FOOTBALL finals bring out my primeval instincts.
There’s something about two teams of grown men giving a contest every ounce of energy. We don’t see it often enough, because professional sporting teams are managed so well these days that we rarely see a match where two players, teams, men or women, are prepared to push themselves to the absolute capacity their bodies will allow.
There’s always next week, next tournament, next pay cheque to worry about. The bodies of athletes are an investment. They can falter, but they must not break.
Geoffrey’s in aged care now, but he was a good footballer in his day. He used to punch a few walls and run hard from the first whistle, often until he had three breaks to his nose before half time.
At which point, he’d smoke two cigarettes, knock back a couple of tinnies, and do it all again. I remember one day seeing him with so much blood on his face, he couldn’t speak without blowing bubbles.
They took fifth grade seriously, and although Geoffrey had no ambition to claw his way up the grades, there was no way he was going to be told in any after-game banter that he’d been perfunctory to the cause.
Sure, he’s got a nose shaped like alphabet soup and knees that crack like a milk-infused rice crispie every time he rolls over. But it was worth it. Some of those Saturday afternoon hits are the only things he remembers, along with the name of the opponent who bore the reverberations of his left elbow.
He’d hobble around during the week, pop some frozen peas on the Jatz crackers, and lie on the hardest bed he could find to straighten the bendy bones.
Three missed training sessions later, he’d be right for a Friday night session before taking to the field for another round of skirmish against the latest unsuspecting combatants.
There was no opera singer at Geoffrey’s grand final, but the team would dig into their chest of Aussie karaoke hits an hour before the game. It killed the nerves, and the hangover.
Pity the one who copped a whiff of Geoffrey’s breath in the first tackle. Day-old beer meshed with three packets of Winnie Reds and a half re-eaten crumbed sausage are an acquired taste to nobody. Even Geoffrey would turn to a few sips of fizzy drink to kill the unpalatable odour.
They were all carrying niggles into the finals. But they turned up. And they gave it everything they had. Didn’t always win, but that wasn’t the point.
And here we are, at that time of year when coaches and medical staff throw away the sterile book of player management, instead allowing instinct to take control.
Because this week there is no next week, only next year. And if the victor can run around an oval in front of thousands of loyal disciples wearing their pants on their head and a trophy in their hand, then nobody cares about consequence. At least not for the moment. Because we’ve won the war.
That’s what finals footy is all about. Like cavemen who fought to bring back the biggest beast, we allow ourselves to shed decorum to discover our own prehistoric instincts while we watch a bunch of others hunt a bouncing piece of leather until they break.
To the winner go the spoils. Whatever that means.
