Almanac Footy: Ron Barassi and me
Ron Barassi and Me
by James Walton
It was a breakfast flight. The food wasn’t bad. Tony Grieg and Rhonda Burchmore were a few seats ahead, not together, separately. I was young. Maybe some were from a Channel Nine celebrity flight, heading off from an early morning broadcast to a show or a telecast. Ron was in the row ahead of me. Immaculately dressed and turned out, I marvelled at the way his hair sat still, and the wave that went through it to the back of his neck.
He turned around briefly with a “Morning”, and a smile that would have lit up Sydney Harbour Bridge on New Year’s Eve, with a manner that made me feel like we’d known each other all our lives, and the Bridge turned to dull coat hanger metal in comparison, in the immediacy of his warmth. He pointed at the union badge on my lapel and rolled his eyes, but made me laugh back, as he turned about.
It was a quick inter city trip. He jokingly dropped his shoulder slightly towards me as we got our overnighters out of the overhead luggage compartment. He said hello to everyone who said hello or not to him, as we made our way stagger stop out of the plane, and over to the taxi rank, where we ended up side by side again. As he was about to get into an old yellow cab he turned around and with a hanky wiped a spot on my shoulder.
“I see you have a baby”, was all he said, and was gone, and that is all I know of Ron Barassi, the civilian, outside of football and legend, and how he ducked into and sidled into the bench seat of the taxi, with a knowing wink back. A man constructed like something a cooper might make of the human form, a barrel of a torso, who couldn’t he held, could crash a pack, and would take the time to clean up a stranger.
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About James Walton
James Walton is published in many anthologies, journals, and newspapers. He has been shortlisted for the ACU National Poetry Prize, the MPU International Poetry Prize, The James Tate Prize, and the Ada Cambridge Prize. Five collections of his poetry have been published. He was nominated for ‘The Best of the Net’ 2019, and was a Pushcart Prize 2021 nominee. He is a winner of the Raw Art Review Chapbook Prize. His fifth poetry collection, Snail Mail Cursive, was published by Ginninderra Press in January 2023. He now resides in Wonthaggi, Australia, in an Edwardian house which was once a small maternity hospital.
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Did you have a baby at the time, James? Just wondering. Spot-on portrait here of a side to Barrass many wouldn’t know.
Yep Bill, one just a month or so old. I left in a hurry, didn’t check the suit jacket from the cuddle.It happened it bit later with John Cain, who called me back into a private meeting to let me know! Boy, did that leave people floundering about what he had to say to the juniour at the meeting. I played it up for all it was worth of course, finger on the nose, revelling, confessed after a few minutes. John was very kind to the new bloke.
Wonderful. The writing and the man.
It was a special moment.
Great story James and beautifully told.
Oh thank you, James.
Enjoyed your piece James. Well done. A special moment in time.