Football (June)

I remember Collingwood, decked out Magpies queueing at ticket boxes, joking tactics, savouring the pie-sweet air. First thrill of the green zone as we mounted the ramp, and blue sky, the players circling their positions, muscles gleaming from the rooms, handsome in their distance, leading for a pass, stacks-on-the-mill. The wooden members’ stand was a tangle of streamers, a lungful of belief. Ted Potter was all style, Mick Bone looked ready to kill, even in June our place in the four secure. Fans standing on cans they had consumed yelled the louder over the partisan crowd: “Get some glasses, u-m-p-i-r-e!” 

Football (August)

The objective of football is to avoid permanent body damage. This includes lifelong inflamed bones, concussed brains, and separated joints. Your body runs freely onto the ground. After that, you’re on your own. You must not be tripped, pushed in the back, hit with a passing elbow, but you will. An important achievement is the flying mark, so be prepared for someone to crash into you, breaking your neck. If injuries sustained are grievous, or even mortal, and it’s August, the offender may be scrubbed out for the Finals, but it all depends where the umpire is at the time.

Football (April)

A quadri-lanceolate oval employed by a quarantine of wills upon a cornerless field. Its indented heads serve unpredictability, point being to bounce opposite to the course of play. Stitched tight by fearsome egos, laced for loss, it upends the April Premiers’ arrogant marks, rolls clear of princely pretensions, floats mysteriously to a passing rover, watched on high by thousands near a goalpost. The bladder is no possum intestine but imperial rubber: intestinal fortitude combines imported British optimism, purple emotions, and a load of pressurized hot air. Placed, dropped, torpedoed, punted, or stabbed, it’s the game’s one element no-one argues with.