Cakewalk

 D. J. Williams. 'Lawrence "Lardie" Tulloch, Captain of Collingwood, 1902-04.' Drawing.

Cancel culture chooses to overlook Claude Debussy’s composition ‘Golliwogg’s Cakewalk’, even as the word golliwog cancans into archaism. Written between 1906 and 1908, it is a standard of classical solo piano. Debussy enjoyed strolling like a musical flaneur. The title reflects Parisian connections with French America, the South, and its nascent jazz culture, the composer possibly thinking himself at the time the height of political correctness. The cakewalk was a strutting or strolling dance performed by African Americans in the period, the best dance winning the cake, and I’ve always wondered if it was fashionable in Melbourne at the turn of the century. Cakewalk became ragtime. There is an aural similarity between Golliwog and Collingwood, making one wonder if there isn’t some connection, some reason why ‘cakewalk’ walked its way so easily into the club song, though its lyrics are said to have been made up in 1903. Other club songs are innocuous (‘We are the Navy Blues’), ludicrously cheerful (‘We’re a happy team at Hawthorn’) or philosophically postmodern (‘It’s a high flying flag, it’s the emblem for me and for you.’). Deconstruction is not on the agenda here. Collingwood’s song has edge, it cuts to the chase by bragging that Grand Finals are a walkover, when you’re Collingwood. In fact, only if you’re Collingwood. This is because cakewalk already had a second meaning, probably derived from the first meaning, anything that is achieved with ease, an accomplishment that’s in fact a complete pushover. Significantly, it is the only club song that acknowledges its multitudinous fans: ‘See, the barrackers are shouting, as all barrackers should, for the Premiership’s a cakewalk, for the Good Old Collingwood.’ Understandably, such an openly declared certitude will get up the noses of other football followers, even if it happens to be correct; the attitude could be described as Debussyan. Claude Debussy was known for his egocentric hauteur and opinionated arrogance, further reasons why he fits right in at Collingwood. He knew he was right all of the time, as we find in his one-eyed music criticism. But indeed the hubristic sentiments in the song have served to define the club, resulting in difficult emotional dramas and soul-searching when Collingwood happens by chance to not win a Grand Final, as occurred incredibly during the traumatic Colliwobbles period (1970-90). Things got so bad that some people at the club argued cakewalk should be removed from the song to save embarrassment. However, this minority view was only a temporary aberration, an unexpected loss of nerve, and after a brief reality check ‘cakewalk’ was soon reinstated by unanimous acclaim.

Point

Arthur Streeton. ‘The National Game’ (circa 1889)

That there is all the time in the world, springtime and its rite, then summertime blues, to recover simply by reflecting on other phenomena, experience itself, upon the difference that is made through the difference, either way, of one point. That this season of multiple tactics and strategic breakouts, of inflated bladders and projectile egos, enacted with purpose from early and very close to perfection in daylight and nightlight, a time warp in which every day is a Saturday, now more literally than ever, should come down in the dying moments to a difference of one point. That the hopes and fears of all the years since first the promise of September victory entered the childhood perplex, are met in the turmoil and sponsored highlights and unstoppable pattern of run and snap and tap and knock leading to an exceptionally close thing one straight kick could change forever from down one point. That they would do it in that devil may care fashion, not just before, but now in the preliminary, not give in but take it up to the chancers in a furious spectacle of miraculous coordination, only to know it in the nerves, the seconds ticking to the siren, and that the gap, people, is one point. That the fantasy contests of boyhood, colossal scoreboards and towering marks of desirous dream, translate into a lifetime of reckonings with record book margins, their close alliance with the truth of experience, the closest of contests short of a draw, in which two forces of remarkably equal excellence must scramble in the final shadow stages to be the one on the winning side of one point. That hyperbole, all those slavish enthusiastic columns week-in week-out home-and-away to say they climb the heights, they stacks on the mill, they blind-turn the pass, they play the four quarters, they never surrender except for a patch there where they for a moment lost control slightly of the narrative, in spasmodic adjectives and limited verbs and select clichés, would come an end with but one point; not a summary, or even an ellipsis, but after all those delirious deadlines, those heady headlines, one solitary point, one effing point, can you believe it mate tell me I’m dreaming one point. That it takes but one panting pent-up player, pint-size or pontifical, to put one punt between the big sticks, is a far far better thing to do than not kick the big six: do it please, for all of us, just one straight as a die punt to pass by that imminent defeat by one point. [Part 2: ‘Point’ of the two-part poem ‘One Point’.]

Image: when Sir Arthur Streeton exhibited this work at the 9 x 5 Impressionists Exhibition at Buxton’s Gallery in Swanston Street, Marvellous Melbourne, in 1889, Australian football had been going over 30 years but the Victorian Football League still hadn’t been invented. It is therefore a matter of local chutzpah for Streeton to title his small painting ‘The National Game’, given the game had only just started infiltrating across colonial borders. The painting is historical proof that at the time only goals counted; behind posts and therefore the counting of behinds (aka those make-and-break single points) was introduced in 1897.

One

 

 Charles Blackman. The Barracker. (1965) Oil on canvas.

That that swirling and bifurcating surge from the centre determined at every duck and swerve and flick and roost to move the oval object inexorably forward for a timely goal, whichever goal face at the time; that same dashing attack that is the best form of stalwart defence; (the proposition in the minds of all participants here today, passive or active) will avert a loss by just one point. That these tidal teenage minds speaking throaty cockatoo to those trained-up twenty-something minds, hot chilli peppers and cool cucumbers the lot of them, and those thirtyish traditional minds too, spent every second (observers are keen to believe) of their speaking careers and handballing panache intent on getting beyond at all cost an end by one point. That it is on point to remember the better team does not always win, a truism of three-quarter time orange munching, as the world watches on with scant regard while dodgy umpiring, unscrupulous behind-play maulings, unsavoury sledges and other misdemeanours too minor in themselves to deserve more than cries of shame and ball it up, leave in their wake the better team within cooee of victory but for one point. That this titanic twenty bursting their boilers for four solid quarters, come hell or high water could avoid or overcome that immovable object on their close horizons, and closing fast, iceberg side of twenty capable of freezing the blood and sinking hopes by so much as one seismic collision (so the thinking goes), just a single hit and disappearance at one very direct point, for only one point. That legendary walkovers are recalled, massive margins leaving the impression only one team was playing, bloodbaths of bone-crunching consequence, and even results that left no margin of error or element of wrong-foot or doubt in players and spectators alike, goading each other on with goal scores galore, leaves still the existential end (turning reluctantly towards the scoreboard) that that is not 100 or 50 points difference, but one point. That that fervent belief in one colour of guernsey not another, that mascot not another, that obscure working class suburb not another, leads into still greater fervour, a mindset of partisan memory, a fountain of continuous star statistics, a retelling of their most balletic ballistics, their most hardened hard-earned heart-warming teamwork, that leads towards the almost splendour, the nearly total glory, the so near and yet so far summed up by the hyper commentator at the last bell near the last post his avid laconicism, a blast from the past, now present again very very loudly: one point.

Kick

Roy de Maistre. The Football Match. (1938) Oil on canvas.

Today’s game has been reduced to kick-to-kick, the simplified choice of flat punt and torpedo. Lamentable is the vanishing of classic kicks. I sometimes think that the place kick is the missing link, a clue to the origin of the game, dug into the earth. Those old men, young then, they’d line it up and boot it through, out of the ground. Dead now, who were kicking back then. Whether from a mark or free, the player placed the ball in a small divot made with his boot. The skill was to meet the ball with the toe at the best angle for height and accuracy. This process today would be called a delaying tactic, as well as bad for ratings, and it was due to this slowing of the flow that the kick phased out of use after 1910, together with lace-up guernseys and knickerbockers. Contra Blainey, it is sensible to keep an open mind about adaptations from Indigenous sport, though given the game’s perceived hybridity, the place kick may have been borrowed from rugby. Its demise suggests that 100 years ago players and spectators already relished a faster game. Closely allied to the place kick is the drop kick, point of impact being at ground level as the ball lands from the hand, or bounces. Some of the most spectacular kicking in the modern game was drop kicking, made by men with nous and bravura. Which is why it’s inexplicable that the term has come to be an insult for a stupid or hopeless person. I note the term’s similarity to the insult ‘dipstick’ and comic legend ‘dropbear’ as clues to this irrational connection. Erasure of the drop kick came about when nervous coaches forbad it as too risky: for every awesome flight trajectory there was another that bumbled along the ground, the term here being grubber. There are many who remain unimpressed by the grubber defence, especially those who remember players whose drop kick was their most natural form of play. The drop punt is nothing but an excuse for a drop kick, disregarded with contempt by those who lament the golden age of kicking. Unsurprisingly, there were also major practitioners of the stab pass. This low, fast kick was once a feature of any game, especially as delivered by a rover, itself a team position that is disappearing like the Cheshire Cat. Dainty little punts between players are nowadays a charming way of passing the time, but will never match the incomparable stab pass. The name describes the action, a moment that in a flash changed the tempo of the game, lifted the spirits and the roar of the crowd. Alas, this ghost of the past has given way to an age in which teams play up to the easily gobsmacked with variations on the banana kick, or check-side, a farcical new term that seems to have been lifted from snooker.    

Coping

 

Seeking support is one of the best adaptive coping mechanisms for a Magpie barracker. Grouping together during finals season with likeminded supporters confirms the concrete view that Collingwood is bound for glory and gives respite from the nagging fear that some bunch of clowns (Sydney, Geelong?) could cheat you of what is self-evidently yours by right. Relaxation is recommended, spending your afternoons devising Greatest Collingwood Teams of the past hundred years: Billy Picken fullback, the Richardson brothers wings, ‘Fabulous Phil’ Carman interchange, &c. Setting realistic goals is part of the coping mechanism known as problem-solving. A five or six goal victory in the Grand Final is more realistic than a 20-goal win. Keeping this in mind helps steady nerves and better focuses the barracker’s mental game plan. Maintaining a sense of humour is well nigh impossible if you’re Collingwood. Finding a sense of humour, however, is a good practical exercise that can occupy hours of your day, if only as a distraction from the confounded business of what is the right angle for wearing a black-and-white beanie and scarf. Physical activity is a mechanism tried and true. It can involve pinning club photos around your room, regularly checking where you are on the League Ladder, and may extend to walking down to the local oval and doing something you haven’t done since you were a kid: kick a football. Maladaptive coping mechanisms, unfortunately, are very common amongst diehard Magpies. Escape into daydreams, playing all the positions in fantasy matches of the mind, are on the record. Self-soothing is a slippery slope. It sounds therapeutic to watch Collingwood replays 24/7 with the aid of large bottles of Jack Daniels, but this is a false friend, leading to deepening delusions of grandeur and disconnection from the central nervous system. In fact, can lead onto numbing, a coping mechanism that critics claim is the normal state of homeostasis for people who barrack for the Pies: what else do they think about? Isn’t it “their very being”? This is unfair. Collingwood people are capable of doing more than one thing at a time. Scattered evidence is available if you wish to know more, just message me. Compulsion is common, especially during the winter season if the Woods look like a chance. Online tracking verifies that Collingwood sites get more hits per minute than any other football site, with computer hermits asserting, or perhaps that’s indulging, their existential belief in visions of Victoria Park. Some analysts have likened this to religious behaviour; others say it’s just tragic. Or comic, depending on your point of view. Risk-taking must be factored in, at the very least, dangerous driving, hooliganism, extreme vulgar jokes often being explained with the off-hand judgement, “Must be a Collingwood person.” Most serious is self-harm, for example getting a tattoo of the club crest on your bicep, the names of the 2010 Premiership team down your calf muscle, or (worst case scenario) going the full Dane Swan and covering yourself in glory from head to foot, black-and-white and read all over.  

Collingwood

 

Collingwood is into the Preliminary Final. This raises the agonising yet ecstatic possibility of finding our way into the Grand Final, with the unbearable chance of winning the Premiership. These prospects, collectively, are enough to keep the anxiety levels permanently in the red zone. What if we lose? Even worse, by one point? Equally terrifying, what if Collingwood wins? The word ‘miracle’ will haunt the mind for the next year, the next finals. People say Collingwood barrackers take the game too seriously, that we lack a sense of humour. What of it? The overriding principle is that Collingwood is the best team, wherever we finish on the ladder. Not only the best team, actually the only team, as other clubs merge into a polychrome cohort of club colours, drug scandals, and bad kicking. That’s their problem! Collingwood’s problem is that it’s a legend, a huge burden to bear, but we manage. The Preliminary Final is a precarious proof of this self-evident fun fact. Which is why Collingwood is perennially accused of hubris, arrogance, and pride, with accompanying disorders of self-delusion, megalomania, and colour blindness. Who’s arguing? When you’ve got it, flaunt it! Whether it’s a wooden spoon or a Premiership cup. It is this supreme indifference to anyone else’s feelings that engenders hatred towards Collingwood. This is not an intellectual proposition but is, so I am told often by those with these feelings, visceral. Hatred that is linked to laughter, the scornful, derisive laugh of those who enjoy watching Collingwood lose the Preliminary Final by one point due to a poor umpiring decision on the siren. Old Four Eyes strikes again! Chrissy Amphlett sings it’s a fine line between pleasure and pain and she’s just your average Geelong supporter. Collingwood, by comparison, is Dantesque. A Preliminary Final is purgatory, a promise of future Magpie misery or magnificence on a scale that, either way, transcends mere mortality. Perhaps this is why slurs are common, for example that the bulk of the Black-And-White Army are alcoholics. This is unverifiable, though there is no question that Magpie fans require a raft of coping mechanisms, especially given we treat Collingwood itself as a coping mechanism for life itself. I say all of this on the eve of the Preliminary not because I doubt the players’ ability to win; this is never in doubt. They are 20 of humanity’s finest. My concern is with the fans, will they survive, given we’re being dangled halfway between Heaven and Hell? You might laugh, but you don’t barrack for Collingwood. They say a Collingwood crowd is the only Earthly sound that penetrates into Outer Space, the acoustic equivalent of the Great Wall of China. It makes sense. Full-voiced expression of our collective psychodrama has no barriers. In space no-one can hear you scream, unless you’re Collingwood.