Almanac Footy: Finals Diary – Chapter 1: Pre-emptive hindsight

 

Finals Diary, chapter the first – Pre-emptive Hindsight

 

It’s coming round again
Slowly creeping hand
Of time and its command
Soon enough it comes
And settles in its place
Its shadow in my face
Puts pressure in my day

 

(‘These Days’, Powderfinger)

 

Today was footy colours day at school. Compared to the footy fiesta my youngest daughter has at her primary school, ours is certainly a more moderate affair. She is engulfed in a day long festival, a parade of colours, banners, and longest kick competitions. For our year eleven and twelve students, it is business as normal in the school day – exam preparation, final assessments and the like – albeit decked out in their footy gear. But my daughter and I share something in our footy day experiences, like the Highlander, we are the only ones of our kind. The only Lions in our schools. To the blaring blasts of “We are the pride….” she marched in maroon, a singular figure in the same way that Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans ran through forests with only his musket for company. I wandered through the hallways and the yard, solitary and stoic, an aging but hopefully dignified figure in my retro Fitzroy hoody. A world teeming with an armada of students decked out in Richmond, Essendon, Geelong and Carlton gear.

 

My year eleven class this year are all remarkable and wonderful young people. This class is one I look forward to and always leaves me with a smile on my face. Some of the finest minds I have ever been lucky enough to teach are in this class. Their essays make me think and challenge me to be better. Their questions and our class discussions make me glad I became an English teacher and not an air traffic controller or travelling troubadour. I entered their class today and was greeted by a phalanx of joyous but relieved Collingwood fans. To echo the ABC Late Show’s ‘Graham and the Colonel’, the game last night was ‘tough, uncompromising, no holds-barred, no beg your pardon’. They are an elegant bunch of kids this class, optimistic and clear-eyed. But today, the morning after the night before, there was a Shakespearean solemnity in the eyes of the Magpies in our midst.

 

‘You’d be feeling confident,’ my colleagues say to me throughout the day.

 

‘Reckon your mob are sure things for at least the Grand Final,’ they reckon.

 

It’s comments like these that one can do without at this time of year. Expectation hangs like the sword of Damocles. Heavy lies the maroon, blue and gold head that many pundits cite a realistic chance to wear this years’ crown. I continue to wander corridors with my head stooped. Students and teachers, all of us rendered and homogenised as one entity beribboned with scarves, beanies, hoodies, and jumpers. The Demons fans look sheepish, bowed but not yet broken.

 

“Write some practice essays this weekend,” I tell my year twelves. One of them, a gem of a kid who plays footy for the mighty Traralgon Maroons, is wearing his Kangaroos jumper. Like me, he seems to be the only one of his kind in our school yard today. I give him a nod of respect as he leaves the classroom. I’m the last of the Royboys, but he might well be at the dawn of something. He’s eighteen, he follows North. Who knows what the next few years will have in store for him. He should be optimistic.

 

Port Adelaide tomorrow night. “Reckon you’ll smash them sir,” a graceful girl from my year eleven class quietly informs me. She’s a Blues fan; something about her has reminded me all year about the Carlton I remember in my youth. She deserves and demands excellence and success in herself in that regal way the Blues once had. Another student, who is a Bulldog through and through seeks me out as well to let me know that the Lions will be her finals team this year. She shows me her new Josh Dunkley badge, a Lions one which is proudly pinned to her scarf.

 

Why am I writing now instead of tackling some corrections? Because for me and my Lions, these next four weeks may just belong to us. It’s been too long since my ramblings have appeared in the Footy Almanac. These days may just be ones I want to look back on and savour.

 

 

More from Shane Reid can be read Here.

 

 

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