One Point

 

 

The Ressies had it in the bag. The mob we were playing had to beat us to take our spot in the finals, but didn’t.

On a day forecast for rain, the clouds danced over the mountain without stopping to even look. Hell, it wasn’t weather, it was scenery. Under that, on the oval, we were less unfit than them, which is sometimes enough. We tried, some tired hard, the knuckle never came.

We sang the song, and did what we do. Sat around on the dusty hall floor, drinking beer, talking shit like we had all the time in the world.  As if sweat and grunt have their release.

But, in the end, nothing we did mattered. Nothing. The seniors, playing the second team on the ladder for a spot in the finals, lost, on the last kick of the day, by a point.

I felt shit. We all did.

To our fucking bones gutted!

We kicked more points, we had more play. One of the kids, our best kid, had a set shot from twenty out, dead in front, thirty seconds left, and missed.

Nobody died, but Jesus wept.

 

One point.

 

Between achieving something against the odds. Between making a community happy. Between giving a club, new to this division, momentum – with recruits, with making people stay. This loss will affect us for a year or two. A lifetime in a small town, where every player, every supporter adds up.

One damn point.

We mumbled to eaxh other to get around the Ones as they walked off. Only Dobbo had the cheek to tell them, in their rawest moment: “Get on the Twos…”

Ha. Oops

 

The night’s B&F count, with one bad kick, went from being the biggest party of the year, celebrating us and who we are, and all we are, to a wake.

In the end the boys found party form. Some are probably still going. But it was almost a mean thing, the way they drank.

That’s the nature of sport, I guess. It’s usually more about character than fairness. Somebody’s year of work had to lead to an empty plate. For all our misery, there was another mob, another community, on a thumb-print of an oval, buried in suburbia somewhere, going off. Being rewarded.

Loving life.

 

The seniors year is over. Dead and buried as if it hit a wall.

Ours has just begun.

 

We play on Sunday. I’m an Old Dog and can’t just rock up full of youth. I plan on touching the ball four nights this week.