Carlton 16.10.106 d Richmond 14.12.96

Time for a proper match report. I have been to more Carlton Richmond games at the MCG than all my other AFL games put together. Out of about 8 matches I have only seen the Tigers win (and sung the beautiful club song) ONCE. Spoiler alert - this record still stands.The one win was round 22, 1999, the night the scoreboard caught fire.

I was in Melbourne primarily for Presentation Night (see below) but took the opportunity to gather together my group of originally-Tasmanian mates who all barrack for Carlton, and get along to see Richmond go into a game as favourites for once.

As a sentimentalist I insisted we meet under the clocks at Flinders Street - John and Michael were there but Alex was coming from the south so he insisted on meeting us at the G rather than sailing past it on the train. It was a beautiful day, and we got pints of proper beer on board by the Yarra before taking the new (to me) walkway over to the coliseum, where mid-strength beer is now the rule.

We gathered by the statue of Ponsford and waited for Alex. And waited. The other boys went in, I said I would wait for him but was overruled. I had his ticket, was trying to call him, getting nowhere, didn't want to miss the bounce, ran in and out through the turnstiles three times, did miss the bounce, and almost missed the first goal. Between that and second goal I finally located the man whose nickname is Tardy [Surname Suppressed] for good reason. I finally settled into my seat in 2nd tier above the right back pocket, and drank it all in. What a magnificent sight it is - like a huge banquet laid out in front of a starving man.

Back to the first goal - what was Malthouse thinking starting promising under 13s player Josh Bootsma on dual Coleman Medallist, Jack Riewoldt? That's tanking, that is. The first time the ball came their way Riewoldt just unbalanced Bootsy who slid to the ground, while the high-stepping show pony dawdled into goal and hoisted the ball over the cheer squad into the top tier. Which set the tone for the first quarter.

We were down the other end and I had not brought the binoculars, so I had only a distant view of our eight first-quarter goals. I saw Jacko nail one, and Vickery, and they just kept coming. I had decided to watch Alex Rance's work behind the play on Lachie Henderson, and actually picked a bad quarter to do it because my study kept being interrupted by goals. I did see one pretty weak effort by David Astbury when he was beaten for agility by 9-foot Blues ruckman Warnock. I was already halfway to wearing out my voice, and barracking like the hopeless once-a-year man-in-the-outer that I am. "MATTY MATTY MATTY MATTEEEEEEEEEEE" I yelled as various smaller players who were not Matt White (late withdrawal) kicked goals or executed snappy give-and-gos. "BURY IT TROY!!!!" as Tyrone Vickery lined up the big sticks. After that I just called him a different Irish county every time he got the ball. "MAYO!!" "WATERFORD!!!!" Yes, the beer was working wonders and I'm sure rows BB and AA were regretting it.

I had planned to tweet through the match and keep in touch with various Blues and Tigers around the ground and around the country by text, but had creatively left my phone in the car when Elf dropped me at the airport. I had a replacement phone but without all the numbers it was a bit useless. So I focused on the boofheads I was with. They had been gloomy about their chances, and at five goals down by 2 o'clock they were feeling pretty dire.

But the 2nd quarter was all Carlton, six goals to 2, so again all the action seemed to be miles away. McLean kicked three and the general impression around us was that this was an admirable but doomed fightback from an undermanned team who would never be able to sustain it. Our skipper Cotchin was very quiet though, and in the back of my mind I started to go over all those other losses to the Blues. Alex is late, I forget or mislay something important and Richmond lose - its usually like clockwork.

At halftime I found Joe from Launceston over in the other pocket. He had his mind made up - we were going to lose. I said that we had just let them back in it as we need to generate a finals-like atmosphere in the second half to practice for the weeks ahead. The Tigs are guaranteed finals participants for only the 3rd time since 1982.

I think in the 2nd half, that fact - guaranteed finals - eroded some of our competitive spirit. Maric was trying hard, Grigg and Conca and Ellis were pretty busy, Deledio must have had 12 or 14 running bounces for the game. But the goals wouldn't come. Had a close-up look at Eddie Betts having kittens about taking a set shot. I've never seen anything like it - if modern-day Wayne Harms had suddenly appeared behind him I think Eddie would have dished off a handball, even though he was only 20 metres out on a 30 degree angle. Grimes was not very effective in his first game for months, and subbed for Tucky.

The mood was strange. On the scoreboard we could see that the Suns were touching up the Power (ugh to expansion club nicknames, UGH) and that gave the Blues fans a bit of a whiff of finals themselves. The Richmond crowd were, like the players, cushioned from the usual misery of fluffing a winnable game by the very UNusual thought - we'll be back here in a final in 3 weeks, win, lose or draw today.

And so it went. There were signs of a late rally, and if there had been another 5 minutes the Tigs may have pulled it out of the fire, but ... siren went with Carlton 10 points up and my delirious so-called friends reminding me that they are the old dark navy blues. Actually they were very kind, and said they wished the Tigs had actually won since I had come such a long way. Again, like so many times before, I reflected that I had really enjoyed their company, the big occasion and the quality of the game, but was really disappointed with how Richmond fell away conceding 13.8 to 6.10 after quarter time. It was just complacency and a few players deciding to coast.

My plan had been to leave the old dark navy blues and have a few drinks at the Cricketers Arms with the boys from Launceston before finding a cab to Tullamarine to fly home. This was always a dangerous plan, and with the unexpected bereavement of a loss I felt at liberty to change it. I said goodbye to Alex and Michael and walked back to Flinders Street with John. On the way through the parkland we passed a few kick-to-kicks, and one bit of old fashioned man-on-man scragging with no ball in sight. A bloke in a Richmond guernsey upended his mate in a Carlton guernsey on the grass in a textbook tackle, pinning the arms. In a yelling mood and 5 or 6 mid-strengths to the good, I called "He hasn't got it umpeee! He hasn't goddddddddddddddit! He didn't bring it!!! IT'S AT HOME ON THE COFFEE TABLE UMPEEEEEEEE."

Old mates and beer are the keys to unlocking a much wider emotional range than I usually have. John and I slipped into another Yarra-side bar for a last pint together, then he got on his train and I went up to Little Bourke St to find solace in dumplings. You had to order them with an iPad.

Carlton 23.12 (150) d Richmond 9.13 (67)

I hopped over to Melbourne on Thursday afternoon for the first match of the new football season, Richmond v Carlton at the MCG. The hype leading in to the game was massive, with tickets sold out. I tipped the Tigers to win by 11 points. While I was making a toasted cheese sandwich I had a very strong premonition of Mitch Morton kicking six goals.

It was Ben Cousins' first game for Richmond after being sacked by his old club and then copping a 12 month suspension from the AFL, for lying about his drug addiction. Cousins would be lining up against his former West Coast premiership captain Chris Judd, now with Carlton. Apart from this drama, everyone was expecting both sides to be big improvers this year, and to put on a good show.

John picked me up at the airport. He works in the area, and we swung by his office on the way into the city. All around there are acres and acres of office buildings, warehouses and workshops that look like they dropped from the sky overnight. It is all very new, and feels like a hastily populated paddock. Even when you are walking down a glossy marble-floored hallway on the second floor of an office building, you still feel that you are in the hinterland of a large pastoral holding.

The drive through the city took over an hour. The Grand Prix is in town as well, and with a crowd of 90,000 heading for the football like us it wasn't surprising we crawled along. John had teed up with a friend to use her parking spot in a back lane about 5 minutes walk from the MCG.

While John and I were shoveling down large mediocre burgers from a food van, Alex and Michael arrived. Just as we were getting toey about the time, the fifth member of the party, Vincent rang. He was standing near us somewhere in the crowd so I waved my hand above my head to help him zero in. I happened to have two tickets in my hand and I had to rebuff a few people who thought I was a scalper.

Once we were all together we surged in and up, up, up. We got to row Z in the Olympic Stand and kept climbing. At last we reached our seats in DD. The MCG is simply massive. As always its so impressive how the opposing fans mix so peacefully. Vincent and I were backing Richmond while John, Michael and Alex were there to see Carlton do the business. Its common to see couples or whole families with split allegiances.

Richo hit the post after about one minute. The next four scoring shots were Carlton goals, all from Richmond turnovers in defence. From the very beginning Richmond's skills were woeful. The headline in Friday's Herald Sun was eloquent; STILL LAZY, SLOPPY & INCOMPETENT. As Elf said, the word that hurts most there is "still". Carlton won by 83 points, and it would be very surprising if Richmond are not bottom of the ladder after round 1. Oh, and the super recruit tore his hamstring early in the last quarter and is out for 4-6 weeks. Mitch Morton kicked 4 - the toasted cheese oracle was just a little off.

As it was a work night, Vincent and John excused themselves and took off afterwards. Poor Vincent, he could have had a lovely quiet night reading a book or cleaning the fridge, and I dragged him out to watch Richmond. Michael, Alex and I snudged off along Swan Street looking for and failing to find coffee. No, I didn't know that was possible in Melbourne either. I ordered a round of soft drinks at the Post Office Hotel, and chatting to the barman about the game mentioned I had come over solely to watch Richmond and would fly home the next day. He gave me the drinks for free. Richmond are literally that pitiful.

Sorry, Talking Heads

When I was about 16, the New York band Talking Heads were everything to me. My mate Joe and I were staying on his uncle's farm at St. Marys. We caught a lift into Launceston to go to the Basin Concert (Mental As Anything headlining) and while we were in town, we raided Wills Record Bar. They had a lot of far-out stuff that you never saw in Burnie. I came away with Remain In Light and Joe snared Fear of Music. After the concert we hitched back to St Mary's. That night we commandeered the stereogram and introduced the Fingal Valley to New York art school new wave music.

Through the rest of the vinyl era I steadily gathered all of their albums, and the various wierd side projects of David Byrne and occasionally the others. I played them on my Radiola portable record player, so small that the LP hung over the side and obscured most of the controls. Choose the volume you want before you put the record on.

Then CDs came to town. This was my first experience of technological redundancy. CDs were so easy. They didn't need to be turned over. If you fell asleep listening to one you didn't wake up to "..thrrrp.....thrrrp.....thrrrp....."

Of course I didn't buy CDs of things I already had on vinyl. After a while my record player disappeared the way things do when you move. No great loss, didn't play the records much anymore anyway. Etc etc. I feel so guilty recounting this now. I was asleep at the wheel!

So - only now do I realise I have lost a good ten or twelve years of Talking Heads listening opportunities. I've got one CD and a few mp3s that crop up occasionally, and that has been enough to dull my senses to the reality that I have let a really great band effectively slip out of my life. And particularly this one album, Remain in Light.

We visited Matt and Mem and Edie and Callie yesterday, and in talking music with Matt I blurted out my feelings on the matter. He sent me home with all his Heads CDs. Today I felt quite emotional as I listened to this great, great album again for the first time since about 1996.

David Byrne actually played in Melbourne a couple of weeks back, and my friend Alex met him. Alex was at the right hip 3rd floor warehouse bar when DB stepped out of the lift right in front of him. (I'm not jealous because I met Don Lane at Mascot airport in 1979.) I think hearing about this might have been what woke me up from my dreadful slumber.

So - sorry about that Talking Heads. I'm back on board again now.

Carlton 17.16 (118) d Richmond 12.16 (88)

I went over to Melbourne for the day, to join in Richmond's centenary celebrations. They joined the VFL in 1908. Apparently they wore insipid striped jumpers in the first two seasons, which made a comeback for the occasion on Saturday (with 21st century advertising superimposed of course). They were playing the old enemy Carlton, in a game with a lot of genuine importance for both sides' finals aspirations, over and above the centenary guff.
The morning before the game there was a merchandise-fest at the Punt Road oval, beside the MCG. Joe went over for the day too, and I met up with him and his Launceston mates there, where they were queueing for something or other. There were a range of queues to join. Some tired looking older gentlemen were signing autographs - I didn't actually recognise any of them, so I bailed out of that queue. After I had soaked up some more Punt Road atmosphere I thought it was time to move on.

I met Alex, John, Carmen, Michael and Cooper, (all Carlton fans) at a pub in Swan St for lunch before the game. Alex was tardy, Michael and John have a running punt on how late exactly he will be for each event. We wolfed down some very good pub food (even pricey pub food is much cheaper than AFL prices) - then got moving. We had tickets just along from Joe in the new Ponsford Stand, roughly where I had sat with the family at the Adelaide match 3 weeks prior.

We flowed into the MCG among a massive crowd. Soon after we got settled the Tigers ran out onto the field, and the huge atmosphere went flat. Their jumpers! Holy hell, they looked terrible. The sound was that of 73,503 people turning to the person next to them and saying "Oh - they look like Hawthorn don't they?" I just hope the marketing geniuses were there to see it too. Something that looks great when paraded up close in front of the media might be worth having a look at from a distance, next time.

The foolishly stripey Tigers were the better team through the first half, as they were against Adelaide. Kelvin Moore was having a blinder on Fevola, who had no impact at all. Richmond goaled after the siren at the end of the first three quarters, but going into the last only led by a point. Carlton kicked 7 goals to two in the final quarter, with big fat Nick Stevens getting 12 touches. At one stage he smothered a shot on goal, then gathered and passed out of defence, to set up a Carlton goal. Alex remarked Stevens has been bulking up on burgers to become a smother specialist.

I have now seen Richmond play maybe ten times, for a total of one win. Obviously I should stop going. For some reason, it just didn't bother as much as it should have. I actually found the inevitability of their failure somehow soothing. I was among friends I don't get to see very often, and they were being fairly gentle with my feelings. And I only had to squint slightly to imagine it wasn't happening to Richmond at all - it was actually Hawthorn on a bad day.


We went to a different genteel pub after the game, where we were the only football fans. It was quiet and dark. I took off my scarf and slurped a flat white. The MCG seemed a very long way away. John and Carmen dropped me off in the city where I rejoined Joe and his pals. I thought the 4 of us could share a cab to the airport as they were flying out just before me. But they had come in on the Skybus, and had return tickets - those muppets. I don't know why anyone catches the Skybus unless they are travelling alone. So I shelled out for the Skybus too.

I had ages to wait at the airport, and the place was practically all closed. I had nothing to read except the Footy Record. Its always such a mind-numbing read, as everything is the official AFL opinion. Guess what - everything's great! It's pretty sad having to read about what a mouth-watering prospect a game you have just seen was. After an hour or so of reading very obscure stats in an enormous half-empty airport, I realised I am actually a bit sick of football.