others who have ambitions a little less grand than Collingwood, the hurt is no less severe, it’s just that you get used to it. As the realisation dawns that finals are out of reach, again, there is a numbness, a despair that is all too familiar; one that you know well from last year and the year before. And the year before that. There are those who say that none of it matters. I’m not so sure. You may appear to be calm and rational 227
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and mature at home and at work. But deep down, when you lie awake at night thinking about the latest catastrophic loss, you are not composed at all. Not really. Not properly. It happens to me regularly and I reckon it happens to many more. Yet in each club, in each season, there is a win or two that restores your faith. That makes you feel good about yourself and the world. That makes you understand that somehow, somewhere, sometime the trust you have placed in a collection of men playing a game will be repaid. I took up walking during the Olympics. Not as a sport, mind you, but as a way of relaxing. I was told that walking was not only good for you but it calmed the soul; that communing with nature made the day easier to bear. If that was true then why hadn’t I been walking all these years? What if I’d gone for a stroll after 1970, would it have helped? Would I dream less of Harmes if I had walked home from the MCG all those years ago? Besides, did all the Footscray supporters walk? Or Richmond? Are their souls calm? Still, I gave it a chance and during my early morning perambulations I had time to think. I sensed that the Collingwood season was petering out; that except for the black and white fanatics the usual interest was waning. To put my new-found theories to work I parked the ute at Victoria Park and headed off on foot to the MCG for the game against Port Adelaide. I wanted to find out if what I suspected was true. If the people in the heartland still cared now the season was over. I headed off along Johnston Street, stopping first for a beer at the Yarra Hotel. The woman behind the almost empty bar told me how quiet business was and how it 228
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was a lot quieter when Collingwood were not doing well. It was also nothing like it was when the Pies played at Victoria Park. Then, on occasions, Johnston Street was a dangerous place to be, especially if you were a fan of the team that had just beaten Collingwood. Then, on occasions, celebrations were out of control. I asked an old fellow at the corner of the bar if the Pies were waiting for the year to mercifully end. He was quiet for a while, contemplating the question. I think I saw his eyes move but I wasn’t sure. He raised his beer, took a swig, licked his lips and placed the glass back on the bar. Still staring straight ahead his answer was succinct. ‘Fucken all of us are.’ I thanked him and the bartender and left, the eyes of the few drinkers following me as I stepped into the noise of the traffic. I walked past the shop that was once the Bob Rose Sports Store and looked up at the windows where he had lived. The best player in Australia at the time earned five pounds a week and lived in a tiny flat above a shop with his wife and two sons. While I waited for the lights to change I turned and gazed back along the street. I imagined the road full of factory workers pouring out of the pub at six o’clock. I could see a torrent of black and white on Saturday afternoons. I turned back and crossed over Hoddle Street at the lights where, a short distance further along, I noticed a couple of young men looking nervously around as they entered a house of ill repute. These establishments had been around forever although never quite so apparent. A few minutes later I turned into Smith Street. Just along from the corner a broken neon sign in a foreign language dangled from the verandah of a cafe. Peering through the window I could see pictures of the 229
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Greek national soccer team after Euro 2004 stuck on the walls alongside a poster of dancers in national costume. The cafe was plain and sparse. Old men playing backgammon and drinking what looked like liquid bitumen occupied two of the laminex tables. I asked them if they thought the Pies were losing interest in the year. One of the men looked up, smiled and went straight back to his drink, obviously having no idea what I was on about. Another, in faltering English, said they didn’t really care. I stood for a moment wondering if I should continue with the questions but when one man looked up at me quizzically, I left. I paused outside the hairdressing salon a few doors further on and watched as young women attended to the locks of other young women at chairs positioned in front of large mirrors. In the window were shelves bearing more Oscar-like statues than would be seen at an Academy Awards night. The only male in the place came out to see me, offering a business card to remind me of the address if I ever needed a haircut. I asked him about Collingwood. He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Football! Oh dear, I’ve only been here a couple of weeks.’ Smith Street had a number of art galleries. Some displayed art to hang on the wall while others, some of which were open, were purveyors of art for the body— tattoos and body piercing. I knew there would be no joy for me in them so I continued until I came across the Punters Palace. The pub had a large area for poker machines and an even larger one where big screens were showing races from every corner of the country. On Friday nights, punters could lose their money only on the trots and greyhounds but on Saturdays they could watch their 230
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money disappear on horse races everywhere. The few drinkers were mostly old, mostly dressed from the opshops that were prevalent on Smith Street, and mostly in need of a dentist. There was a message in there somewhere, I thought. One man with wispy hair and a dishevelled beard grinned at me, exposing the stubs of a few blackened teeth. ‘We’ll be right next year,’ he said when I quizzed him about Collingwood. ‘We get some good players, we’ll be right.’ ‘That would be handy,’ I replied, ‘some good players.’ ‘We’ll be right,’ he said again as he nodded and winked at me and lit another smoke. I left him and his friends to their punting, aware the desperation and hope they placed on a horse was similar to that which I placed on a football team. Legend has it that the Grace Darling Hotel was where it all began. I opened the door that swung from the distinctive bluestone walls. Those inside looked up as I entered before turning back to whatever it was they were doing. It was apparent that a number of walls had been knocked out to allow for the expansion of a dining area but there was still a sense of the old mixed in with the new. The old windows were smaller than modern ones, while open fires burned at each end of the room. However, where once large logs of wood had been used now imitation logs were fired by gas. Around them were plush new lounges where young inner-city dwellers sat close together, drinking and talking. On one wall was a picture of Grace Darling and the story of the way she rescued a number of passengers 231
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from a ship that sank off the coast of Scotland in 1834. I was sure Grace would have been impressed with a pub in Collingwood named after her. Another poster told the story of a meeting held in the cellar in 1892 to form the Collingwood Football Club. The steps to the cellar were worn and bowed from the feet of many a publican and cellarman. A wood stove once used for cooking meals as well as heating rested in the wall, its usefulness long gone. The surrounding bricks were worn, chipped and broken, the mortar falling out of the cracks. On the wall was a commemorative picture of Collingwood’s four consecutive premierships. Another was of the premiership team from 1896. Faces with bristling moustaches gazed towards the lens, proud and strong. The men in the front row wore boots with no stops. Towels were slung over the shoulders of the trainers and in the lapels of the executives were buttonholes that looked as big as corsages. Suddenly the club was more alive to me than ever. I sat on one of the wooden chairs and stared at the fireplace and the photographs. Even though there were electrical cables running across the ceiling, a modern wine rack and large speakers with mood music waiting for any diners that may book the cellar for a function, there was still a sense of time and place. That’s the thing about history. Thinking of those who have gone makes sense of the present. Sitting there gave me a connection, a feeling of what the whole Collingwood journey was about. Of how, despite how much we love the past, it is the necessity to move forward that counts. The modern look of the upstairs proved that; the change, the progress. I’m sure the men in the photograph with names such as Proudfoot, Sherrin and Pannam would have agreed. 232
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Rick, the owner, startled me as I sat there dreaming, and brought me back to the present. He’d only been in Melbourne for a short time but he realised it was the place to be. I asked if he had been a Collingwood man since arriving. ‘No.’ He hesitated. ‘I barrack for Carlton.’ I felt strange. I looked at the photographs and I’m sure I saw some eyes rolling. Perhaps it was my imagination. ‘Carlton,’ I stammered incredulously. When Rick moved from Sydney he worked with Dean Rice, an ex-Carlton player and so . . . he shrugged his shoulders. I quickly asked myself whether it really mattered. I decided, yes it did, but he seemed a good type so I tried to ignore my feelings. Rick said, quite sensibly, that history belonged to everybody and that the history of his pub was important to all who came through the doors, not just Collingwood people. If he’d lived here forever I thought his opinions might have been different although I did understand what he meant. I decided not to ask him any football related questions, especially about the Pies, and he went back upstairs to the bar. I sat back down and softly whispered an apology on his behalf to the photograph. Rick was right. The world was different; Smith Street was now cosmopolitan. I had even come into the Grace Darling expecting something that no longer existed. Characters in pubs have gone. The old blokes have left or died and been replaced by younger trendier people, many with interests other than football. I left the bar and watched a tram, its bell clanging, as it turned right while I headed towards McDonald’s at the end of the street. I stopped and looked in the window of a music shop where cellos lined the floor and violins 233
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hung above them, their mahogany coloured timber shining in the lights. I was glad the shop was closed as the aching sound of a cello would have done me no good at all. I crossed Victoria Parade, passed by the Freemasons Hospital and saw the MCG light tower just over the hill. I walked alongside the gardens and, as anonymously as I could, joined the crowd heading for the game. Even though the Magpies had been touted as a chance in the game, it wasn’t long before the opposite was evident. We were never really in it. As much as I hated to admit it the mob from over the border had too much talent. Plus they had something to play for. Collingwood, after the long season, did not. Maybe the long season had affected me too; I could not believe I was thinking that way. I was almost mellow. Perhaps it was the poor crowd. There were huge gaps in the outer and the noise was almost non-existent in comparison to a usual Magpie game. Perhaps subconsciously I knew I had to save any emotion for next year and not waste it on a lost cause.
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Round 22 Collingwood v Carlton— Friday 27 August—MCG An American woman, Nadine Gordimer, once wrote, ‘Time is change; we measure its passing by how much things alter’. She was right. How things had altered in the time since last year’s grand final, and how quickly had we measured its passing. Then, we anticipated the new season eagerly and now here we were at the last game of the season with nothing to look forward to, no finals excitement, nothing except a desolate spring. It was as though the practice matches had only just ended yet the months since had disappeared in a blur of frustration, hope and endless anxiety. However, one thing could save the season from being a total wreck—a victory over Carlton. Every Collingwood supporter, every website, every group of fans had declared a ‘beat Carlton week’. We desperately needed a win. The Blues were above us on the ladder and a victory would see us finish higher than them. At least that would be something. 235
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As I headed across the MCG carpark I sensed something special. On a balmy Friday night it was almost as if the surrounds and the ground itself knew we were playing the dreaded enemy. I walked over the footbridge to the Lexus Centre, past the back of the new imposing stand, over the tennis courts where kids were getting lessons in the early evening and the platforms where trains came and went regularly. The walkway was full of people going the other way, some were spectators heading for the game early, while others, smartly dressed and wearing ‘Walk with God’ badges stretched out in a line about 500 metres long. The Friday evening rush hour outside the centre was a chaos of cars and lights and people. I followed the crowd and crossed Swan Street illegally. Collingwood’s new home was crammed, indicating that it had quickly become the place to be before games at the MCG. I looked around and remembered when the Lexus Centre was still a swimming pool. It was my first year in the navy and we’d drive up from the peninsula on Wednesday nights to play water polo. Not because we were much good at the game but because it was the only opportunity we had to get out at night. The rattling old bus took forever to reach the city and then even longer to return to the depot along roads that were bumpy and narrow and full of slow cars. Supporters of all types were jammed into the centre, standing at the bar, enjoying coffee or simply sitting in the plush surrounds. I suspected they were all talking about the chances of victory. The cheer squad, the loyal fans with reserved seats, social club members and those who were more affluent all mixed with each other. It was everything Eddie could have wished for. Joffa yelled at me from the beer garden. I pushed my way through the crowd and waited while he signed a 236
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few autographs. That’s the price of fame, I told him when he’d finished. He fielded countless offers of beer with a gentle no thanks. He grinned. ‘People don’t believe me when I say I don’t drink.’ We talked about the team for a few minutes before he introduced me to Will Brodie, the writer for the club’s official website. Will, by his own admission, had a dissolute youth and ‘the most delinquent record in the history of Melbourne Uni’ but had landed a few jobs, one of which was this. A self-confessed Magpie nut he told me the biggest regret in his life was not being at the game in 1988 when Tony Shaw kicked the winner against Essendon at Waverley. It was the only game he’d missed for a number of years. As we stood observing the diversity and the passion, Will agreed that Collingwood fans were substantially different from others and cited the singing of ‘Joffa is a wanker’ by a group of Pies supporters as evidence. ‘I find it fascinating that our own supporters can sometimes be louder and more vehement against our own than the opposition but bagging our own is harmless compared to spitting.’ I asked Joffa how he felt about it. ‘Oh, well, it happens doesn’t it; they’re all right though.’ That was typical Joffa; not wanting to put anyone down. ‘There’s no point doing that,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He said when he spoke to the dissenters individually they were fine, and he knew there was nothing nasty about it. ‘It hurt a bit at first but it was more that opposition supporters were hearing it than anything else.’ Will laughed. ‘The notoriety builds your legend even further though.’ ‘Get stuffed,’ said Joffa to us both as he wandered away to make his speech, which was heartfelt and passionate. The crowd lapped it up. He finished by 237
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encouraging the crowd to sing the song, not that they needed it. I reckon that was the fiftieth time I’d heard Joffa sing the song during the year. He loved it. ‘It’s an anthem,’ he said. ‘A hymn, not a song.’ Joffa and I dodged the Swan Street traffic safely and walked in silence towards the ground, both thinking how important the game was. ‘This is not just any game, ya know,’ Joffa said eventually. ‘This is Carlton.’ We debated whether, in the whole scheme of things, winning really mattered. ‘Of course it matters,’ he exploded. ‘Of course it bloody does.’ Nevertheless, I argued, we don’t follow clubs simply because they are winning. There must be more to it than that, otherwise no-one would follow anyone, particularly those who always seem to struggle. Joffa half grunted at me and, although he knew what I meant, said that I had a real problem. ‘This is Carlton, ya know,’ he repeated. I did know. I knew that beating Carlton was one way to end the year with a positive; to go into summer with some enthusiasm and with the knowledge things would get better. However, the game in round 7 still gave me nightmares. The team must still be hurting about that. They couldn’t let them do it again. Could they? I felt sick just thinking about it. But I had walked down to the ground so according to the experts I should be calm. I had news for them. Breathe, I told myself, breathe, as we stood outside the Punt Road end waiting in the line. It did no good. I left Joffa to his own devices inside the ground. He said that he hoped there was as much feeling of passion and desperation in the rooms as there was in the stands. The crowd was huge, the biggest of the season. All this for 238
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teams that were eleventh and thirteenth on the ladder playing their last games of the season. But this was not simply another game of football, aimlessly playing out the year and waiting for Mad Monday. This was Us against Them. During the season I spoke on numerous occasions to ex-Collingwood and Carlton player Ray Byrne, one of the characters of football during the late 1970s. Ray was a noted prankster. He stood Kevin Bartlett when the Richmond legend played his 400th game. When they shook hands at the start Ray presented Bartlett with a toothless comb he produced from his sock. Ray played eighty-one games with Carlton before moving to the Pies in 1978 for a further 123 games. On his first night at Victoria Park he trained in a Carlton jumper, shorts and socks. He was running laps and could hear the supporters saying, ‘Jesus, who’s this idiot we’ve got!’ Tommy Hafey took him aside and told him to wear something more appropriate next time. Collingwood fans took a while to adopt him but during the preliminary final of 1978 he heard a few cheers, even though they lost. ‘They’re different, all right,’ he said comparing Magpie supporters to those who followed the Blues, ‘more fanatical and probably give the whole of themselves to the club.’ Ray remembered some good times at Carlton but thought Victoria Park was a special place. ‘The old social club was like a big family with all the old players mixing with the fans.’ Even though he was part of a dismal run of grand final losses, Ray said they shouldn’t be remembered as losers when in fact they were successful. ‘You might ask why,’ he said, ‘when I played in three losing grand finals and won only one of four preliminaries.’ 239
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I did ask why and he responded by saying that people used to laugh at him and say that Collingwood had lost another one, ‘But there were ten clubs behind us who were dying to run second.’ He also laughed, not quite genuinely, when reminded that he’d left Carlton in 1978 and then they won flags in ’79, ’81 and ’82, while he lost in all those years either in grand or preliminary finals. Ray considered himself a Collingwood man. ‘I grew up there really, Tommy had arrived and we were all twenty-two, twenty-three, all playing in grand finals. We did everything together, except win a flag.’ So how, I wondered, do you get over that? ‘Look,’ he replied, ‘the first thing is you have to realise that losing is shattering, just shattering. It’s a mental thing, everyone hurts, it’s hard and you don’t realise that you are affected but you are.’ ‘How do you get up again?’ I asked. ‘The first thing is to accept that you are affected and then forget about it. And it’s a new year, there’s new hope, new thoughts, a few new players, you just think of it all again.’ We both wondered if Mick Malthouse had done that, even though he said that he hadn’t spoken to the players about it. Perhaps if he asked them to accept the last two years and move on things might have been different. Not that it mattered much now. There was one thing that still irked Ray: despite all the good results he will never be introduced as a premiership player. ‘You hear it all the time,’ he said, ‘Robert Walls, premiership captain, John Nicholls, premiership captain. I’ll never hear them say, Ray Byrne, grand final player.’ It was another unbearable night at the footy. Fate had stepped in. Carlton were going to win and, worst of 240
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all, we had to suffer more gloating from sanctimonious opposition supporters. I couldn’t stand the comments so I went for a walk around the ground. Behind the Punt Road goals Joffa and the squad were desperately trying to engender some enthusiasm in the crowd. I walked down and sat with him. ‘So this is how it all ends,’ I said. ‘Looks like it,’ he replied. The last few minutes summed up our year. After all the injuries, all the suspensions, all the wasted possessions, all the turnovers, we were still in the game right to the end. Two quick goals and we were a point behind with a minute to go. I smiled to myself in resignation. A point, one last delicious irony left for us. There is a time when, despite all the barracking and yelling and jumping up and down, you just know what is coming. Twice in one year they had done it to us. I could not believe it. I yelled back at one Carlton fan who, in one of those smart-arse comments that sends you off, asked Joffa if he had been let out for the whole day. Despite feelings of anger welling up inside him, Joffa thanked the woman very much. I was pissed off and told her to get a life. She snarled at me and said it was a payback for the wooden spoon waving the year before. As she left both Joffa and I managed a half-smile at those sweet, sweet memories. I watched the crowd disappear. I stayed until there was almost no-one left. Like a condemned man asking for one more minute I didn’t want the season to end. I wanted more, I wanted to enjoy the hate and the love and the disappointment for as long as I could. Eventually I dragged myself out of the stadium. I didn’t go to the after-match function; there was no point. I didn’t 241
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go to the Cricketer’s or to any pub down Smith Street. I wanted to be alone. I could not imagine finding any solace in company. I sat in the Fitzroy Gardens contemplating how the year had scurried by without pause. I thought perhaps at my age I should know better than to be fixated with this misery. I knew from experience it wouldn’t last; I knew in a day or so I would be back to normal but I didn’t care. In some obstinate way I wanted to be morose; I enjoyed the feeling of being a victim of the world’s unfairness. How could I even begin to feel otherwise? So I stayed there, alone in the silence, alone with the desolation of defeat and alone with the knowledge another Collingwood season had slipped away.
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The first day of spring arrived and with it came a feeling of relative serenity. The sun shone, the air was crisp and it was light on my early morning walks. My heart was beating as it should; my stress levels and blood pressure had dropped to be more in keeping with good health, while the bags under my eyes were slowly being unpacked. It was good to pick up a paper and see that not one story about Collingwood—good, bad or indifferent—had made it to the sports section. I wasn’t sure if I should watch the finals on television, or even listen to the radio. Would it be some sort of betrayal? Some of us Magpies supporters pretend we don’t care about the finals, although I’m sure we really do. I knew I cared. Not about the results because the Pies were not playing, but because I was at home when I should have been at the MCG. But I watched anyway. I lay on the couch and grinned at the antics of those in the crowd. The way the veins on their necks bulged and 243
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the looks on their contorted faces was something to behold. The poor, twisted souls. When Brisbane demolished St Kilda, I laughed. ‘They call themselves a football side,’ I cried out as I kicked the cat off my legs and ripped the top off another stubbie. Later, when Jonathon Brown escaped suspension on a ludicrous technicality I smiled and estimated the weeks he would have received if he had played for Collingwood. In between mowing lawns and weeding the garden, I watched Port Adelaide belt Geelong. Not that I cared, but Port appeared finally ready to banish the Collingwood inspired demons of the past couple of years. I made a bit of time in the evenings to watch the television news and there was not a word about Collingwood. When I began to feel withdrawal symptoms, I told myself the break was necessary. My emotions had been full on for three years and my life needed to return to normal. However, it was not long before my false bravado dissipated. The season, all things considered, had been a disaster. It had started badly and progressively got worse. Philosophically, things would have been easier to accept if we’d won a recent premiership or two. Then I went into analytical mode. Firstly, I made a distinction between excuses and reasons. I didn’t care what anyone said—Mick Malthouse included—injuries had a dramatic effect on Collingwood’s year. That was a reason. Excuses were harder to find. There were no excuses for making bad decisions on either the ground or anywhere else. There was no excuse for a game plan not aligned with the talent at our disposal. Or for losing to Carlton twice. For being beaten by Melbourne. Or Sydney. Or Richmond. I also knew I might have to get used to these feelings. My lawyer friend Geoff Wilson said he didn’t 244
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know how he’d feel during summer. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Driven by his profession he said that the evidence for approaching success was far from convincing. ‘Collingwood is in my blood and it goes without saying I’ll barrack for them but it’s a different thing having belief and faith that they’ll do well.’ We agreed that making the finals was always something to aim for but as for a flag, ‘it doesn’t look promising does it?’ Nonetheless, he continued, we will go on believing and hoping. ‘We have to, really. All of us.’ By the time the preliminary finals came along I had regained some of my composure. I decided that I was interested in football after all. I had to look at the whole thing, not just be preoccupied and obsessed with my own feelings. I needed to acknowledge other teams, to allow them to share the feeling of finals. It is very difficult when your side has been in the lower part of the ladder for years. It is a challenge for them to climb up and when they accomplish the feat everyone—including Collingwood supporters—should acknowledge their achievements. I likened St Kilda and Geelong’s performances to those of Collingwood over the last two years, except, of course, we won our preliminary finals. But reaching that stage of the season gave those clubs hope. At least there was something to look forward to. The Sunday of preliminary final weekend brought more feelings of grief when they auctioned the fixtures and fittings from Victoria Park. It was as though a family had gathered after a death and divided up the belongings in the house. I considered going and buying a piece of something or other. Perhaps Bobby Rose’s locker or his name from the stand. Then I thought again. I would much prefer to have the memories locked away in my mind than locked away in my shed. 245
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And so grand final day came around. By some lucky alignment of the planets, I was offered tickets and after a moment’s hesitation I accepted. Of course, there are never tickets when you really want them but I was grateful. Three of us travelled to Melbourne on the train: me, Zac and a young bloke I knew who barracked for Port Adelaide but had never seen them play. For that matter, Jason had never seen an AFL game live, or been to the MCG. We reached Spencer Street without any problems but while standing on the suburban platform for the ride to Jolimont, I suffered a bout of my dreamy affliction. I started thinking about the grand finals I had seen live. The first one was in 1962 when the Swan Hill thirds had an end of season trip. An ex-local lad, Billy Ryan— or Widgie as we called him—played in the Geelong Under-19s that day and he waved to us as we leaned over the fence. In 1979 I wept after Wayne Harmes raced up the ground, jumped the fence and threw the ball back from row 7—and no-one did anything about it. Then in 1981 my wife and I and a couple of friends lined up at daybreak outside the old Southern Stand to get the best spot, then stood on the second tier all day before watching Carlton do it to us again. Afterwards we caught a tram back to our hotel and suffered the insults and ridicule thrown our way. I had watched the other grand finals on television and as well as remembering those, I was also contemplating what I would be doing if I were playing in this match. How would I prepare for the day? Then I heard yelling somewhere. It was Zac telling me the train we were supposed to catch had come and gone. He looked at me in despair, shook his head, and we caught the next one. 246
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When we reached the MCG I finally admitted I was in denial. The ground looked so perfect, the lines so crisp and white. I could smell the newly mown grass. I jealously watched the fans dressed in their club colours and knew that it should have been us. The day should have seen me in the grip of grand final nerves anticipating the ultimate success; third time lucky and all that. Instead, I was languishing in my self-inflicted ‘Collingwood Depressive Disorder’. When Brisbane and Port Adelaide lined up for the opening bounce, and after much agonising, I came to the conclusion I wanted Port to win. There were a couple of reasons, one of which was my history of once having lived in South Australia. It was a pathetic reason but one that I could cling to. The other was that at least it would stop Brisbane equalling Collingwood’s record of four straight flags. My entertainment for the day was watching the crowd. Port supporters in particular. I relinquished my seat and spent most of the day in the standing room area. Because my team wasn’t playing, nothing mattered much. All the groans and gasps and screams and disappointed looks meant little to me, apart from sheer amusement. Then, curiously, I was affected by the game and by the fans. I found myself yelling. I was caught up in the emotion. But that’s what this game can do. I was disappointed with myself for not being belligerently opposed to any form of enjoyment but I was happy that I had more than a one-dimensional view. That view changed towards the end when Port appeared as though they would win. The bloke next to me, decked out in Port colours, said it was reward for the years they had suffered. I asked what he meant and he replied that 247
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the last two years had been terrible for them and this was their reward. They had not lived, I told him scornfully before I quickly walked away, screaming inside. How dare they talk about suffering! I wanted to yell that we had lost twenty-five grand finals! And suffered most years. They had no idea what it was like. None. I wandered around outside afterwards reflecting on Jock McPie’s win in the mascot race at half-time and spotted Zac and Jason in the maelstrom of people. Zac reckoned it was an event, not a football match. It would have been different if the Pies were in it though. Jason was beaming. ‘How lucky am I,’ he said. I agreed: one trip, one match, one grand final, one premiership. But I felt good about it. Jason wasn’t demonstrative but I could tell what it meant to him. I was glad in a way that he would have these memories; glad that I could be part of it. That when he was older and had been disappointed a lot more he could sit back and remember this day. On the train home (which we caught without any mishap), I sat by myself as the carriage was almost empty. The boys sat two seats behind and enjoyed a couple of cans from the bar. I listened to them discuss my wayward mind before I drifted off again. I thought I would love the early days of spring, the feel of a September without football. I thought I could make myself understand that feeling distraught about a game was futile and not at all the way a supposedly sensible, mature man conducts himself. How wrong I was. I began wondering whether I was right after all, whether my assumption that winning didn’t mean much in the whole scheme of things was correct. That 248
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belonging to something was more important. I decided I was wrong, and I was right. Even though we would all still be barracking for the Magpies no matter what, a steady stream of wins would certainly help. But how would we become winners again? If we could obtain a few decent players and we can keep the ones we have on the field that would be a start. Then, if our younger players come on as expected, if Bucks has another good year and we can find someone to take the pressure off Fraser and Tarrant . . . Perhaps if I wrote to Mick again he might listen to what I had to say this time. As the train clacked its way home, suddenly I was keen again. I knew we probably would not win the Wizard Cup. I understood where we were as far as the premiership was concerned. I knew I would feel anxious and depressed and envious, and would despair of anything ever going right again. But I also knew that in amongst the disasters would be sweet, tasty morsels that would keep us all happy for at least a week. Ah, yes! Christmas will come and go, I told myself. Soon it will be another year. As much as it hurts now the pain will recede and become a distant memory. My belief will return, my vulnerability also. It won’t be long before the pre-season matches will herald another year of hope, another year of anticipation. Another year of faith.
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29 KEEPING THE FAITH
Pre-season 2005 Winding down after the grand final was difficult. Swirling around in my mind was a conglomeration of weird and wonderful thoughts of what could have been, indeed what should have been. I envied those two teams. But gradually the pain receded and as the summer days lengthened football became less of a presence. Granted it was still there, almost every day at times, but at least I could attempt to pay attention to other things. Christmas was a welcome relief until I waddled uncomfortably from my bed late on Boxing Day to be greeted with the news of the Asian tsunami. Watching the desperate and devastating scenes caused me to reflect on the relative importance of becoming exasperated with a group of men chasing a football around while thousands upon thousands of others watched, listened or read about them. In the big scheme of things, football mattered little. A couple of weeks later as I sat under the cottonwood in the evening, and when the remnants of the 250
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self-induced fog (the aftermath of New Year’s Eve) had long gone, I experienced familiar feelings of trepidation about the upcoming season that appear about this time each year. What would happen? How many games would we win? Would we have as many injuries as last year? Yet much had changed for me. Like the Magpies, my son had moved out of home. His room—like the stands and change rooms at Victoria Park—still echoed with footsteps. I fancied I could see reflections in the windows as though ghosts or spirits still remained. I wondered how long they would take to leave. Just as there would always be a Coventry, a McHale or a Rose somewhere down the end of Lulie Street, I knew a part of Zac would linger at home. Zac had left for university while Collingwood Football Club’s further education was to be at a place unimaginable fifteen years before—the world of corporatised sport. Both Zac and the club had set aside the traditions of their past and settled somewhere else for the benefits of their future. As much as some part of me didn’t want either to happen I knew things must move forward. That even though in some ways it was sad, I was also excited for the experiences that would come to Zac and to the club. Their tomorrows were what counted. And, tomorrow, as Bob Dylan said, is a long time. As I became more comfortable with both moves, the old saying about everything old being new again came to mind. I remembered the previous year when I had been in much the same position, with all the promise of a new season that was quickly approaching. I had thought then about the players who had lost a year and a yard, about the depressed supporter base after the disappointment of the previous year, about the question 251
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marks over some of our players, and about the supporters of other teams who were glad about our demise. All these concerns were now new again. We had recruited Chad Morrison from the West Coast Eagles and Blake Caracella from Brisbane, along with a few kids, and I wondered how that was going to make us zoom up the ladder. Recruiting—another old Magpie problem that was new again. Then I stopped being cynical. I just knew the coming year would be better. As the weeks went by, the news about the tsunami receded like the waters of the ocean until—apart from news of the many worthwhile fundraising efforts which continued apace—it had been relegated to the inside pages of the papers and halfway through the news bulletins. In late January Collingwood played a cricket match against Melbourne to raise money for the World Vision tsunami appeal and, in part, to commemorate the loss of one of their own, Troy Broadbridge. At Pieland, we embraced the match wholeheartedly; after all we knew what it was like to lose someone. We’ll always remember Darren Millane. The game was played by some—Bucks in particular—in earnest and what’s more, we actually won. I decided it was a portent of things to come, a sign from the sporting gods that the Pies were on the way back. Who cared if it was only a hit-and-giggle occasion. I mentioned to someone after the game that it’s always a serious matter when the Magpies are playing and they remarked how silly and twisted I was. I admitted readily to that but also asked them to imagine what would have been said if we had lost. How many jokes would that have brought forth? How many derisive smart-arse comments in the papers and on the streets? No, I said, we’ll take the win. 252
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Another old thing that was new again was Eddie, God love him. Really, Ed’s a remarkable person. Simultaneously he seemed to be joining the board of Athletics Australia, organising a talent quest for The Footy Show and taking Collingwood to the world with the prospect of starting our own television channel, opening our own clothes shop and having our own line of snack foods. He also arranged operations for Des Tuddenham and Len Thompson, two of our biggest names who were still troubled by injuries from the ’70s. That was typical Eddie. According to him, ‘once you’ve worn the black and white on the battlefield you won’t be forgotten’. Fantastic, I thought. Go Ed, you beauty! Some say you’re a bit over the top but they’d all love to have you as their president. Then Nathan Buckley did his hamstring in a practice match and everything came to a grinding halt. Or so the newspapers would have us believe. But it was, as Bucks said, still only February. The high point of the new year for me was the bumper sticker that came with membership: ‘I don’t care what you think’. For the first time in years I felt enthusiastic about a slogan, probably the first time ever. It encapsulated everything we stood for, it was pure joy. Whatever anyone said, wrote, gesticulated, thought or anything else about us, there it was—do your worst, we’re Collingwood and we don’t care what you think. I rang Geoff Wilson to find out what he thought. I could almost see his grin down the phone. ‘Lovely, just lovely,’ he said. He’d read an article that day about Eddie heading off to the western suburbs of Sydney and had emailed me. ‘The papers are finally beginning to address the real meaning of life—the Pies. Eddie’s foray into Sydney’s west makes ecumenical evangelism 253
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in the USA look pathetic and makes me feel safe.’ I emailed him back: ‘Lovely, just lovely.’ I rang Joffa who told me he’d been hibernating for the last few months and was just stretching and waking like a big bear ready for the winter. When I reminded him that bears do things the other way round he told me to get stuffed and not be so picky. He reckoned the slogan was fantastic before adding, laughing, that something was worrying him. He had received a new bottom denture and now that he had a full set of teeth he was afraid he’d get kicked out of the cheer squad. Training was going well. Mick was his usual cheery, talkative self and apart from Bucks, there were no significant injuries until Guy Richards did a knee and Chris Tarrant had trouble with his groin. Again. Then the day before the first Wizard Cup match Greg Baum wrote in The Age about the weight of expectation on Mick. He was right; another old thing that was new again. Baum alluded to the fact that there is expectation on all coaches, but much, much more on those in charge of Collingwood. Naturally, both Eddie and Mick denied being under any undue pressure. Why was it so hard to admit to the expectation and the pressure that comes with their positions? Of course there is pressure. And not just from the supporters. It comes from within. I reckoned that by acknowledging it, some of the pressure would be relieved, but then I had no idea really. I rang Baum and asked him if this would be another difficult year for the Magpies. As a journo who barracks for Collingwood, Baum admitted to being hypercritical of them but at the same time tried to be objective and realistic. ‘You just know that it will be difficult,’ he said, ‘and if we don’t perform, there are bound to be questions asked.’ 254
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In the article he wrote that the only way up is down, a laborious journey. I wondered if we had gone down far enough, or for long enough. Would the year be harder (as in, coming to terms with expectation) or easier (in that we all suspected we knew what to expect)? He laughed. ‘A bit of both,’ he said. ‘We know it will be hard but then it’s easier because we know it will get better eventually.’ We then discussed in true Magpies fashion all the ills of the football world and how we wouldn’t barrack for anyone else. How we knew that when we had one or two bad years, a change would be close at hand. One or two bad years for other clubs could mean the end. Expectations were high for both teams in the Friday night game against Richmond. Memories of the hideous game against West Coast the previous year were banished from my mind because this would be different. This would show how much we’d improved. Even though we trailed by almost five goals late in the game we beat the Tigers but got thrashed by West Coast in Darwin. Guessing where we would finish in 2005 was a senseless exercise, although hopefully it would be better than last year. Perhaps—certainly—not with a flag but we would be there to give all the other sides a good run for their money. I knew that the season would be just another part of the never-ending cycle of life as a Collingwood supporter—a turmoil of happiness, grief and most of all, faith. Not faith that we’ll win all the time but faith that comes with believing in something. Something intangible that gives us identity. I looked forward, as ever, to the season and the closer it got, the further away last year seemed, the results now forgotten and unimportant. I eagerly anticipated the first 255
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match against the Bulldogs on Easter Monday. That’s when everyone will see that we’re back, I thought. That’s when we’ll bask in the glory of a return to the right end of the ladder and we’ll share it with none but our own. That’ll be the start of another year of this cyclical malaise that others cannot know or understand. But we know. We understand. That’s all that matters.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A book like this cannot happen without help from many people. Firstly I thank the enthusiastic and supportive Rebecca Kaiser and Jeanmarie Morosin at Allen & Unwin. Thanks also to editor Andrea McNamara who was a source of great ideas and a like-minded thinker. All the people who spoke to me should also be acknowledged. There are too many to mention them all and I would be guilty of missing someone’s name, so to anyone who remembers speaking to me, thanks a lot. Special thanks to Jeff (Joffa) Corfe and the muchmaligned Collingwood Cheer Squad; Geoff Wilson; Sly; Mohammed; Kevin Rose; Jack Thompson; Greg Baum; Mike Sheahan; Glenn McFarlane; Terri, Lois and all the lovely ladies from the Women In Black; Michael Lumsden; the Sydney Supporters Group; the people at the Gisborne Football Club; Mick McGaune, Peter Daicos, Allan McAlister; Ray Byrne and Will Brodie. Also to Kara, Shane and Harrison. A big thank you to Rod and Madeleine Haag who know what they mean to me, as well as Scott Morrison who took the back cover photograph and Dylan Templeton and Pat Noonan, who starred in it with me. And an extra special thank you to Peter McKenna—the idol of many old full forwards—for his foreword. 257
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Sources of information were from Col Hutchinson at the AFL, The Herald Sun, The Age and The Australian. I also gained information from Collingwood at Victoria Park by Glenn McFarlane and Michael Roberts (Lothian 1999).
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