Almanac (Footy) Memoir: Skin in the game

 

 

 

 

By Tony Newport

 

It’s 1964 and I am eleven years old, going on twelve. For my birthday in October I am gifted a book: High Mark edited by Jack Pollard. It’s an anthology of Australian Rules Football containing essays and anecdotes written with the assistance of noted scribes and reporters in conjunction with luminaries such as Ron Barassi, Ted Whitten, Bob Skilton, Alan Aylett, Fos Williams, Lou Richards, Polly Farmer and many others. Best of all are the photographs. Beautiful full page homages in crisp black and white of high marks and interplay and featuring one of the best compositions of flying for a high mark of all time: John Dugdale hovering above his opponent with everything in near perfect symmetry.  Arms and legs, frog-like in their extension, head centred and focused, the ball just within his grasp and one imagines a stillness, captured by the crowd. A great image that certainly fired my youthful imagination, and a recently learnt spoiler, he did not complete the mark.

I have come late to full awareness of the Victorian Football League. Up until my final year at primary school, I had not chosen a team. This is not unusual for the time. We are living on Tasmania’s west coast. Most kids know of Barassi and Whitten. We play school footy but our exposure to the big time is sparse. We are out playing on Saturdays when the six VFL matches are covered by radio with broadcasts evenly shared between heavy static and commentary. We are outside kids. Even in the rain which we accept as part and parcel of our existence. But yes, there are times when the weather confines us to a small lounge room and an umpire mother with limited options for a send-off rule.

As if by osmosis I opt for St Kilda. I know little of Darrell Baldock. I am not swayed by the colours. I have simply chosen my tribe. A choice which is vindicated in High Mark when I see the plate of Carl Ditterich with a messy mop of blond hair reaching over an opponent to mark the ball. From now on I am Big Carl. For Christmas that year I get a St Kilda guernsey with number 10. It hangs down past my bum and there is no prouder wearer of the colours.

The book stays at home. It is hard bound with a colour plated dust jacket. The Saints go on to win their one and only flag. I leave school. I leave home and the book is forgotten. In time it is passed on to my younger siblings until eventually my mother returns the book to me. It goes into storage until it is resurrected six decades on from my twelfth birthday.

What kind of nick is it in? Well in football parlance it is a veteran of at least 300 senior games. There is wear and tear. The dust jacket long gone. There are torn pages at the back and scribbling where my two youngest brothers have updated the records. Notably the Saints 1966 premiership. There are games of noughts and crosses inside the back cover. Those days of winter confinement have taken their toll. But the integrity of the book is still there. The glorious plates. The solid editing of Pollard. It’s a time capsule worthy of its title High Mark in more ways than one.

Have I passed on the bug to Rod and Trev my younger brothers? Not really. Football on the west coast is played on Sundays. There is not much else. Spectators dress for church but their true allegiances are for the afternoon service. The bug so to speak is in the air we breathe, the gravel and the mud, the crib rooms, the playtime scuffles, the Friday Sun Pictorial team selections, the coloured streamers on car aerials, the skiting in the pub, the Scanlens’ footy cards. The bug I have passed on is a passion for the St Kilda footy club. My stepfather barracks for Collingwood. My mother and my four siblings are all Saints. Thank yous are in short supply. But they have stuck. Not like me. A callow fifteen year old who jumped ship in 1968 on the impulsive declaration that seeing as half Tasmania now followed the Saints I wanted to be different.

In that same year I am at bank school in Hobart. A week of indoctrination and sneaking into pubs under age. Now that I have a paid job I buy a present for my brothers to take back to Rosebery. It is an Australian Rules board game. On a sheet of cardboard folded out to twice the A3 size of the box it came in, two teams are represented in all eighteen positions with two players matched against each other in red and blue colours. An oval-shaped disk the size of a coat button, red on one side, blue on the other is tossed to start the game. The disk is flicked from player to player. Goal and point posts are arranged at each end. The goals are about four inches high and roughly the same distance apart. My brothers take to this game with all the fierce endeavour and competitiveness they will display later on the actual field. Adjudication of goals and points requires the defending player to lie down on the carpet at eye level. Dissent hovers like a frisson in the air. They mark each other hard but temper tantrums are rare. The scores run down a quarto writing pad and onto the next page. These games are epic and reminiscent of the early days of the game when time was of no consequence.

Time that is not always so beneficent. Rod and Trev will continue their fierce rivalry. Bonded by their love for each other and a game that resides deep in their soul. Both will play on the mining town football fields of Tasmania and W.A. Trevor, often the smallest combatant, is also one of the fiercest and best. Rod will go on to coach Mines Rovers to premierships in Kalgoorlie. He will also suffer a serious mining accident in which his shin bones pierce the soles of his feet. He will recover to go on and play Super Rules. They will never be household names, Rodney and Trevor Sumner, but they are at the heart of all the best things our native game can bring. A passion nurtured within the pages of a classic sporting book, a long forgotten and obscure board game and the gravel and mud spirit of Tasmania’s west coast.

 

Footnote:
In choosing another team in 1968 I must assuage my conscience. I must, I tell myself, choose an underdog. I choose well. I opt for South Melbourne. They will not win a final until 1996. They will lose consecutive games to the magnitude of 29 and 26 games respectively. They will be shunted unceremoniously to Sydney. I stay the course. They have been my tribe for 58 seasons. My brother Rod still calls me a turncoat.

 

Read more from Tony Newport HERE

 

Read more about Tony’s book Gravel & Mud, a collection of footy writing from the west coast of Tasmania, which he edited with Chris and John Carswell HERE.

[Unfortunately their book is sold out, but a reprint is being considered]

 

 

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