Almanac Footy: Clint’s Streak

 

For Clint English 1970-2010

 

It’s the morning of the 1997 Grand Final and my good mate Clint is still trying to score a ticket to the big one.  He has been to every Grand Final since 1978 and is eager to make it twenty years in a row.

 

*

 

I first met Clint in 1982 at Donvale Christian College, a small outer-eastern school founded by the Dutch Reformed Church.  The school was so small that it needed composite classes to help fatten out the numbers.   He was in Year 6 and supported the Hawkers.  I was in Year 4 and supported the Pies.  I was the smallest kid in the class and the only boy of Southern European extraction.  You can imagine the taunts.  Clint was an immensely popular tall kid with sandy blonde hair.  I was scared stiff of him.

 

Astonishingly, amidst all the tears and bullying, Clint befriends me.  We both have a passion for footy, you see.  Not only do we love playing the game, we also share an encyclopaedic knowledge of it.  Suddenly I have a protector who will stick up for me in the classroom and also on the footy ground.  If you look at the class photo of 1982, you will see a short boy with dark hair sitting next to a tall boy with blonde hair.  We were inseparable.

 

 

 

During those lunchtime games, Clint always looks out for me and quite often handpasses the ball over the top of the pack to me in the goal square.

 

He is also one of the only people I know who has attended a VFL Grand Final.  He even hands me the footy record for the 1981 Grand Final, not that I really need a memento of that sad, sad day.

 

*

 

Later on in ’82, Clint is responsible for getting me to my first final: Hawthorn versus North Melbourne at the G.  Dermott Brereton’s first game.  Dermie dazzles on the big stage and boots five majors as the Hawks run out comfortable winners by 52 points.  Earlier on, the great Malcolm Blight kicks his 100^th goal on the quarter time siren and Clint, a mad Hawk to the death, refuses to clap.

 

After the game Clint’s old man, another one-eyed Hawk, decides to head straight to Glenferrie to participate in the celebrations.  I have no choice but to tag along.  It is the Hawks first finals win since the ’78 Grand Final and you could sense this mob is on the cusp of something special.  We squeeze into the Glenferrie Social Club with many of the Hawthorn faithful and wait for the players to arrive.

 

At about half-past seven the players start to emerge.  Clint and I are right on cue with pen and scraps of paper or cardboard to procure their autographs the moment they step into the premises.  The loudest roar is reserved for Lethal.  He is immediately swamped by hundreds of well-wishers.  Clint is first to score his autograph.  I am second.  Poor Lethal.  Having just won Hawthorn a final (37 possessions, 4 goals) he is now required to sign a ton of autographs before he can even sit down and relax with a beer.

 

Clint and I spend the night scouting the Glenferrie Social Club far and wide securing every possible autograph.  We find John Kennedy Junior and Peter Schwab, sitting with their partners in a quiet corner, and duly obtain their signatures.  No player is going to escape our detection.  Kennedy produces an extra special version of his autograph for me with elongated letters.

 

And then Dermie arrives.  The new hero.  The future of the Hawthorn Football Club.  He enters through a side door where it is a lot less crowded.  By chance, Clint and I are close by and are thus able to pounce.  He is more than happy to chat with us for a few moments, before the hordes arrive.  He is accompanied by a slightly older woman with short blonde hair and perfect diction.  As we score his precious signature, she looks at him wistfully and said ‘Oh, you’re a star now.’

 

 

 

*

 

Inexplicably, Clint leaves Donvale in mid-1984 and moves to the school of hard knocks, Ringwood Tech.  Thus for the next few years, seeing him becomes a rarity.  As we live a fair distance apart, the footy is the best place to bump into him.  It is an unwritten tradition to meet at the scoreboard at VFL Park at half time.  We do so on a wet day in Round 8, 1986 when the Hawks pummel the Pies.  He is having a kick with his younger brother John.  I join in.  He can’t believe how much I’ve grown.

 

*

 

The next time I see or hear from Clint is the morning of the 1988 Grand Final when he calls me up out of the blue with the offer of a Standing Room ticket to the game.  My old man drops me off at Clint’s in Ringwood and we catch the train in.  It is my first Big One.  I am 15.  It is a tight squeeze in Standing Room.  Before the game, the scoreboard provides a live cross to the Seoul Olympics for the 100 metre final.  Ben Johnson powers to victory in world record time, shocking the world (and Carl Lewis) in the process.  With the atmosphere building, the larrikins around me break into a spirited rendition of a familiar song that does not have a chorus.  I know it is a Cold Chisel tune, but am unsure of the song’s name.  The game itself is an anticlimax with the Hawks prevailing by a record margin.  Clint celebrates his fifth flag in the flesh.

 

*

 

In Round 10, 1990, the Pies are carving up Melbourne at Waverley.  During the final term Daicos reels in a one-handed mark on the 50 metre line and then goes back and unleashes a booming torp that sails through the sticks.  As I stand to applaud the Marvel, Clint miraculously appears out of nowhere to share the moment with me.  He proudly announces that he has become a Collingwood supporter for that season.  I am stoked.  He always had a soft spot for the Pies.  Looking back, I think he felt sorry for us.   Or maybe he wanted me to experience the joy that he had felt in ’78, ’83, ’86, ’88 and ’89.  Or perhaps it was the Lethal factor.

 

*

 

I see him after the Grand Final that year. I am in a long queue to purchase a WEG poster and spot him walking towards Richmond station, binoculars in hand.  I call out his name, but he doesn’t hear me.

 

*

 

All the while, he keeps attending every single Grand Final.  He goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure he is there every year – prayer, fasting, scalping, begging the Salvos, fraternizing with the enemy, he even has a complete stranger give him a ticket one year.

 

*

 

By 1997 I am not a happy camper.  I am entrenched in a soulless number-crunching job for which I have no interest or aptitude.  It does allow me to write poetry though.  I sit in a corner all day and scribble my rhymes.  No one is the wiser.  Often after work, I head straight to Clint’s joint for a drink and a chat.  His unit in Nunawading becomes a haven for a bunch of remarkable blokes from all walks of life.  At any time of the day, you can pop in and just chew the fat with Clint and his mates.  There is talk of how Clint will get to the big one this year.  Will the streak continue?

 

*

 

On the day of the ’97 granny he is struggling.  He is standing outside the ground, hustling for a ticket and the first bounce is only an hour or so away.  All his efforts have been in vain.  His mighty streak is about to end.

 

But then while gazing at a Record boy, he gets an idea.  A brilliant idea.  He approaches the Record boy and inquires if the boy is allowed to enter the ground.  The Record boy nods affirmatively.  Clint makes an offer.  The Record Boy accepts.  After he hands fifty bucks to the Record boy, Clint dons the kid’s lime smock and enters the ground masquerading as a mature-age Record boy.  Once inside the ground he then enters a toiletry cubicle, takes off the smock and stuffs it into his pocket.  He then gets a pass out, finds the Record boy, who is waiting outside the ground at a prearranged place, and hands back the smock him.  Clint then re-enters the ground with his pass out.  The streak continues.

 

 

 

More from Damian can be read Here.