Football, and death on the clifftops.

Football, and death on the clifftops

It’s a perfectly still night in the Otways tonight (Friday). Still, with a full moon out, no less, grey kangaroos everywhere, lit silver by lunar surfaces. I got home from thirteen hours on the road to find out an old couple bit some bullets down at the remote beach where I take my little girl, where we put the old man out to sea.

‘There were no suspicious circumstances’. Police code for suicide, at a guess. It still bummed me out. I get it, they had their issues, or, I dunno, who knows? But those clifftops, the beaches under them, are where we roam on dusk, after hard days in the bush.

The good thing, for us, as a family, was Stewie Sutherland, our club’s heat-and-soul, called to check on us, then Nathan Robbo, who’s having a year off. Then there were a few more messages from teammates.

Footy, as far as I’m concerned, up and along, then over the ridge, and down inland, 40 minutes away, but next door, everywhere. Our club, our district, the ranges, footy at its absolute finest.

I flicked on the news to see aerial shots of a track I know every rock of, surrounded by rolling hills of coastal bush that fall away forever. Nowhere to strangers. Beautiful nowhere to some lost at heart, it seems.

 Then the kid was in bed, wifey snuggled up beside her, and I was watching Carlton versus Geelong.

It was the weirdest, funniest thing. There was the same bloke, in two different kits, competing against himself in the ruck. He didn’t like himself either. The slightly older version was really trying to bully the younger about. It was a good tussle. Ironically, a backman/ruck rover, Biclav, did better in the ruck that both. He was just that bit older, tougher, smarter than the brotherly pair.

It was also odd to see the Blues De Koning step aside when around the ground, and let anyone else have a go, so he could ruck rove. Cripps is a champion midfielder, but no ruckman. Would they do that against a Gawn or Nank or English? They’d be slaughtered at stoppages. How can the elite not understand the value of great rucks, unless they know they don’t have great rucks. Back your De Koning’s lads.

The game itself was also odd. Footy seems to have fashions. In this moment, it’s the chip. I’ve said since watching the Giants in Round 1. It seems everyone’s brought in. Take away the colours, and it makes every team look alike.

The grounds are perfect, always, players trained to ridiculously high levels of skill. Footys don’t arch off the boot, they go in straight lines, like lasers. Zip, zip. Can’t touch this! Chip, chip, chip, look for an opening. Wait… chip. Four chips, still in the defensive 50? Chip again. To think, in the early 80s we were worried about handball leading to a lack of contact.

It’s boring footy, only countered by extreme pressure, executed by the most insanely fast forwards. Only the Tigers vs Swans have done that a whole game long this year… and haven’t since. When the extreme pressure hits, though, it’s epic football. You’ll still find it in the last ten minutes of any close one.

The blues chipped better. Their backs ran better, forwards and on ballers put more pressure on. The team is young and strong and hungry, and, at last, has a backline with backbone. And has adapted. Start of the year they pissed games into the wind, working hard to get the ball, streaming through the middle of the ground, before simply bombing it long to Curnow, then again, and again… and again, each time watching it stream back out.

They’ve lowered their eyes now, and are sharing the love. And getting scores and results to suit. Ironically, Charlie Curlow is now up and firing, because, by the Blues looking for other options, the other mob can no longer triple-team him. The defence is spread, not a pack he is in the middle of, waiting to kill another bomb.

Carlton also won because they played Geelong.

The Cats are odd. Well on the wane. Not just Hawkins, who, despite his bulk, was primarily a lead and mark forward – a. bit of muscle, then go hard for ten-twenty metres. As the club sags, the class running through the middle drops, the ball comes in more randomly, there’s no more spoon feeding, defenders have time to get in his way. He and the club have been brilliant for each other, he’s been as true servant. The timing was sweat, but the moment feels past.

Like with the Tigers, it’s not so much the age of the stars still in the team, as the lesser players coming up aren’t as good as the previous batch. The bottom six, if nothing else, hold structures, work to patterns, are predictable to each other and you.

They keep it smooth for the more elite of the club to shine.

Both The Cats and Tigers had midfields without a single weak link, now they don’t. All it takes is one lesser light, let alone two, and that link, that impact, that splitting of packs for each other, falls away.

Richmond still have Rioli, Vlastutin, Broad, Nank, Dusty… Geelong Stewart, Dangerfield, Duncan, so on, quality premiership players, yeah, but the glue is gone.

So it goes, so it goes.

Carlton slipped away, steadily, inevitably. And Geelong are slipping away. Such are rises and falls.

You see it in nature, in footy teams, over time you’d see it in mountain ranges.

In the end, the game was done, and all that was left was an even stiller night. I went outside, and, watched by a mob of kangaroos, pissed off of the porch, so as not to wake the girls, and because I can, listening to the distant surf, from those hard, beautiful cliffs. A bit annoyed at the dead couple for the awkwardness it leaves locals. Odds are they were old, wanted one more piece of scenery, one more sunset, one more view.

Life and death are a part of the bush, and of such remoteness. A crazy German smashed his car outside our place on his way to do the same thing last year. Not long after, abalone poaches, word has it, were swept out to sea. The rockpools, when you get down there, are full of rusted out shipwreck anchors. There’s a tombstone for the drowned buried in the cliffs somewhere. There were massacres of indigenous tribes during the pioneer days. The abandoned wagon trail pub above us is said to be haunted by the man who hung himself in there 100 years ago.

But, mostly, there’s space, and freedom beyond compare.

Chip, chip, chip. Blues-Cats will wash through me quick enough. I’m looking forward to local footy tomorrow. It’s raw and human and suits this land.

CARLTON          5.3     11.5     12.11     21.12 (138)
GEELONG          2.2      5.5       8.8         11.9 (75)

GOALS
Carlton: Curnow 5, Owies 3, McKay 3, Cincotta 2, Walsh, Newman, Kennedy, O.Hollands, E.Hollands, De Koning, Cowan, Acres
Geelong: Cameron 3, Tuohy, Stengle, Rohan, Miers, Holmes, Dempsey, De Koning, Close

BEST
Carlton: De Koning, Cripps, Walsh, Curnow, Cincotta, Kennedy
Geelong: Holmes, Cameron, Duncan, Dempsey

INJURIES
Carlton: Nil
Geelong: Hawkins (foot)

SUBSTITUTES
Carlton: Corey Durdin (replaced Orazio Fantasia in the final quarter)
Geelong: Gary Rohan (replaced Oisin Mullin in the third quarter)

Crowd: 75,218 at the MCG

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