Monthly Archives: Feb 2014

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Football islands

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Alex and Max at footy

My ears are more alert than my eyes. I hear the song before I see anything.

Meet me down by the jetty landing

Where the pontoons bump and sway

I see the others reading, standing

As the Manly Ferry cuts its way to Circular Quay

“Reckless” by Australian Crawl takes me back. With a funereal bass line, and a snare drum like gunshot, it’s prominent in the soundtrack to my last year at school. This was also the year I broke my arm playing junior football for Kapunda. June and my season, wrecked.

A fortnight later my arm was to be re-broken, as the locum had not aligned it. Six more weeks in a cast! So with Mum watching I was on a hospital bed as the resident doctor loomed and mumbled.

“Ouch! It’s hurting!” I sensed the subterranean crunching.

Doc was an absorbed professional. “Be quiet please!”

I was in distress. “ No, it’s really hurting!” Not just Masters bakery is out of sausage rolls distress. Or even Skyhooks split distress.

Minutes later the doctor squinted at the drip. He realised. His tone transformed. “Oh! I’m so sorry. I’m very sorry!” There he was, fracturing my arm enthusiastically, but, somehow, having neglected to turn on the anaesthetic. After, the local veterinarian gave me artificial insemination gloves to slide over my cast when showering. Pleasingly, for the district’s young and old bulls and especially me, these were not pre-loved.

We’re at the Australian School in Singapore. It’s Auskick registration on Australia Day. With blonde mops, the boys now merge. Unlike much of Asia, no one here takes their photo. Ninety-five inches of rain annually means there’s artificial turf. However, they’ll be in the cavernous gym. No footy boots. Not yet.

The covers band chugs along. “Reckless” runs into “Flame Trees.” More country town wistfulness. Bouncy castles. Bins bulging with ice and drinks. BBQs and stalls. Barefoot blokes, clutching lagers, kick to kick. They spill nothing. They could be Geelong backmen. We rush the Singapore Sharks footy tent.

An official measures them. The Sharks jumpers are green and gold. The major sponsor is a Boat Quay restaurant and bar. Our coach anticipates. “Who do the boys support?”

“Adelaide Crows.”

“I reckon I’ve got a Tex Walker left.”

And so Alex is to begin his career as number 13. Could be worse. Shane Ellen kicked five in the ’97 grand final wearing 13. We like Tex, but I can’t envisage our first born cultivating a Broken Hill mullet.

“Number 8 for the little fella?”

“Sounds good.” Nathan Bassett is Adelaide’s best number 8. The boys’ mother’s favourite too. Dependable. Left arm like a telescope, and an under-age kicking style.

Welcome aboard, Max.

A bouncy castle seduces us like sirens, both footy ground and Greek mythological. I think ahead. What do we want for our fledgling footballers? A thirst for sport and endeavour. Skills, but also camaraderie and community. And ultimately, social and personal responsibility.

As Malcolm Blight maintains, football is difficult. You wait for your turn in a handball drill. It devours your boyish patience. Mostly, you don’t have possession. You watch the ball up the other end. Zinging anticipation. And then- it’s coming your way! Make a decision. Quick. Do something! But there’s fun too.

This, an ex-pat isle of footy, is itself on an island. The Singapore Sharks is new, whilst I began at Kapunda. Launched in 1866 at the North Kapunda hotel, it’s among the world’s oldest football clubs, in any code, operating under its original name. Magnificently, its website is

http://www.bombers.com.au/

My home club owns this, and Essendon’s behemoth doesn’t. I imagine Kapunda as a brittle island up against the seismic bullying of the AFL. I imagine Demetriou ringing the club president, and in a loutish, aborted monologue, trying to acquire it.

Mini-League was my Auskick. Wednesday training at Dutton Park. Former stationmaster Bruce Dermody was our coach. He was grandfatherly. “Hold that ball straight, when you kick lad!” We’d have scratch matches with goalposts across the ground, down the trotting track end. It was an innocent island. It was our world. Only stopping because of the gathering gloom, we’d then cycle home to chops and three veg. Dukes of Hazzard and bed.

Bruce met his wife Melva at Bowmans, a railway siding, between Balaklava and Port Wakefield. It’s long gone. They lived for the club, and it was their family. Now they are also gone. With blind, familial loyalty Alex and Max often announce, “I’ll play for the Kapunda Bombers!” Their Poppa, my Dad, is a life member. Football flows like rain. A stationmaster? My boys are likely to be coached by a web-master.

Leaving this rowdy islet of Australiana, the band jangles through Powderfinger’s “My Happiness.” What varieties of happiness might football offer Alex and Max? What will it teach them of the tantalising connections between danger and beauty? Others and self? Will football become a faithful, tormenting mate, or fade like a sepia photograph in a museum?

This Saturday, we’ll start to learn.

bouncy castle

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Swanny, Spandau Ballet and Spotted Dick

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spotted dick

 

England 6/226- Pietersen 67,Carberry 38, Harris 2/32, Johnson 2/59

Graeme Swann #1

Retirement. Swanny pairs up in 2015 with Phil Tufnell on their vaudeville TV show, The Spinning Geezers. Debuting in primetime, ITV soon buries it on Sunday afternoons, against the darts. Channel 9 fast tracks it. Each episode’s finale is Swanny and Tuffers singing, with grinning irony, a Spandau Ballet number

Gold!
Always believe in your soul
You’ve got the power to know
You’re indestructible
Always believe in, because you are
Gold!

Morning Session

Leading an unchanged eleven, Clarke wins the toss and bowls. Prior and Swann are out for Bairstow and Panesar. Broad removes his moon-boot and Hannibal Lecter mask to retain his place in the team. Diving wide, Smith drops Carberry on 2; a tough one, from the bowling of Harris. Heartening.

Cook is effervescent, scoring at a run a ball. Australia’s bowling is tidy with good line and length, but not menacing. Then Lyon turns it, gets it to bounce, and questions Carberry. Presenting as a hybrid of a kindly, but bonkers granddad and Uncle Terry from A Moody Christmas, it’s comforting to have Bill back in the commentary box.

Siddle claims the wicket of Cook, playing at one he should have left, and Clarke takes the sharp chance. It is emblematic of the English captain’s summer. A poor decision, taken by a batsman with a tremendous record, but perhaps not the leadership skill and imagination currently demanded by circumstance and country.

Root comes in, and Warney on Channel 9 and I resist all manner of adolescent puns. We both struggle. Siddle interrogates him. Root pokes about. At The Members’ End. See! It’s impossible.

Carberry grows in assurance, having multiple first innings starts this series. He needs to make a century to convince of his long-term position. He dispatches Johnson to the boundary with the shot of the session, a pull shot of majesty and power. At lunch England is 1/71. Sent in by Clarke, who’d have wanted at least three wickets, I reckon they’ve taken the early honours.

Graeme Swann #2

Sudden by international standards, Swann’s demise was glacial compared to my mate Bob’s at Greenock in 1986. At the start of his final ever over for the Kapunda Cricket Club he was a reliable medium pacer. Ten agonising minutes later his bowling career was dead.

It began with a couple of wides, progressed to a cancerous lack of confidence and culminated with Bob, broken, walking to the wicket like it was the gallows, and trying to complete a legitimate delivery. It often ended up at slip, or skidding forlornly, ashamedly, down to fine leg. His mental self-disintegration was total.

Subsequent pub analysis confirms that Bob’s fifteen-ball over only contained seven legal deliveries, and therefore nearly thirty years on, remains incomplete. I was at mid-off, and lobbed the ball to him, fifteen times. I felt increasingly like I was throwing him a box jellyfish.

Graeme Swann #3

Swann’s retired, declared the radio headline. Great, I thought, the Collingwood mid-fielder is grafting two horns to his forehead, and joining the Jim Rose Circus to star with the Amazing Mister Lifto, Zamora the Torture Queen and The Lizardman.

Oh, wrong Swann.

Afternoon Session

The English begin patiently. Clarke has mixed his attack about, using his bowlers in brisk, but barren spells. Watson swings it away, but not tantalisingly, as his bowling is often too wide. Carberry seems to have plenty of time. Did Clarke spot some demons in the pitch that, like Jeff Thomson’s sensitive and urbane qualities, aren’t actually there?

Watson bowls Carberry a ripper. It curls late and big. He leaves it. It crashes into his wicket. It will make the Best of Watto DVD. KP strides out to tremendous noise; cheers and jeers. With maturity and poise Root starts to build his innings. Expectation now as Siddle is about to bowl to his bunny, KP. It could finally get fascinating.

Johnson gets Root to edge one, but it falls short of Clarke at second slip. It offers some encouragement to the Australians. Now nearing 90,000 the crowd is justifiably quiet. It has been the most prosaic day of the series. I might start a Mexican wave, or assemble a beer cup snake if I can just locate some beer cups.

Harris lures the impish Root forward, who dabs feebly at an outswinger and snicks it. 3/106. If only Harris were a decade younger! The dismissed English batsman have all made useful starts, but with the now expected lack of concentration, contribute appreciably to their own downfall. KP and Bell decide survival is required, and refuse to follow their instincts. Like Cook’s captaincy, it seems pointlessly defensive. We have them spooked.

Lyon has bowled with variety, surprising the visitors with bounce and spin. He looks like he could do some damage. His control remains a chief attribute. A rare six is caught, but carried over the rope. Poo.

Graeme Swann #4

Swan retires, declared the radio headline. Great, I thought, Tippett the traitor is gone. He’s belatedly taken the morally correct path and hung up his boots. Homesick, he went back to that little-known Gold Coast suburb of Sydney. As you do. Buddy and Tippett on the SCG forward line would have been like two anacondas in a bath, wrestling over a ping-pong ball.

Oh, wrong Swann.

Graeme Swann #5

Possessing limited natural talent, but brazen confidence, he stole the advantage from the opposition and became an unlikely international celebrity and geezer role model. No, that was Ronnie Biggs.

Evening Session

Pietersen and Bell continue. Johnson bowls quickly, but spraying them like a tomcat. Lyon is afforded respect, but the English are channelling the dour spirit of Yorkshire men past, minus the sunny flamboyance.

Neither side has done much wrong. Neither side has done much right. The clouds have cleared, but the cricket remains grey. Clake’s decision to bowl looks increasingly peculiar. On this placid deck, I wonder what carnage Warner and Watson might have caused the fractured tourists, with Anderson struggling, Monty a well, Monty for a spanking, and Broad’s foot surely problematic.

As Kanye didn’t rap, “Oh hell, Bell’s gone into his shell.” The scoreboard is frozen. Boof is surely napping in his chair. Warney’s talking about the Ball of the Century. They’ve shown it now. Many times. The Warney carnival continues with his 700th test wicket. Like the car Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio spent horizontal time in during Titanic, the commentary box is steaming up. I turn on the fan. If they start showing scenes- there are no highlights- from Two and a Half Men, I’m going for a swim.

This wank-fest is interrupted cruelly by Ryan Harris getting Bell caught behind. It’s 4/173. Bailey then drops KP at mid-on. Harris is unhappy, but Bailey should be sent to the Old Bailey for that. KP starts spewing. Has he swallowed a fly? Perhaps the 12th man should bring out a spider. Boof wakes up. KP reaches fifty.

Stokes goes after Lyon and England reach 200. New fig in hand, Johnson gets the edge to Watson at slip. Maybe Clarke will receive vindication in the late, golden sunlight. Bairstow takes guard, and the Porno Mo is really flinging them now. Bairstow then leaves a Hummer-sized gap between bat and pad, and Johnson drives it onto the pegs. The crowd is ecstatic. A frantic, diving Harris just misses a Bresnan pop up. We head to Day 2 with the advantage.

Graeme Swann #6

An Antipodean Christmas had no appeal for Swanny. Pulling a cracker with KP is thorny when one or the other or both have their head/s somewhere warm and dark. The greatest Christmas cracker joke, according to our five year old is one that references both Swanny and Ronnie Biggs

Q- What do you call two robbers?

A-   A pair of knickers.

Let’s hope, back in England, safely distant from those “nasty” Australians, and in the soothing bosom of his Nan, Swanny enjoyed his festive Yorkshire pudding and Benny Hill-inspired dessert, Spotted Dick.

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Six sixes

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BB

Nuriootpa High School 1981- Jock McGregor 

Saturday morning, underage cricket. Barossa Valley. Fruit-heavy vines enclose the ground, vintage approaches. Teenage conversations.

“Do you think REO Speedwagon are better than Adam and the Ants?”

“Pass me that Blankety Blanks lemonade.”

“EH Holdens beat XP Fords? Get real!”

Most of us were boys. But Jock was a fully formed man. His batting power was laughably brutal, and as a mate’s dad used to say, “He had an eye like a stinkin’ fish.”

Back then, footy goal posts were permanent fixtures. We watched as Jock punished the looping ball. We watched, slack-jawed. It sped straight through the goals at three-quarter-post height. Six runs and six points! We kept watching. Zooming above the gnarled rows of Shiraz vines, the ball was still climbing. 

Gabba 2005- Brett Lee 

Weet-bix devourer, and Australia’s Funniest Home Videos devotee, Brett Lee was a better batsman than guitarist. He belted West Indian Daren Powell’s delivery above and beyond the Northern Stand, and with near tragicomedy. It exploded on impact close to another blonde Australian paceman. And his wife and young daughter.

“I felt like the mayor of Hiroshima. Six inches either way and the ball would have caused some real damage,” a relieved Carl Rackemann said of the bombardment.

Kapunda High School 1979 until 1983- Paul McCarthy

In my youth of Skyhooks and sausage rolls, there were teachers versus students matches. We loved them. These were played in wholesome spirit, although, as ridiculous, rash lads, some competed like fuming dogs.

Once in the footy my friend Crackshot perfectly tackled a staff member, trapping the Lyrebird to him. The teacher finally loosened an arm, and to his eternal shuddering horror, and our eternal amusement, promptly jabbed Crackshot on the chin. Did we just see that? I don’t think he bit off part of his ear though.

In every cricket match history teacher, and champion golfer, Paul McCarthy provided the highpoint. Batting at the Gundry’s Hill end, the occasion would arrive, and he’d flick it off middle stump, over the spotty fielders, over the boundary, over the school fence, over West Terrace, over the dusty footpath, over a neighbour’s front yard, and onto the roof of her white-washed cottage. Thud. A depth charge in a submarine movie. Everyone waited for it. Macca always delivered.

WACA 2006- Adam Gilchrist

We were at Adelaide’s Highway Inn for Gilly’s pyrotechnics.

It had been among the last workingman’s pubs. On Fridays a misshapen gent haunted the front bar, peddling greasy handfuls of cubed cheese and sliced mettwurst. As such I suspect it was often a real gastro pub. It sold butcher glasses (200ml) of port, but no craft ales. Around six they’d pay a woman to dance through the smoky fug, to wrong music. She would forget to wear her shirt.

Then the Highway was gentrified. The cheese and metty man was gone. Now you could buy

Spring garden riccioli (v) $22 w Brussels sprouts, radicchio, peas and rye crumbs.

Gilchrist launched four sixes in that Ashes knock. Was it so few? Bludgeoning 24 off a Monty over, each shot crackled with sharp raucousness. Aural affects often characterise sport. Gilly sounded like he was right in your lounge room, cracking a whip.

During that beer garden afternoon, I’m sure there was a distant whiff of crumbly cheddar and Linke’s mettwurst

Wudinna 1990- Gary Fitzgerald 

When bowling, my approach to the wicket was utterly unlike Michael Holding. Less whispering death, more three-legged race. Kyancutta’s batsmen could hit it hard, but Fitzy could hit it hardest. He went after me one February afternoon.

Instantly, the ball was one hundred feet high. With the perpetual hopefulness of all bowlers, I thought he’d skied it. Catch, I thought. In a split second I knew. I was wrong.

Fitzy clubbed it like an Adam Scott 9 iron, but unbearably long. It somehow evaded the Commodores cowering in the shade of the distant gym. That Kookaburra travelled further than Yorkshire men go on holiday.

After bouncing ferociously on the rubble the ball returned, but needing cranio-facial surgery. Every batsman tries to smack me. With the last delivery of the innings, I take my seventh wicket. For 74! And win a slab of Southwark! We lose.

WACA 1997- Mark Waugh 

“Along with golf, it’s probably my favourite pastime and cricket gets in the way a bit,” Mark Waugh once said. Our most elegant punter is not Punter, but Junior.

His celebrated strike, off Daniel Vittori, is uncomplicated grace. There is no hyperbole: no running, no leaping, and no punching the air (or Joe Root’s chin). Plainly, the younger Waugh found more delight in Super Impose winning the 1992 Cox Plate at 25/1.

Of course he was batting with older brother and captain Stephen. After Mark’s soaring stroke their demeanour remains uninterested. It suggests an unhurried single to extra cover.

Four stories up on the Lillee-Marsh grandstand roof, the ball clatters like hail on a shed, and, without a yak, is irretrievable. Our coda to that shot is the mid-pitch exchange

Stephen: Fair swipe.

Mark: Yep.

Stephen: Now pull your head in.

Mark: Are you kidding? You jealous?

Stephen: Nup. Who held the Bankstown Pizzeria Space Invaders record?

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Stephen: Randwick quaddie?

Mark: Nup.

Stephen: Salad or veg with tonight’s steak?

Mark: Veg.

waughs

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The Gatting Ball and me

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AB and me

Kimba is halfway across Australia, and on a Friday its sole pub would be rollicking and happy. Icy beer, roaring jukebox. The core of its community. My first weekend in town, I won the meat tray. How could I not love it?

Geelong-besotted supporters identify Kimba as the hometown of Corey Enright. As a young fella who was frequently upright, and possessing of a pulse, I became Boris’s PE teacher. All saw him as a gifted footballer, but I argued that he was a better leg spinner and could go far. Bowling on concrete decks that bounced and bit like a taipan, he bamboozled men and boys alike.

June 4, 1993, is a Friday, and despite it being Eastern Eyre footy season, a blissful tangle of chaps is in the front bar. The Kimba pub jukebox blasts Choir Boys, Meat Loaf, and the sing-along gem, ‘What’s Up?’ by 4 Non Blondes. Day Two of the first Ashes Test from Old Trafford is on, but it’s beyond a footballer’s curfew, particularly for us modest B-graders. And then, shortly before lunch, AB throws a tubby, naturally non-blonde the ball.

For all the where-were-you-when-you-heard about Lady Diana, 9/11, the Boxing Day tsunami, there are celebratory counterparts. Jezza’s legendary leap, Australia snatching the America’s Cup, and for many, the Ball of the Century.

Ritchie’s commentating.

He’s done it. He’s started off with the most beautiful delivery. Gatting’s got no idea what’s happened to it. He still doesn’t know.

The batsman’s humbled reaction is apposite. What choice had he? Anger and disappointment could have had no useful function. There’s only Gatting’s acceptance something astounding had occurred, that he had not previously seen, nor would likely see again. In the booming beery frenzy, Robbie, Hendo, Klingy, and I know we’ve witnessed a remarkable episode that would define SK Warne.

Kimba Hotel, KIMBA, SA | Pub info @ Publocation

Strolling off, Gatting preternaturally knew he’d stolen a cameo role in what would be regarded as cricket’s most illustrious single-act production. Not a tragic narrative, but one approaching the comedic in its enthralling unlikelihood. Shaking his head in bemusement corroborates our shared view.

Australia was then sponsored by XXXX and much later, so was I when in the skirmish for beer supremacy a grassroots marketing strategy took me hostage. For twelve months I transmogrified into a XXXX Gold Ambassador. As a Coopers Sparkling and Pale Ale aficionado, I call it the year I barracked for Collingwood. I had not gone native. It was abundantly worse. I had gone Queensland.

Given entirely too much XXXX to inflict upon family and friends, I was also required to host a XXXX-infused BBQ and, finally, with my Kimba mate Bazz, sat in the sponsor’s marquee at the Adelaide Clipsal 500. This was telling given my relationship with motorsport is akin to that between Fev and Mensa.

My ambassadorial climax was a Sunday in Glenelg’s Holdfast Hotel with our most significant modern captain, Allan Border. We had a chat.

Me: I must tell you that you’re my Dad’s favourite cricketer. He describes you as being “pugnacious.”

AB: Well, everyone has their own personal style. I did what I did best.

I decline to say that Dad also once remarked if he had to be in a fight, AB is the first bloke he’d want on his side.

Me: Can I ask you about my best ever sporting moment? The Gatting Ball?

AB: Sure. It was a huge occasion.

Me: Where were you?

AB: At that point I often fielded at midwicket, so I didn’t really get a decent view of it.

Me: But you knew it was special?

AB: Yea. At the drinks break Heals said it was, “a pretty fair seed.”

Laconic understatement. Just what I wanted to hear. Sensational.

Me: What did Gatting say?

AB: He knew it was good too. He’s done really well out of it. The Gatt’s dined out on that story ever since. With all the speaking engagements, he’s very pleased.

Warne’s striking proclamation of his arrival is leg spin’s enchanted temple. For cricket fans, it generated a global epiphany while the attendant symbolism makes this the most resounding of his 708 Test wickets.

And on that June afternoon here and there folks knew SK Warne’s first Test delivery in England was to be cherished.

In Kimba we definitely did.

Shane Warne says Gatting ball changed his life 25 years on | Fox Sports

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2013 AFL Grand Final: chook

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chook

9.18am SGT – River Valley, Singapore

Is there a more cherished Australian word than chook? It speaks profoundly of our affection for larrikin idiom, contraction and, of course, poultry. Given the pit of existential terror that is our condominium’s BBQ, we’re having chicken (chook) and salads at our AFL grand final lunch.

Our exclusive ownership of chook was illustrated to me years ago in a Hertfordshire school staff room when I told a joke that ended with a punch line something like, “And mum said, ‘Trevor! Stop doing that to the chook.’” I expected belly laughs and streaming eyes, but the audience response was Easter Island. Beyond our shores, chook does not exist.

11.55am-Tiong Bahru Park, Singapore

As the boys rush about in the playground and zip up and back on the flying fox, I get the ABC on my phone, and from his temple The Coodabeen Champions’ mystical mentor muses.

Guru Bob: Chess is the superior game.

Torch McGee: Greater than Australian Rules football?

Guru Bob: No rule changes for 500 years.

In the late 1980’s on Sunday night drives back to SA’s West Coast, The Coodabeens would accompany me as I hurtled past wheat fields along Highway 1. With the cover featuring two goal umpires in traditional coats, their Double White Album is the best cassette I ever bought. Even better than Ripper ’76. Using a funked up melody from Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train”, Champs’ “Rhys-Jones (Goes A Bit Mental)” remains among my favourite Australian songs.

Rhys-Jones is in there swinging,

Uppercut from Rhys-Jones!

12.05pm- Gawler East, South Australia

It is a sweltering, breathless afternoon here on the equator. Air-conditioning blasting, good folk from Hobart, Vancouver, Kentucky, Brisbane, Henley Beach, and Kapunda are bunched on our lounge. 54 hundred kilometres south it’s a nippy day, and my parents-in-law have lit their fire. Pop! They open a bottle of Bird in Hand Sparkling Pinot Noir, from the Adelaide Hills, to complement their footy viewing.

12.10pm- MCG, Melbourne, Australia

Birds from Tokyo play a couple of songs to an uninterested crowd. It strikes me as forgettable music. Like Brian Taylor’s commentary, it’s affected, cliché, a grating imitation of something much more engaging. “Pre-game entertainment” has always been an oxymoron, but it must be tough when you’re the curtain raiser to the curtain raiser.

12.25pm- Barossa Valley, South Australia

Mum likes the Crows, and does not care much for the rest, so, invited to lunch with some girlfriends, she takes the opportunity. Now home alone, Dad relaxes into his recliner, and a glass of shiraz. He enjoys the match. He’s like me, there are no bad games of football, only ones you don’t watch.

1pm- River Valley, Singapore

Friends from near Louisville are with us, and Mark comments, “Fremantle’s poor kicking might cost them.” I love sharing our game with others. We discuss their visit to the MCG, years ago, when they saw Richmond play.

We also talk about the Kentucky Derby. Mark says, “There’s two ways to experience the Derby. The corporate experience for the rich, and a real experience for the rest of us.” It’s a telling observation on AFL grand final day, in the Fonzie Demetriou epoch.

2pm- Victor Harbor, South Australia

Bob and Trish and their toddler, Jack are on a Fleurieu Peninsula farm stay for the weekend. As the Dockers thrillingly surge in the third quarter, and Bruce brings out his growl, a text appears from Bob

 the purple haze descends

The haze comes, but the brown and gold ultimately disperses the purple smog. Disappointingly, for the specialised subset of Dockers and Prince fans, there is no Purple Reign.

3.10pm- River Valley, Singapore

In our living room, to selected bemusement, the siren sounds. It’s another unique feature to be prized. I always liked the siren at Nuriootpa’s ground, despite it being enemy territory, as its shrill urgency is pure 1939 London air raid. It’s still strangely appropriate in the heart of the German-settled Barossa.

Nathan is a proud Tasmanian, and a happy Hawks fan. I’m pleased for him. In anticipation, he’s picked up some James Boags. We open them enthusiastically. The fruity softness of these Australian beers, contrasts with the metallic sharpness of Asian lagers. They’re a treat.

3.20pm- River Valley, Singapore

“It seems kinda cruel to keep the losing team out on the field,” suggests Mark as Hawthorn is presented to the MCG in a stentorian baritone by AFL announcer Craig Willis, while Fremantle sit there, heads in hands. “In America, the losers would be allowed to go straight down to the change rooms and lick their wounds in private.” I think this tradition means we applaud the runners-up too, conscious that without them there can be no contest. This should continue.

We agree that it is a chief difference. This day is about parallels and diversity, closeness and distance. Football connects. And as generations of ordinary Australians have known, in the dreadful absence of barbequed meat, on this most sanctified day, these simple celebrations are best enjoyed with chook.

DRJ

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The cobra and the condominium

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williard

 

This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, a lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head.

The Dude, The Big Lebowski

Condominium living with two young boys is to be imprisoned within an endless St Kilda players’ function- minus the moments of deep introspection, and wholesome civic values. It’s occasionally beyond challenging. It’s at the heart of our predicament. To stay in Singapore or head home?

Australia is lucky. Although threatened, a chief reason is the backyard. Here five million Singaporeans wrestle on a napkin. It’s a quarter the size of Adelaide. It’s berserk. There’s a plan to surge to seven million. How can we continue in such crushing lunacy?

Mercifully, nearby is bike-riding, footy-dobbing, scooter-crashing open space, straddling the canal. Recently, as the boys played, an English jogger merrily pointed out the assorted cobra nests. Frenetic construction means homeless snakes slink elsewhere. Obsessed by these reptiles, I’m Willard to the cobras’ Colonel Kurtz. I need to confront one. Not in the zoo. Up the river. Or at a bus stop. We best leave Singapore before I do.

Our school’s in the shadows of Orchard Road, and sometimes, skulking and coiling, cobras come a-callin’. Slouching past, the groundsman saw one inside the PTA office. The PTA president, a bellowing, volcanic empress, sat at her desk, focussing fiercely on her PTA-ing; fabulously unaware of the poised snake. The groundsman stomped. “Watch out! There’s a hideous, poisonous creature! Get out! Get out!” He yelled to the cobra.

I intermittently amble along Alexander Canal to The Boomarang (sic) Bar at Robertson Quay. It shows the AFL on big screens, hypnotic altars. Settling on a stool in the sultry noise, I buy a beer. Football and refreshment finished, I glance at the bill.

Tiger Pint- $15.01

“Excuse me,” I ask, “Is this correct?”

“Yes?”

“The $15 part. I get. Sort of,” I fucking offer, “The government doesn’t want people to enjoy themselves. Ever. It is an obstacle to the singular, undying aim of zealous National Service. But One Cent? Really?”

The bartender blinks. “Sir, this is the appropriate price.”

I can live in a city that cheerfully steals $15 from me for a beer, but my Principles of Drinking, and interior cash register, cannot stomach $15.01. In The Big Lebowski Walter Sobchak hollers, “Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?”

Singapore is a pubescent with an attendant sense of self. Its 2013 Grand Prix concert headliner? Justin Beiber. Truly? Is Barnsey retired? The Choir Boys doing a bikie wedding? Metallica has toured; surely they could have been seduced by the petrochemical /banking /biotechnological coin.

Grands Prix peddle aspirational fantasy and boorish volumes of din. We moved here to engage with what we don’t understand, but are snarling motorsport devotees Beliebers? I can’t connect F1 to my fuzzy, involuntary construct of JB. It’s a funny joint, this Singapore.

The government aims to protect its citizenry. Buses and trains are gruesomely crowded; fetid, heaving confines. A billboard campaign directs commuters to

Protect yourself against unwanted sexual harassment

It’s arse-about. Yes to empowerment against predators. But I think an alternate message should be disseminated. I’d suggest, ”Hey you! Shithead. Keep your stinkin’ hands to yourself!” T-Shirt of The Gruen Transfer agrees. There’s much to appreciate about this diminutive island, but it’s often unknowable.

Football is the final dilemma. Next year, Adelaide oval hosts AFL. I’m impatient to take a clattering tram from Moseley Square with our boys, Alex and Max, and walk down King William Road. This is where their learning, their golden heritage waits. Footy happens in Singapore, but as a desolate addendum, a doomed transplant. It’s decontextualized. You can’t get a decent pie here.

And there’s Auskick at Glenelg oval on sun-dappled afternoons. Our boys will scurry about in their too-long sleeves. Delighted shrieks curl about on a sea breeze. We’ll get teary, as one, maybe Max, arrests the Sherrin’s flight, somehow marks the ball- and then kicks it, joyously, messily, toward a muddy mate. And after, in the still swirling exhilaration, A4-sized schnitzels for all. Perfect.

This towering cosmopolis allows us global insight, but country footy is vital too. We’ll watch the Kapunda Bombers and the Kimba Tigers. What is more instructive, more superb than an unhurried Saturday at our game? Yes, we’ll make the most of now. This is a remarkable sabbatical. However, for how long can we resist home?

The Big Lebowski: What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski?

The Dude: Dude.

The Big Lebowski: Huh?

The Dude: Uh… I don’t know, Sir.

The Big Lebowski: Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost? Isn’t that what makes a man?

The Dude: Hmmm… Sure, that and a pair of testicles.

2

How football cost us the 2005 Ashes

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2005

Like a crazed nymphomaniac I could not get enough of the punt.

It was perfect to be an Australian in England when we won the first test by 239 runs. My local friends conceded glumly that the 2005 Ashes were gone. Smirking, I imagined how I’d spend my bodyweight in pound notes when we won our tenth consecutive series.

On the morning of the second Test in Edgbaston our summer guests and we take a day trip to Amsterdam. Anne Frank’s House is affecting and crowded. We visit Nieuwmarkt- zigzagging about the canals and museums, and enter the heart- or is it groin- of the Red Light district with its prostitutes behind windows. Tragicomically stricken with zero speech filters, my mate Bazz hollers across to his wife, ‘Hey Annie!’ He then suggests. ‘Pick out which hooker you’d like to join us for a threesome.’

Late afternoon at O’Reilly’s pub near Dam Square, and the stumps score blazes from a TV screen. Over 400 English runs in a day! Ponting had won the toss, and bowled! I then learn that McGrath, fresh from a man-of-the-match, nine-wicket bag in the Lords test, was a late withdrawal. He injured his ankle playing football! At silly mid-off! And Ponting strangely, unknowably, elected to bowl. Shaking my head, I think I must be a passive coffeeshop smoke victim. Despite the last wicket heroics from Lee and Kasprowicz, Australia is defeated. Arguably, football cost us this match, and the Ashes.

Boston made me a fan of three things: New England clam chowder, the Red Sox and naming beer after national idols. The Barking Crab restaurant faces the old Northern Avenue Bridge in the downtown area. Its shanty-like setting appeals to sailors and Harvard professors, and we devour the tasty seafood. The billboard declares, ‘It’s the best place in Boston to catch crabs.’

T-shirts pronounce there are two baseball teams to support: the Red Sox and whoever beats the New York Yankees. Catching a few innings in America’s oldest continuously operating tavern, The Bell in Hand, converts me. Baseball and cricket are both beautifully hypnotic. Both anchor a country’s summer.

Named for Declaration of Independence signatory, Sam Adams lager encourages me to ask why Australia fails to similarly honour their icons. I’d love to be at the altar of my Sunday pub ordering, ‘Two pints of Dennis Lillee, a jug of Gough Whitlam and a bottle of Bon Scott, thanks.’ Boston’s illustrious baseball history provides a captivating context for the fourth Test at Trent Bridge. In this pre-smart phone universe I frequently visit the hotel’s business centre to check the scores. Flintoff stars again. We’re down a test with only The Oval remaining.

Ashes tickets are as rare as sunburn in Sheffield but, back from North America, we score a pair for the Saturday. Taking the Northern Line to the ground, I’m struck by the blissful civility of those waiting to gain entrance. I’m also struck by the industrial quantity of wine and beer allowed. Adelaide Oval banned BYO decades ago. After lunch the Barmy Army is amply lubricated. Many ditties on their hymn sheets simultaneously tease and glorify Warney. Set to the tune of “Amarillo”, I enjoy

Show me the way to Shane Warne’s Villa

He’s got his diet pills under his pilla

A dodgy bookie from Manila

Nursey’s on her mobile phone

Rain restricts play to only fifty overs, but Langer makes his 22nd century, and Hayden achieves his first ton in a year. After tea, with vino bottles spread about like a berserk Neapolitan wedding, I’m startled by the tidy conduct of the Vauxhall End supporters. The gasometer looms benevolently. The Oval is festooned in Wolf Blass advertising and I’m homesick for Australia and the Barossa.

I dreaded going to school on Tuesday September 13, 2005. The previous afternoon England reclaimed the Ashes for the first time since 1989 and I, as fortune would have it, was teaching just north of London in St Albans. Over the next weeks the banter I had as the conquered Australian in a country celebrating a gigantic sporting triumph, was good-natured. Mostly.

As they had not been born the last occasion England defeated us in cricket, I helpfully suggested my students at Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School (named after the only English Pope) should enjoy the victory. ‘You could be grandparents the next time this happens,’ I lectured. Freddie Flintoff celebrated like a Viking and on the first morning after, Mike Gatting asked him whether he had had anything to eat. ‘Yes,’ replied Flintoff, ‘a cigar.’

I trudged the campus handing over cash to numerous colleagues. I also gave each horribly happy Englishman a letter.

Dear Sir

On behalf of the Australian cricket team I’d like to offer my congratulations on a highly deserved victory. It was a most exciting series.

With the Ashes now completed, I can reveal that the ICC, ECB and Cricket Australia were engaged in top-secret talks over the past months. If Australia had won and made it ten consecutive triumphs, then all future Ashes would have been cancelled and a more competitive nation, officially sought to play Australia every two years.

So whilst cricketers from Italy and the Shetland Islands are disappointed, I for one am pleased that, at least for the next encounter, the Ashes will continue.

Your colonial servant,

Ricky Ponting

oval

0

Dangerfield and the Rickenbacker guitar

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RSL

 

Patrick Dangerfield is the opening chord of A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles.

George Harrison’s Rickenbacker strum is pop music’s most thrilling moment, and Adelaide’s most dynamic midfielder also electrifies. Both are anticipation and frisson. Dangerfield exhilarates just like The Fab Four’s two and a half minutes of frenzied, intoxicating genius. Both are astonishing illustrations of their respective art.

It’s a Mother’s Day game so I offer to listen to the footy via a radio app. The wife urges me, “to watch it live, so you’ll appreciate it better.” Radio streaming is brilliant, and one morning I found a local Mandarin station. Despite having limited Chinese I quickly establish that the show, certainly called the Wacky Breakfast Zoo, features a zany guy, a straight guy and to use media industry jargon, a chick. Sound familiar? Doubtless, there’ll soon be a Black Thunder stalking my Singaporean street, giving out icy cold cans of Coke and Whispering Jack CDs.

The Sydney Showgrounds arena is fetching in the autumnal sunshine, but the wood chopping at the Royal Easter Show makes more happy noise. Iconic Tassie axe man David Foster would have been terrifying in a forward pocket, and I once saw him departing the Adelaide Show in a 4WD, fresh from dichotomizing a feeble log. Struggling to mount a speed hump, his car appeared to have been assembled around his singletted bulk. Like the Bluesmobile outside the Cook County Building on Richard J Daley Plaza, it would surely disintegrate.

The Crows and Giants begin before lunch Singapore time. I’m at The Boomarang Bar, and not wanting to evoke the ancient Barossa rule of, “One at 11, or eleven at 1,” I get a frosty pint. With a cornucopia of splendid Australian beer from which to choose, Boomarang’s management could have Coopers Sparkling Ale, Little Creatures or Fat Yak as their ambassadorial lager. No, Pure Blonde is on tap. It’s like Phil Tufnell being Wisden’s Cricketer of the Century. Still, come June I’ll be watching the footy back in wintry Adelaide. A glass of Dutschke GHR and a boisterous fire will then suit.

GWS. The acronym suggests a K-Mart quality law firm to which Dennis Denuto of The Castle might have aspired. GWS, I’d also argue, could be a mildly exotic skin infection. I can hear my GP grimly saying, “I’m afraid you have GWS.”

And Giants? The Icelandic nu-folk listening, hipster marketer obviously said, “Greater and Giants totally share a ‘G’ and that is, you know, like, alliterative, so let’s go with that.” However, I hear you retort, your team is mascotted by a hostile bird, best known for Graham Kennedy’s 1975 infamy. Faaaark.

The dazzle from the empty orange seats is as sorry as the AFL’s probable excuses for the attendance: catastrophic competition from Mother’s Day luncheons, the eight race card at Gunnedah, Col Joye headlining the roast and three veg fixture over at the Rooty Hill RSL. In a pulsating heartland of three million people, that only 5,800 bother is alarming. GWS will be successful eventually, but I think they should become successful elsewhere.

With a population of over eighteen million, that Los Angeles has not hosted a NFL club for nearly two decades might indicate a vast community is not itself a guarantee of football permanence. Green Bay is a small municipality by American standards, and its team continues to thrive. Similarly, supporters in Tasmania, Cairns or Darwin would have attended a Crows and Giants encounter with an increased and vociferous presence.

Tom Lynch provides the best breakout performance by a carroty-haired youth since Richie Cunningham’s work in season one of Happy Days. With Arthur (Tex) Fonzarelli’s knee having jumped the shark, and Potsie (Tippett) taken by a swan on his lonely way to Inspiration Point, Lynch presents himself. When he laconically kicks his tenth, and becomes the first Crow to do so since Tony Modra in 1994, the few spectators remaining are glumly playing paper/rock/scissors to see who locks the gate.

Adelaide wins by 135 points, a solitary behind shy of their record, but I remark that it’s not a game I’d buy on DVD. All at The Boomarang nod agreement. We stroll out into the tropical afternoon.

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The Frog and The Footy

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volleys

Ordering rissoles in Bali is a sign that I need to go home to Adelaide.

It’s a Friday night, and I’m in Barb’s sports bar for the Crows season opener. With an Adelaide Crow tattoo on his arm, mine host Ian ambles by as the club song choruses from the TV. He mutters, “It’s got a good beat, but I reckon the kids won’t dance to it.” He’ll say that another twenty-one times before September. There’s a galaxy of Indonesian dishes on offer, but I inhale a plate of meaty patties, chips and veggies. The footy is streamed from Channel 7 in Perth and, frosty long necks of Bintang aside, when I find myself getting misty-eyed about the Bunnings ads, I know the score.

Then there’s the frog. He lurks in the grounds of our Singaporean condominium, and he’s seeking a mate. After dark, his thoughts turn, as Barry White may have sung, to making a little love or as HG Nelson certainly said, to “wielding the night tools.” His call is a loud, resonating, metallic honk. He honks nightly into the cruel fug. His throbbing desperation wakes me up and keeps me sleepless. Nightly. I want to escape his amphibious ardour so am heading to South Australia for a June holiday.

Despite living on the equator, I love winter. The endless summer here delivers an effortless lifestyle of shorts and swimming, but Adelaide extends her charms. I like dressing for the cold; faded jeans and my boots- indestructible Blundstones bought in Kimba twenty years back. Include Dunlop volleys and a pair of dusty thongs and what other footwear is there? The Southern Ocean often lashes its wind at us so I’m a convert to the hoodie. I’ll stick a pair of rubber boots on each of our boys Alex and Max and they’ll be right. Cousins are often among our first friends and, happily, they’ll all soon be running, yelling and settling their necessary disputes.

I’ll relax in Adelaide, but also tour the Barossa, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra – viniculturally. Confirmed by one ignoble episode, tropical life and cabernet sauvignon simply don’t combine for me. It’ll be superb to plonk down with some old winter friends from Turkey Flat, d’Arenberg and Katnook, and discover what they’ve been up to. I’m confident that every bottle will burst with stories as I sit at assorted tables with Dad and uncork some robust conversations about footy, the Ashes tour and everything else.

Winter back home often hosts cloudless, still days of pale sunshine; ideal for beach walks and parks. Blokes occasionally label their pubs; Rundle Street’s Exeter is, “The X.” The boys name their preferred coastal playgrounds- the Nemo Park, the Buffalo Park and the Rock Lobster; baptised for the B52’s song I unthinkingly played them once. They also have to climb some trees with their mates.

Enthusiastically standing on the terraces as Glenelg play at Brighton Road could placate my football pang. Contemporary AFL spectators have little opportunity to appreciate the contest, as it should be enjoyed. Standing, skilfully, allows for better talking, laughing and barracking, and also expedites what Roy Slaven described as, “drinking in concert.” Unlike modern colosseums, I can wander to Snout’s bar or the BBQ while maintaining an eye and an ear on the ball, without burrowing down a concrete hole, like a rodent, seeking a snag or a pint.

Improbable footballers such as cult Roosters full forward Grenville Deitrich charm me. Treasured exceptions who, despite their prohibitive shape, advance to a high level. Thankfully, these survive in the SANFL. Just. I favour this over the AFL as the national competition is increasingly conquered by charisma-free robots, automatons manufactured into facsimiles of footballers like an Asimov dystopia.

A fire is vital. Grumpy’s Brewhaus at Verdun boasts a German-inspired microbrewery, wood-oven and combustion stove. A golden pint of Tomcat pilsner and a few slices of Funky Chicken pizza on a Sunday and I’ll be set. I taste it all now and can smell the drifting eucalyptus smoke as Alex and Max scurry through the last of the autumn leaves on Grumpy’s lawn.

Life here in the endless summer is fine, but like gravity, winter at home exerts an indisputable pull. It will be a languid exhalation but, ultimately, I’m hoping that when I return to Singapore, the amorous frog is on his honeymoon.

fire

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Scenes from Silly Point

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southwardk

 

Waddikee Oval on SA’s West Coast reminds me of Adelaide Oval. Apart from the Moreton Bay Figs, heritage-listed scoreboard, immaculate playing surface, world class player and spectator facilities, and fetching cathedral. It’s a nasty Saturday of blustery heat and flies like blackbirds. A chorus of thudding car doors announces the arrival of the Kimba Cricket Club, skippered by Phil “Klingy” Klingberg. Fifty overs per side is scheduled so with two evenly matched XI’s, play can stretch, languidly, from noon to well beyond seven.

Klingy wins the toss and bats. Waddikee is the reigning A grade premier. They have daunting bowlers and their fielding is Ponting-slick. Ours is a gallant innings. The men of Kimba are to grind it out; David Boon style. Veteran opening batsmen, Richard “Dickie” Clements, is bold. He combats the hostility, slices some sparkling shots through slips and accumulates an effervescent 11.

The middle order is secured by Klingy with a Steve Waugh classic; gritty and rousing; especially so on two hours sleep. He piles up 13. After an epic struggle of three quarters of an hour we are dismissed. We are bloodied and bruised. Like our page in the scorebook.

Kimba CC boasts a potent pace artillery including Marc “Soup Bones” Chapman, a gaunt version of Bruce Reid, and others who make Trevor Chappell’s over-arm action seem venomous. We are exactly unlike like Jeff Thomson. Waddikee is really going to have to dig deep to get our Bradmanesque 34.

Following a hearty lunch, we stride onto the crisp outfield to warm up. This is a significant game as spots in the top four are up for grabs in the four-club competition. We prepare to defend our total. Dickie wonders how his horses are going. Badly, we discover. Needed Waikikamukau in his Randwick treble. Klingy inhales two quick gaspers. An old cricket ball is slung around, and occasionally caught. Happily, no-one is injured. Someone shouts, “We only have ten fieldsmen”. The deserter is found. Suffering in his HD Holden, Craig “Nogsy” Nielsen is rudely resuscitated and restored to battle. We warn him against operating heavy machinery and put him at slip. We slap lazy flies away. This torrid duel continues.

Soup Bones is to open the attack. He is at the top of his run. It is longer than Fred Truman used to go on holiday. The grimy north wind hollers. Trying to anchor his clown feet, Soup Bones is desperate to not be blown through the southern goals, like a lost kite.

The Waddikee batsman tweaks his box and, behind the stumps, Klingy orchestrates his field like Churchill at Gallipoli. With an old ball Soup Bones bowls a few looseners to me at mid-on. We’re hoping he can push into the cyclone and actually reach the crease. In clear anticipation of a bright new Kookaburra six-stitcher he then hurls the old ball at the fence. He is pumped up. Well, as pumped up as Soup Bones gets. He is like a man with a tiger outside his gate, he not only couldn’t relax but he couldn’t relate. Now he can. Bowling man. With the left hand. Dig! He yells out to our captain, “Hey Klingy! Where’s the new ball?”

A defining moment follows. A time when kings take actions that unite and fortify subjects. What Klingy shouts back to Soup Bones is paradigm-shifting. As captain he is a leader. A prophet.

Soup Bones repeats into the gale, “Klingy, throw me the new ball.”

Klingy calls back, “New ball? Don’t be mad. They’re worth twenty bucks! That’s an extra slab of Southwark at the wind up!”

Ten blokes nod assent. An astute decision for the old ball spends most of its afternoon sun baking on the clubroom roof, adventuring into the prickly paddocks and like a grenade, exploding among the mixed doubles on the tennis courts. It, too, travels further than Fred Truman. In my brisk spell I am lofted through the goals by the Joyce boys for four majors. Cricket balls, surprisingly, enjoyed better working conditions in Medieval Yorkshire.

Batting practise by Waddikee elongates play to 1:30. Despite commencing ten minutes late and a considerable break between innings. With vital hydration stoppages we return to Kimba in the dark. Klingy and Soup Bones invite all into the pub for some richly earnt refreshment. In the merciless glare of Sunday morning those who have to, try to explain themselves. And yet again we make our dusty ways through to our Mondays. But, of course, at season’s end, having made the finals, we relish the bonus box of Southwark.

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From Croke Park to Vicarage Road is a one hour flight with Ryanair

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CP

Dublin’s Croke Park on the All Ireland Football Championship quarterfinal day is fantastic. During our tour of England, Ireland, France and Italy we’d see plenty of cathedrals but with O’Keefe ancestry in County Cork, this is a distinctive pilgrimage.

And while it’s Dublin and Roscommon clashing, a vivid afternoon unfolds. Taxiing to the ground, Dad and I see sky blue tops on scurrying local spectators and bright yellow on the visitors. We pass pubs like Quinns, Kennedys and The Big Tree bursting with blokes roaring and downing pints. Dad and I duck in for a lager. The Red Parrot is thunderous and frenzied but affable.

Our reserved seats are on the top deck of the Hogan stand and Dublin Bay sparkles across to the east. As the match evolves, two local supporters observe, ‘Our centre forward is too slow’, ‘We’re getting killed across half back’ and ‘the umpires aren’t doing us any favours.’ We could be at Footy Park, the MCG or Dutton Park in my hometown of Kapunda. Possessing an aural effect unlike soccer, the crescendo and fall of the GAA crowd is uplifting.

The game is attractive and fluent. The Dubs are quicker than Australian footballers, and as a matter of necessity, lithe and angular. Dublin controls the ball and the lush spaces. In the golden summery light, they tidily account for Roscommon, known also as the Sheepstealers.

Of course, the guilty were often transported to Australia. Leaving Croke Park, Dad and I evade a bony lad enthusiastically jettisoning a hula-hoop of amber onto the concourse. It is uncertain whether he is celebrating or commiserating Dublin’s victory, but there is jeering praise. We return to our digs at Browns Hotel near O’Connell Street, for an Irish music tour through Temple Bar.

I enjoy the dexterity and explosiveness the round ball allows but prefer our game’s elliptical ball. Its blissful and cruel unpredictability seems a candid metaphor for life, which is surely football’s noblest function. Additionally, our code allows and even celebrates goal scoring imprecision by permitting behinds.

How exquisite was Plugger’s famous point after the 1996 preliminary final siren? This, too, reflects an Australian ethos that speaks of our generosity of spirit and innocent effervescence.

Despite our resistance, sometimes sporting teams demand us as supporters. Southampton chose me not because of their soccer prowess but, curiously, their fans’ set list during a fourth round Carling Cup encounter with Watford at Vicarage Road. Some mates and I sit at the Away End and the singing is compelling.

Early in the fixture and expectant, Southampton praise their diminutive striker in blossoming tones

Sup-er Sup-er Kev Sup-er Ke-vin Phillips!

Still 0-0 late in a grim first half but their pride remains contagious. The contrast with the hyper-moronic, “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi” is sharp.

We love Southampton, we do!

We love Southampton, we do!

We love Southampton, we do!

Ohhhh, Southampton, we love you!

At half-time the combination of glacial queues and gastronomic judgment makes me unable to buy a cup of Burton upon Trent’s finest yeast- based beverage, Bovril. Five minutes in, they’re down 0-2 to the second division side.

Maintaining the global custom of using ridicule to try to save face, they taunt

We’re in the Premiership

We’re havin’ a laugh!

Suddenly it’s 0-3 and getting grubby. Across the autumnal air of Vicarage Road, the Saints’ choir recites the dismissive,

You’re just a small town near Luton

And then yet another Watford strike and all patience is gone, so they turn cannibal, as Bob my mate in Adelaide says, and start devouring their own

We’re so shite

It’s un-be-liev-able!

Two late consolations for the Saints and the second half, seven goal orgy is over. It is a night of dramatic tragedy on the pitch and musical theatre in the grandstands. Then, this being modern soccer, we of the Away End are funnelled, for our own safety, through a human chute of mountainous policeman.

We’re flushed out of the Vicarage Road ground and along the Watford streets to our Vauxhall Corsa. My evening is emblematic of England: startling and faintly menacing but, as always, richly engaging.

watford

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Footy’s Other Hemisphere

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423040-darren-jarman

When living overseas, footy becomes symbolic. A happy emblem of home. Like Merv’s XXXX-foamed moustache on the side of a London double-decker.

Singapore’s Boomarang Bar is one of those Australian themed-pubs that is both brilliant and dreadful. It shows AFL, NRL, and the races from Randwick and Flemington on big screens. It’s at Robertson Quay where the river is muddy and languid; it could pass for the Yarra.

The crowd is older than the backpackers at the Walkabout pub in Shepherd’s Bush, and mercifully, there is no Barnesy banging out over the thick, hot air. It’s Saturday afternoon, and the Crows and Hawthorn are underway in the preliminary final.

This Asian city’s mostly shy and undemonstrative so it’s exciting to see some punters in Hawks and Crows guersneys. Brash tribalism is rare here. There’s banter between the fans. “Ball,” intermittently choruses out across the quay. The footy is electrifying. The Hawks threaten constantly, but we persist.

We know that it could be Tippett’s valediction. He monsters Schoenmakers and with Walker, combines for eighteen contested marks. It’s close. Back home in Adelaide, my mate Bob texts. It’s too tense, too pulsating for him. He wants a personal media blackout.

Bob was in Edmonton in 1997, for the Crows’ first flag. It was a primitive world. Footy was inaccessible. No social media. No streaming. Many, like me, were sans mobile phone. During GF week Bob instructs me not to inform him of the result. With the discipline of a Roman soldier, he avoids it.

Then, at 2.30pm Saturday, Alberta time, to guarantee the authentic Australian experience, he and his friends watch a VHS recording of the game over a BBQ and beers. And like us seventeen hours previous, underground in Grote Street’s Players Bar, he is bewitched by Jarman’s sublime clinic, and Macleod’s exquisite poise and poetry. We love Bruce McAvaney’s climax: “Jarman. Jarman. That will do. That. Will. Do.” Bob rings after their final siren, waking us, in Glenelg, to our glorious and groggy Sunday morning.

With only the grand final telecast in Canada, he tells me he followed the Crows’ campaign on the internet. In ’97 this meant reading the footy online as an underling at AFL house, typed the action on their rustic website: Smart handballs to Bickley. Bickley kicks to Ellen. Essentially, it is a three-hour telegram. Like listening to Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles in the farm kitchen.

At the Boomarang Bar, we’re a disparate group. Like us, Annie is from Adelaide. She is avid; she streams 5AA’s call of practice matches. Nathan is from Tassie and loves the Hawks. His fiance, Alison, is from Vancouver. At half time I ask her, “Are you growing to love our footy?”  She replies that she’s, “Getting there.” As Adelaide and Christchurch are sister cities, our Kiwi friend Ariana supports the Crows.

In 2004 we were living just north of London in St Albans. I’d taken my Sherrin, and would occasionally have a few dobs by the Roman walls in Verulamium Park. Back home in the Barossa, Mum and Dad taped the Crows’ games, and mailed the wins to us. They saved plenty on postage that year.

My friend Barry, from Harrow, records the grand final on Sky Sports, and I enjoy Port’s triumph. Whilst I love beating Port in the Showdowns, I am an atypical Crows fan who barracks for them when they play interstate teams. It’s a residual from the State of Origin glory days of the 1980’s.

Barry’s an Irishman, and his Catholic passion is exceeded only by his worship of Wealdstone FC. I’m with him in Wiltshire by Salisbury Cathedral for the 2005 season closer when the Stones score in the last minute to avoid relegation by a single goal. In reverential electronic whispers, he texts me one fucking goal three times the following Sunday. Returning to Adelaide, Barry gives me four shares in Wealdstone FC. Every year I am posted the annual report.

Johncock puts us up with seconds left, but then the Hawks pinch the prize.I t was a tremendous contest and, wretchedly, the Crows fourth consecutive preliminary final loss. Annie and I agree that we’ve done well, and next season our youngsters like Dangerfield, Sloan and Walker will improve. Bob and I text. Mum and Dad message their pride. We take comfort in the future.

We leave the Boomarang, and walk home along the muddy Singapore River.

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snakes and ladders

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snakes and ladders

she tackles my football daydream with

“stop and look back at what you nearly stepped on.”

thoughts on my team’s blossoming

and withering are benched

i pivot

crow black eyes    green trunk

carpet python resting

like a ruckman in the forward pocket.

behind the grand final scoreboard at

freeling oval in ‘74

desert boots    golden breed windcheater

boys zip and thrill    dropkicks spinning

my lyrebird footy flees under

a pine tree’s eager arms

the snake

shadowed and coiled within scoring distance

i scamper and

scoop the ball as

kingswoods and valiants strain at the railing

mutton-chopped and ankle-booted

kapunda bombers   seize the cup         (since poisoned)

victory delivered    the king brown (a collingwood 6-footer)

slithers under memory.

snakes are singular

signs of premiership fortune

reptilian omens

handballed by sporting gods

cold-blooded tipsters

my weekend torment is torniqueted

hibernation ceases

this september.

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five visions of captains & cricket

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five visions of captains & cricket

davo drops a catch at cover

the bespectacled batsman edges

to 8 & our oval shrinks like

grandma’s backyard

at dusk he’s dismissed

on 295 & davo is still shouting

a wicket or a run

barossa grand final   last delivery taunts

the nervous bat     keeper & slips yell & rush

as the ball (eyes shut)  magically squeezes

between middle & leg & escapes to the fence

we remain stumped

i’m a very handy cricketer

boasts the burly minnipa policeman     i can’t

bowl   bat   or   field   but

i live right behind the town oval

in the pub & around an autumn bbq

these worn yarns   treasured old mates

slap our backs & cackle

raw appeals startle the afternoon breeze

baggy caps dusty   prickled outfield brown

cricket     rich as a sepia photograph

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crutches

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swinging metallic crutches

and his narrow frame form

a pendulum as he

steps… stops…

steps… stops…

along jetty

to palm-tree square

 

empty trouser fabric pinned neatly

in a flat rectangle

his remaining leg suffers the weight

of this hollow world

 

a blast beyond nightmares

in a jungle

thousands of miles

and years

from this twinkling esplanade

 

refusing to rest

on a peeling bench

a solitary soldier

and his crutches funeral- march toward

a darkened room where

 

sleeping

he escapes the landmine’s orange anger

and wishes

he only

lost a leg