Almanac Footy (Memory): John Longmire had a bad day

 

 

Saturday 24 August 1991.

Round 23 in the AFL.

North Melbourne faced Geelong out at Waverley in front of a crowd of 26,445.

I was not part of the 26,445. Instead, I was 500km away in Kapooka, NSW.

 

I was part of a platoon of 30-odd unfortunate souls that were nearing the end of their first week of Army recruit training.

Having ‘trained’ us (i.e. flogged us) all week the platoon staff had determined that we were by far the shittiest bunch of pricks to have ever set foot in “this man’s Army” (it was 1991, things were changing, but very slowly) and as a result the platoon needed to be punished accordingly.

(In hindsight one comes to understand that every week one platoon is the worst bunch of recruits that any instructor has ever seen. The blokes in the next building had been told the same thing last week.)

For 13 weeks our lives were going to be controlled by the platoon staff as they turned us from worthless civilians into useful basic soldiers.

What went on across those 13 weeks is now immaterial.

It was the most physically demanding and mentally draining exercise I have ever undertaken, and I completed it, and it’s done.

(I had drafted a longer piece that addressed the platoon staff and some of the stuff they put us through, but the act of putting pen to paper allowed me to purge those memories.)

 

The reason that Saturday 24 August 1991 sticks in my memory is that this was the day that I realised that being at the beck and call of the Army, and all the bullshit that came along with it, was not for me.

I belonged at the footy.  Any footy, anywhere.

SANFL, country, AFL, it didn’t matter.

 

While we were being put through the wringer on this Saturday afternoon, John Longmire was also having a bad day.

I know this because having a surname that started with ‘A’ meant that I was housed in the first room in our barracks, and our room was directly across the hallway from the platoon staff’s room.

The platoon staff had a radio in their room, and it happened to be tuned to the footy (likely ABC).

Hence, I was able to catch snippets of the post-game wrap and learned that Geelong had defeated North comfortably, and that Longmire had been disappointing for North.

I recall thinking that if John Longmire has had a bad day, I would gladly trade my day for his!

 

33 years down the track I am finally ready to revisit that Saturday afternoon and see what really happened out at Waverley.

 

Thanks to australianfootball.com I can see that the 20-year-old Longmire had only nine touches and kicked one goal, a disappointing outcome in a 91 goal season.

Although, he wasn’t alone.

Fellow 20-year-olds Wayne Carey and Anthony Stevens had only nine and eleven touches respectively and did not hit the scoreboard.

Even Geelong’s superstar Gary Ablett had only 14 kicks (zero handballs) for two goals, and had his direct opponent Mick Martyn collected a Brownlow Medal vote.

North led by seven points at quarter time, but from there it was all Geelong with the final margin being a 32-point victory to the Cats.

Billy Brownless kicked three for Geelong and Paul Spargo was North’s only multiple goal scorer.

Paul Couch collect the three Brownlow votes and Barry Stoneham earned two votes for his work in defence.

 

Thanks to YouTube, I can also go back and watch the Channel 7 highlights of that game (plus Collingwood v Richmond from Victoria Park if I feel the urge).

Below are some random observations on the game at Waverley:

Socks were pulled up and jumpers tucked in (mostly).  Even if you weren’t a good footballer, you could at least look like one. (The exception being Trevor Poole and his awful slicked-back hairstyle.)

There was plenty of mud and the ground was quite chopped up in places, but everyone just got on with it.

There was no ‘fat’ side of the ground as positional play was still a thing and left and right meant something.

Frees for incorrect disposal weren’t on the agenda.

I really don’t need umpires to be mic’ed up. I was ok without it.

Sandy Roberts on Ken Hinkley in the third quarter: “Looked to have been slightly concussed earlier in the game, came back and is ok.” It would have been an innocuous comment at the time, but this kind of sentiment hasn’t aged well.

Gee Paul Couch could play, even if he was quite one-sided. He roved superbly to Damian Bourke, also won a lot of his own ball and then did something positive with it. When corralled on the outer flank he stands up both Wayne Schwass and Anthony Stevens to get back onto his left and drive the ball forward, Gary Ablett crumbs and goals.

Ablett was at his enigmatic best. Quiet in the first half, he comes into the game in the third quarter. In one short burst he soccers a goal from nowhere, butchers an easier attempt at a soccered goal, snaps a goal on his left crumbing the Couch kick, bursts through half forward from a ball up on the outer wing to set up what should have been another goal (Billy Brownless misses a sitter), marks the subsequent kick-in on the opposite flank and hits Trevor Spencer in front of his eyes with a bullet pass (Spencer can’t convert). He then fades out again.

Bernie and Robbo note that Trevor Spencer is having a pretty good game for the Cats with six marks at centre half-forward, while noting that, at the other end, Wayne Carey couldn’t get a kick at centre half-forward (and was now back in the goal square). I am confident that this was the one and only time that Trevor Spencer was compared favourably against Wayne Carey.

John Longmire’s solitary goal came from a wobbly left foot snap on the run halfway through the third quarter.

 

 

To read more by Greg Andrew click HERE.

 

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