Grand Final Day, 2015

Seasons and Grand Finals aren’t the same anymore. Now, they are inescapable reminders of the passing of time.

It’s not the players, with 20 of those glorious Hawks who received medals on Saturday being the same as last year, hardly appearing a day let alone a year older than they were when they destroyed the Swans 12 months ago. But rather, it’s my company in the form of a now 3.5 year-old who had slept through the first half of last year’s Grand Final, but who this year was so excited for the day and the game that he couldn’t get to sleep the night before despite the fact that his beloved Tigers weren’t to be involved.

His sister is here now too, a tiny 7 month-old bundle of energy and smiles with giggles just desperate to burst out any day now. She slept for a while, right up until Bradley Hill kicked the Hawks’ 5th goal as the first quarter approached its conclusion. She’d slept that morning too, though decided she needed my shoulder to assist in the morning nap while her brother and Mum could be heard in other corners of the house, playing, reading, chatting and occasionally sharing fits of uncontrollable laughter.

I recently noted to a friend that we’re currently experiencing the period of our lives that would feature as the flashback in our respective biopics. Towards the end of the film, there we’d be in our twilight years, sitting next to our wives while looking out upon an overtly symbolic sunset. Slowly, the shot would dissolve into a clichéd montage of our wistful memories of days spent with our young nuclear families: playing under doonas and in backyards, visiting with grandparents and cousins, taking family holidays and visiting favourite locations.

It feels pathetic to speak in such nostalgic ways when in one’s 30s, and yet Saturday could only but remind me of how vastly different he is now, and how unimaginably different he and she will be when the next Grand Final comes around.

For the boy is not the same boy who he was last year.

12 months ago, we thought he liked footy and then we thought he really liked cricket. But suddenly, the 2015 footy season hit and the obsession – his first true passion – was born. His most memorable weekend of the year involved meeting a bunch of the Tigers after their Saturday training at Punt Road before watching them defeat the Magpies at the MCG the next day, allowing him to be one of the smallest punters belting out ‘Tigerland’ at game’s end. And now, he’s the kind of child who was recently found at the breakfast table laughing at the absurdity of his parents’ revelation that Buddy once played for the Hawks, demanding that images be quickly sourced so that such hilarious nonsense could be enjoyed in all its visual splendour.

All of which was why he couldn’t sleep on Friday night, and why – the best part of two hours after the evening’s bedtime stories ‘Why I Love Footy’ and ‘I Barrack for Richmond’ had been replaced on the shelf – I was called back into his room to answer an all-important request: “Dad, can you tell me again what’s going to happen on Grand Final Day?”

And it’s why he was up well before 6am, being cajoled into some quiet reading until the newsagent finally opened so that we could grab our Saturday Age and the Grand Final Footy Record. It’s why his aunt showed up in sneakers for our Grand Final afternoon so that she could join in the inevitable games of backyard footy during the breaks in play just as soon as she was called off the interchange.

It’s why you can’t call him by name during these backyard games, but rather need to refer to him as whichever Tiger he’s pretending to be at any given moment. It’s also why you need to come prepared with your own persona – though throughout Grand Final Day, we were provided with our own. His Tigers-supporting grandfather was informed he was Jack Riewoldt for the day, while I started the day as Breust, becoming Cyril by half-time, Jordan Lewis by three-quarter time and Gunston after the Cup had been won, often reflecting the impact that various Hawks had been having as the Grand Final played out.

It’s why his father dragged him in from outside prior to the start of the match to make sure he saw the parade of retirees around the MCG, as he’d been waiting for weeks to farewell Chappy and Chris Newman.

It’s why late in the second-quarter, during the only moment when he wasn’t actively watching the game, his mother caught him sitting in front of his new Tigers poster, serenading them with a song on his ukulele that seemed to be entitled “We’ve got the Footy Record”.

It’s why he considered himself to be in the safest, happiest place possible on Saturday: surrounded by family, eating his chipolatas, salad and giant handfuls of smarties, and joining in the general, endless commentary of the game.

Since Saturday, the Hawks aren’t just the premiers, but they’re all-time greats. Their three-peat is an achievement that only one other club has managed since the 1950s and is surely something they won’t repeat in my fanhood. This is beyond any fan’s wildest dreams; it’s truly as good as it gets. I’ve loved this team since I was as young as the little fella, and yet now when I’m older than all of the players, they have provided me with joyful wonder, everlasting pride, and sheer delight in that daft way that successful sporting teams enliven their fans.

I’ll watch the dvd time and again in the future. It will serve as my own flashback to 2015, when Hodge kicked that goal from the pocket, when Cyril seemed to be all alone in the forward 50, and when many of my most memorable moments of the day on which the Hawks achieved their greatest feat were generated at home rather than at the MCG. I’ll be watching again in order to remember them all.

On Sunday night, I received an email from an old mate and fellow Hawks fan who’d shared Grand Final week in Victoria with his own young family. He said that he didn’t want the week to finish. I couldn’t have agreed more, and continued to marvel at the great paradox which I seem to have inhabited since the dawn of my parenthood: the understanding that this indescribable, endless delight in life’s tiny moments comes with a desperate wish that no day, week, or weekend – Grand Final or otherwise – would finish.

When it was finally time to leave the backyard late on Saturday night, the kid turned to his Dad as we strolled towards bathtime. “Dad, we need to put a cricket pitch in our backyard now for cricket season.”

So we beat on.

Changing the Game

I wrote this post a month ago, just prior to the death of Phil Walsh and the Adam Goodes story dominating the AFL news cycle.

Throughout this time, it’s seemed so…I dunno…relatively pathetic to talk about football purely as football. But now, with Goodes heading to Geelong to play tomorrow and the Crows playing the Tigers in Adelaide tonight, it feels like we might have reached a moment where we can just sit back and enjoy the pure entertainment of this great game once more. As such, I offer a delayed posting of my thoughts on a Hawthorn favourite. Bring on the Finals.

 

 

Asking whether Cyril Rioli is over or underrated, as was posed in The Guardian on Wednesday, only serves to create debate where one needn’t exist. Clearly, Rioli isn’t a superstar bound for the Hall of Fame – only once has he been selected in the All-Australian team as one of the best 6-7 forwards in the AFL, and he’s only tallied 29 Brownlow votes in his career. But arguing that Rioli is no more than an occasional excitement-machine who lifts Hawthorn fans from their seats once or twice a match fails to address his real legacy. For Rioli is one of the few players who has changed the way the game is played.

In 2008, Rioli’s rookie season, he was one of only three players to kick 20 goals and make 85 tackles during the season. The other two, Gary Ablett and Jimmy Bartel, opposed Rioli in that year’s Grand Final.

Prior to 2008, the 20-85 combination had only been achieved 25 times, with Aaron Hamill the first to accomplish the feat in 2000. But while a few small forwards such as Byron Pickett, David Rodan and Leon Davis had managed it prior to 2008, it was the rookie Rioli who led a revolution in the defensive pressure that small forwards would come to force upon opponents.

For Rioli’s play was less that of a traditional AFL small forward and more that of an ice hockey forecheck, where forwards rush, check and battle for the puck while it’s in their offensive zone. But unlike many of hockey’s best forecheckers, Rioli was also a consistent goal scorer and he would change the expectations upon elite small forwards around the league.

In the 6 seasons since Rioli’s rookie year in 2008, the 20-85 milestone has been reached on 80 occasions – an incredible rate of 13 per season considering it had previously happened only 25 times. Indeed, only 3 of the past 12 Grand Final participants have not had at least 2 players on their team with 20-and-85 for the season. Suddenly, as if to echo Rioli, small forwards like Schneider, Blair, Garlett, Gray, LeCras, Zorko, Giansiracusa and Jetta have been tackling in the forward 50 like never before. Rioli’s fellow Hawks Breust and Puopolo have also followed suit, and last season they joined the Swans (Parker and McGlynn) and Cats (Selwood and Murdoch) as the three teams with two 20-85 players – and all three sides finished in the top four.

Tackles are only one metric, of course, and this is a clear example of an arbitrary statistical cut-off being used to enhance an argument. But Rioli’s forward pressure, whether it results in a tackle or not, felt incredibly new in 2008 in a way that it doesn’t in 2015. A modern expectation upon elite small forwards is that they conduct their AFL version of forechecking throughout games by chasing, disrupting and tackling in ways that were unheard of prior to the turn of the century and extremely rare prior to Rioli’s emergence.

In the history of the AFL, only two players have had 5 seasons in which they have scored 20 goals and made 85 tackles. Midfielder and future Legend in the AFL Hall of Fame Gary Ablett is way out in front with 9 such years, leaving Rioli second with 5. Paul Chapman (4), Jason Akermanis, Luke Breust, Keiran Jack and Ben McGlynn (3) are the only others to have achieve the feat more than twice. Who’s to say if the small forwards amongst them would have ever done so had it not been for the example set by Rioli as to how disruptive and valuable a speedy pest in the forwardline can be.

Rioli will never reach the Hall of Fame and is not regarded by many as a genuine star of his generation, particularly as he only averages 15.5 possessions a game. However he is one of the best defensive forwards the game has ever seen, and his play has changed our expectations of what greatness in the forwardline should look like.

Each season, the NHL award the Frank J. Selke Trophy for the forward who demonstrates the most skill in the defensive component of the game. If the AFL ever decides to inaugurate an equivalent honour, it may just be best placed to be named after a trail-blazing Hawk.

Questionable Collectibles

Occasionally, one tries to forget the weight of the world and escape by remembering the simpler times of one’s childhood.

As a sports-loving male Canberran primary school student in the late 80’s, it was incumbent upon me to be a part of the rugby league cards craze of the time. My obsessive collecting and swapping lasted four years, from 1987-1990, and seeing the images of the cards at Dan’s NRL Collectables online creates an instant nostalgia for afternoons spent playing pretend football games on my bedroom floor with the cards for players, wooden blocks for goalposts, and a scrunched up strip of paper for a ball.

But even in this relatively innocent world, the cards still leave a number of heavy, unanswered questions hanging on the soul.

Questions such as:

Did Steve Larder every actually dodge an opponent, or was he instead constantly dodging thin air?

Was this the best facial expression that Greg Florimo made during 1987?

Are these men rugby league players or serial killers?

Was this the best facial expression made by Greg Florimo in 1988?

After the disaster of ’87, couldn’t the photographer instead have let Florimo pose beautifully as he did Gavin Jones?

How many of the Roosters later obtained roles on Downton Abbey?

Why did Peter Jackson film The Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand when hobbits were already roaming the western suburbs of Sydney?

If Mario Fenech knew this moment was going to be memorialised forever, would he have closed his legs?

How long did it take John Cartwright to get over his constipation?

Did Michael Carberry ever notice that men would often cuddle his legs?

Has Kevin Hastings just thrown this ball, or is he about to catch it? If he’s just thrown it, how the hell are his hands now in the position they are in? If he’s planning on catching it, how the hell will he do so with his hands in the position they are in? If he’s neither throwing or catching the ball, what the hell is he doing with his hands?

When the Newcastle Knights gathered for their individual photos at the start of the team’s inaugural season in 1988, why wasn’t Alan McMahon more embarrassed about leaving his uniform at home?

Was this the best facial expression made by Greg Florimo in 1989?

Did Michael Pobjie not only dodge non-existent opponents, but do so in slow motion?

Back in the days when it was legal to use bongos as shoulder pads, what noise did they make when Laurie Daley was tackled?

How many complaints from animal rights activists did Mark Bugden’s consumption of a cane toad instigate?

Why did the photographer in the Balmain dressing room ask Benny Elias to pose, but not extend the same courtesy to David Brooks?

Do footballers actually play better with their eyes shut?

How often did Dale Shearer confuse his teammates with his inexplicable movements, as he did the guy behind him in 1988?

Exactly how excited was Greg Florimo in 1990 to find out that the photographer who had been trolling him for the past few years had decided to stop?

And why did the photographer turn his trolling to Peter McPhail instead?

Had the show existed back in 1988, who would have finished second to Brent Todd in ‘Dancing With the Stars’?

Exactly which collectors of rugby league cards were Col Fraser and Brian Johnston attempting to appeal to? And which of them was more successful?

And finally, has anyone ever won at rugby league cards as convincingly as Bob Lidner did in 1988?