A Sporting Weekend

Friday evening. I am on the footpath outside the North Fitzroy Arms on the phone to a Swedish car wrecker. The family Volvo has died. He has offered less than the value of the computer which we have recently had re-soldered so that the air-conditioner is not stuck on Saharan Gale. Max walks by chomping on a big Havana, half-smoked, looking like he’s an oil tycoon or has shares in Volvo.

It’s freezing.

Inside, it’s magnificent. Two beautiful fires. Cold beer on tap. The buzz of Friday afternoon freedom, and people checking the footy tips results, and pondering. (West Coast or Freo?). In walks Tony Robb from Canberra with his mates Steve (who is well ear-ringed) and Brendan (the statistician).  They are on tour, and theirs is a quantum step up insofar as Friday buzz is concerned. They do everything to suggest they are renaissance-men: they speak of football at Belconnen, boarding house food at St Joseph’s in the 1970s, and why kicks fly with a 9-iron’s trajectory instead of a 3-iron’s. They are in love with Melbourne.

I do Family Harms’s tips. Which takes a long time these days: five cards to fill out.  Max heads outside to have another crack at his cigar. He’s been grumpy since they changed the smoking rules. He also has a `95 Volvo, so when I tell him the yarn he shows no sympathy, he just asks for the passenger-side rear-vision mirror, and then asks the others how to remove it from its mount. That leads to a discussion of the retrieval of car parts generally. I offer him the spare tyre.

I stay for a couple and then get the tram home to the kids. Tony and mates settle in.

I am then subjected to one of the all-time crook games of footy. St Kilda usually struggle to kick 10 goals against anyone, so to kick 19 against the Crows says a lot about the Crows who are passionless. They cannot raise the effort to run a couple of metres to tackle. It’s bad.

Thank God for the Tour de France, and snippets of the England-India Test from Lords.

Saturday is cold. Theo and I are going to go to the ammos at Brunswick Street, but he gets engrossed in a computer game where he is rewarded in eggs if he completes the task appropriately. He has a lot of eggs, which I assume are a bit like replays on old pinball machines. And then I start wondering whether Theo will ever understand what a pinball machine is.

I start the long job of pruning the grape-vine which is over the courtyard, and the bougainvillea. This is best done while listening to football – North and Brisbane for a while. Change stations for the Swans-Dogs.

We feed and water the kids and after stories, exhausted, they go to sleep, which allows me to sneak out to the pub (with permission). Daff is on the same roster. I know this because he is on the same tram.

At the North Fitzroy Arms the brothers Walker, Phantom and Peter (game show characters?), who are over from northern Tassie, have been ridden from the barriers with the whip. They are happily in front of the fire, half-watching Essendon and Carlton. C. Down is also there. He is on a similar roster to the Harms-Daffey roster, but not near a tram line.

The Friday buzz of the night before has turned into mid-weekend comfortability and a general atmosphere of denial that there is no such thing as work or Mondays. That’s ages away, and no-one is thinking about their Monday persona, their say-the-right-thing, don’t-rock-the-boat, keep-out-of-trouble sensibility. No-one is thinking of work.

Except me.  I am working. In a meeting? Researching? Watching Carlton demolish the Bombers with goal after goal after goal. How many beers have I had in half an hour: they seem to be kicking a goal every 45 seconds? I realise that’s because they are.

I am preparing for Offsiders and I am definitely involved in research when the topic of Cadel Evans and the prospects of him winning the Tour are discussed. He’s not over the line, but he is about $1.50 to win it. Someone suggests it will be the greatest achievement by an Australian in sport. Which is a nice staring point when a few blokes are standing around a fire with beers in their hand. The Tasmanians invoke the spirit of Flanners and suggest that there is more achievement in Doc Baldock and Ian Stewart pulling on a pair of jocks (or whatever) than in any other Australian sporting achievement, and that leads to a tangential discussion of where the Mason-Dixon line is in Tassie (Is it just outside the pie shop in Oatlands?). The footy on TV is completely forgotten and I can’t even recall whether I first saw the Walker mark that night or the next morning. He is no relation to Phantom and Peter.

The debate continues. The yachting and A. Bond are dismissed quickly (by me) although I am accused of playing the man when I suggest it was funded by an appeal to pensioners to send their last $20 in to Mr Bond. (I’m happy to play the man on that one). Herb Elliot gets a run. Contemporary golf and tennis are considered, but that puts Hewitt in the frame. Norman? I go for Bobby Pearce (Who?). And the debate goes all over the place and Phantom Walker drops a few conspiracy theories in when, just to make it a really sensible night, in walk the Canberra boys (two thirds of the posse anyway). They burst through the public bar doors (like Kramer) and Tony sings “da, da-da, da-dah” which has Carlton written all over it.

They have been to Flemington and then the footy. At Flemington I have recommended they introduce themselves to Wally F. Beaver, doubles bookmaker to the down-trodden and disheartened. Tony Robb has nailed him for two doubles on his first visit. (It took me a decade to get a pay-out.) Tony has the Carlton strut, with all of its Elliot-ness (not Herb), which would have been insufferable if it didn’t appear so much like method acting.

The discussion continues until Martin (the publican) points out that we should get home before Cadel Evans launches. What he means to say is that he wants to get home before the time trial commences. The TVs are on SBS and the riders are heading off one after the other. He should turn them off. That would work.

Each heads to digs. Mine are peaceful. I watch Evans and he is very, very strong. Superb.

Sunday and my research has paid off. Offsiders rolls along and the Tour’s elephant remains relatively unmentioned in a mood of triumphalism, albeit not really nationalist triumphalism. I like the Evans connectedness; the determination, the courage.

I half-tell the story of getting interested in the Tour about a decade ago. So interested I went looking for cycling as a sport. And found it. My research took me to Park Road in Milton in Brisbane (there is a mini-Eifel Tower there) where I learnt of coffee riders, those who start and finish in coffee shops, clack, clacking their way in their lycra to a latte or whatever, and talking. I learnt of Melbourne’s hell-ride, and other rides.

The story was published under the title: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Anarchy.

Definitely anarchy. And that is reflected in the Tour. There’s a sort of fin de siecle restlessness (and madness) in the whole culture. In the riders themselves. In the spectators. Carnivale, Craziness. Dress-ups. Manic.

I buy a tub of taramasalata and a ciabatta, and head home. The family is out for a while, relocating the havoc to a friend’s place.

I watch Geelong dismantle Richmond in an ordinary match the main function of which is to provide a stage (and an opportunity) for a few young Geelong blokes (and no Richmond blokes). Allan Christensen finds the footy and runs quickly with it, Travis Varcoe is in and out, and big West is OK. But once the result is clear it becomes tedious in the way that the Tour hasn’t been for a week. The last quarter is up there for tediousness with the St Kilda game.

I am quite glad when the family comes home, full of beans (when really they should have spent some). And normal service is resumed – with the Eagles and Freo in the background.  Having given up on Freo, I return in the dying minutes to see their comeback which means the kids can stay in the bath longer.

Finally they’re all asleep and I prepare for another week – as I am taking it one round at a time – and the minutes pass before Cadel Evans appears. He pedals away like we used to on our Malvern Stars (until I saved up my mowing money and got my Dragstar). I am picking up blocks and books and pieces of marble race, as Cadel Evans is sipping champagne while in the saddle. I am as exhausted as Cadel is.

And we wonder why we romanticise his achievements. It would be odd if we didn’t.