Round 22 - Ready
A dreaded sunny Sunday, so I’ll meet you at Kardinia Park
By Ready
NINE o’clock on a drizzly Monday morning and I’m first, and only, in the queue inside the Athenaeum. The usual dour exterior masks a welling enthusiasm for the prospect at hand. Yes, I want a ticket for Geelong. Yes, I know we’ll most likely lose. Yes, I am more than aware the mathematical possibility that still exists despite yesterday’s loss will have evaporated into complete and utter nothingness by then, but still, you know what, I’ve had this game pencilled in ever since the draw came out and the truth is, no matter what, I was always going to go. I want a ticket for Geelong. I just can’t help myself.
Two weeks later I can’t be bothered stuffing around with the trains so I take the Torino Express, onto Kings Way and then up over the West Gate where the northerly is threatening to send everyone toppling over the edge. It’s a long drive which presents plenty of opportunity to think, and thinking too much can get a bloke into a lot of trouble. A bit of a daydream about how last week we pulled one from the fire in a pretty much meaningless game against Hawthorn, and just how bloody fantastic it was. All those arrogant Hawks in their mid-twenties, bred on success and never having shaken their born-to-rule mindset. They still don’t rate us. At one stage they beat us year in, year out for ten seasons. I remember as a kid, late at night and exiled half a world away, my father telling me that it was character-building to barrack for Richmond. I was eleven years old. Wayne Campbell played his first game for the Tigers in 1991 and today he’ll play his last.
I spot the ground and turn off to find a spot for the car, then wander down the hill, filing my pre-match report to Reeve from sunny downtown Geelong. So this is what suburban football was like. I climb the steps to the terrace and find a spot behind a few Grog Squad regulars: Charra, Jason, Mick and his fiancée, Scotty the happy Hammer, and, ladies and gentlemen, Mr… Ron… Jeremy. Been standing with this lot for three seasons now, know all their names but they don’t know mine. I’m the big beanpole fellow who mostly keeps quiet except to join in the sing-songs, just another regular face. They’re here just like I knew they would be. They can’t help themselves either.
We kick into the wind in the first term, and after an early flourish that yields two behinds are in trouble. Joel Bowden is one of two loose men in the back half, and going back with the flight of the ball he’s collected head-high by Mooney. No free kick, and Nathan Ablett pounces on the crumbs and goals. Typical. A Geelong bloke behinds me wonders why you’d bother backing back like that. I am incredulous. Because it’s your first and only instinct, because if you didn’t they’d get a goal anyway, because you’d get dragged, and because twenty-four thousand at the ground and a national television audience would shower you with scorn and derision. Bowden used to drive us all up the wall something chronic, but in the last two years he’s earned himself an awful lot of respect.
After ten minutes we’re four goals down but manage to steady and chip the ball around. It’s ugly football but impressive because we’re obviously playing to instruction. We’ll see out time and then go direct after the break. We can execute a specific game-plan! Things are looking up.
At the start of the second quarter Steve Johnson manages to knock one through from an impossible angle while flat on his back. It’s not looking like our day. Hartigan wraps up a handbagger in a tackle and after an eternity to dispose of it, he does – incorrectly. Play on. Goal. But Campbell has found a bit of space to kick truly and when Richo gets fifty and his second, dispatched onto the roof of the Hickey Stand, we’re very much in this. Brett Deledio leaves Gary Ablett grasping at thin air and dashes through the centre square. Hope for today and hope for the future.
At half-time the margin is three points and it’s a matter of holding on for a quarter and then coming home with a wet sail. Darren Milburn goals. We have long memories and tell him to be careful driving home. For some reason this doesn’t make me wince like someone yelling out, “How’s your sister?!” to Peter Riccardi last year. Sometimes there’s no logic in football.
Meanwhile Terry Wallace has decided to employ a bit of logic and drummed the game plan into his charges again. Keep possession. Don’t have it come straight back at you at a rate of knots. Kane Johnson patrols the back half marshalling operations and although we turn it over a few times, the best the Cats can manage is a string of behinds.
Then Milburn (be careful driving home!) gets his second and Tom Harley bobs up off the treatment table, and into the forward fifty, to put through another. We are twenty-six points down at three-quarter time and it may just be a bridge too far. But just prior to the last change a Geelong kick from half back has cleared the pack at centre half forward by a mile and sped towards the boundary in the pocket. If we harness the wind we can win this. We should be gone. Come on, Tigers.
Geelong sense that one solitary goal will break us and pile forward. Rory Hilton has been towelled up by Steve Johnson and concedes a free kick deep in the left forward pocket. Johnson jumps to his feet and dobs it through the big sticks but the umpire calls him back. At the second attempt he puts it out on the full. We flood back, giving the Cats no space, and concede a mark deep in the right pocket. It’s an impossible shot but Darren Gaspar leaps up and smothers the ball, then grabs it. He’s paid the mark for a kick that’s gone all of five metres but we don’t care. We laugh. Doctor Who has come back from the brink of oblivion this season but has never lost our respect. In fact, it was against Geelong last year, a few rounds from the end of a wretched season having come back much too soon from his knee reco, that Gas made four consecutive efforts on the half back flank and signalled he’d eventually find his elusive form again. We remember. Sometimes it pays to have faith.
But ten minutes have elapsed and we’d want to get a hurry on. Amazingly, we do. Jay Schulz spoils and then runs from defence. So does Ray Hall with his ungainly gait. Deledio knows no fear of failure. Richard Tambling does, but will then momentarily forget that he’s a teenage tearaway in mortal danger from a swarm of grown men. One day soon he’ll step out on the ground and in his mind see only himself, his teammates and the precious footy. Shane Tuck keeps racking up clearances and best and fairest votes after surviving last year’s cull by the skin of his teeth. Plough remembered his old man playing umpteen reserves games for Hawthorn before setting off for 400. By Tuck senior out of an Ablett mare, he has the breeding, and the class, and the desire.
We get a goal, and another. The Geelong supporters have lost all confidence and our vocals ring out across the terrace. We just might lose but having soaked up pressure and then gone for broke we’re getting at least a moral victory. Geelong are shot and chip the ball around hoping for respite. Boring, boring Geelong. But we harry and hassle and break it up. In his last game of football Wayne Campbell is part of the charge as much as anyone. It’s inspiring and just might be telling. Another goal.
For the second quarter in a row they haven’t started the clock above the cheer squad but we know there can’t be much time left. It’s taken all year for the brains trust to realise that Troy Simmonds is a ruckman rather than a key forward, but with the chips down he drifts inside the fifty. Amid a milling throng he grabs the ball from the ruck and snaps. Goal! Two hundred metres away we go absolutely mental. There must be only seconds to go. Please, just win it out of the middle. We do, and scramble a kick forward, and Richo comes steaming out leaving Scarlett in his wake. But Ling has sensed the danger and drops in from the side to mark. It’s gutsy. It’s over.
We don’t hear the siren but the storm of blue and white flags thrust skywards tells the story. We put on a brave face and take the *smile*. We haven’t won *smile* all, since sixty-three… how *smile*ing sh!t are we? Some of the locals want to have a go back but don’t have much except “Scoreboard!” and “Next week!” That lot beat a path to the steps, leaving a few that have a bit more gumption. They ask us why we’d live in Melbourne when we could be chatting up the beautiful belles of the surf coast. Maybe because all their sisters are in the big smoke. I should know. I know how to get my heart broken.
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We wander around and then across the ground, looking for the umpire’s rooms where the post-match is to be held. Benny Gale walks past and we cheer. We eventually find the unremarkable brick structure where the Richmond faithful are gathering. A clutch of Tiger players from the 1990s have come down to see Campbell into retirement. Scotty Turner gets a rousing reception and grins. Maybe he knows he’s Grog Squad’s all-time hero.
I spot a familiar face and go over and shake his hand. Pedro is another Grog Squad regular, although he’s been sitting with the cheer squad today. Always reckon he looks like the ghost of Robbie McGhie -- although my mail is Robbie McGhie is still very much alive -- and when we run into each other at the back of the Bourke Street goals at Docklands we always give each other a nod, a wink and a grin. He’d have a beer except he’s got a long hike back to Narre Warren, so we head outside for a dart and a chat. Pedro’s barely missed a game since the mid-seventies and tells me about the greats, about a DVD he’s just got where he can see the footage just like he can see it in his mind’s eye. He’s brought one of his young fellas down today because he always promised he’d take him to Kardinia Park to see the Tiges. We talk about Campbo. “I’ve seen his whole career,” Pedro says, and shakes his head. “It’s gone past just like that.”
The man himself arrives to polite applause. He looks embarrassed. I suppose he feels he’s been hung in the court of public opinion, once when he threatened to leave in a futile attempt to shake the joint up, and once when awarded the captaincy that Spud had stripped from Matty Knights, but this hall is filled with the same Tiger faces who’ve been in the crowd year after year, the ones who keep on going knowing that things have to get better sooner or later. In the meantime they do their best with a bad lot, and learn to love them in spite of everything. Campbo is presented with a plaque and shakes hands with the well-wishers. He’s not a man much given to displays of emotion, but on the inside, despite all the disappointments, he’s probably just a little proud.
I head back outside and run into a bloke who was standing behind me on the terrace. Am I really that tall? I grin. Yes I am. We have a laugh and a yack about the day. Like me, for some reason he’s not completely gutted at getting done by a point. “It’s dangerous to live in the past,” he tells me, “especially where we’ve been the last twenty years. But this time I reckon there’s real hope for the future.” He and his mate are off to the pub, but the shadows are lengthening and I’ve got the Torino Express to deal with. I tell them and Pedro I’ll see them in Round 1.
I head off up the hill and find the car, and sit for a few minutes listening to Campbell’s last interview as a player, then start inching my way through the neverending set of lights. It’s another long drive and another opportunity to think, and thinking too much can get a bloke into a lot of trouble. The radio is playing up so I turn it off and have a bit of a sing-song. It’s all right, there’s no kids to scare or birds to send flapping off into the trees.
The bloke was right. There is real hope for the future. Deledio is all class, and when Tambling works out class beats brawn he’ll be a beauty as well. Then there’s the slick Danny Meyer, and the gangling Adam Pattison, and the wild-card Luke McGuane waiting in the wings. Daniel Jackson, Andrew Raines and Thomas Roach will benefit from having a coaching panel who can fill their heads with the right things. Give them time. Richo can play another few years, surely. Just stick Simmonds in the ruck and leave him there. Give Tuck and Mark Coughlan the thoroughbred preparations they need. Then there’s Dean Polo, a kid from Wy Yung who’s not going to die wondering whether he could have made it. He’ll be unassumingly special. Wallace knows what to do, having almost pulled it off the first time and then gone away and reappraised his methods for his second and last chance at success. Things are looking up. Clinton Casey might even find a way of not making a loss.
It can be a mug’s game, hope, but just at the minute I really don’t care. You’d be a miserable bastard if you did. Hope springs eternal. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and there’s more to it than just football, honestly there is, there’s a few more bits of the jigsaw besides, but I tell you what, won’t you just know it: I just might die with a smile on my face after all.
