
Copy of Royboy 1996 (after Edvard) July 4th is a significant date for Roy Boy Supporters. Read Adam Muyt
MILLIMETRE BOB & THE ROYBOYS
I was sitting at the bar of the Edinburgh Hotel in Sydney Road in Brunswick. I’d finished my first rum and coke and had just ordered another when the publican called to me from the bistro lounge.
‘Donny! Phone call for you.’
I swivelled on my stool, lifted my feet off the steel ashtray on the floor, I took my fresh rum and coke and salt and vinegar chips with me and headed to the bistro. The receiver was resting on a brown laminated table next to the wall mounted phone.
‘Hello.’
‘Donny’ a panicked voice was on the line. ‘It’s Millimetre. You have to come over now. They’re coming. They’ve found it, they’ve found us. It’s happening.’
‘It is?’
The line went dead.
I finished my drink, brushed down my pockets to make sure I had my smokes, I tipped the chips packet in the air, the dregs of the packet spilled into my mouth, then I walked out of the pub and made my way to Millimetres place.
I’d met Millimetre a few months back at the pub after a footy match. Fitzroy had a come-from-behind win against finals regulars, Richmond in the opening round of the VFL season at the Junction Oval. The Royboys fell behind early in the last quarter, but then rallied, and with goals from Garry Wilson and Bobby Beecroft, we hit the front and held off the Tigers for a rare opening round win. I rushed off the tram in Sydney Road after the game euphoric, my scarf flapping in the autumn breeze as I dodged the cars and trucks. I hit the footpath and in one giant stride burst through the front saloon doors of the Edinburgh Hotel.
‘Donny,’ the barflies greeted me. The races were on the radio in the background, but they’d heard of Fitzroy’s win in the footy wrap up. They lifted their glasses to me.
‘Go the Roys.’
‘Up the Royboy’s. Make a noise.’ Such was my excitement and joy that I reached into my wallet and slammed fifty dollars on the bar in front of the publican and shouted to the barflies and the other patrons.
‘Drinks are on me.’
‘Onya Donny,’ the barflies said. The other drinkers around the bar, some I knew and some I didn’t raised their glasses. ‘You’re the best.’
An hour later, a tall lanky man with dimples in his thin cheeks and freckles that ran across his pale nose came up to thank me for his drinks.
‘The name’s Millimetre, Millimetre Bob,’ he said as we shook hands. He had a Fitzroy beanie squeezed on his head and shoots of blonde hair ran down his forehead and around his ears. He had movie star sunken cheeks, blue eyes dulled by alcohol and his breath smelt of gin and whisky. ‘Thanks for the drinks. I’m mad for Fitzroy. What a win.’
Besides barracking for Fitzroy, we discovered both of us had lived in Brunswick our whole lives. He lived in Evans Street, while I lived a couple of blocks away on the other side of Glenlyon Road in Edward Street. We went to St. Ambrose’s and then Brunswick High, but because I was three years older than him, we never crossed paths. Not at Mass twice a week, not on the basketball courts at school, not even when they handed out free milk at recess. Even walking the streets of Brunswick as adults, we’d never bumped into each other. He’d been to some of the Fitzroy matches I’d been to, but we’d never seen each other at the games either.
Millimetres real name was Robert and one day the barflies watched him having a drunken and pointless argument with the publican over the correct height of a bar. Measuring tapes were produced, voices were raised and before the argument could be settled, one of the barflies yelled to Robert with an accusing finger.
‘You know what you are, you’re a real ‘Millimetre Bob.’’
His fellow barflies around him laughed, and the name stuck.
Our friendship was fast-tracked long after my fifty dollars had run out. Millimetre and I both agreed as we chatted about the upcoming football season, that, after nineteen years in the finals wilderness, nineteen years of a finals drought that included wooden spoons, whole seasons without a win, and almost two decades of football misery and mediocrity, Fitzroy would finally make the finals in 1977. Without a doubt, this would be our year.
‘Come back to my place. I want to show you something.’ Millimetre said, slurring his words. It was closing time, the night lights had been brightened to wake the barflies from their drunken stupor, the publican was in front of the till counting the night’s takings and the staff had upended the stools onto the tables and were hand washing the glasses.
We finished our drinks, and it was raining as we walked out the side door of the pub and headed down Albert Street. We strolled past an old mustard coloured Salvation Army headquarters, past the milk bar on the corner. We darted through the school grounds in Minnie Street as the drizzle became heavier. We slipped on the cobblestones next to the gutters as we made our way to Millimetre’s house.
His house was on a double block, a rarity compared to the other single-fronted weatherboard cottages jammed against one another in the street. The front gate was in the middle of the small white fence off the footpath, there was a large frangipani tree that dominated the tiny garden in front of the first bedroom and a side gate on the left of the house. A path from the veranda led to the carport on the right.
Millimetre opened his front door and led me through a row of beads attached to an archway and down the hallway. The house was a typical Edwardian cottage. Bedrooms ran off one side of the long and narrow hall, with the lounge and kitchen on the other side.
Millimetre was an only child and when his parents died, he inherited the house he grew up in. He saw no reason to leave and had lived there on his own for nearly ten years. I thought I was a one-eyed Fitzroy supporter, but as Millimetre turned on the lights and we moved through the rooms of his house and our footsteps creaking on the carpets and linoleum underfoot. I realised he and his parents was much more fanatical than me. Stuck on the wallpapers throughout the rooms were posters and pictures of Fitzroy players through the decades. There were wilted newspaper clippings of players from the turn of the century to the present day.
They were all there. Past champions Bunton, Gale, Freake, Parratt, Moriarty, Ruthven and Murray mixed in with pictures of our current crop of players – Wilson, Padley, Murphy. There were black and white group photos of the players, grouped up against each other, looking serious, with their bare arms folded, sitting and standing together in rows, the players having their picture taken on the wing of Brunswick St oval to ring in the new season. There were badges and footy cards lying loose on the kitchen table, mixed in with scarves and jumpers. A duffle coat hung over one of the chairs, with the names and numbers of Millimetre’s favourite players emblazoned in gold on the back.
‘Wow, dude, your family’s full-on Fitzroy.’
‘That’s not even the half of it,’ Millimetre cryptically replied as he went to the fridge to get some beers. He clinked open the tab and handed me a can.
‘I don’t get what you mean,’ I said to him.
‘Follow me.’
We walked out to the kitchen to the back of the house. Millimetre flicked the outside light on and opened the back door. There was a covered landing with an outside bathroom on the left. In front of us was a run-down bungalow and beyond that I saw in the darkness at the back fence a long-abandoned chicken coop. Vegetable plots in front of the coop were overgrown with weeds and there was an aviary that looked just as ruined. Millimetre led me right of the landing to a closed door.
‘This is the laundry.’ He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and slotted one in the lock. ‘This is what I want to show you.’
I was wondering why he would feel the need to lock the laundry. When Millimetre opened the door, I figured out why. There was no washing machine, dryer or wash basin. In the middle of the room was a boxy looking contraption, rectangular in shape, maroon and blue in colour. I turned to Millimetre.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a time machine,’ he explained. ‘Dad did some work for a company in Clifton Hill in the thirties. They didn’t pay him they screwed him over. He saw this in the basement of their office in Queens Parade when he was packing up. Not knowing what it was, he stole it as payment. Came back to their offices at night with his trolley, wheeled it onto the back of his van and nicked it. It was only when he brought it home that he figured out what it could do. Dad didn’t have much of a childhood, growing up in the Depression and all that shit and living with alcoholic parents, so he wasn’t much into history as such. He actually used it and went back in time, looking for his father, so he could kill him. Mum gave him a bit of an ear bashing about it. You know, use the machine for good instead of evil, that sort of thing. He was good with his hands and he tweaked it so it took him to Fitzroy home games at Brunswick Street.’
‘Wow.’ I didn’t know what else to say.
‘The machine took him to matches at Brunswick St alright, but only to games where they lost. And he got sick and died before he could remedy it.’ Millimetre tapped the machine with his fingers and a tinny hollow sound echoed through the laundry.
Brunswick Street was Fitzroy’s home ground until 1966 when the cricket club forced them out. The ground was in a dilapidated state and neither council nor the cricket club were prepared to spend the needed cash to upgrade the oval. Although efforts continued to try and bring the club back to its spiritual home, after a season at Carlton, the Lions had found cosier surroundings across town at St. Kilda’s old ground.
‘After dad’s funeral, mum wanted it out of the house. She asked me to drag it out to the kerb so someone else could grab it but, instead I stored in the chicken coop with the chooks. When she died a few years after dad, back into the laundry it came.’
‘Who painted it in Fitzroy colours?’
‘Mum and I did. Dad didn’t like the grey metal colour of the machine, so we painted it in Fitzroy colours for his birthday one year. He reckons the machine belonged to aliens, and after he stole it, the aliens started a demolition company as a front to search for their machine and have been knocking down buildings ever since.’
‘Nice touch with the colours,’ I said. ‘So… I can’t go back in time and kill Hitler, for instance?’
‘Unlikely. Unless he’s standing in the outer at Brunswick Street. That’s all the machine does. Takes you back to Brunswick Street to matches they lose. It’s very specific.’
Millimetre opened the door of the machine. Fluorescent lights of varying colours lit up the inside, and a buzzing hum filled the room. My drunkenness quickly evaporated.
Aliens. A time machine. This is bullshit, I thought to myself. But the promise, however false, of watching Fitzroy play in the past was alluring enough for me. I approached the machine with the timidity of someone inching their way towards the edge of a cliff and sat on the small seat in front of glowing panels.
‘What do I do?’
‘Nothing,’ Millimetre replied. ‘Dad rigged it so it does it all for you.’
He closed the door of the machine and turned the latch of the handle. I looked outside the front glass window to the drab and grey laundry wall.
The drab and grey of the wall disappeared.
Outside the front glass window, a more colourful scene emerged.
A scene of…
Picket fences.
The green grass of a football oval.
White goal posts.
A football ground.
Footballers.
I was sitting in the machine on top of the cricket grandstand of Brunswick Street oval. A game was in progress. Outside the ground, I could see rows of green trams in Brunswick Street waiting for the game to end so the throngs of exiting spectators could ride back into town. There was a concrete wall running the side and length of the ground and the still youthful skyline of Melbourne was in the background. The late afternoon sun was shadowing two-storey terrace houses in nearby Brunswick and Freeman Streets.
There was a wooden bridge at the scoreboard end of the ground that led to a hardware shop and a coal yard and spectators were standing on the bridge, watching the game for free. Kids were climbing trees behind the concrete fence. They were watching the game for free as well.
Fitzroy were playing North Melbourne, and Millimetre was right. Fitzroy were losing to a team that, most years, occupied the bottom rungs of the ladder. I thought I was a Fitzroy guru, but I struggled to pick any of the players running around in their jumpers. I watched a comical passage of play as a Fitzroy back man handballed to his teammate who failed to catch the ball. It trickled between his legs and was picked up by a North rover who, from thirty metres out calmly drop kicked the ball straight and true for another goal. The pro Fitzroy crowd groaned as North Melbourne went further ahead. I saw some scattered Shinboner supporters amongst the crowd wave their hats in joy. Fitzroy fans from the outer and the two stands, knowing a loss was inevitable, started to leave the ground. The smell of different flavours of tobacco, sausages and liniment floated up to me.
And then, without any notice or warning, I was back facing the laundry wall. I would only have been at the match for a couple of minutes. The door opened.
‘Far out,’ I said to Millimetre after he helped me out of the machine. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins. ‘You were right. I travelled back in time to a Fitzroy match. Amazing!’
‘What were the scores? Millimetre asked me. ‘Who were we playing?’
‘We were getting flogged by North Melbourne, of all teams.’
‘What year do you reckon?’ he asked.
‘Late forties, I think. I could tell by the shorts.’
North Melbourne had a hot spell for a couple of years. They might had even won a grand final except for Essendon. With John Coleman at full forward, the Bombers were unbeatable for four or five years. North finished on top of the ladder in 1949, lost the grand final to Essendon in 1950 and, with their one shot at glory over, slipped back to their usual position of one of the leagues cellar dwellers.
Millimetre reached into a small cabinet by the door. Inside were old newspapers, faded archives and articles of previous football matches. After a minute he tapped one of the pages in triumph.
‘Here we are. 1949, round 11, July 2. We lost to North Melbourne by three goals. We finished seventh that year, missing the finals by three games.’
He ticked off the game. There were other matches ticked off as well, records of games that Millimetre and his father had been to. Some had been ticked off more than once.
‘I saw the boundary umpires wave a handkerchief instead of a whistle when the ball went out of bounds.’
‘It’s cool, isn’t it?’ Millimetre replied with a huge grin on his face. ‘Being part of the evolution of footy.’
‘Can I do that again?’
Millimetre had been inside to the kitchen while I was in the machine. He shoved another can of beer into my hand.
‘Anytime,’ he said. ‘Be my guest.’
Fitzroy’s 1977 season was over before it had begun. After beating the Tigers in round 1, they went on a winless streak that spanned the rest of autumn and lasted well into winter. I had the pleasure of watching Fitzroy lose every Saturday afternoon. After work during the week, I’d go to Millimetres laundry and watch them lose a match from the past as well. Some losses were end of siren heartbreaks, most were thrashings, but never a win. Sometimes I’d take my cigarettes, a couple of cans of beer, and I’d smoke and drink in the machine while I watched the games.
A 1950s match against Melbourne. The machine always lands in the same spot, on top of the grandstand. I have a prime view, one of the best at the ground. I see Kevin Murray, Brian Pert, Norm Brown and Alan Ruthven play for Fitzroy- but they’re no match for Norm Smith’s Demons. Lead by the bulldozing Ron Barassi, they steamroll us into the Merri Creek soil and win in a canter. Trams line Brunswick Street, waiting for the crush of passengers when the game ends but I also see rows of taxis waiting as well, a sign of the rising middle classes spreading through Melbourne. I look to my right behind the stand where the bowling club is holding their weekly game. They don’t let the roars of the footy crowd break their concentration on the green, nor do tennis players in the gardens behind the oval are holding a social event on the courts. Melbourne runs further away as the game progresses, but there’s no shame losing to one of the best teams ever to grace a football ground.
I travel to a football match at the turn of the century. The grandstand on my right has yet to be constructed. It was built in 1904, so I’m guessing I’m at a game around 1903 or earlier. The ground, the game, the surrounds and the city skylight of the Victorian era are as foreign to me as another country. The sky above the houses is shrouded in smoke from wood burning chimneys trying to warm houses. Horse drawn carriages and hansom cabs are parked in Brunswick Street. Spectators are dressed in their best clothes to go to the footy with parasols and straw boat hats the fashion.
Familiarities remain. Fitzroy are in dark maroon jumpers and Geelong have their famous blue and white hoops. Fitzroy is a powerhouse in the early years of the VFL, but in this match, Geelong wins easily. The pace of the game is leisurely and casual, the ball is bloated and spherical like a rugby ball and there are many unexplainable stops and starts during the game. Instead of handballing, the players throw the ball in the air before punching it and there are many skirmishes and brawls behind play. I’d like to think otherwise, but it’s my beloved Fitzroy players who are guilty of the flare ups, a tactic to upset the winning Geelong team. The forwards slow the game down even further by digging up dirt to place the ball on the ground to kick for goal. When the match has ended, the fanaticism of the Fitzroy faithful is such that after the final bell has rung, fans run onto the oval and hurl abuse at the umpire, until police on horseback race escort the man to his dressing room. The consensus seems to be is that Fitzroy wouldn’t have lost by seven goals if the umpiring had been fair and judicious.
In 1945 I watch a full game and we draw against Essendon. The time machine can’t figure out if a draw is a win or a loss, but marks it down for a loss, as most supporters do. It’s a bonus game, the first home game at Brunswick Street for the new season, so I see Fitzroy unfurl their premiership winning pennant from the previous year. It floats in the wind on the flagpole next to my spot in the machine. Spectators look through me as they applaud and cheer when it is raised. The game is played at a pinball action pace, and Fitzroy are in front until the dying seconds when an Essendon rover kicks a point to level the game. I see Fred Hughson kick drop kicks from full back that land in the centre of the oval. Poetry, art and sport mixed in one.
We lose to Hawthorn at Brunswick Street only 7 times in 40 years, so I get the pleasure of witnessing one of those losses. It’s 1964 and we went winless all season. There’s only a few thousand at the game, the ground is a corridor of mud from goalpost to goalpost and the oval stinks from the sawdust used to dry the mud. Such is the downcast mood of the supporters from the continued defeats, the loss is pencilled in even before the players run out.
You would think with three Brownlow medallists in the one team, there would be a slew of finals appearances and premierships in the 1930s. Not so. Even with Hayden Bunton bamboozling the opposition players, the dazzling skills of Chicken Smallhorn on the wing and first year sensation Dinny Ryan controlling the back line, not only did we miss the finals, but we also finished last in 1936.
We lose to Collingwood in a spiteful game and I see Magpie players spit, kick and punch Fitzroy players behind the play. I thought I’d heard it all at a football match, but even when confined in the safety of my machine high up from the action, the racial abuse and continued taunts slung to aboriginal Fitzroy wingman Doug Nicholls from Magpie supporters makes me blush.
I witness a wooden spoon performance that I’m proud of. I’m at the last round of the 1916 season, and we’re beaten by three goals by Collingwood. As the Fitzroy players plod off the oval, downcast and sullen at another loss, I chuckle to myself, unable to keep the smile of my face.
‘Don’t worry, fellas,’ I mutter. ‘You’ll be fine.’
The war is raging across Europe. Most of the clubs disband because their players are fighting overseas. Only four teams remain Carlton, Collingwood, Fitzroy and Richmond. The League takes a battering from the press and politicians as to why the competition should continue in such dark times. If the players are fit enough to chase after a football, the argument rages, they’re fit enough to arm themselves and defend King and country. The four teams that are left are inner-city clubs, living in slums and houses that should be condemned. A high percentage of the players from the remaining clubs have Irish blood in their veins and a natural reluctance to take up arms and fight for the British, so the four sides left have no problem fielding a team each week.
With four teams, it’s a 12-round season, each team playing the other four times in the shortened year. Melburnians, with other things to worry about, quickly lose interest in the footy as the war drags on. Attendances plummet.
Fitzroy win their first two games, lose the next 10 and finish last. Yet, because there’s only four teams left in the competition, they still qualify for the finals. They find their early season form to beat Collingwood once and Carlton twice to win the flag. The only team in history to come last yet win a grand final in the same year.
I see Bob Pratt soar above much taller Fitzroy defenders to pull in screamers and watch the crowd follow him each quarter to opposite ends of the ground.
I see Carlton win by a point in 1948 and have my head in my hands along with all the other despairing Fitzroy supporters. Even though I know we’re going to lose, I pray to the time machine to send me to a game just so I can see one win, but it’s not to be. Carlton kept clawing away at our lead and kicked the winning goal in the last seconds of play. The constant drizzle that lasted all game clears at the end of the match and I see a rainbow in front of me that goes from one side of the horizon to the next. I’m sure there are more colours, but the only colours I see in the rainbow are maroon and blue. The beauty of the sky compensates for the agony of the loss.
I see Fitzroy champions from all eras, and champions from other teams across decades.
I shed tears at the never say die attitude of big-hearted follower Alan Gale.
I fall in love with the brawn and courage of Jack Dyer.
I watch open-mouthed in awe at the speed of Noel Jarvis.
I’m spell blinded by the tree trunk legs of Carlton ruck man John Nicholls.
I’m in awe when I watch the sublime skills of Geelong ruckman Polly Farmer, tapping the ball from the centre bounce to rover Bill Goggin, who sprints to the forward line then drop kicks the footy into the arms of a leading Doug Wade. If the machine detoured me to the pyramids of Egypt, I’d feel a greater privilege watching the precision and grace of Billy Goggin’s drop kicks.
I see Fitzroy supporters cry at close losses.
I see them cry at thrashings.
I see the supporters stay at Brunswick Street right to the final bell or siren, even when they know they’re going to lose. The ground is a temple, a shrine, a sanctuary and a place of worship for Fitzroy supporters.
Then like I always do when I come back from the past. I see a familiar wall in the laundry, I see Millimetre waiting for me with the records in his hand from the cabinet and a smile on his face. I see him waving from his front door when I leave, and I see him waiting for me with a beer in his hand when I arrive to go to another game.
Then I see a rum and coke in my hand, while I crunch my fingers into a packet of salt and vinegar chips. The barflies are at my left, nursing their drinks at the Edinburgh Hotel, I hear my name being called by the bartender. I hear Millimetre Bob’s frantic voice on the telephone, urgently summoning me to his place.
When you’ve been time travelling, any cynicism and disbelief is easily swept away. You’re more inclined to believe there are aliens in Melbourne and you can be persuaded it’s their time machine and they’re looking for it. You have no problems believing they’d use a demolition company as a front.
The company was well known in Melbourne, had a monopoly on the industry and had been knocking down buildings for generations. It wasn’t uncommon for Melburnians to wake up one morning to see a favourite church, a colonial cathedral or an art deco building in the heart of the CBD reduced to a rubble of bricks and dust. The company’s banner would drape proudly out front with their name boldly written on the front, showing everyone far and wide who was responsible for the destruction. The company sometimes demolished buildings in error and there were howls of protests from Melbourne’s outraged citizens, and a proposed heritage act was before the parliament to try and curb the over enthusiasm of the demolition company.
So when he rang me at the pub saying they were onto him, I knew what he meant.
A loud and deafening noise could be heard all over Brunswick as I was walking towards Millimetres house. It sounded like the engines of nearby jets. One noise was coming from Lygon street, the other was opposite on Sydney Road near Moreland Street. I heard it as soon as I stepped out of the pub, and it became louder as I made my way to Millimetre’s place.
He was waiting for me at the front door and quickly ushered me inside.
‘I told you they’re coming,’ he said as we rushed down the hallway. ‘Don’t know how they tracked us down. Only took them twenty years.’
We headed out the back door and reached the laundry. Millimetre jiggled the lock of the door, opened it and we faced the machine.
‘One last time,’ he said to me. ‘Go for it.’
‘You have a turn,’ I replied. ‘It’s yours, after all.’
‘It’s okay. I’ve gone back plenty of times. You’ve only been to a few.’ Millimetre had already made his decision. Philosophically accepting the machine would soon be gone, he was already walking away.
‘I’ll head them off the best I can.’ He closed the laundry door behind him. ‘Make it quick, though.’
I sat in the machine, closed its door, the panels lit up and the laundry wall disappeared.
I’m at a football match on top of a grandstand but not the one I’m usually on top of. I’m at a football ground, yet it’s not Fitzroy’s. Gone are the inner city and federation houses, the trams and the timberyard. There’s another city skyline in the distance, but it’s further away and it’s not the skyline of Melbourne. It’s a night match, and the lights from the tower make the match just as bright and easy to watch as any day game.
It’s like a colosseum styled VFL Park with its electronic scoreboard, orange glowing writing and wrap around grandstand-but it isn’t Waverley. I don’t recognise the colours of the team Fitzroy is playing. I squint my eyes as I read the scoreboard.
Adelaide?
The machine had taken me into the future instead of the past. Ten, fifteen, twenty years maybe. And it looks like the League’s gone national.
Fitzroy are in front by 11 points. It’s late in the game. It’s raining, the ground is muddy and many of the Adelaide supporters are leaving their seats early-the match seemingly over to them.
Is the machine going to let me witness a win by Fitzroy? Then I watch dumbfounded as I witness the worst umpiring decisions in the history of the League. Adelaide are awarded two soft free kicks on their froward line, which they convert to goals. The last kick of the match sails through to give Adelaide an impossible win.
The laundry wall returns, and I hear Millimetre thumping on the laundry door.
‘Donny. We have to go.’
I vaulted out of the machine and we ran from the laundry, through the back door, down the hallway and out to the front veranda.
Outside it was pandemonium. Two semi-trailer trucks were bearing down towards Millimetre’s house from each side of Evans Street. The narrow road was no deterrent to them, and cars parked on the road were crushed, bent out of shape and pushed onto the footpath as the trucks approached. Residents, drawn outside by the noise, stood by their front gates and watched in horror at the wreckage and carnage.
The trucks stopped in front of Millimetre’s house, front bumpers inches from each other. On one of the back trays of the truck was a crane. It operated remotely as it rose over Millimetres house and hovered over the laundry. Then, with a bang, it crashed through the ceiling. The time machine was lifted into the sky, held like a magnet by the crane and swung back onto the street. With a heavy thud, it rested the time machine on the back tray of the other truck and the vehicles started reversing back up Evans Street. The burly sullen looking drivers in blue overalls didn’t even acknowledge Millimetre and me.
The parked cars were pummelled again, and, in some cases flung over the fences and onto front yards of houses. One truck disappeared down Minnie Street. The other, time machine on its tray, flicked on its blinker, reversed into Lygon Street, crunched gears and headed towards the city. We watched it all in shock silence by the front door.
There would be no more football matches from the past to go to. Millimetre’s machine was back with its original owners.
‘Sorry, dude,’ I said eventually. ‘That’s rough.’
I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. ‘Traumatic even,’ I continued. ‘Do you feel like a drink?’
‘Drinks, Donny,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think one’s going to be enough, do you?’
We headed through the front gate of his house and onto the footpath. We heard police sirens in the distance as we stepped over bits of flattened metal and chrome. We stepped around tyres and panels and engine parts from the crumpled and mangled cars as we made our way to the Edinburgh Hotel.
We passed the milk bar on the corner of Albert Street after cutting through the school grounds.
‘I forgot to tell you,’ I said. ‘The machine took me to a game in the future. We were playing Adelaide. The League’s gone national.’
‘Really? Wow,’ Millimetre said. ‘How did we go? Did we win?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it.’ We reached the pub, and I opened the saloon doors. ‘The goddam umpiring was horrible. We lost on the last kick of the day.’
‘Typical,’ Millimetre Bob sighed as we stepped inside the pub.
Read more from Paul Harman (aussiewombles) HERE
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About Paul Harman
Paul's earliest memories of sport is listening to the 1973 grand final between Richmond and Carlton and watching with his father the VFA grand final between Port Melbourne and Oakleigh a year later. His first football book was '100 great marks,' a birthday present given to him from his parents when he was six. Now in his sixth decade of life, he writes short stories and novels, and pens a regular column on English Football for the Footy Almanac
A great yarn and a great read, thanks.
I love a bit of footy fiction. Thanks, Paul.
Truly fantastic.
That house sure does sound familiar….