View From Shepparton: Round 12: Geelong win reminds me of barracking for the Croweaters

By Peter Schumacher
It seems eons ago when Dean Laidley resigned as coach of the Shinboners. Indeed I can scarcely remember the name of his replacement. Barry Crocker wasn’t it? No that’s right it’s Darren Crocker. Anyway it’s hard to believe that the guy has yet to coach his first North Melbourne game.
Such is life as a footy barracker. I hate this mid season split round, but then I suppose as a coach or player I might have a different perspective.
In the real world, Geelong beat Freo. This was always going to happen even though the Dockers put up a brave fight. The local commentators were trying to talk it up of course.
This reminded me of the ’60s in South Australia when as a born and bred Croweater I would devoutly pray for a South Australian win against the mighty Vics. I seem to recall that Victoria even then didn’t take interstate games seriously, they would merely select two players from each team, train for a week and invariably, but not always, win pretty easily. The South Australian team would train together for weeks. Our local press would talk it up but the reality was that the Vics were nearly always far too good.  Thus would commence another period of introspection and gloom for we Croweaters. Yet I do have fond memories of one match at the Adelaide Oval in 1965. My  father,  a Lutheran Pastor,  very rarely had Saturdays off  but on this occasion he did and we went to the beautiful Adelaide Oval,  where for the first time I saw the great names of South Australian football in the flesh. Seeing all of these players was just fantastic. Kerley, Head, Barbary, Eustice, Wedding, spring to mind.  I   didn’t know or want to know anything about the Vics. They were from some evil empire and Dad reckoned that their beer tasted terrible. As the local minister he must have been right about this.
I have tried to get a match description or summary of this game to supplement these comments but despite looking everywhere on the net could not find one. Thus I will stand corrected if (some) the names mentioned were a figment of my imagination re- this particular game.  What I can say for sure was that we won by over ten goals and Dad and I were so over the moon as we drove back to my home town of Birdwood.  For once the South Australian press hype had been justified and the fact of the win remains one of the happiest memories of my life, one reason being that it was a relatively rarely shared footy experience with my old man.
Back to the now, I think that Collingwood’s effort against Sydney was pretty superb.  Of course I was hoping for a Swans victory more than anything else to maintain interest in the code in the Harbour City. They sure missed some gettable shots early in the last quarter but Leon Davis proved what  a great player he is with those three goals in that period.  I was really happy for Mick Malthouse too; I still think that generally speaking he is one of the fairest and most articulate commentators on the game.
Essendon got the better of Melbourne; they do look good at times, no doubt about that.
Now to a full round again, at last.

About Peter Schumacher

Wannabe footy commentator and writer, used to be a wannabe footballer

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