Almanac Footy – Finals Diary, Chapter 5: Five by Five

 

Whenever I need petrol, I always go to pump number five. Last night, it meant leaving other odd numbered options unattended, waiting behind a little Hyundai and standing in the rain while I filled my tank. It’s odd behaviour but I can’t change now.

I’m a modern-day Sisyphus. He pushed his boulder up the hill of Hades every single day of his life, an infinite and futile quest to get it to the summit. Every single day, I grab a skinny latte from McDonalds and then drive up the Kay Street hill to work. When the randomly generated code on my MyMaccas app finishes with a five, it’s normally a pretty good day.

Despite the focus of this diary entry, I’m no kooky numerologist. But when the number 5 appears in my life I notice it – when I get 5, or 35 or 85 from the ticket machine at the supermarket deli; whenever I get to choose my own raffle ticket, I’ll skip ahead to one that finishes in five; I set my alarm clock for 5:55 every morning; when I buy the newspaper, I choose the fifth one from the top; I put my five-dollar notes in a separate section of my wallet. Last night at her dance eisteddfod, my eldest daughter won her character solo section. She was competitor number five.

Yeah, I’m kind of getting how all of this sounds. Maybe I am a kooky numerologist after all.

Josh Dunkley wears number five for the Lions. It’s been a good number for us. Prior to Dunks, our talismanic enforcer, Mitch Robinson wore it. Way back, when I was young, another Bulldog with Gippsland roots became a Lion and wore the number 5 too. His name was Bernie Quinlan; like Dunks, he could play a bit.

That’s definitely where it all started. After Quinlan retired, it always seemed far too obvious for Paul Roos to be my figure of individual idolatry. It was just that even at nine I wanted to look like I’d given my choice of hero a bit more careful consideration than the typical cookie cutter fan. You’d see these kids at school, strutting around in their barely worn Carlton jumpers with Kernahan’s number ‘4’ or their straight-off-the-rack Collingwood ones with Daicos’ ‘35’. Mindless automatons with no credibility as fans.

I always kind of rated the decision of the only Tigers fan at our school to not wear a number at all. It was a bold move. In the initial analysis, it could be seen as being a flippant fan – not knowing any of the players or their numbers or, worse, not even understanding the sacred custom of wearing your favourite player’s number. The sort of move a prime minister might make to garner popularity – throw on a Lions scarf and be caught on tv drinking beer from a plastic cup as part of an election campaign.

But there seemed to be something a bit deeper in this kid’s decision. His footy jumper was as broken in and as any of ours were, the cuffs were knackered and the yellow sash had some pretty dubious looking stains on it. This jumper was legit. I ended up asking him one day, “How come you don’t have a number?” He sighed like a returned soldier and grimaced, “I love the Tiges, but our players are all shit – none of them deserve it”. Such was life for the Tigers fans in the post-premiership, pre-Richo era.

There was a decision to be made post Bernie. I imagined going to games, wearing my jumper and the wise old heads who had been following the Roys since the days of Haydn Bunton nodding sagely as I walked past them wearing the number of a less obvious choice. Paul Broderick? Matthew Armstrong? I wanted to look like a thoughtful connoisseur of players. Someone who didn’t just blindly follow the seasonal fans.

Leaving Bernie’s number ‘five’ where it was, was given a bit of consideration. It had been rested for a year in 1987 as is the custom when legends depart. I hung on for that year as a sign of respect. Going into 1988, it wasn’t just respect but hope. Even though at the start of 1988, ‘Superboot’ was the wrong side of thirty-six with a buggered achilles, I still had this futile hope that maybe, just maybe, a comeback was still possible. When that didn’t eventuate, the number was given to Andrew Brockhurst who was recruited from South Australia in the draft. Now I tip my hat to Brockhurst. The bloke had three seasons and thirty-eight more senior games for Fitzroy than I did but, in 1988, he hadn’t quite earned jumper number privileges just yet. A badge maybe, but nothing more than that.

The other reason a change was needed was that it looked a bit sad and odd when you saw kids at the games wearing numbers long after their heroes had retired. One could be accused of hanging on to the past after that much time had passed or, worse, not being abreast of who was still playing for the team. A casual fan. The year before, at a game against Hawthorn, I’d guffawed when one of our fans had berated a kid about my age in a dangly poo and wee coloured Hawthorn jumper with the number three on the back with the rejoinder, “Matthews retired years ago dickhead,” and then to his parents, “Buy ya kid a new jumper.” The ‘5’ had to go; I would not be party to the Quinlan name being treated with similar disrespect.

I went through a few different numbers in the years that followed. Gary Pert’s number 3; then he left for Collingwood; Osborne’s 44, then he became a Swan; Lynch’s number 11, then he went to the Bears, before finally simplifying and going with Paul Roos’ number 1 – just before he became a Swan. If I was an incense-burning, tarot-reading, star-gazing superstitious type, I could potentially consider myself a bad omen. Or note that every year I had a number on my back not involving the numeral five, Fitzroy kind of struggled. The back of my jumper became a sure portent that whoever I chose was about to leave Fitzroy and that we would be anchored to the bottom.

The number five apparently represents freedom, curiosity and change. It is also said to represent something very human – we all have five appendages, five senses and five major bodily systems. More than one major religion believe that the number five represents God’s interactions with and the gifts he has given humanity. Anyone who remembers anything of Bernie Quinlan would readily agree.

If we win against Carlton, it will be the fifth Grand Final for the Brisbane Lions. If they do, it will be the fifth that Michael Voss has been involved in. What does all this numerical pondering mean in terms of the result this Saturday? Buggar all, probably.

My tip – Lions by five points.

 

To return to our Footy Almanac home page click HERE.

 

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

Do you enjoy the Almanac concept?

And want to ensure it continues in its current form, and better? To help things keep ticking over please consider making your own contribution.

 

Become an Almanac (annual) member – CLICK HERE.