The first time I went to the city without my parents was when Mad Max Two came out during the Christmas holidays of 1981/82. I was with school friends, and we caught the tram from Bundoora to the city to watch the early morning screening. When we came out after the film had finished, there was a line-up of movie goers, waiting for the midday viewing, that stretched out of the cinema and along Bourke Street. Adrenaline was coursing through our veins from the action-packed finale of the movie, so we hit the nearby pinball parlour and played like we were arcade champions.

The first time I was allowed to go to the city on my own was a few months later when I applied to join the army as an apprentice carpenter. I made it as far as the psych evaluation. I was asked by the army psychiatrist if I saw someone I knew walking the street towards me, would I walk across the road to avoid them.

‘Well, yeah,’ I replied with the casual tone of a veteran who’s been avoiding people for years. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ If I recognised a friend’s mother or sibling coming towards me on the same path when I was walking the neighbourhood, I’d dart to the other side of the road to dodge saying hello or chatting to them. I would have tried to make it look natural, that something had lured me across the road, like a dog to pat in a front yard, or a stray cat that look troubled, although I imagine my actions fooled no one.
The psych report on why I was denied entry to the armed forces probably read: ‘above average academic intelligence but average at confrontation’.

I went for a second try for the army a year later, again made it to the psych evaluation, was asked the same question, gave the same dumb response and was declined again.

This was the period from 1980 to 1988 where I followed Geelong in the VFL. I had a tiny orange Nerf football, a possession that was for years as equal in importance as the bike I rode after school or the cricket bat that was always in my hands over summer. Our cat would find the Nerf football lying around the house, scratch and claw at it; as the years passed, with small chunks missing, the football began to lose its oval shape. I’d still kick and handball it while I listened to games on the radio, and run around with it in the rumpus room, pretending I was part of the game, mimicking my favourite players, marking the ball like Jack Hawkins would, tucking the ball under my arm whenever wingman Murray Whitcombe went for a run, or copy Gary Malarkey booting a clearing torpedo to safety from the last line of defence.
I remember a game where Geelong beat top team Richmond at the MCG; the highlight I remember most was a Michael Turner goal. He bounced the ball several times after marking on the wing, baulked and weaved around Tigers opponents, and aided by a tackle-busting shepherd from Stephen Lunn on Bryan Wood, kicked a long-range goal. The commentators excited call of Turner’s run, the roar from the crowd at Lunn’s shepherd on Wood, and the cheers when the ball sailed through the goals live in my memory.
The week before that game, my father had taken me to a Geelong clash against Melbourne at the MCG. In what was expected to be an easy win for the Cats, it ended up a close-fought contest where they just hung on to beat the Demons. Paul Jeffreys soared high over Melbourne utility Steven Smith in the centre of the ground for the mark of the day, and I witnessed the goal-saving wizardry of Ian Nankervis as several times he beat two or more of Melbourne’s opponents when the ball was deep in Geelong’s backline.

That season, 1980, Geelong crashed out of the finals after finishing top of the ladder, their four-point preliminary final loss to Collingwood all the more gallant after injuries to defenders Hawkins and Malarkey. They lost to Richmond in the second semi-final, and it’s hard to imagine if Geelong made it, if they’d pulled off a win against the Magpies, and with their two key backline players doubtful to play, the result wouldn’t have been much different to Collingwood’s then record grand final loss to the Tigers. They’d started the 1981 season with a win over Essendon at Kardinia Park, were up and down for the first few rounds, but found consistency with the arrival of prized Western Australian recruit, Bryan Peake (flown in by helicopter to Kardinia Park for the press). They had their best fortnight at the end of the season, beating Essendon in the last home and away round, bursting the Bombers’ run of 15 unbeaten games in the rain at VFL park; then John Mossop and Steve Reynoldson starred in the qualifying final a week later against the Magpies. But when it mattered most, Geelong’s rivals throughout the year, Carlton and Collingwood, had their measure and the Cats crashed out of the finals again. In a disastrous day at Waverley against Collingwood in the preliminary final, Garry Sidebottom missed the bus to take him to the ground and champion rover David Clarke was omitted from the team; Clarke gave the club a spray in the Geelong Advertiser after the loss and was promptly cleared to Carlton.

The ‘us against them’ mentality, the ‘city slickers’ against the ‘townies,’ cultivated so well by coach Bill Goggin to inspire his players nearly worked for them. When Geelong were playing well – when Clarke, Peter Featherby, Neville Bruns and Turner were running amok – they were one of the fastest and more skilful teams in the league. Geelong had 57 scoring shots when they ran amok against Melbourne in 1981. They had one of the meanest defences in the league – they managed to halt the momentums of Essendon’s winning streak, beat fifth-placed Fitzroy twice in the home and away season, but against Carlton and Collingwood, they could never muster enough goals to win. It’s worth noting that Geelong beat Collingwood only once in the four times they played them in 1981, and they didn’t beat Carlton at all. Blues coach David Parkin based his tactics around his theory that Geelong would never kick a winning score by playing so defensively. The Cats’ sole win against the Magpies was due to Mossop and Reynoldson playing their best games in the qualifying final. Carlton won premierships in 81 and 82 without a century-kicking forward, but Geelong, who didn’t have a century-kicking forward either, couldn’t pull it off.

Geelong started the 1982 season by thrashing Collingwood, but both teams were on the brink of suffering weeks of drubbings that would result in headlining articles of coaching changes and fractious boardroom upheavals.

My father took me to the Western Oval in July to see Geelong play bottom team Footscray, when Geelong’s fall from prominence became complete, as Bulldog spearhead Simon Beasley kicked twelve goals, and Footscray ran away for a forty-two point victory. Goggin placed ruckman Darren Flannigan on to the full forward in the last quarter; Flannigan would often have his back to the play, standing between Beasley and the game, trying to curb his last-quarter dominance. This was the era where the tabloids painted unflattering pictures of Geelong. When they lost games they were supposed to win, the ‘handbag’ reputation surfaced, and the Nankervis brothers were mocked and labelled unfairly as the ‘Leyland Brothers’ for their indirect play and passing across the ground, an sure enough indication of their lack of a decent forward line.

The first football game I went to on my own was near the end of 1982, when I went to see Geelong play North Melbourne at Arden Street. Going to the city on your own to the footy was different than going to the movies with your friends or applying for a job with a government sector and my parents were cautious about me surrounded by thousands of strangers at a football match. The street directory was brought in from the car, and I familiarised myself with the route I’d be taking. I had to catch a tram from Bundoora to the city, hop off at Elizabeth Street then catch the Airport West tram that travelled through North Melbourne. I’d disembark at the Children’s Hospital in Flemington Road, then walk the short distance down Drysdale Street to the ground. Once I’d proved to my parents that I’d memorised the tram lines and which stops to disembark from, and I’d be responsible, they gave their approval.
I left early on the Saturday morning, giving myself enough time in case I got lost or the trams were running late. But I didn’t have to wait for the trams at all, and I didn’t get lost; everything went smoothly, and before long the Children’s Hospital loomed in the distance. I walked down Drysdale Street, reached the ground and produced a Guiness Book of Records performance for arriving the earliest anyone had ever arrived at a ground to watch a football match. I was at Arden Street at eight in the morning, six hours before the game was due to start. I rocked up just as a news van pulled up to drop bundles of the Football Record off. The driver looked at me as he hopped out of the van and saw me standing by the gate in my Geelong beanie, scarf and jumper, and quipped with a smile on his face, ‘Did the morning express from Corio come in early, mate?’ With nothing better to do, I gave him a hand to unload the truck. When we were done, he pulled a box-cutter from his pocket, cut the strapping from one of the bundles and gave me a free Record for my troubles.

Geelong were tumbling down the ladder in the last half of 1982 and lost to North Melbourne by eleven goals. The only thing I remember about the game was Kangaroo defender David Dench being knocked unconscious when he hit the hard surface of the ground from an accidental Ramsey Bogunovich bump in the second quarter and having to be stretchered from the ground, and North pulling further away the longer the game went on.

The next game I went to on my own was at Windy Hill. On a crowded Moonee Ponds train full of footy fans, I sat opposite a Bombers supporter, and while the stations rolled past, we previewed the upcoming game. With Essendon’s star lineup of Tim Watson, Merv Neagle, Terry Daniher and the Madden brothers, and with Essendon fourth on the ladder and bound for finals action, the Bombers fan sitting opposite me righteously concluded that Essendon would thrash Geelong for a percentage-boosting win – and I found it hard to disagree with him. But there was no thrashing; instead Essendon barely prevailed in a rugged game marked by skirmishes. I saw a Geelong player knock out his opponent with a punch to the jaw that sent him sprawling to the ground. An Essendon teammate looked to the boundary umpire, who was only a few metres away and asked, ‘Did you see that?’ but the boundary umpire ignored him, and it was only late goals from Justin Madden and Paul Van Der Haar that sealed the win for Essendon.
There was a Geelong-based supporters club in Melbourne called the ‘Melcats’, who’d organise a coach to take fans to Kardinia Park for Geelong’s home matches. For what was Goggin’s last game as coach, I booked a seat on the bus. My father offered to drop me off at the pick-up point in town but slept in on the Saturday morning, and he sped and ran red lights to get me there in time. I made it, sat by myself as the bus travelled down the highway, but the Cats lost to Collingwood by five points. It was a bad year for Geelong but a worse one for Collingwood. They sacked Tom Hafey mid-season after losing nine games in a row and had only won three games all year. Geelong trailed the Magpies all day, and in the end, Geelong forward Peter Johnston had a hurried shot for goal seconds before the siren, hoping if he goaled and with the match tied, there would be enough time for Geelong to rush forward for another score. Goggin didn’t even see the shot for goal. Johnston was a notoriously unreliable kick, and Goggin couldn’t bear to watch. Johnston missed, the siren sounded and the game was over.

Geelong might have won the flag in 1980 or 1981 if they’d had a decent forward. Whenever they were behind and desperate and the game was getting away from them, they’d stick young defenders like Mark Bos or Bernard Toohey onto the forward line, hoping for some late goal heroics. The recruitment of Garry Sidebottom was supposedly the answer to their forward woes, but he only played seven games before being cleared to Fitzroy halfway through 1982. Robert Walls was able to harness Sidebottom’s talents, and he played many fine games for the Lions.

I kept scrapbooks full of Geelong clippings and articles for a couple of years. My first entry was on the eve of their semi-final match against Richmond in 1980. Geelong had finished on top so had the week’s rest and the first page was a picture of a grinning and confident Bill Goggin walking his greyhounds. Underneath that was a Tom Prior exclusive on how Terry Bright’s car had broken down on the Westgate Bridge after a function in Melbourne, a good samaritan had picked him and teammate Jack Hawkins up after a night in Melbourne attending the Cazaly Awards, and given them a lift back to Geelong.

My mother typed the results of the finals series for my scrapbook. Red ink for the dates, black ink for the teams and the scores. The scrapbooks made it to 1983, when my last cut-out was a picture of a dejected John Mossop walking off the ground after second-last placed Richmond came from behind to win by a point in the driving rain at VFL Park. Geelong toppled out of the five and lost to St Kilda by ten goals the following week at home, and their season was over. The year’s fixtures and footy cards of Geelong players, along with the match reports, the player statistics and the articles on Geelong and the players made up my scrapbook. I had The Age and The Sun to pick from during the week and The Observer and The Press on the Sunday. The wet-weather skills of Leo King and his three last-quarter goals in their close win over Hawthorn, Rod Waddell’s last-minute clearance from Carlton, and a piece on Alan Mangels sliding into the team to cover for the injured Ian Nankervis all featured. I made a note for the 1982 season: Richmond and Fitzroy kicked off their round two clash a week before the season started. The VFL, for whatever reason, had decided to bring their match forward a fortnight.

When Geelong felled Essendon in the rain in the last round of 1981, Mike Coward described Geelong by writing: ‘the out-of-towners are as robust, intense, single-minded and desperate as any other leading contenders for the 1981 title’. Three weeks later, after their preliminary final loss to Collingwood, amid the fiasco of Sidebottom missing the bus and the omission of Clarke, one-eyed Geelong supporter, journalist and future Coodabeen Champion Ian Cover, devastated from the result, wrote in his weekly Sunday Observer column that he intended to switch allegiance from Geelong to Melbourne for the following season. ‘At least you know the Demons are going to lose,’ he thundered.

Ian Nankervis was injured for most of 1982, and my scrapbook was full of articles on the progression of his injury as he crawled to his 300th game. He reached the milestone at VFL Park; it was a day he and Geelong would rather forget. At one stage of their match against Richmond, they trailed the Tigers by 114 points.

My father played baseball when he was younger and I played catch with him more often than kick-to-kick. We both would stand opposite each other, standing by a fence in the backyard, glove in hand, throwing the baseball across the yard. I can remember having one or two kick-to-kicks with the footy with him. While my kicks were wobbled torpedoes or wayward punts, Dad’s left-footed drop kicks would thump straight to my chest – a remnant from his school days of kicking the footy with his friends a generation back.

We moved to Queensland in 1984, and the cold of Melbourne and everything that came with it was blindsided by the sun and beach culture of the Gold Coast. The umbilical cord that binds you and your team together, the thread of loyalty that makes you wear their colours and makes you kick the footy around the house, mimicking your heroes has its limits. The constant presence of the ocean can test the loyalty of the most fervent Aussie rules supporter.

It wasn’t until 1987 that my love for Aussie rules was rekindled. On the televisions of one the bars I was drinking at was the match of the day from Melbourne. Geelong versus Melbourne from Waverley. The heroes from my days following them in Melbourne – the Nankervis brothers, Jack Hawkins and Gary Malarkey – were gone, but Bos, Yeates and Bruns were still playing. They finally had some gun forwards. Bill Brownless could kick the ball a mile, and they had a champion goal scorer who could play anywhere in Gary Ablett. I remember Damian Bourke thumping the ball from the centre bounce deep into Geelong’s forward line, but even with Ablett and Brownless, they lost to the Demons. Then they thrashed fourth-placed North Melbourne the following week by 97 points and they came from a mile behind to beat Sydney which kept them in fifth spot coming into the last round. I was watching the game upstairs at a club in Surfers Paradise where, when the match began, I was the only one watching the game, but as the game drew to its nail-biting finish, I was too focused to notice that the room was filling up behind me. When the siren went and Geelong won – they kicked 8.8 in the last quarter, turning a twenty-seven-point deficit into a nine-point win, the room erupted from the pro-Geelong supporters behind me.

Geelong were fighting with Footscray and Melbourne for the last spot in the finals. The roar that went up at the Western Oval from Melbourne supporters who had their radios with them and had heard that Hawthorn had beaten Geelong by three points, ensuring Melbourne of their first finals appearance in 23 years was loud enough to confuse the players on the field into thinking the siren had sounded.

Melbourne made the five, taking Geelong’s spot, with Jason Dunstall kicking two late goals to snatch a win for the Hawks.

In 1988 I was in Melbourne, on my own and enjoying the first freedoms of adulthood. The VFL moved the Panasonic Cup night competition to March before the home and away season began, and Geelong made the final, and again lost to Hawthorn. Channel Seven, having regained the broadcasting rights, introduced the countdown clock, an innovation that irked me then and still irks me thirty-five years later. Isn’t there more excitement in not knowing how much time is left?

I only went to one game all year: a Sunday clash at Kardinia Park against Sydney. The sharp, bright red and white colours of the Swans, the dark blue and white hoops of Geelong stood out as well as the eye-catching skills of Sydney mid-fielders, Gerard Healy, Barry Mitchell and Greg Williams. I sat in the forward flank on the members side and the shadow from the Hickey Stand on my right crept over the ground as the afternoon wore on. After trailing all day, Geelong came from a mile behind at three-quarter time to nearly pinch the game. Robert Scott had a shot for goal from forty metres out as the siren went. The ball looked to be sailing through, the cheer squad behind the goals began to raise their flags and streamers to celebrate a miracle win when the ball drifted away and banged into a goal post and the anguished groans from Geelong fans at a last-kick loss echoed around Kardinia Park. The umpiring had blatantly favoured Sydney throughout the game, and a few days afterwards, the VFL issued a rare apology to Geelong and their supporters after reviewing footage of the game.

I remember 1988 more for Rodney Grinter being the first player to be suspended from trial by video, the introduction of the fifty-metre penalty, the Brisbane Bears players piggy-backing each other whilst on the mark to distract Simon Beasley from kicking a goal after the siren at Carrara, Stephen Silvagni’s screamer against Collingwood, and the year-long dominance of Hawthorn and their inevitable march to another flag.

I caught the bus up from Melbourne to the Gold Coast for the Queen’s Birthday weekend. Back then I had stamina and energy, youth and tolerance, and could handle sitting next to European backpackers or tobacco-chewing Americans for twenty-seven hours. I’d spend the time reading, sleeping or watching the countryside while looking out the window. I made it to Queensland in time to sit with my mother and watch her beloved Carlton easily account for Fitzroy. I remember during the visit my father asking me my plans on how I was going to get back to Melbourne and his smirking at my carefree approach of not having a plan to get back in time for work on the Tuesday, and if I did, it probably involved another long and drawn-out bus trip, so he offered to pay for a flight back to Melbourne. On the screens at Coolangatta airport while I waited to catch the plane back to Melbourne on the Monday was the match of the round: the Geelong versus Collingwood clash. This was a must-win game for Geelong, a chance to shed their inconsistency tag, a chance to justify being a finals contender by beating second-placed Collingwood. They were in front when it was time to head to the gate but had lost by the time I arrived in Tullamarine. The Cats lost their next five games and their year was over. John Devine resigned and was replaced by Malcolm Blight, who confirmed his appointment while commentating for a post-season game in London, and a new era for Geelong was about to begin. An era where Blight possessed the best forwards in the game who posted mammoth totals. What Bill Goggin would have given at the beginning of the decade for a Brownless, a Stoneham or an Ablett prowling the forward line! But at the end of the decade, Blight would himself be wishing for a more defensive backline, wishing he had the players who possessed the miserly pedigree of a Hawkins, a Malarkey or an Ian Nankervis.

I can remember the results, scores and highlights of games from thirty years back, but can’t remember what compelled me to jump on a bus and traverse three states to travel to Queensland. I am stumped. Even the stupidity of my youth had its limits. What was the reason? I go to the computer in the study and click onto the wonderful ‘AFL Tables’ website, enter the year, 1988, and zoom in on the Queen’s Birthday round. My memory of all things football serves me well. Carlton did play Fitzroy – that was the game I sat with my mother and watched – and Geelong played at home against Collingwood on the Monday. The results match my memory as well. The Blues won and the Magpies were too good for Geelong.
I look at the date of the Queen’s Birthday round, then slump in my chair at the realisation that the reason was so obvious I didn’t know why I hadn’t remembered it.

My birthday had just rolled over, and in 1988, I’d just turned twenty-one.

I’d wanted to celebrate my birthday with my parents.

That’s why I caught the bus.

I wanted to be with them more than I wanted to be with anyone else.

I remember when Dad dropped me off at the airport to head back to Melbourne after my visit. We were always awkward with our goodbyes. I offered him my hand at the wrong moment; his hand shot out just as I’d withdrawn mine: my hand would reach out again, and finally an uncomfortable handshake followed. I was too young and stupid and embarrassed to tell him how much I loved him back then, and he was wise and old enough to know that I did.

Years later, when I talked with my father over the phone, when we were ending our conversations, there were no such inhibitions.

‘Love you, Dad. Bye for now.’

‘Love you too, son. Ooroo.’

These memories of kicking my Nerf football in the rumpus room, cutting the clippings for my scrapbooks, the crowds, the sounds and the smells of the games I went to, are embedded in my brain, but some memories fade and I’ve forgotten what my father sounded like, and his voice, as unique and different as everyone else’s, is lost to time. I remember it was soft and slow, the result of his body ravaged by years of illness, the pain he was always in and he died before recordings were commonplace and at the tip of your fingers of your phone. With his blue eyes, thin face and withdrawn cheeks, when he was younger, he looked like a cross between Royce Hart and Harrison Ford. He was a squash fanatic, was listed in the top fifty in the state rankings, and I remember watching him sprint from end to end of the squash courts as part of his training regime.

The last time he travelled from the Gold Coast to visit me in the Blue Mountains before he died was when I was going through a history phase of the area I lived in. I took him for a drive one morning and showed him a section of the old highway, long out of commission that had run parallel to the train line. The double yellow lines were hardly visible and weeds were growing through the cracks of the faded bitumen. With the creeping growth of the nearby bush on the side, the road had almost shrunk to a one-lane highway instead of the two that it once was. Then we stepped into the bush, and I showed him the original highway, forged over the mountains by convicts two centuries back. We stopped at a row of small pieces of stone-gutters and boundary-markers jutting from the ground. We knelt down and I showed him the chisel marks the convicts had carved into them. We ran our fingers along the markings, trying to deduce which convict was right or left-handed by the direction of the chisel etchings.

What is to become of my scrapbooks? I’ve had them for forty years; the pages are turning yellow and curling, some of the articles are peeling away from the glue and the pages are prising themselves loose from the rusting staples. I usually pull them from my bookshelves every few years and go through them again. The words of Mike Coward, Corrie Perkin, Greg Baum and Andrew Rule are as fresh and tightly written as when they first appeared. When I read them, I’m transformed back to a time of listening to the radio, kicking a Nerf football around the house and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The Nerf football is long gone, along with the voices of Captain Blood and the Major, Clarke Hanson, Doug Bigelow and Smokey Dawson; consigned to Saturdays of decades past.

My two sons find the act of cutting articles from newspapers and gluing them into books just as archaic and boring as the technology of the Atari and Donkey Kong games I grew up with. When I’m gone, the scrapbooks will end up on eBay or in the bin. When the boys were young, there was a small spark of interest about sport from them. They’d say to me about an upcoming game they were half-interested in, ‘Hey Dad, Souths are versing Manly. Who’s going to win?’

VERSING?!

My youngest, who is now 19, is in the last-lingering throes of teenage life, so for years I’ve had the pleasure of receiving eyebrow-arching looks of disdain whenever I try and converse with him.
He’ll shrug his shoulders at my questions, which in his eyes passes as conversation, and if pressed, I’ll feel blessed if I receive at a grunted and mumbled reply.

The oldest, who’s 22 and lives in western Sydney, tells me he loves me whenever we speak on the phone. I kept saying ‘I love you’ so often to him, I obligated him to say the same.

‘Love you heaps, son.’

‘Love you too, Dad.’

Like the conversations I had with my father on the telephone years back.

I’ll take that. That’s a win.