Several months ago I joined 100,000 people at the MCG and saw my beloved Hawthorn win the 2014 AFL premiership. I was anxious because my health's not standard, and we had standing room tickets, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to last the distance. (I sat down in-between quarters and went home not too long after the game finished). And I was anxious because it was, well, exciting. The Grand Final is a big occasion here in Melbourne, and you could feel the anticipation flooding through the MCG.
And I was anxious too because you never know how things are going to be. The Swans were hard, hard favourites. It's funny how consensus swells, like the ocean, like a crowd. In the previous weeks favouritism for the Swans had hardened, and the more people who jumped on the bandwagon, the more that jumped on the bandwagon, until it seemed almost bizarre to think that Hawthorn had any way of winning.
Still, nobody expected what happened. Sydney weren't switched on for that unfathomable reason that is unable to be measured. And while from a football watcher’s perspective it was possibly a bit of a fizzer (that fruckin' Hawthorn, we're sick of them) really, from my perspective I got to watch the brown and gold perform poetry.
The next day, Erin Riley shared in The Sunday Age how her Grand Final experience as a Swans supporter was made intolerable, not because of her team’s on-field shellacking but because of racist, homophobic and abusive Hawthorn supporters off-field. As a member and a football-goer, I think about this sort of thing a lot. Wouldn't it be cool if people had more empathy, cared how much their aggressive and repulsive actions upset and disrupt other people? How do you stop offensive behaviour from happening in public places? Can you?
What can we expect the AFL/MCC to do when supporters are obnoxious beyond the pale? Do they get one of their security minions to throw them out of the ground? That's an option. Although in Erin’s case, it quite simply didn’t work. We’ve had other instances this year where people have been thrown out of the ground and had their memberships cancelled. I would be quite happy to see nasty dickheads thrown out. Might help them learn to handle their own shit enough so they can stop projecting it onto other people. But cancelling their membership? That's a ridiculous over-reaction, surely. If you punish someone's love because of their hate, where does that get you? Most likely a hardening of the sort of thoughts and ideas that fuelled the behaviour in the first place.
But even throwing people out of the ground doesn’t work out so great for the vibe for the rest of us if the cops and security guys required for such actions get to roam the aisles inspecting us for naughtiness week in, week out, even during the times when nothing bad is happening. It makes for a rather intimidating and unfriendly atmosphere. Add to that the directives, shown several times a game on the scoreboard, to SMS the seat position of those indulging in bad behaviour. A hostile environment surely breeds more hostility. Or at the least, alienation, which is encouraged even further by the promo stuff going on in-between quarters, which drowns out the possiblity of conversation with the person next to you. Gillon McLachlan has made some good, people-focussed changes to the fixture for 2015. The AFL needs to take a look at this kind of thing as well.
So what else could the AFL do to keep unruly elements in line? Seeing so much of this cruddy behaviour comes from people who’ve had six too many, how about not serving alcohol at the ground? Ooh, there's a controversial idea. That would go massively towards stopping the grosser end of the abuse spectrum. But can you imagine how worked up people would be if they couldn't get smashed at the footy? I mean, what are ya, mate? And anyway, I do wonder if the AFL/MCC wouldn't blanch at enacting those kind of measures in a society where alcohol is such an embedded facet in its perceived ability to function, quite aside from considerations of revenue loss.
More alcohol-free zones at the footy would be a start, though. Then us overly sensitive ones could band together and enjoy the footy (whatever the result) without feeling intimidated by people who've lost the ability to keep it nice – and by being annoyed by bands of people getting up and down throughout the game to go stand in line for the next round, disrupting others trying to watch the game in the process.
Some may say that abusing the opposition is part of the game, and though I don't like it myself I am a lily-livered wussbag, who empathises with every losing team my beloved Hawks has had the pleasure of beating this year, and who cries at the killing of mice. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if more of those people whose disenfranchisement with their lives bubbles over with their beer on the weekend possessed a modicum of intelligence and humour to go with it? Those who can hassle the opposition with a touch of finesse, rather than a bunch of VB and under 8s style? Delivery is everything, folks.
But the other side, though, in the quest to make football more friendly, is us. We're just not really all that good at being with each other in a nice Buddhist kind of way, are we? We can't see this in ourselves, but we can sure see it in every other bastard getting in our way. So if the actual environment of the MCG is the nature element that needs changing, we're the nurture part. We need changing too. We hate each other.
The footy is all about the story. Part of the reason we watch sport is to see teams and individuals rising against the odds and coming through. We want to see them believe in themselves. We need those sort of stories. They’re as old as time ~ so old in fact that they've become cliche. The hero's quest. Overcoming your inner demons to land the prize you've been aiming for but missing. The stories that remind us that we are bigger than cogs in an economic wheel, or fodder in wars, are reflected on the footy ground, and on our screens when we watch LOTR or Game of Thrones. The same kind of story goes on off-field in every person. Many of us have been born into a murky, rather nasty cultural soup. The world is a cold one, and our shared social experiences are nowhere near as much as we need to keep us glued together, both personally or collectively. Indeed, I think we have forgotten why a culture needs glue, even while we see evidence of its lack everywhere. And then, when we do have shared social experiences, they're not innocent, because they're surveilled and scrutinised. Guilty before being presumed innocent. It's as though everyone assumes the Gollum in us, but what about the Aragorn, the Geladriel, the Ent?
If we people had emotional smarts, combined with an MCG that made us feel like we belonged, we would find ways to gently and creatively rectify disruption amongst ourselves. We wouldn't find the need to demonise the opposition. But unfortunately, being brittle and not liking each other much, this makes it somewhat difficult. We don't display much understanding of why being kind and gentle to people we don't know is a little bit of awesomeness. Instead, we have the kind of environment where everyone in your crowd is your enemy except the person on the end of your phone. In this environment, you feel so alienated that you really do feel a massive urge to get a new pair of silicone breasts. And it doesn't take much to set off fires. Because man, we all hate each other's guts so. It's freakin' scary. And we're so angry. We need to find a way of tolerating the intolerable. Inside as well as out.
Crowds are a reflection of the people who make them up. Each of us is facing a larger hero’s journey too, the little Davids against the entire society. The thirsty frog confronting its own water. We are told by our rather shitty water that we are small. Our quest is to redevelop the belief that humanity as a whole and people individually have inherent dignity, and are worthwhile, despite the dross elements constantly on display. They are dross partly because that is what they have grown up in. And so have you. But transformation is always possible. We go deeper and wider than we think.
Showing posts with label hawkies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hawkies. Show all posts
Some of the Hawthorn supporters I sat near tonight were such a dismal pack of entitled little bastards that the evening was 20 times more hellish than it needed to have been.
My team got comprehensively beaten by our arch rival. It was never going to be a pleasant experience. But these dudes added a lovely patina of barely contained fury to my already rather dismal viewing experience.
Seriously, there's some blokes out there with real bad anger management problems. I understand why such a thing could be prevalent in today's society. I think men oftentimes feel lost, not exactly sure of how they should be behaving in a post-feminist society where women have somewhat found their voices in some ways. Sometimes it seems that men have been left feeling a bit emasculated. Maybe a bit like women have found their voices and men have lost theirs. Or at least had them stifled under waves of political correctness and lack of social cues on what is acceptable and what isn't. Sitting at the football is one of the few places where you get to yell and scream and vent your spleen and it's fine.
To an extent, though, surely. Because surely in the end, losing a game, playing like poos, being outcoached and outmuscled by the team you hate the most really doesn't entitle you to behave like petulant brats, does it? Some sort of perspective has to come into play at some point. In the end, you know that ultimately it's just a game, no matter how you doth love it, and it's only one game within a season, as thoroughly disappointing as the episode was. Your team has many injuries. And if they are playing a shocker, at some level you know that the players are not losing just to make your weekend start off all wubbly and wascally.
Several amongst the bunch of males surrounding me this evening called our team c***s. The guy next to me screamed his guts out the entire game and abused basically every single player on the team whose colour he was wearing. Some other dweeb threw away his scarf in a fit of childish rage at the end of the game.
I understand the whole anger thing. I was angry myself. But maybe some men need to consider why their self-identities are so flimsy that they can feel entitled to behave like a big tantrum bubby simply because their team has had a bad night at the office.
Their team, and identifying with and being part of that team, gives them that lovely little winning feeling. We all love that feeling. But if you need it too much, then the players, the individual people who are talented enough to be playing professional Aussie Rules, are lauded and loved and exalted but then ripped down when they don't perform to scratch. As if they are just wind-up robots that give you a nice feeling, like rats pressing down on the lever for more drugs, rather than living, breathing people.
And a living, breathing entity. A sporting club to which many people belong, or at least identify with. Part of that adherence involves loyalty, doesn't it? A willingness to stick with your team through "thick or thin"? To be willing to go with the losses as well as the wins, rather than smacking away the drug dealer when they don't give you your fix.
Some Hawthorn supporters need to lift their game even more than the playing list. The playing list has interrupted preseasons and half their backline missing. Some supporters behave like they have interrupted psychologies.
My team got comprehensively beaten by our arch rival. It was never going to be a pleasant experience. But these dudes added a lovely patina of barely contained fury to my already rather dismal viewing experience.
Seriously, there's some blokes out there with real bad anger management problems. I understand why such a thing could be prevalent in today's society. I think men oftentimes feel lost, not exactly sure of how they should be behaving in a post-feminist society where women have somewhat found their voices in some ways. Sometimes it seems that men have been left feeling a bit emasculated. Maybe a bit like women have found their voices and men have lost theirs. Or at least had them stifled under waves of political correctness and lack of social cues on what is acceptable and what isn't. Sitting at the football is one of the few places where you get to yell and scream and vent your spleen and it's fine.
To an extent, though, surely. Because surely in the end, losing a game, playing like poos, being outcoached and outmuscled by the team you hate the most really doesn't entitle you to behave like petulant brats, does it? Some sort of perspective has to come into play at some point. In the end, you know that ultimately it's just a game, no matter how you doth love it, and it's only one game within a season, as thoroughly disappointing as the episode was. Your team has many injuries. And if they are playing a shocker, at some level you know that the players are not losing just to make your weekend start off all wubbly and wascally.
Several amongst the bunch of males surrounding me this evening called our team c***s. The guy next to me screamed his guts out the entire game and abused basically every single player on the team whose colour he was wearing. Some other dweeb threw away his scarf in a fit of childish rage at the end of the game.
I understand the whole anger thing. I was angry myself. But maybe some men need to consider why their self-identities are so flimsy that they can feel entitled to behave like a big tantrum bubby simply because their team has had a bad night at the office.
Their team, and identifying with and being part of that team, gives them that lovely little winning feeling. We all love that feeling. But if you need it too much, then the players, the individual people who are talented enough to be playing professional Aussie Rules, are lauded and loved and exalted but then ripped down when they don't perform to scratch. As if they are just wind-up robots that give you a nice feeling, like rats pressing down on the lever for more drugs, rather than living, breathing people.
And a living, breathing entity. A sporting club to which many people belong, or at least identify with. Part of that adherence involves loyalty, doesn't it? A willingness to stick with your team through "thick or thin"? To be willing to go with the losses as well as the wins, rather than smacking away the drug dealer when they don't give you your fix.
Some Hawthorn supporters need to lift their game even more than the playing list. The playing list has interrupted preseasons and half their backline missing. Some supporters behave like they have interrupted psychologies.
Sometimes you lose but it feels like you've won, you know?
Tonight was a return to the MCG to watch Hawthorn and Geelong begin their 2009 AFL seasons in a Grand Final replay. We lost by 8 points. But life is paradoxically strange. Some losses actually feel like wins, whereas some wins feel somewhat hollow.
Geelong do a bit of psychological poos in their pants when it comes to Hawthorn. Maybe that's why they couldn't kick very straight for goal.
In terms of narrative and poetry, which is the lens I see my football through, a loss tonight has really only set up a nice little spicy bit of season tension, for mine. Tonight, Hawthorn had eight premiership players missing. We debuted three young 'uns, lost one player during the game, did not play our number one ruckman, and had a few seniors a bit niggly round the edges. We did pretty alright considering. Indeed, in the last quarter, after we were starting a reasonable defeat in the eyes, Buddy Franklyn and Jaryd Roughead combined to almost steal the game with beautiful straight poetic goals. In contrast, Geelong were all quivery in front of goal again, like last year. Maybe they'd eaten jellymeat for dinner.
We get under Geelong's skin like splinters. And they know that we know. A win is a win, but this one probably tastes a little too strongly of aspic, I would suspect.
Do I sound cocky? There is a fine line between cockiness and confidence, isn't there :) And I think I crossed it about 10 k's back. Actually, I crossed it in the last quarter. We could have lay down and got thrashed, but we fought it back and nearly ran over the top of them. And we aren't as good as we will be by the time we meet again in 17 weeks' time. So I swagger a bit when I walk. Watcha gonna do about it? :)
Cocky, from Lester's perspective, would be the cat who has been sitting next to me purring while I type this. In Lester's house, while he's not here. What utter betrayal by the woman who he does gaze at with such love and adoration. If he could read, I'm sure he would be heartbroken.
No, it's not one of the kittens - I still have not managed to tame then. And it's not the mother cat either. She is quite a tame sort of a puss really, but I haven't seen much of her either lately. No, this is the black and white puss with one and a half ears who smells a bit and has a cute miaow. I've seen this puss around a bit. Hell, I've probably been feeding this puss unwittingly. I don't know where it lives - I presume it is next-door. But he (she?) has come here visiting this evening, after we had a bit of a chat out the front while I was parking my car. I think all the cats in the neighbourhood are smelling a good wicket. The black and white puss eats hungrily now, outside my door. One step closer to crazy cat ladyness :)
The Cats might have won the game, but not with any sort of authority. And Hawthorn win when it counts. Bring on the season. While you're there, bring on a bout of cat sterility, if possible, or else it's gonna start getting mighty crowded around here :) Maybe I should get the Hawks to come visit my house, scare some cats away.
Miaow :)
Tonight was a return to the MCG to watch Hawthorn and Geelong begin their 2009 AFL seasons in a Grand Final replay. We lost by 8 points. But life is paradoxically strange. Some losses actually feel like wins, whereas some wins feel somewhat hollow.
Geelong do a bit of psychological poos in their pants when it comes to Hawthorn. Maybe that's why they couldn't kick very straight for goal.
In terms of narrative and poetry, which is the lens I see my football through, a loss tonight has really only set up a nice little spicy bit of season tension, for mine. Tonight, Hawthorn had eight premiership players missing. We debuted three young 'uns, lost one player during the game, did not play our number one ruckman, and had a few seniors a bit niggly round the edges. We did pretty alright considering. Indeed, in the last quarter, after we were starting a reasonable defeat in the eyes, Buddy Franklyn and Jaryd Roughead combined to almost steal the game with beautiful straight poetic goals. In contrast, Geelong were all quivery in front of goal again, like last year. Maybe they'd eaten jellymeat for dinner.
We get under Geelong's skin like splinters. And they know that we know. A win is a win, but this one probably tastes a little too strongly of aspic, I would suspect.
Do I sound cocky? There is a fine line between cockiness and confidence, isn't there :) And I think I crossed it about 10 k's back. Actually, I crossed it in the last quarter. We could have lay down and got thrashed, but we fought it back and nearly ran over the top of them. And we aren't as good as we will be by the time we meet again in 17 weeks' time. So I swagger a bit when I walk. Watcha gonna do about it? :)
Cocky, from Lester's perspective, would be the cat who has been sitting next to me purring while I type this. In Lester's house, while he's not here. What utter betrayal by the woman who he does gaze at with such love and adoration. If he could read, I'm sure he would be heartbroken.
No, it's not one of the kittens - I still have not managed to tame then. And it's not the mother cat either. She is quite a tame sort of a puss really, but I haven't seen much of her either lately. No, this is the black and white puss with one and a half ears who smells a bit and has a cute miaow. I've seen this puss around a bit. Hell, I've probably been feeding this puss unwittingly. I don't know where it lives - I presume it is next-door. But he (she?) has come here visiting this evening, after we had a bit of a chat out the front while I was parking my car. I think all the cats in the neighbourhood are smelling a good wicket. The black and white puss eats hungrily now, outside my door. One step closer to crazy cat ladyness :)
The Cats might have won the game, but not with any sort of authority. And Hawthorn win when it counts. Bring on the season. While you're there, bring on a bout of cat sterility, if possible, or else it's gonna start getting mighty crowded around here :) Maybe I should get the Hawks to come visit my house, scare some cats away.
Miaow :)
I'm totally spent. My football team won the flag yesterday. I cannae believe it! There are more Grand Final celebrations going on today down at Glenferrie, but I am socially worn out. Need to stay home and get quiet and get recalibrated :) And so, before Discombobula returns to normal broadcasting and stops making every post about football, here is my personal take on why this flag means a lot to me :)
Back in 1996 my team was threatened with extinction when the AFL set in motion plans to try to merge it with another Melbourne-based club (called, strangely enough, Melbourne). The club administration agreed to its own potential demise, and talks began in earnest. The members would have to vote at the end of it all on whether we would merge, but possibly from the club's standpoint Hawthorn members seemed apathetic, going on low membership signup figures. Indeed, that was part of the reason why the club was $1.7 million in debt. The AFL probably would have thought we were an easy merger target. I remember the four-colour glossy brochure outlining why it was that Hawthorn could not continue on in its curent incarnation. Reading it, depending upon your susceptibility to shiny four-colour views, you could concede that indeed, it looked like the end had come.
This was a team that had been one of the most successful clubs in the history of the game. In the eighties they were unstoppable, the team everyone hated because the bastards wouldn't stop winning flags - 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989. And another one in 1991 just to top it off. But five years after that last flag, here we were with talks afoot to do away with the team, merge it into this new bastardized hybrid called the Melbourne Hawks. There were valid reasons why the club honestly didn't see any alternative - because without vision the people perish, because football had become a commodity like everything else, because the members were not signing up. Hawthorn members, the rather spoilt little breed that we are, had become complacent. You get complacent when you've had a lot of success.
In response, an ex-player, Don Scott, started up a breakaway group which became known as Operation Payback. He believed the club was entering too quickly into this undoable situation. It's true that the club was $1.7 million in debt, but Scott wanted to put it out to the members first and see what could be done. It's funny how simple faith in possibilities is so ridiculed, is so small, and yet so powerful. The media and the club both did their share of ridiculing the impossibilities of the situation. Everyone knew the reality was we had to merge, right? It was all down there on paper. It certainly felt like a David versus Goliath battle, believing against the black and white evidence. I know, 'cause I was there :) Signed up almost from day 1 to answer phones after Don Scott put the call out for the supporters of Hawthorn to do something about it and so found myself heading down to Glenferrie after work, to hang out in a tiny little room upstairs in the social club and answer phones and start feeling the snowball gaining momentum. Heady stuff.
The resulting groundswell of support was part of the reason why I will continue to support AFL football despite its professionalism and shininess. I know that at the heart of my club is a group of passionate people. I saw it, and was involved in it. All those hours spent are some of the fondest memories I have. Making coffee for Don Scott (he's scary). Making a few friends (indeed, I would later marry one of them). Answering calls from opposition supporters who didn't even like Hawthorn but wanted to donate some money to the cause because they were sick of being dictated to and told that teams would be eliminated simply because what was once a Victorian-based football league had now gone national, and it was simply untenable on paper that there could be eight Victorian teams, making up half of the competition.
Well, that was all fine and good and spreadsheet savvy. But there's nothing like a cause to get your blood pumping, and the righteous anger that the AFL would try to merge my club - my club, the club my grandfather barracked for, my mother did, and now me, the club that has arguably been the most successful club in history, made my pumped blood boil :)
By the time it came to the September meeting that would determine the fate of the club, we had raised the $1.7 million required to get us out of debt. But to keep a rational level head on the situation Ross Oakley, the head honcho of the AFL, said:
But that's what happens when you mess with football clubs. In this strange little passionless world we live in, sport is one of the few areas where vast groups of people can come together with common cause and passion, and dress up, and paint their faces, and jump up and down, and hope, and shed tears. I saw a lot of shed tears yesterday by members who have been carrying the responsibility ever since 1996. Onfield success now sees more people jumpin on board and this year Hawthorn had somewhere around the vicinity of 40,000 members, some of who got to be part of the 100,000-strong crowd that rocked it at the MCG yesterday.
So the members voted against the merger, we went on to fight another day, I went on to insert yet another cliche in this post, and Hawthorn went on to win the 2008 flag. Going by their season form, Geelong should have won yesterday - they only dropped one game all year. Indeed, of their last 43 games they have won 41. And on the stats spreadsheet for yesterday's game, they should have won, too. They had more shots for goal, but sprayed them. Choked under the pressure. But while Geelong may have thrown their side of the game away off their own boot, there's no doubting that Hawthorn won their side. With aplomb.
Spreadsheets and prognostications are empty wineskins with no people in them. If you lived according to the spreadsheets, Hawthorn wouldn't even be here at all. If Hawthorn played according to the spreadsheets, they wouldn't have turned up at all. Hell, according to the spreadsheets, we weren't even meant to be contending for the flag until 2009.
That we will. Just with the 2008 cup in the trophy cabinet :)
++++++
Edit: Changed my mind. Can't stay home, even though I desperately need recalibration. I think writing this post has recalibrated me a bit. It shall have to do. I'm off to Glenferrie :)
Back in 1996 my team was threatened with extinction when the AFL set in motion plans to try to merge it with another Melbourne-based club (called, strangely enough, Melbourne). The club administration agreed to its own potential demise, and talks began in earnest. The members would have to vote at the end of it all on whether we would merge, but possibly from the club's standpoint Hawthorn members seemed apathetic, going on low membership signup figures. Indeed, that was part of the reason why the club was $1.7 million in debt. The AFL probably would have thought we were an easy merger target. I remember the four-colour glossy brochure outlining why it was that Hawthorn could not continue on in its curent incarnation. Reading it, depending upon your susceptibility to shiny four-colour views, you could concede that indeed, it looked like the end had come.
This was a team that had been one of the most successful clubs in the history of the game. In the eighties they were unstoppable, the team everyone hated because the bastards wouldn't stop winning flags - 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989. And another one in 1991 just to top it off. But five years after that last flag, here we were with talks afoot to do away with the team, merge it into this new bastardized hybrid called the Melbourne Hawks. There were valid reasons why the club honestly didn't see any alternative - because without vision the people perish, because football had become a commodity like everything else, because the members were not signing up. Hawthorn members, the rather spoilt little breed that we are, had become complacent. You get complacent when you've had a lot of success.
In response, an ex-player, Don Scott, started up a breakaway group which became known as Operation Payback. He believed the club was entering too quickly into this undoable situation. It's true that the club was $1.7 million in debt, but Scott wanted to put it out to the members first and see what could be done. It's funny how simple faith in possibilities is so ridiculed, is so small, and yet so powerful. The media and the club both did their share of ridiculing the impossibilities of the situation. Everyone knew the reality was we had to merge, right? It was all down there on paper. It certainly felt like a David versus Goliath battle, believing against the black and white evidence. I know, 'cause I was there :) Signed up almost from day 1 to answer phones after Don Scott put the call out for the supporters of Hawthorn to do something about it and so found myself heading down to Glenferrie after work, to hang out in a tiny little room upstairs in the social club and answer phones and start feeling the snowball gaining momentum. Heady stuff.
The resulting groundswell of support was part of the reason why I will continue to support AFL football despite its professionalism and shininess. I know that at the heart of my club is a group of passionate people. I saw it, and was involved in it. All those hours spent are some of the fondest memories I have. Making coffee for Don Scott (he's scary). Making a few friends (indeed, I would later marry one of them). Answering calls from opposition supporters who didn't even like Hawthorn but wanted to donate some money to the cause because they were sick of being dictated to and told that teams would be eliminated simply because what was once a Victorian-based football league had now gone national, and it was simply untenable on paper that there could be eight Victorian teams, making up half of the competition.
Well, that was all fine and good and spreadsheet savvy. But there's nothing like a cause to get your blood pumping, and the righteous anger that the AFL would try to merge my club - my club, the club my grandfather barracked for, my mother did, and now me, the club that has arguably been the most successful club in history, made my pumped blood boil :)
By the time it came to the September meeting that would determine the fate of the club, we had raised the $1.7 million required to get us out of debt. But to keep a rational level head on the situation Ross Oakley, the head honcho of the AFL, said:
It's all very well for people on the fringes to come out and rant and rave, they will have to carry the responsibility.Well. That September meeting at the Camberwell Civic Centre sticks in my mind as the scary way a group of people can become a mob. Yikes. That night, members howled at club stalwarts on stage. Peter Hudson, one of the club's most loved players, was howled down and as club CEO advising we merge, his face was ashen grey that night. I shall never forget it. I understand people's passion, and I felt it myself that night, but to spew vitriole at people who are following the course they think best is just not on. It made me sick.
But that's what happens when you mess with football clubs. In this strange little passionless world we live in, sport is one of the few areas where vast groups of people can come together with common cause and passion, and dress up, and paint their faces, and jump up and down, and hope, and shed tears. I saw a lot of shed tears yesterday by members who have been carrying the responsibility ever since 1996. Onfield success now sees more people jumpin on board and this year Hawthorn had somewhere around the vicinity of 40,000 members, some of who got to be part of the 100,000-strong crowd that rocked it at the MCG yesterday.
So the members voted against the merger, we went on to fight another day, I went on to insert yet another cliche in this post, and Hawthorn went on to win the 2008 flag. Going by their season form, Geelong should have won yesterday - they only dropped one game all year. Indeed, of their last 43 games they have won 41. And on the stats spreadsheet for yesterday's game, they should have won, too. They had more shots for goal, but sprayed them. Choked under the pressure. But while Geelong may have thrown their side of the game away off their own boot, there's no doubting that Hawthorn won their side. With aplomb.
Spreadsheets and prognostications are empty wineskins with no people in them. If you lived according to the spreadsheets, Hawthorn wouldn't even be here at all. If Hawthorn played according to the spreadsheets, they wouldn't have turned up at all. Hell, according to the spreadsheets, we weren't even meant to be contending for the flag until 2009.
That we will. Just with the 2008 cup in the trophy cabinet :)
++++++
Edit: Changed my mind. Can't stay home, even though I desperately need recalibration. I think writing this post has recalibrated me a bit. It shall have to do. I'm off to Glenferrie :)
I've been feeling anxious and nervous all week. My inner deconstructionist whispers that feeling nervous and anxious about a game which, when reduced down to it, is a bunch of guys competing against a bunch of guys to see who can kick a leather ball through the goals more than the opposition is ... well, it's just not cricket, is it?
It is just football, I agree. But my heart is not in my deconstructing this week. Analysing and casting cool critical eyes over our systems and ways of living are always sore requirements. But not today and certainly not tomorrow.
I'm far too gone with the romance of it all to be indulging in those sorts of things. Melbourne has gone Grand Final mad and my team is part of it for the first time in 17 years and I can't stop pinching myself.
A couple of kilometres down the road as I walked to work today 100,000 people were lined up for the annual Grand Final Parade. The shop I buy my lunch in had posters and balloons stuck up when I went in today. Yelled out my support for my team before ordering my lunch. Wore my scarf to work. Draped another scarf around my cubicle, stuck up a poster, in competition with my workmate Mary, who had an opposing blue and white scarf and poster of her own draped around her workstation.
Festivity. Buoys your step. You can feel it in the air. Melbourne is a football town. Everyone is talking about it. It's a Christmas Eve feeling in Melbourne town this evening. What I'm loving the most about the leadup is this sense of community. Of shared excitement. Of a connection with other people. Of the suspection that most of us are drowning in our own loneliness, dying for festival, yearning for connection. You can see it in people's eyes.
I don't have seats for tomorrow's game. My mum and I are meeting three hours before the game starts so that we can secure "front row" seats in the standing room of M2. I plan to take a book, my camera, a pen, something to write on. Comfy footwear. There is something attractive about being forced to sit around for three hours and having nothing to distract myself with unless it's a book or some paper or chattery conversation. No computers. Oh, there's my mobile and I imagine there will be flurries of nervous text messages going backwards and forwards. But you can only text so much before you tire of it. Much more exciting to watch the passing parade, knowing you are part of it, soaking in the atmosphere. Knowing that the magnitude of the occasion is going to rise me above self-consciousness. Even looking forward to standing with a group of people I don't know. These big occasions always get us over our animosity towards each other and throws us into cameraderie.
And so this week I have laid aside my deconstructionist hat and put on my poet's beanie :) Walking misty eyed into the experience. Smearing Vaseline on my lenses. Mindful that it's just a game. Mindful that I love this game. Mindful that it may just be a game but whatever the result I will shed tears tomorrow. Perhaps I should feel embarrassed about that, I'm not sure. But that's something that also belongs to my deconstructionist side and that side is packed away for Monday. Hell, I might even leave it in its box till the following Monday. 'Cause deconstructing and analysis are all very well, but singing and festival and colour and community provide the vision about what could possibly be. Even if that's starting from the position of a bunch of guys kicking a dead pigskin around.
Whatever. One more sleep. Go you Hawkers.
It is just football, I agree. But my heart is not in my deconstructing this week. Analysing and casting cool critical eyes over our systems and ways of living are always sore requirements. But not today and certainly not tomorrow.
I'm far too gone with the romance of it all to be indulging in those sorts of things. Melbourne has gone Grand Final mad and my team is part of it for the first time in 17 years and I can't stop pinching myself.
A couple of kilometres down the road as I walked to work today 100,000 people were lined up for the annual Grand Final Parade. The shop I buy my lunch in had posters and balloons stuck up when I went in today. Yelled out my support for my team before ordering my lunch. Wore my scarf to work. Draped another scarf around my cubicle, stuck up a poster, in competition with my workmate Mary, who had an opposing blue and white scarf and poster of her own draped around her workstation.
Festivity. Buoys your step. You can feel it in the air. Melbourne is a football town. Everyone is talking about it. It's a Christmas Eve feeling in Melbourne town this evening. What I'm loving the most about the leadup is this sense of community. Of shared excitement. Of a connection with other people. Of the suspection that most of us are drowning in our own loneliness, dying for festival, yearning for connection. You can see it in people's eyes.
I don't have seats for tomorrow's game. My mum and I are meeting three hours before the game starts so that we can secure "front row" seats in the standing room of M2. I plan to take a book, my camera, a pen, something to write on. Comfy footwear. There is something attractive about being forced to sit around for three hours and having nothing to distract myself with unless it's a book or some paper or chattery conversation. No computers. Oh, there's my mobile and I imagine there will be flurries of nervous text messages going backwards and forwards. But you can only text so much before you tire of it. Much more exciting to watch the passing parade, knowing you are part of it, soaking in the atmosphere. Knowing that the magnitude of the occasion is going to rise me above self-consciousness. Even looking forward to standing with a group of people I don't know. These big occasions always get us over our animosity towards each other and throws us into cameraderie.
And so this week I have laid aside my deconstructionist hat and put on my poet's beanie :) Walking misty eyed into the experience. Smearing Vaseline on my lenses. Mindful that it's just a game. Mindful that I love this game. Mindful that it may just be a game but whatever the result I will shed tears tomorrow. Perhaps I should feel embarrassed about that, I'm not sure. But that's something that also belongs to my deconstructionist side and that side is packed away for Monday. Hell, I might even leave it in its box till the following Monday. 'Cause deconstructing and analysis are all very well, but singing and festival and colour and community provide the vision about what could possibly be. Even if that's starting from the position of a bunch of guys kicking a dead pigskin around.
Whatever. One more sleep. Go you Hawkers.
I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final. I'm going to the Grand Final.
Everyone has things they are bad at. Mine is fine print processing/retention and hoop jumping. Especially in a week where I have been finding it difficult to concentrate. It's what caused me to just pick an ISP in the end because comparing different plans and looking at all those different little things just confuses and disorientates me. Confuses me and boggles me and makes my head scramble until all the words swim in front of my eyes and it doesn't make sense. I would much rather ponder the big massive things of the universe, than work out how to go about getting tickets to the Grand Final and all the 140 steps required to do so.
That is partially the reason why I have stuffed up buying two standing room Grand Final tickets. I won't go into the rather dull details, suffice to say that when Ticketmaster rang me at 4.42 this afternoon to say that they were holding them for me until 5.00, that I had my phone switched off. I never switch my phone off. If I had my phone on, the way it is all the bloody time, I would have been able to take the call and sort it out.
But really, all those little if onlys really only add up to the fact that I stuffed up. I'll add the word 'should' to 'if only' - may as well go the full hog - and say I should have sat down and put in some brain time to make sure I had it clear in my head what the procedure was. Because God only knows, they only get more convoluted and hoop jumping as time goes on, and moronic people like me who get confused at such things miss out on two Grand Final tickets because they are stupid, brain-dead, fucking doofuses.
But no, really. I'm fine about it. I'm not too bad about it now I've swallowed by tears and rang my Mum to explain what a paradox it is that her very intelligent daughter can't sometimes organise herself out of a wet fucking paper bag. And that's why she's not going to the Grand Final either. I'm not too bad now I've spent 15 minutes screaming at myself and crying in rage and irritation at what a fuck-up I can be sometimes.
Standing room tickets sounded a bit dodgy. Now I'd be happy even with stand-on-one-leg tickets.
Anyone wanna sell a slightly braindead 13-years-in-a-row Hawthorn member who's spent countless hours of volunteering time selling memberships before games and answering phones in Operation Payback telephone rooms a couple of tickets?
That is partially the reason why I have stuffed up buying two standing room Grand Final tickets. I won't go into the rather dull details, suffice to say that when Ticketmaster rang me at 4.42 this afternoon to say that they were holding them for me until 5.00, that I had my phone switched off. I never switch my phone off. If I had my phone on, the way it is all the bloody time, I would have been able to take the call and sort it out.
But really, all those little if onlys really only add up to the fact that I stuffed up. I'll add the word 'should' to 'if only' - may as well go the full hog - and say I should have sat down and put in some brain time to make sure I had it clear in my head what the procedure was. Because God only knows, they only get more convoluted and hoop jumping as time goes on, and moronic people like me who get confused at such things miss out on two Grand Final tickets because they are stupid, brain-dead, fucking doofuses.
But no, really. I'm fine about it. I'm not too bad about it now I've swallowed by tears and rang my Mum to explain what a paradox it is that her very intelligent daughter can't sometimes organise herself out of a wet fucking paper bag. And that's why she's not going to the Grand Final either. I'm not too bad now I've spent 15 minutes screaming at myself and crying in rage and irritation at what a fuck-up I can be sometimes.
Standing room tickets sounded a bit dodgy. Now I'd be happy even with stand-on-one-leg tickets.
Anyone wanna sell a slightly braindead 13-years-in-a-row Hawthorn member who's spent countless hours of volunteering time selling memberships before games and answering phones in Operation Payback telephone rooms a couple of tickets?
Tonight's thrashing of the Western Bulldogs felt in some ways like the final we had to have to get to the next one. The poor old Doggies have limped their way into the finals and will most likely limp their way out next weekend :( But oh, oh, oh, my team is a happy team, and a very, very good one. That boy on your right is a 21 year old, once in a lifetime player. I am so grateful that he misses a lot of goals because seriously, it might possibly keep his ego from spilling completely and utterly over into irrevocable Antichristness :)The Hawthorn supporter in front of me was a disgusting creature and may at some point in the future feel ashamed at his behaviour one can only hope. Or maybe not. To yell at supporters who are despondently leaving the ground stuff like, "Oh well, at least you've got '54" - 1954, the last flag the Dogs have won - just doesn't float it for me. What a bitter bastard this guy is. Spent the entire game abusing the umpires - many supporters have this strange paranoia that the umpires are out there to get their team. As if a shiny professional outfit like the AFL would stand for any kind of favouritism like that. I reckon probably 75% of the words that came out of his mouth were vitriole. Man, it left a horrible taste in my mouth.
That Hawthorn supporter in front of me, I commented to my mum, was like a Richmond supporter only richer. Seriously, I understand people going to the footy to get their anger or angst or whatever out. I mean, how many socially sanctioned places are there where we get to yell and scream? But sheesh, does that need to include the levels of vitriole that people (mainly men) display against opposition supporters and players? It makes me angry. I don't understand why you can't be gunning for your team to win without it necessarily meaning that you require the opposition to get hurt, to die, to never win a flag.
Sigh. I must be too egalitarian. Last weekend my team played it's last game for the regular season. Each side had a player aiming to kick the elusive 100 goals. No player has kicked 100 goals in the AFL for about 10 years, so it was kinda a big deal that we had two in the one game, you know? Our team thrashed Carlton that night, too. Thrashed them so that I was kind of bored at times, realised my mind had wandered off and I was pondering ponderables. The same even hapened a little bit tonight, I am embarrassed to say :) But last week, I wanted Brendan Fevola to kick his 100 goals as well. I wanted the opposition supporters to be able to go home - a team who were not playing finals - with something that they could be happy about as well, you know?
I have an ethical problem with sport even as I devour my team's performances each week (and would consider strangling your grandmother for a Grand Final ticket). I have a problem with the whole concept of winning. What constitutes the happy elation you feel when your team has won? What proportion of it is happiness that your team has played well enough to win, and what proportion is euphoria constituted by the fact that you are on top, the best, the greatest? How much of winning is comparison? How much of everything is comparison?
Maybe this is just a male/female divide, I'm not sure. Maybe some males reading this would be rolling their eyes at the namby pambyness of this version of winning. All I know is that when I see grown people behaving like this at a football match, it makes me realise how bitter and twisted so many of us are. It's kind of creepy. But then, I guess it's kind of real.
And just in case I'm sounding a bit holier than thou by saying all this, a bit "I'm ethereal and don't indulge in that stuff", I spent a great part of tonight's match trying to hide my extreme distate and irritation at what I thought were two pathetic examples of humanity that were sitting next to my mum and in front of me when really, all they were doing was taking pot shots at easy targets. Which, when you think about it, was exactly what I was doing too.
Dammit. I hate thinking things through to those sorts of conclusions :)
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Image: AFL.com.au
My footy team just beat Adelaide on their home turf, first time we've beat them there in 14 years. Wheeee!!!!
We're a happy team at Hawthorn
We're the mighty fighting Hawks
We love our club and we play to win
Riding the bumps with a grin
At Hawthorn
Come what may you'll find us striving
Teamwork is the thing that talks
One for all and all for one's
The way we play at Hawthorn
We are the mighty fighting Hawks
We're a happy team at Hawthorn
We're the mighty fighting Hawks
We love our club and we play to win
Riding the bumps with a grin
At Hawthorn
Come what may you'll find us striving
Teamwork is the thing that talks
One for all and all for one's
The way we play at Hawthorn
We are the mighty fighting Hawks
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