Round 1 – Sydney v Brisbane: Unfamiliar Parameters

 

This season started sometime last spring, when colleague Marty hung a 20-year membership scarf off a trolley at work, like a waiter’s cloth ready to serve something up. Week after week it hung there, until November when the fixture came out and a Hawthorn/Sydney first round match-up was put firmly on the table. That same week, Marty packed up one day, wished me a good evening and closed his laptop quietly behind him. I saw the first of the stickers, a modest insignia of belonging covering the laptop brand, nothing too flash about it. I smiled as he stepped into the lift. Throughout the summer, the ciphers proliferated: a fixture card left lying close to my desk, a membership magazine spouting the spirit of 100 club years strategically forgotten atop a pile of files, a second sticker on the side of the drink bottle artfully swivelled my way – insinuations of brown and gold proliferating like an algal bloom. HR might have called them micro aggressions.

 

I haven’t been a Swans member for two years now. Incensed at the League for head injury carpet sweeping, the handling of First Nations players, commercial arrogance and gambling cosiness, I gave up my 20-year membership. I no longer loved the stadium with its thrum so loud I couldn’t hear Gwen and Row T when they told me what their weeks had been. I’m less and less tolerant of the mid-winter cold. But I continued to watch from home with sworn ongoing loyalty to the red and white.

 

Last June, the 19-year-old Cygnet flew the nest for an overseas adventure and the nest broke. It was a winter of recalibration. All my parameters felt unfamiliar even when daily rhythms stayed relentlessly the same. As a new life portrait accumulated day by day, the Swans were putting together an unexpected week-by-week uplift, a season so optimistic and determined, a season of such joy at playing together, that even the grand final bombshell couldn’t dent the budding spring. The chapters continued to close. I retired the Backpocket, a tipping competition I had run for 19 years; it felt right to do it on the Michael O’Loughlin jumper number. And just shy of the calendar flip, Horse trotted out into the open pasture, cantering free of box and bench, leaving the reins to Cox.

 

After all the upheaval, I wondered what the next footy season would mean. Could I ‘go again’ as the Swans media suggested they would?  Would I be less inclined without a stake in each game? What use was the rhythm section of footy season, when I didn’t yet have a new tune?

 

On Monday the 17^th February just after 3 o’clock, Marty grabbed his phone and read me a message. ‘13 premiership cups are on their way to Sydney!’ Colleague Lia showed her colours. Raised in an every-game Swans family, they turned on a dial when the Giants were packaged onto the scene and promoted as Sydney’s only homegrown team. I flashed back at her with something about ‘that Cat Empire rubbish.’ It took me days to recover from the tale. The season-teaser games and their injury updates brought an all too familiar lurch. But Grundy’s season wasn’t dashed; it was just a knock. And Papley hadn’t broken his ankle; it was just the ongoing niggle. But Mills was in a boot and then … Errol was floored. As I walked home that day, I passed an old man shuffling on his walker, his jaw chomping on a lack of teeth, a bright new 2025 Swans cap snug on his head.

 

No matter how far away you think you’ve got from it, no matter how mature you know your relationship to be, no matter how much you think the off-season has stripped away the raw frazzle of team love, investment runs deep, and it reasserts in increments.

 

Just before Round 0, with a cyclone spinning towards Queensland and my realisation that I had concert tickets for Friday night, two caps appeared on Marty’s shelf. The office Sherrin was sporting a coloured-in disguise, the word ‘Waverley’ taped in front of the regular branding ‘Wizard’ and a new screen saver appeared of Nick Watson staring cross-armed-cocky right at me. Marty headed off to see the 13 Hawthorn cups on tour around the country, the Sydney event confined to a Darling Harbour selfie line after a more lavish event was cancelled due to lack of interest. It was hard not to snigger. But then he sent me a pic and it was glorious, one archivist hand on each handle, smile beaming into the silver.

 

‘Glad you weren’t holding the 2014 cup,’ I wrote.
‘I’m not a cruel person Mathilde,’ he replied.

 

You know once you’re 24 years in, that the game will provide different things from week to week. Some weeks it will be the physical that matters, the bash and crash release of bodies moving in ways we love to watch. Some weeks it will be the brimming feel of success and some weeks it will be a vengeful satisfaction. I didn’t see any of the opening match against Hawthorn. I listened to the first quarter in traffic on the way to the Opera House. I didn’t think about it once as the Cygnet and I drank in Nils Frahm, master of musical build and tension stretch. The game felt somehow irrelevant, like the doormat at a threshold, its job just to lead you into something.

 

On Monday morning, Marty was gentlemanly silent while Lia lassoed her victorious fist high above her head. Colleague Brendan bookmarked the first training sessions in the office calendar – marking practice and torpedo training on the Domain, cut oranges optional.

 

Midway through Round 1 last Saturday night, Flynny messaged. ‘Are you watching?’
‘No!’ I hurried. ‘On delay!’

 

There is no free-to-air Saturday coverage in Sydney for the first 11 weeks. Thanks, AFL, for agreeing to that. I embargoed messaging and waited for the Cygnet to get home from work some time round 7pm. We toggled around to find we couldn’t even begin the delayed stream when we wanted. We’d have to wait ‘til the live replay of the non-live match was over, to watch the beginning of the non-live stream. So, we dipped in at the half time break, braced for a Lion mauling, surprised to find the birds on equal footing.

 

Parameters were unfamiliar. McCartin was stretching upwards in the forward line. There was a Hanily that sounded like Papley ‘cause both were preceded by Tom and a Hamling that sounded like Hanily but we can’t call him Joel cause that’s reserved for Amartey. There was double the Warner and double the Ashcroft and the double take of a Dunkley who was shining for them.

 

We watched in fits and starts, determined not to be too invested while knowing we were already intent. We muttered things like ‘early days’ and ‘marathon’ and ‘remember when we went 0 and 6 and then’ … We bemoaned the crooked kick in, refused to hope for the miracle end goal from Campbell and resigned ourselves to the 4-point deficit. These long relationships take endless bargaining.

 

A message arrived from Flynny. ‘Gee it’s strange to see Luke Parker in North colours.’
I replied without thinking. ‘Gee it’s strange to see a guy called Bice in the number 26!’

 

As I walked to the bus stop on Monday morning, I passed a young guy in a Swans Indigenous guernsey and Jackson Pollock shorts. He was scuffing his way down the road, scrolling his phone, stopping along the way to wait for a slow, old Alsatian who veered to every tree. I tried not to bank the image. Lia was pleased for the narrow win. Marty was all good morning and may have pushed the fixture card further between two books. Brendan sent a new appointment for ‘pre-season training’.

 

‘I don’t think there’s anything pre-season about things now,’ I wrote.
‘Have renamed,’ came the reply.

 

 

To read more of Mathilde’s stories click HERE

 

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