Almanac Footy: Gus and The Not So Death of Football

The Not So Death of Football

 

Paul Roos was one of my biggest heroes growing up, the man I wrote my first ever published story about, who sent a handwritten note thanking me for supporting Fitzroy when he read it. The underdog’s champion, who represented us in All-Australian sides and media. Gave us our moments of feeling elite.

 

   Several decades later, I met him in the SCG foyer a year or two after he coached Sydney, for one of my footy books, and asked if there was a difference between suburban recruits and country recruits. Paul was in a shit mood. Rumours were swirling in the media he had signed at Melbourne, but hadn’t told anybody yet. He scoffed at the question I asked, like he did all others that followed it.

 

   “What are you talking about? The country boy has a shit pair of jeans and crappy haircut. Give him a better pair of jeans, a better haircut, they’re the same player.”

 

   I couldn’t have disagreed more, but my hero, the Doncaster boy, was in no mood to talk footy, so I bowled on to my next question, wondering why he said yes to meeting. I’d come a long way from the Tassie mountains.

 

Most bush boys have already worked on the farm, they have played against men. Even those in the AFL junior system. They have come from clubs where the juniors play before the adults, not on Sundays. Their whole communities, ways of life, revolve around everybody in the district, are far less age bubbled, many have already done some form of manual labour. They mature faster. At least, as footballers.

 

   *****

 

Otway’s juniors had a practice match on Saturday. It was a celebration! On the inside. We’ve had no kids for two or three years, which is the death of any small footy club. The population is gone. Hobby farmers, Air B&Bs, small farms merging to become big farms, there’s nowhere to live. The mechanisation of farm jobs means there are less people working the land. We’ve all heard the stories.

 

   Forrest lost their juniors, then seniors a few years later. Simpson have no Under 18s this year. Birregurra, once a juniors powerhouse, are struggling.

 

   For us, up on the ridge, the Lavers Hill school, in its prime, once housed 700 kids. Now, it’s 40. The Gellibrand school was shut and bulldozed a long time ago. The Kawarren school abandoned. Carlisle River school has three kids in it. To say players are scarce in the ranges is an understatement.

 

   The Otway FNC committee, and community, has done a brilliant job, hustling, making it a place good natured people want to be. The club is solid, strong, numbers are up in footy and netball, but the foundation will always be Under 18s.

 

 

Angus (Gus) Zdrojewski with support team.
Coaching the Under 15s last year.

 

   After the two season void, this year, the coaching job was given to a ripper young bloke from the bush, Gus, with a monster-load of passion. “I reckon I can build a team, mate.”

 

   The world will never know how hard his duck feet have paddled over summer. His sheer ambition, his force of will, has pushed together a group of kids, from nothing, from everywhere. He has mustered a big support team, is on the phone, emails, social media every night, handing out fliers, organising barefoot bowls nights in town, visiting potential recruits in person, him and his crew wording-up high school gym teachers, jiving, planning. He cares. It’s golden.

 

   *****

 

Family took me to the city this weekend. Well, Point Cook. That signpost you see in the freeway between Melbourne and anywhere, that, if you actually take the turnoff, leads to a flat district, with so few hills all you observe is a never-ending sea of new houses and vacant lots soon to be new houses and apartment blocks.

 

   Cut loose on Sunday, I took the dog for a walk, and was drawn, like metal to magnets, to the sound of local footy. Didn’t get much of a run in our prackie match the day before, maybe, if one team was short, I could pull on a jumper…

 

   It would have been a sight, though. Getting there, I noticed the game was juniors. Point Cook vs Geelong’s St Lennards, everyone on the oval 40+ years younger than me, skinnier, faster. So I did what you do, strolled over and chatted to someone, just to backstory whatever I was looking at. The Umpire’s Escort. A roundish man, friendly as anything.

 

   He said we were watching the second grade Under 16s.

 

   “There’s a first?” I asked.

 

   “All the teams in this league have 3 Under 16s teams,” he matter-of-fact told me. “They capped it at that. Nope, no more. So that clubs with enough for four teams, too bad, they have to send their kids elsewhere.”

 

   We watched. The oval was golden. Support staff everywhere, jumpers unique to their clubs, not just AFL copies, their kits crisp and amazing. The skills top notch. Some kid for Point Cook – Mussi, I think – was killing it from the middle. Every time there was a pack, just as suddenly, there wasn’t. The ball was cleared and people were saying, in that knowing voice; “Oh, well done, Mussie”

 

   “The main oval is behind us,” the bloke told me.

 

   I cranked the neck. Sure enough, there were great lights, was a ripper grandstand, benches, a round-shaped bowling green, quality fencing; it was a proper, proper oval. “The third one, back there,” he nodded to the left, “is mostly for other sports. The boys warm up on it, but don’t play there often.”

 

   When the bushfires ripped through Gellibrand and greater Otway recently, the crews spent all summer flying their water helicopters from our footy oval, and parking their fire trucks there, and did the most brilliant job of stopping the unstoppable. I’ve seen footage of walls of flame rising around the town and tree-lined club, belittling them, yet both survived, mostly. Thanks to the firies!

 

   Water ushered everywhere. Yet, ironically, as the town was evacuated, nobody from the club could get to our footy ground to water the grass! It’s now patchwork, waiting to be mud in winter.

 

   Three well-watered ovals? Three teams of kids from each age bracket to choose from? It’s brilliant and scary!

 

   I asked old mate if any AFL talent has come from the Point Cook footy club. He named a senior player from Hawthorn, and another just drafted by Richmond.

 

   “The club’s only 20 years old, the talent is just starting to come through now,” he chuckled. “There’s another Point Cook team that’s been around longer.”

 

   Then told me a bit about it.

 

   I tried to get my head around such stuff – two clubs!? All I’d just witnessed, x2, in just the one suburb?

 

   It made me happy. Good luck to them, I thought. To all the boys, and girls, on their journeys through football.

 

   *****

 

There’s a massive gap between country and city on so many levels of society. For better and worse on both sides. And many things the same. May we never, ever go down the American path of; once your junior footy is over, that’s it. Over there, there’s touch footy/Gridiron in the park, sometimes, with a few random mates, or that glossy tripe on telly. Nothing in between.

 

   Here, footy is the glue of so many bush people and their communities, and such an active part of life in the city. I know playing still keeps me young. It made me insanely happy to see, despite the doom and gloom of our bush conversations, the sport is, indeed, alive and kicking.

 

   No, Otway doesn’t have the numbers, and facilities of Point Cook, but it is a club that has EVERYTHING a young bloke could want. Freedom, country gratitude! Netballers! People who think them, and their mates, are our most important asset. Our future! Otway has life! All sorts and shapes and sizes! A laziness to everything on the outer side of the fence. Kids roaming, climbing trees, riding dirtbikes, leaving after footy to go fishing, all while the adults from all around a 100km district gather and cheer blue murder! We have landscapes. Playing in Gellibrand’s rolling hills one week, bushfire scars everywhere, down on spectacular coasts the next, then on the farming plains, one game under an extinct volcano, even a few in the ‘big smoke’ Colac.

 

   Each season is an adventure!

 

   The lads who have tapped into this will have stories of a lifetime. Worth! A community who idolises them. And work ethic through sport.

 

   *****

 

 

   Gus knows we may or may not win many games, but doesn’t care too much, as long as they improve, and enjoy themselves. He has willed into existence some semblance of a future for all of us. The lads are rippers to a one. Strong individuals. Taking on the teams from town, defying the odds, us mighty underdogs! If the boys tap into their coach’s passion, and his and the strong support staff’s wisdom, this year they will have adventures and learning and a hunger for footy that will see them right an any task they take on in the future.

 

 

 

*****

 

I left the Point Cook No 2 oval, passing, the Under 16s A Team warming up on the No 1 Oval, ground speakers blaring out fire-up music for them. Just thinking of it felt ridiculous, and glorious. I hope the club has success, and every single player goes on to have a long career and love life and love footy.

 

  *****

 

PS: I told Paul Roos; “Hang on, I have a shit pair of jeans and crappy haircut!” To which he huffed out a laugh and loosened up a little, offering to do a ‘Part 2’ of the interview sometime in the future.
“Maybe down in Melbourne,” he said, giving me a small wink

 

 

 

More from Matt Zurbo HERE.

 

 

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