Footy life

Saturday afternoon now and I’m watching the footy.
It’s right there in that sentence – my cultural heritage.
‘Footy’ for me means AFL – Aussie Rules footy. In global terms, it’s a weird game that sports fans from other countries have sometimes shown an interest in, but have never understood it. In parts of Australia – like where I grew up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne – it is passionately followed by a huge majority of the population. Think, say, Liverpool and football (soccer for the yanks in the audience). I’m not sure the Americans have an equivalent, but I could be wrong (Note my cultural touchstones – sorry, it’s the way I learnt about the world).

Look at this: an eleven year old boy shuts the door of his house early on a Saturday morning and begins jogging the kilometre or so to his friend’s home. It’s winter in Melbourne and there’s a light frost on the ground and fog in the air. There are few cars about, it’s the middle of the 1970’s, and this small corner of the world is an innocent place. The boy is wearing his full playing outfit, including his boots. It’s a bit slippery running on the footpath with those stops in the boots, but it doesn’t cross his mind that there is anything wrong. Nothing is. It’s Saturday morning and he’s running to Pud’s house so that his dad can drive us to the game in his old valiant. Pud’s dad is older than mine, but he’s happy to get up early and let my dad have a sleep in. My dad will arrive at the ground just before the game starts and begin his customary shouting. My dad is a generally relaxed man, but footy is central and his eldest son is playing and nothing else ever causes him to shout. Except his favorite team, of course.
Before the game starts, all twenty of us boys huddle around our coach, the grade five teacher at my catholic primary school. He gives us instructions about how to play and knows full well that none of those instructions will be followed. When the game starts every boy will follow the ball around the gigantic oval trying to get it and kick it as far as he can. And then chase after it again. Sometimes, things happen in a game where, suddenly, it all makes sense. A kid takes a mark that nobody expected him to, or another kid bursts free from the pack of kids around him and he’s got the ball in both hands and he’s running for all his worth. Little moments in the chaos that make sense. Sometimes it’s me making that sense and I’m running and running and I’ve got the footy in both hands and it really is the best feeling in the whole world and I can hear my old man shouting me on and I can smell the grass and the dirt and the leather and the sweat and then I hoof that waterlogged footy as far as I can. Little moments on a cold Saturday morning can last a lifetime.
Aussie Rules started, way back in the 1850’s, in Melbourne, as barely controlled chaos. By the 1890’s thousands of people would go and watch their fathers, husbands, mates struggle over a leather ball and the tribalism of sports fans began. Both of my parents grew up in footy households. Every kid I knew was into footy – even the ‘wogs’ who played soccer still kicked (a real) footy around at lunchtime at school. There was no choice, but for a long time it never occurred to me that I would want a choice. The intricacies of Australian footy culture had been woven into my understanding and experience of the world. Everything that that involved – competition, masculinity, team work, tribal allegiance to a team, extreme physical effort – was a part of the lens through which I saw, and judged, the world.
At the end of the game, I patted my mates on the back and spat out the water that I drank (which I’d seen the best players on the tv replay do). I looked out over the empty field of play; puffing, sweating and happy in a world of certainty.