Footy Passions

Footy Passions
Originally uploaded by Graham 1947

Footy Passions
John Cash & Joy Damousi
UNSW Press 2009
www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/086840957X.htm

It is Grand Final day 2005 and I am in Perth WA.

South Melbourne, I actually mean Sydney, have just defeated West Coast Eagles in a fantastic game of football.

My team the Eagles have lost! Somewhere in that magnificent stadium affectionately known as the ‘G’ is my almost 22 yo daughter and her friend Melissa. I should feeling for them and our loss.

Instead I am thinking about my deceased maternal grandparents Perc & Ida Dinwoodie and my Great Aunt Flo, Ida’s sister. I am imagining their pleasure and delight that South have finally won a flag. I imagine how proud they are and them thinking that Bobby Skilton would be pleased. As I write Skilton’s name I am transported to 9 Charles St Hampton and I am a teenager. My grandmother talks to Aunty Dulce, who lives at no. 9 just up from no. 3 where I live with my parents. Grandma in her wise way tells me what a good man Bobby Skilton is.

Football is more than a game and John and Joy (I must call them by their first names after reading such a personal and passionate book) have captured that magnificently in 204 pages.

As I read Footy Passions I thought about my football journey. At 6 years old Dad took me to see Melbourne where his brother Matt Chapman was boot studder. I was hooked on Melbourne against the flow of Chapman’s support Fitzroy and Dinwoodie’s South Melbourne. I stayed Melbourne until I played at St Kilda in their premiership year of ’66. Well actually it was about 9 games in the Under 19s but that sentence sounds good.

Playing for the Saints and then watching them win with my sister Ronis from the Southern stand moved me to St Kilda but not completely. This loosened the Melbourne bonds and set up the possibility of becoming a West Coast man in 1987.

Perhaps ‘the loosening’ was due to a transfer wrangle in my move to Sandringham in 1967. There was a threat of delaying the transfer due to a VFL/VFA dispute. Perhaps this delay threat fed a loosening of ties so that when I saw the exploitative attitude of the VFL to the WAFL in the 70s & 80s I lost my connection to the Demons.

Throughout the transformation from Demon to Saint to Eagle there was one footy constant. The mighty Zebras. Sandringham was in my father’s blood. He told me proudly about how the colours represented Black Rock, Sandringham and Hampton. He told me of watching them in the 20s & 30s and about how we won in 1946 with a come from behind victory. And of course Uncle Matt lived one street from the beach Oval and we lived 20 minutes away. At the end of our street lived the Blackman’s and Mr Blackman took me and his son Bobbie to the footy to watch Sandringham. Later we were scoreboard assistants in 1961 and later I played in the yellow, black & blue. I even captained the seconds one day at Yarraville in 1968.

My Dad took me to see Melbourne play the year I turned seven. Little did I know that in 1990 I would take my daughter Amy, 2 months away from turning 7, to Subiaco Oval to watch Melbourne take apart West Coast Eagles. It was some years before I became aware of this coincidence.

And so Amy and I started our football journey until in 2010 we celebrate 20 years of being West Coast Eagles members. Since 1993 we have had the same seats on the boundary line on the north or railway side of the ground on the wing. During that time we have seen people come and go around us. Some have sadly passed away while others can’t get to the game anymore. A hard core of loyal Eagles have stayed with us for more years than I can remember. To meet them in the street is often a shock. One summer in a Duncraig fish and chip I warmly greeted a familiar face. Days later I worked out it was the guy who sits 2 seats away from me. He was part of our footy family but out context in a shopping centre we struggled to recognise each other. The next season we laughed about the incident.

I recommend Footy Passions. It shows footy is more than a game. It is a fascinating sociological and psychological experience to read the book. It is a book that goes deep. While it focuses on people and their connections to family and football, it also illustrates the change from a parochial system to a more global one. It encouraged me to focus on my own development and growth and to explore how football is more than a game more than fortune or fame ….