A fickle, futile hunt for glory

Sebastian Hassett traverses between the streets of Melbourne and Adelaide to observe the cultural phenomena that sweeps the southern states during September.

FOOTBALL is a funny game. Especially during September, when anything can and usually does happen.

Clichés like the above are wheeled out freely to explain the unexplainable. Sometimes it’s all the football fan has left in his arsenal to appropriately analyse the game. Could anything else better explain the nature of Sydney’s Nick Davis-inspired efforts than ‘fairytale finish’?

It is a part of football’s charm that we have to resort to such terminology. No matter how hard we try, the traditional terms of analysis never do justice to the intricacies and anomalies of the game.

At lunch with my girlfriend’s family last week, her mother remarked how living interstate for two years had deprived her of the iconic ‘football talk’ that swamps Melbourne. It must be said that she doesn’t actually like the game – just the subconsciously endearing analysis that accompanies it.

I was sitting on the 4:45pm train to Werribee on Saturday, when a man boarded the carriage at Footscray Station and sat on the other side of the aisle.

Erring slightly on the rougher side of feral, he grimly clutched a can of pre-mixed bourbon – concealed in the customary brown paper bag – and unleashed a torrent of expletives and incoherent sentences to the man nearest him about how difficult it is to deal with the modern woman.

He was greeted by a puzzled look. The uncomfortable moment of silence was eased by the sight of Davis’s photograph on the front page of a paper belonging to a nearby commuter, spurring the semi-mulleted ruffian to a new point of contention.

“They won’t be able to transport that game to the MCG against St Kilda, you realise. The dimensions of the ground are significantly different to the SCG and the bottled up, stoppage-style game they play will backfire,” he explained.

I broke into a smile. A slightly embarrassed one. Did he just fluke that Commetti-like insight?

“It might suit Barry Hall somewhat, but none of the others,” he continued, gesticulating how the big forward needs to vary his leads and find space.

“Did you know the 50-metre arc at the SCG encroaches on the centre square? Hall needs room to roam; he alone can stretch their backline, especially if the likes of Koschitzke, Maguire and Hudghton don’t come up.”

Encroaches? Yes, it does. And Hall needs that freedom to impose himself in the forward 50, something he wasn’t afforded by a crowded and close-checking Geelong defence. Fact. Needless to say that the Saintly trio are being monitored around the clock by fitness staff.

Just as I was settling in to hear more of this shrewd analysis, he alighted. He then stepped out onto the platform and asked another passenger for directions to the nearest bottle shop.

This was a man who understood the game as well as anyone paid to analyse it. The study of the game in Melbourne is so intense that experts appear everywhere. But is this a localised phenomenon? Hardly.

I spent much of the past week in Adelaide to observe the build up to the Showdown. On every corner of the CBD, some kind of paraphernalia belonging to either club was readily identifiable.

All anybody could talk about was the game. Would Ricciuto’s return swing the pendulum towards the minor premiers? Is Port returning to their best form? Is the cauldron of finals too much for Neil Craig? The street-corner study of the game was intense in the extreme.

The night before the showdown, Adelaide United, the local A-League team who regularly draws crowds in excess of 15,000 to their matches, pulled in around half that figure. A local journalist shrugged his shoulders and told me that people needed to prepare for the ‘biggest sporting event in the history of Adelaide’.

Word about town was that the fear of losing was driving both teams. Perhaps it was; while winners are temporarily exonerated until next week, a September loser is forever condemned as a failure. In a two-team town, the shame of conceding bragging rights is ridiculously amplified.

Six days before, the Port army were exulting in the re-found predatory instincts of their team, while Adelaide fans were still in shock over the result of the previous night. Upon leaving AAMI Stadium post-match on Saturday, it was the Power fans sporting blood-drained faces.

And while the harbourside escape tale is wrapped in a momentary glow – just how the Swans kicked three goals in three quarters and still won is anyone’s guess – wasn’t it only a week before that an erroneous umpiring decision cost the Swans a more crucial victory in Perth?

This coming week, they’ll go in as rank underdogs and quite possibly bow out, unloved and forgotten.

And the Saints, just weeks after being abandoned by the public following a spate of injuries in a crunching game against Fremantle, have been reincarnated by the media as Victoria’s last chance.

Yes, football is a funny game.

Sebastian Hassett is chief reporter for SportsAustralia.com.

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