One-on-one’s not dead

Come Friday, after a solid week on the plantations, plus training, farm work, being a dad, I’m cooked, head-to-toe. The kid’s 4½, so getting her to eat anything is an arm wrestle. By dinner’s end, I’m also spent. Tomorrow, we play the top team, in ones and twos, with about ten of our mob out from each team. It seems there’s nothing for it, but a warm fire, and, once the kid’s asleep, a ripping game and bourbon.

 

The game itself was secondary, really. I wanted to see the re-match. One-on-one, like days of yore. Grieg v Flower, Wood v Hawkins. Shimma v anyone.

 

Langdon v Sidebottom.

 

Like when I was, what, about 11-12? A kid, walking to Arden street on my own, to watch Jess v Glendenning.

 

Everything about the thought of it was exciting. Both larger than life, both brilliant footballers. Toughness v strength, cunning v class. Ten up, or ten down, they were staying on each other.

 

Langdon said something during the week, nothing, who cares? But it gave Maynard and a few others fuel for fake rage. Maynard always looks like one of those blokes looking for any reason. But, really, he’s just a great leader, a natural. Sure, there’s a bit of blow hard, but I like him. He obviously loves Collingwood.

 

The ball was bounced, it went Ed’s way, and Maynard ran over for hugs and kisses that not one modern footballer would be intimidated by. But sent a message to his own mob, who called ‘Stacks on!’

 

Then there was footy.

 

Ed carved Steele last time they played. The freak v the trouper. I love them both. The likeable character v solid and insanely likeable.

 

Ed blitzed early, playing a very Melbourne game. Lots of insanely quick hands under the pump, turning chaos into order, sort of. Like Oliver and Petracca, his strength is his weakness. If the wolves are biting, he can slap the pill on the boot before they all fall on him. But that doesn’t always help if the other mob has a structured backline.

 

And that’s what Collingwood are. In a nutshell. An insanely structured backline.

 

Steele worked his way back into the game as a part of a team. Collingwood run it out on the switch so clean and freely, Ed, time-and-again, would be drawn to the man with the ball while Steele peeled off, making position 30 metres behind him, for the chip over.

 

Somebody at our house took the stats people out back and shot them. Harsh, but we prefer to have footy minds, a degree of passion. Maybe the numbers won’t prove me right on this, but they count for so little at the logger’s pub on Sunday. A team won, we rant our theories. They lost, we rant our anger.

 

What I saw was Melbourne smashed it at the stoppages time and again, but did not have the killer forward. A Lynch, or some-such. Bombing it long to anything other than the best just doesn’t work with a backline built around Moore.

 

Collingwood ran it out of their defence unbelievably well, until half forward, from where they bombed it long, but that just doesn’t work with a backline built around May.

 

The Dees had all the play in their forward 50, every bit of it, but there were a lot of behinds, there was nothing crisp about it. Then, rather than landing the killer blow, having a forward who would seize the game by it’s ‘how’s-your-father’, they would watch the Pies go ZIP, GOAL and stay in it.

 

By the last everything was ding-dong. DeGoey was getting heaps of it in traffic. Maybe the Dees defensive aspects aren’t as good as the Pies are, but Oliver was everywhere the ball was, and so were three opponents. He played the whole game in a booby-trapped phone booth. DeGoey seemed to be far less fast in everything he did, but made space each time he laid hands. Maybe all those years of playing alongside Pendles rubbed off. Whatever, it worked. He found room, it led to goals.

 

Gawn, Petrcca, Oliver, big Benny beating Howe by leading too fast to be jumped over, Fritch, Brayshaw, all tried, but not one of them put their stamp on it. None of them did a Bolton, or Greene, squeezed when their hand was on the throat.

 

Ed was the same. He started like he was horny for laughs, but, as the last quarter became last man standing, most of the play was on the wrong wing – deliberate or design? And in the last, Steele, ever the natural footballer, made himself into simply being in the right spots for swift slaps forward of his own.

 

That lead to goals, that won the game.

 

Not a lot, just enough, in a rip-tooting, high falooting, ping pong last.

 

Robbie Flower told me playing the wing was like chess. A glorified roll of the dice. If your opponent got up early, you became a defensive player for the day. If you got up early, he became aware of you.

 

Give good, get good.

 

Ed was, to me, the more influential of the two overall, but Steele hit when it mattered, and, is often the case, the players down the field made his hits, as ugly as they were, sweet.

 

In a dream world, they would play for the same team. Ed Steele, the blue collar cop in a bad American Telly series. Langdon Sidebottom, the toffy aristocrat. Two footballers, who went from roaming around the wilderness of a game as if owning it, to playing out a tight last side by side, both in every frame.

 

One-on-one in the truest sense of the word. An old school shoot out, with points, this time, to the Magpie man.
All that was left was to try to loosen up my bones with a scolding hot shower, and get ready to bash into a great bush team in the morning.

 

 

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