Born to run - Page 4
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Hamish Townsend
GRAND FINAL MORNING ARRIVED with a hangover gloriously salved with an Oliver Reedesque splash of cold water. On the way to the ground, I recognised so many non-acquaintances from my past: a woman who owned a florist near my mum's house; a science teacher from someone else's class; the former bottlo attendant from that place on Latrobe Terrace and two friends of my younger brother. They looked grand and they all had somewhere grand to go. I could have watched them all day – it wasn't just nostalgia. Something was different: no one seemed desperate, just needy and hopeful. They needed the win like I needed it, so we could stop talking about it and just get it the hell out of our systems.
I waltzed into the members' enclosure at 11 am like I owned the joint. The people in red coats never checked the photo on the borrowed MCC pass; this time no one was getting kicked out.
The ‘Long Room' is the bastion of Melbourne's establishment and was squeaking in government-subsidised refurbished splendour under the soles of the well-shod and collared. I had a lovely Tamar Ridge pinot in a polished glass and rang my dad to tell him so – he was suitably disgusted. I was even wearing an MCC blazer supplied by a wonderfully doddering attendant with a complexion like an eighty-over cricket ball. I have to admit I loved the members': the trust, the politeness, the hot pies and cold beer – it was different.
The politeness lasted until the eight-minute mark of the first quarter when a man behind me suggested that if I was going to keep leaping to my feet and shouting I'd best move on. I stood in the disabled section where they didn't seem to mind and a foul-mouthed attendant called Jeff kept me company.
Sometimes history can be a plinth from which to launch, a pair of concrete boots or a Whitechapel fog. It was wafting around the MCG on this day like an oil well on fire. The hero of the day was a reformed drunk with freakish natural talent from northern Victoria called Steve Johnson. Age writer Martin Flanagan noted the similarities and gave him the Tom Wills award.
Geelong smashed Port Adelaide by 119 points – the biggest grand final margin in history. Channel Ten commentator Tim Lane, searching for a way to explain the massacre that had killed the contest by half-time, put it best: ‘It's fitting within the Geelong story that when they did break through and win a flag they would do it with such panache, such total style and domination. It's the nature of the club; they're the great enigma of the competition.'
In the last quarter, I'd fled the members' to find my friends on the opposite wing. We were miles ahead, victory was ours and I needed others I loved to see it with. The tears began, along with high fives and hugs with strangers and the first of a million renditions of the club song. Pure joy and utter relief flowed like the burst radiator of a straight-six Falcon ute.
When the Premiership Cup was finally raised, a collective roar of beaten frustrations echoed back to Newcomb. A weeping club stalwart, Billy Brownless, said it for all of us: ‘Finally we done it. All that shit we copped for so long – we copped so much shit – it's over.'
The need to do something extravagant saw us catch a cab to Geelong. Amazingly, neither the club nor the town had organised anything. We walked over the Moorabool Street hill as burning rubber wafted through the evening air.
I met my brother. We whooped, hollered and cried, and he swung me around on his broad shoulders. A town unused to celebrating itself was taking to the streets and blowing its lid without a hint of self-consciousness or political correctness. The hugs of strangers became distantly familiar – old primary school friends and ex-girlfriends' sisters. We spent the night singing and drinking at the National Hotel and ended it the next day watching a replay of the game at a renovated Barwon Club.
A drunken teenager and an older, drunker woman hugged outside the Greek café on Moorabool St and jumped up and down. The younger screamed for ‘a new day, a new day!' The older woman, knowing better but just as happy, replied: ‘Yeah and on my new day I'm gonna wake up for the first time and say, "I'm from Geelong and I'm a fuckin' winner!"' ♦