Irregular writings
June 2012
Hey if I forget to drop any names, please forgive me, I’m typing quickly. I attended the annual RecLink Community football match in Melbourne, one team consisting of players from the Melbourne community radio stations PBSFM and RRRFM and one of players from the rock music scene. The Megahertz vs the Rockdogs. It’s been going for so long that the latter team is still vaguely referenced as having something to do with St Kilda music venues – of which there are very, very, few.
The game has had many homes, the Junction Oval in St Kilda and the Punt Road Oval being used for a few years. Recently it has been hosted at the Elsternwick Recreational Park, a venue which usually hosts PUGWOOD, the monthly gathering of pug owners. (I know because I know some of those. Freaks.)
Now both radio stations are north of the river and most of the music venues are as well but the event seems to be one of those cultural institutions/events which behave like a comet with a long tail. It flies low over the city and drags everybody in, no matter where the spread of Bohemia is located at the moment.
So, despite the fact that Sandringham line trains were all replaced by buses due to a derailment and the venue being quite off the normal radar, and also, despite the match being IGNORED AS USUAL by the AFL, 9,000 people even freakier than a willing collective of proud pug owners turned up at the oval on a grey, windy, cold and wet day. Bravo troops! It was not like the conditions were a surprise – the weather had been grim and Shakespearean for the week leading up to it. They knew what they were getting into.
The game had its pantomime type beginnings with Brian Nankervis from Rockwiz leading the umpires out to a dopey AC/DC tune and Johnny Von Goes from RRR reciting the national anthem a la John Laws with a string quartet. He mock barracked for the Megahertz team at the end and was attacked by a female Rockdog, knocking him to the ground and pushing his synthetic suit all through the mud with much too much relish. Perhaps he’d never played her music? He was stretchered off to the cheers of the crowd. The game started and after excitedly running about like children, it slowly dawned on the players that there were to be actually 100 more minutes out there shivering in the wet grass, drizzling rain and wind with shorts and jumpers with no sleeves.
I had brought a footy and went onto the oval, along with a thousand others at half time for a kick. It was beautiful football anarchy with balls of all different shapes and sizes flying through the air. We had to semaphore to locate each other in the great throng of leaping and jumping humanity. Little kids, dogs, stoners, mums and dads. It was like being on a strange dance floor.
Speaking of shapes and sizes, the players on both teams were refreshingly representative of the people you see on the street in their variety of form. Short, fat guys are never seen in the top leagues but they used to be common on the field. There were a few here, as well as many women on both teams and I was glad to see a few hopeless, scrawny, pathetic, indie types making up the numbers and running awkwardly the wrong way whenever the ball threatened to bounce into their arms.
The game had actually been too willing for one fellow who broke his arm in the first minute and Pete Satchell from Dallas Crane who broke his collar bone in the last minute. Dan Sultan, captain of the Rockdogs, looked as though he could run out for any AFL team as well as any rock band. Youth, looks, energy and fitness. Lukey D from PBS was sporting a savage cut across his nose, Tim Rogers volunteered he had a cracked rib. Paul Kelly arrived to present the medals. At the after party at the Bowling Club I ran into Mark Cornwall who I knew as a boy in the Mt Gambier Catholic penitentiary. He’s in town researching a book about Frank Thring and had no connection with the game, just walked into its aftermath.
I sat around with Clare Moore, Jane Dust and Elizabeth McCarthy and let a few people give me shit about my clothes. The usual.
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