A magical day, a community miracle
I love the Community Cup, and played in about seven of them. It was contested again today, with the dirty Rockdogs winning by a point.
In 2007 I wrote this piece for the matchday program. Eighteen years later, the spirit of the game, and the strength of the cause endures.
I love playing in the Community Cup, even if my body doesn’t. I hobbled through the 2005 fixture, and pulled up with a little general soreness, which the Megahertz medical staff thought might keep me out for a game. Fortunately, it was just the one, and now some 103 weeks later, I’m ready to go around again.
Without wanting to give away too much of the Megahertz game plan, from what I saw at training the other night, I think it’s unlikely we’ll chip. It’s not that we can’t play the possession game, and ever since the roof of the men’s toilet caved in under the weight of pigeon shit at the old Fitzroy studios, we have known how to combat a flood. But we will nevertheless eschew ‘possession football’ and as always, aim to kick 20 goals in an attractive exhibition of free-flowing football.
The fact that we usually fall about 15 goals short of this target has nothing to do with effort, and everything to do with the notion that kicking a drop punt 55 metres and finding just the right question to lure Cat Power out from under the studio desk are not always mutually co-existent skills. As footballers, the Megahertz have limitations, and it’s because of these limitations that we make a heartfelt promise to the fans that every year there will be fights and streakers.
Importantly for our chances, the Rockdogs are pretty much the same as us, except they drink and smoke at half time. Okay, the Megahertz players might enjoy the odd half time can, but our rooms don’t have the convivial, tobacco soaked atmosphere of a squandered bar rider. One theory - the years the Megahertz lose are the years we go into their rooms at half time and passive smoke.
Half time is perhaps my favourite time of the day. That miraculous blanket goes around the boundary, the one that means so many more blankets for so many people in need. It’s also an opportunity to venture out into the throng, to listen to music, drunk a beer, and reflect. Usually I reflect on how much I hated half-time during my 200 odd games of serious footy. There’s nothing harder than saying ‘c’mon’ and ‘let’s get em’ and ‘it’s our bloody quarter’ for the fifteenth consecutive year, when really, you’re just cold and stiff and sick of the coach telling everyone to punch from behind and the smalls to get front and centre. How much better to sit on the grass in front of a band, crack a beer, wander back inside, enjoy a half time rendition of the club song, and listen to Dr Pump read from Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’. It’s then that our (retiring) skipper JVG will call us to action in his mellifluous baritone, exhorting us onwards and upwards for the glory of the two stations. By the time we hit the bottom of the race, we’re ready to run through walls, which is lucky because there are 9000 people and 700 dogs sharing the ground with us.
The second half is usually an accelerated experience. The quarters seem to get shorter as the afternoon gets colder, and the result is less important than the real result, which is announced in dollars and cents raised for the Sacred Heart mission. By the last quarter, my right ankle and right knee will both be bone-on-bone, and when the final siren sounds, win or lose, I will try to keep the sort of perspective that should be maintained when there are nine year old playing for both sides.
It’s a magical day, the Community Cup. May it continue to deliver in the way it always has.
'The bells of St Stephens, tolling for Mum'
It was a memorable day, something close to a perfect send off. All of Mum’s kids spoke, as well as her sister Lesley, her close friends Mary Besley and Deidre Pope, our dad Ray, and her grandson Paddy. Jack introduced the thirteen grandkids to the stage, and that was lovely too.
Our film Ange & The Boss is screening at Nova Cinema every day this week at 2.50pm
It’s also streaming on DocPlay.
