Smothered Football

The year is 1994. I am in Grade One. Mrs O’Connell is my teacher. Mrs Briggs is our teacher aide. We have a composite Prep-Grade One class, and my bowl cut is the envy of all. My best friends are Terran, David and Scott, and I enjoy reading, learning to swim well and forming letters correctly. I receive my grey lead licence first after learning to form letters super-carefully in Mr Dyer’s class in 1993.

Sidenote: after some pretty horrendous surgery in 2013, I was home alone, bed-ridden, and in GREAT spirits after ingesting an oxycontin-Endone cocktail. My brother and sister headed out to a dinner and left me with an iPad, food and plenty of water. They returned home after being gone for what seemed like 10 minutes but had actually been 4 hours, and I showed them what I had been up to… Pages and pages of the letter ‘a’ – capitalised and non-capitalised versions of that introductory letter of the alphabet. So well-formed.

I’m pretty much into everything at this stage, but who isn’t at the age of six?

Another boy in our year level seems to be the one to organise football games at recess and lunchtime. He was into event management even before he could probably spell it. He is popular, smart AND good at football, all at the age of six. Look, he probably could spell ‘event management’ – I’m obviously just jealous of all of the skills he possesses. What’s more impressive is that about once a term he sticks a list up in-between the two Prep-One classrooms with two columns; one Essendon and one Collingwood. We will turn up at that lunchtime and play for those teams. Those in our grades flock to the lists, place their names on either side and await the big game.

I wonder why more people aren’t putting their names in Collingwood’s column.

I later realise that the bandwagon is a powerful thing. Essendon won the premiership in 1993, gaining the hearts of many young and impressionable in the midst of their glory.

Friends ask me why I won’t put my name under Essendon’s column.

“I go for Collingwood. I don’t like Essendon.” Pretty straightforward.

My influence on the games isfullback minimal. I don’t necessarily know all the rules, and I don’t want to ruin my uniform for the remainder of the day. Trying to form letters with muddy knees is most unmanageable.

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I can remember a quick crossover between coming home from something with mum and my sisters (I have a feeling it was something to do with dancing), changing into my football garb, and heading to whatever the equivalent of Auskick in 1994 was with my dad and brother. I wish I still had that long-sleeved woollen Collingwood jumper with the VFL badge sewn over the heart. No, I wouldn’t fit it anymore, but what a memento.

I’m sure we practiced skills at the beginning of the session, and then we followed it by putting those skills into action with a game. Lesson schemas are pretty simple, but I wish I could go back and analyse what they were doing. What was our goal? How were they accessing our prior knowledge? How did they teach us new content? How did we apply that new content? Did we revisit the intended goal? How successful were we in achieving that goal? What was our effort, and how did this affect our achievement?

My cousin (who is the same age) is the first chosen by the adults for one of the teams, and I am chosen first for the other team – opposing captains if you will. I feel chuffed at being bestowed this honour, and I know I need to “lead by example”. My cousin is much better than me at football and will be for the rest of our lives. I was reminiscing with him last week about our rivalry at inter-school swimming carnivals in our primary years. He wasn’t a swimmer, and then all of a sudden, he was. YOU HAVE THE FOOTBALL GLORY. LET ME HAVE THE SWIMMING GLORY!

My dad was a great footballer, a premiership player and coach, club best and fairest, known for his speed and as a talented small defender. We are Hanleys – no one is over 6 foot. He played all over the ground but was a brilliant back pocket. I never saw him play, but others’ recounts and the endless newspaper clippings, trophies and medals seem to support his talent.

The game begins, and I don’t remember any of it, save for my being sweaty in my long-sleeved woollen Collingwood jumper and one moment that has stuck with me.

I have “keepings off” explained to me. I know this game. I know how to play it. All I need to do is stop the other team from getting the ball. If they have the ball, get it back. Simple.

I’m quite competitive, but I also like to look good whilst playing any sport, so I make sure I do it with a certain flair. Someone once asked me whilst playing tennis at Korumburra (clay courts) if I did gymnastics because I slid around the court. A netball umpire once said to me, “Will, you play so majestically.”

I also slapped someone during a jump-ball at basketball in 1999, but that’s because they leapt too high and thusly into the palm of my right hand.

Back to “keepings off”. It’s towards the end of the game, and the other team has the ball. It’s neck and neck and obviously quite high stakes. My cousin handballs to a rather tall and talented lad near me, and my instincts kick in. I know they are fast because they have been outrunning me all game. This tall lad will go on to be an AFL premiership player.

If they have the ball, get it back.

They are moving towards the sticks at quite a pace. They drop the ball to their foot and kick for goal. I dive into the path of the football in order to thwart the attempt at goal. I am successful. I have smothered. I don’t know what happens in the game after this.

Yes, it hurts – but from it comes this extreme sense of pride and swelling of self-esteem. I walk off the ground, and a couple of fathers and older brothers keep saying things along the lines of “great smother”, “you put your body on the line”, and “keep doing things like that”. This adoration is nice. I wonder how I can keep it going.

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I didn’t continue with football in my teenage years. Obviously, the sense that I knew I was different and that culture of (what I observed to be) complete and utter toxic masculinity made me feel uneasy and, to a certain extent, unsafe. It’s also a possibility that I wasn’t going to be that great at football, and who wants not to be the best at something?

I remember crossing the Wonthaggi football oval in 2003 with my friend Nina during the 24-hour Human Powered Vehicle event. We are heading to her house for a shower and some food after both completing our riding stints in the late hours of a Saturday night. Someone asks me if I was playing for the Wonthaggi Blues that season. It comes as quite a shock and I don’t know whether to take it seriously or as a joke.

“No, I don’t think so?” I reply.

The thing is that we went to the local football every Saturday as a family. Mum made lunches, we went to the canteen for lollies, we’d sit on the bonnet of the Volvo and honk the horn when the Blues kicked a goal, we’d kick the footy at each break, we’d go into the rooms after each game. My favourite player was a strapping full back named Brett – I end up teaching his children. I watch my brother play football in his junior years, travelling on the bus with dad and Tim’s friends across the Gippsland countryside. I become a Collingwood member in 2002 and 2003 with one of my high school friends. There is slight internal tumult in my relationship with football throughout the early 2000s.

Today is a different story. The football ‘culture’ doesn’t necessarily bother me. I follow Collingwood with immense passion and attend games regularly. My football friends are brilliant and generous, and we attend multiple games together every year. I sometimes go alone, sitting on the fourth level of the MCG overlooking the best athletes in the world playing the best sport in the world.

Darcy Moore will one day recognise me, and we will marry.

Or someone who appreciates AFL will one day recognise me, and we will marry.

Rewind to 2010. Heath Shaw performs one of the greatest smothers ever in the Grand Final replay. He thwarts Nick Riewoldt’s attempt at goal at the 21st minute of the first quarter, a game in which Collingwood runs over St Kilda.

I could have been like that.