AFL Round 15 – Geelong v Hawthorn: Colonists and Dirty Dogs

I’ve been reading the diary my great grandmother penned as she made the trip from Midleton in County Cork, Ireland; to Melbourne, in 1895 (The Cats played in the VFA Grand Final that year but lost). It makes for some extraordinary reading. This rather petite (I won’t say diminutive) woman must have been as tough as nails; like most women of that era. Her writing displays a thoughtful but pragmatic approach to life. She had neither an expectation nor any aspiration about her new beginning, but she does display a robust faith. The world must have been so different then. There were no superannuation funds, life coaches or social commentators to spin a faux reality. Life was what happened to you every day.

“Oh, how shall I leave all those dear to me” she wrote. I could almost see her tears on the paper.

“It’s been very very hard to leave all on earth that’s dearest, still, what am I to do?”

I suppose it was poverty that provoked her move away from Ireland. Perhaps not abject poverty, as I know she was reasonably educated and that she left Ireland as a recognised dress maker, but the constant stress of privation that wears one down. Being one child of eight there would not have been too much of anything to go around. When the invitation came from her uncles in Australia she probably looked upon it as a way out. But a way out to where?

“When I look around at each dear place where I have spent my childhood and dearer still are those whom I’ve loved so much, well, the thought is almost unbearable” she wrote in describing the heartache of leaving, “Still, I am facing it. I will pray for courage and strength although I will part from all I love, from father and mother…..If it is God’s will I may return (one day).”

She records how she got off the boat in Port Melbourne on Monday 14^th October 1895 and a few days later was loaded on to her uncle’s trap to make the arduous journey up a heavily corrugated unmade road called Sydney Road, eastward onto the Samaria track which skirted around the Warby Range then into the high country, before swinging northward again onto the Lurg track and a quiet place in the Wattle Creek valley.

The quiet place must have been at Tarrawingee, north of Wangaratta, for that’s where her uncles, James and Eugene Egan cut their farm out of the thick bush.

Four years after stepping down from her uncle’s trap and taking in her new “home”, which was a small rudimentary farmhouse, she married William (Bill) Dalton and raised six children on their own farm on the Four Mile Creek near Baddaginnie. Baddaginnie sits just off the Hume Highway today, not far from Benalla in Victoria’s north east. One of those children was my father’s mother. Mary Egan never did make it back to Ireland.

The story of Mary Elizabeth Egan isn’t unique and in many respects would not even be considered remarkable as it was a path often travelled by Irish immigrants. But I find it extraordinary, because it is part of my story. When I peer into the grainy, scratchy photo of her posted on the front of the diary I’m searching for a resemblance. And I’m sure I can see it.

I was thinking about Mary Elizabeth Egan as I sat at the MCG on Saturday night with my own family and 85,000 other spectators. What would she think of this place I wondered? Mary’s blood is just a piece of my family’s genealogical jigsaw, but it is a part nonetheless. And some of it pumps through the veins of my children. I hoped that somehow she could see what I was seeing.

Whilst the nervous tension always builds before a Geelong and Hawthorn clash, my thoughts of Mary Egan did put them into context. Tonight’s game would be another installment in that story, another chapter in a tale that will continue. There will be a winner and there will be a loser, but the narrative won’t conclude tonight.

The Cats started the better as they cut the Hawks up through the middle. Mitch Duncan and James Kelly were the central links, Corey Enright and Jimmy Bartel the anchors at half back. Not even Dirty Dog Mitchell, who was once again racking up countless, meaningless possessions across their half back line, could stem the flow. The Cats’ coaching staff seems to have developed a theory about Dirty Dog Mitchell. Every time these teams clash they appear happy enough to let him chip away like a palaeontologist scratching at a mammoth’s carcass, so long as he’s not getting possessions forward of the centre. I watched Taylor Hunt quite closely as he tagged Dirty Dog around. He only put the hard tag on when the Hawks went forward. Still, the “experts” will probably put Dirty Dog in their votes. Not me. Stratton and Roughie had far more influence on the game, as did Lewis and Gunston.  Breust, who I really rate, was having trouble getting involved in the contest, much to my relief.

It was a game that ebbed and ebbed. After quarter time it didn’t really flow at all. Between quarter time and three quarter time, the Cats kicked one goal thirteen. The game should have been all over. The Hawks didn’t fare much better kicking two goals seven. During this time Dirty Dog Mitchell managed to elbow Taylor Hunt in the throat, sending him to the turf clutching his larynx. But there will be no tribunal hearing or even a report. Not sure why. A bloke called Steve Johnson would get a month for such behaviour.

The crowd was engrossed. The tension was boiling away just beneath the surface. Cats’ fans marvelled at Selwood’s intent. Strangely, Hawks supporters booed every time he got caught around the neck, which happened quite regularly as he burrowed relentlessly in for the footy. Not sure why they booed. The Cats kicked clear early in the last quarter as Rupert (Murdoch) found his feet. My kids were celebrating.

“Hold your flow” I counselled, “this aint over.”

Sure enough the Hawks grew a leg. Buddy, who had been subdued by Lonergan for most of the evening, loomed as the match winner. His chest was even more puffed out than usual. He’d stopped waving his arms at the umpires after every contest and started playing footy. When he got near the ball, the excited murmur in the stadium built into an expectant rumble. He’s the type of player who causes fans to undertake innumerable probability calculations when in possession. But he wasn’t quite getting it done, unlike Simpkin, Hale and Gunston; especially Gunston. His snap from the boundary to bring the Hawks back to a 15 point deficit was Gary Ablett-esque. I hope he meant it. Hale’s goal, to bring the margin back to 9 points is best forgotten. Absurd rules introduced to stuff up our great game are succeeding.

When Dirty Dog Mitchell deliberately and maliciously sat on Joel Corey’s head and knocked him out (once again no report from the umpires) the game was as tight as a soccer goalie’s sphincter. The margin had crept in to just three points. Cyril, who had been released into the contest in the third quarter, was causing as much grief as carp in the Murray, and the Hawks supporter who was sitting two seats up from me was, well, standing. He looked like a bloke with a bad case of gastro; petrified that taking a seat might bring on another ghastly explosion. He wasn’t on the edge of his seat, he was way past that.

These games are supposed to simmer then boil, and this one didn’t disappoint. It was tough and uncompromising not flashy and brilliant; in many ways that made it even more nail-biting. It took a pinpoint pass from Mitch Duncan to Caddy, who duly slotted a goal almost as good as Gunston’s, and the elusive Rupert Murdoch in snapping his third for the quarter, to get the Cats home. When the siren sounded the ball was near the wing. In dispute. A fitting way to end. Or should I say a fitting way to conclude this particular episode in an ongoing saga.

Votes

3 – Bartel, Selwood, Lonergan, Duncan, Kelly, Mackie, Blicavs

2 – Murdoch

1 – Roughead