So what did you do?
Kick a defenceless pet? Throw a fragile family heirloom at the television? Go for walk in the rain wearing nothing but your underpants and North scarf? Burn your Home and Away and Sydney Olympic Opening Ceremony VHSbox sets in a hastily lit bin fire?
Feel free to let me know. It can be useful to talk about these things.
Whatever you did, I hope it helped, and I hope it didn’t involve something that insurance won’t cover.
Sigh. Unless you’re one of the more detestable people on earth that leap from their bed at the crack of dawn, wink at people on their way to the station and smile like a maniac at strangers on the platform whilst genuinely looking forward to another working week, you know that Mondays are for the tip.
Footy, in some small ways, can help cope with this weekly emotional distress.
Footy, in some larger ways, can also compound this weekly emotional distress.
Especially when the game was played less than 24 hours earlier.
Especially when the game was that close.
Especially when the game was that important.
Especially when you betrayed every learned behaviour you’ve ever learned through years of being a footy supporter and actually allowed yourself to think that you were going to snaffle victory with a couple of minutes to go.
It’s not easy.
Do you know who created Gumby? I do. His name is Art Clokey. I’m wondering whether he was a North supporter and was inspired to create a character who can leap into televisions and effect the outcome of whatever he is watching, solely due to his experience of listening to North lose ridiculously intense matches of footy in the fifties via some bizarre BBC Worldwide simulcast of the then VFL.
I don’t actually know what I would have done if yesterday I could have made myself appear on the half back line with two minutes to go. In my more confident moments I like to imagine that I’d put a hard tag on the Sydney runner and drag him to the bench Gordon Tallis-style, or maybe I’d run to the centre circle and start performing an impromptu Michael Flatley-inspired Irish dance solo, in order to both distract a Swans debutant and (hopefully) cause a halt in the play so that the North players can gather their thoughts and realise that they really don’t have to stream forward with the wild abandon of adolescent cheetahs being released into the wild.
I’m also very aware of the fact that I don’t need to imbibe the transubstantiation ability of a Gumby/Christ figure to achieve the outcomes stated above. For the paltry fee of…what is it these days…ten thousand dollars or so…I could don a green suit and invade the field of play at any moment I choose. But I’m not as sprightly as I once was and fear that either my hamstrings or aorta would explode before I could put enough distance between myself and security to affect any significant impact on the game.
But again, subject to feedback I’ll consider starting a gofundme page to help pay for any future fines, if anyone thinks that field invasion is a tactic they’d like to see legitimised moving forward. If only it had have been an option in the match day enjoyment survey the club sent to me last week…
At the risk of telling you what you already know but aren’t ready to hear: that was one hell of a game. Don’t you love hearing that repeated to you by the media and your flog mates?
“It sure was!” I hear the Bloods reply, resplendent in the throws of glorious victory away from home.
“Get stuffed” – I hear the Shinboners mutter, while reaching for a brick and/or broken bottle.
Once again, while others bemoan the state of the game, North and Sydney potentially sacrificed their seasons to give the punters what they’re told they want.
It’ll take me a while to get over this one.
Easy now, Gumby. Mathematically we can still make the finals.
Here’s my quarter by quarter summary:
Q1 ~ We burst from the blocks with the most scintillating first term since the Hawthorn game.
Q2 ~ We have now officially taken up permanent residence in the Nightmare Zone.
Q3 ~ We clawed and stormed our way back into the lead.
Q4 ~ The club toyed with its supporters’ emotions like a kitten with a crippled rodent before allowing Sydney to torpedo punt our last vestiges of self-esteem into the estuary of the Yarra.
The last two minutes happened like a Lemony Snicket book. A series of unfortunate events occurred and we now live in a world in which they occurred. Analyse them if you have the desire. I’d then advise you to consider your life decisions, as you may have issues that need addressing beyond the putrid minutia of a football match.
They have Buddy. They have Kennedy, Heeney and Parker. They have Rampe and Lloyd. They have Sinclair (underrated in my book). They have the best troupe of medium-small forwards in the league.
They also have some injuries. But don’t we all.
I’d say let’s now save Ben Jacobs for the finals, but without him it’s hard to see us making them at all. His safety and well being is the only consideration that comes into play here, but again, that doesn’t help my aunty’s second favourite vase when Luke Parker and Isaac Heeney get off the leash in the final term and my “throwing arm” starts to get twitchy.
With Kennedy going down midway through proceedings, I dared to dream that we’d roll over the top of the Swans at the coalface. For a while in the third and in the beginning of the last, this looked like it was unfolding before my welcoming eyes.
But they’re a tough mob. And we burned, torched, eviscerated and downright fragged the footy too many times going forward at crucial times to give ourselves enough of a break that it caused the Swans’ heads to drop.
Two hands around the waist. Play on.
If there was going to be a consolation for Ben Jacobs being a late out yet again, it was the inclusion of Luke Davies Uniacke into the heart of the midfield. This kid isn’t cutting his teeth in a forward pocket, he’s plum in the guts where the big dogs eat. Beasts like Kennedy, Parker and Heeney don’t give favours to young players – Davies Uniacke is learning to swim during feeding time in the Orca pool.
And he has “it”. Give him another two or three pre-seasons and “it” will be breaking clear of congestion like a dodgy vindaloo.
He naturally keeps his hands free in a tackle and is a natural multiple-effort hunter in the contest. With increased core strength and increased running capacity I’m already getting ahead of myself in thinking I see potential for a Kennedy / Judd hybrid that will win five Syd Barker Medals and a Brownlow or two.
To be fair, we may have to temper the expectations. Paul Ahern will no doubt take a couple of those accolades off his hands in years to come. Ahern opens up the field to others like his mate in the middle, Ben Cunnington. With Cunners he already has the best delivery by hand on our list – as exemplified by his magnificent, majestic delivery to Macmillan in the first. That handball was so good, the TV didn’t pick up where it was going until it got there. It told Macmillan where to be and demanded that he be there.
Get excited. Good times ahead. And many sore ribs, if Anderson and his tackling has anything to do with it. In the final term when things were hottest, Ahern, LDU, Anderson and Simpkin were still facing up in the centre square.
In the final term when things were hottest Goldstein won tap after tap after tap. Unfortunately, more often than not they seemed to be sharked by Swans. Miscommunication? Probably.
Did it shit me? You betcha.
I’m not angry at Goldy. He’s back and he’s back to being the extra midfielder that we cherished so dearly a couple of years ago. Keep rolling, big man.
Nobody leaves Baby in the corner.
Ben Ronke should probably win the Rising Star. With Ben Brown leading the Coleman and doing wonderful things with a football and a hair dryer every week, it’s (slightly) easier to cop the other mob’s equivalent popping up for five minutes of mayhem after being contained by Tarrant for the other 105 minutes of the game.
But when witnessing in Ronke the cold-blooded finishing and unteachably spot-on positioning at the fall of the ball that kept Sydney’s scoreboard ticking over in times of trouble, the gaping hole in our own list (a gaping hole that seems to be shaped suspiciously like Lindsay Thomas) feels like a yawning wound left over from a botched surgery.
Having Turner not get knocked out in the opening salvo would have gone a long way to potentially rectifying this imbalance. Having any one of Garner, Wood and Waite available and without soft tissue made of actual kleenex would also help rectify this imbalance.
As it was we were left to witness what at this stage we don’t possess. Dammit, Ronke. If you ever get sick of kicking bags for Sydney, come and kick some bags for us.
The real shame is that, as things stand right now, I can’t bring myself to reflect on yesterday’s match with any more energy required than to put these thoughts to page. This is a shame, as beneath the final score and its associated degradation were the sort of heroic performances that in other times would be turned into ballads to be sung in make-shift battle halls in post-apocalyptic Kensington.
Jack Ziebell. Oh captain my captain. Potentially the most damaging medium forward in the game. Marauded across the field like a pirate king.
Shaun Higgins. Was tagged. Hard. Didn’t matter. The thought of a North player legitimately contesting the Brownlow still hasn’t sunk in.
Majak Daw. Let’s celebrate a bloke who finally, finally seems to have had confidence penetrate a hardened exterior of pure bronze. For the first time in his career, he looks like he finally knows he’s the biggest specimen out there. For the first time since the Bulldogs game all those years ago, he had a forward structure in front of him and a defender behind him that worked to give him the space in which to lead, leap and create havoc. We have a genuine swing man on our hands. And kind of but not really like the Jenny Craig add: it might not happen every game, but it can happen.
Ben Brown. Please let him win the Coleman. Just, just…just let him win it.
Alas, for so many positives. They accentuate the pain of ultimate loss. It would all be so much easier to cop if we’d stunk it up from beginning to end. Except it wouldn’t, would it?
Hang in there, comrades. We’re so tantalisingly close to being what we all want us to be…whatever that is. And the positives that we witnessed and rejoiced in are not only to be celebrated, but used as signal fires that light the way to ultimate success.
We’re not there yet. That hurt like hell. But by crikey we’re showing some good things. Every week something else. Something to make you smile when Monday morning is at its bleakest.
Collingwood this Saturday. They just got rolled by the Eagles on their home deck. Oh boy.
I have no idea who, if anyone, will come in. Ben Jacobs goes without saying, but the fact that he seems likely to miss also goes without saying. If we win, we forget all about Sunday and start seriously considering finals footy.
Defeat, and we roll again the week after.
Shinboners don’t quit.
Come on you Roo boys.
O'Shanassy street 