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It’s the second Sunday of the month, which means I’m at the MCG.
Usually it’s in the role of tour guide, resplendent in striped blazer, but this afternoon the Blues are hosting the Crows, so tours are off.
The jacket is earned only after a year’s service. “When are you going to get your jacket?” was a constant source of curiosity among friends. The jacket is fancier than anything I was expecting from the Blues today.
My grandfather played three games for Fitzroy and one for University when they were in the VFL during the days of the Great War. Gramps nominated me as a newborn and, according to family legend, Bill Ponsford seconded the nomination, which is quite possibly true given the great batsman worked at the club at that time and knew my grandfather.
Gramps’ membership preceded 1927, which meant that in the days of Ladies’ tickets he had not just one but two. Great for schoolboy popularity, but growing up in Gippsland meant limited use for me. Gramps took me to the 1968 Carlton-Essendon grand final, my first ever match at the MCG, but decided we would go home at three-quarter time to miss the traffic. I had to listen to the Blues sneak home by three points on the car radio.
The only Carlton premiership I missed after then was the famous 1970 grand final, a game I rarely fail to mention when taking tour groups, especially those with Collingwood supporters. After all, the match featured the largest ever sporting crowd at the MCG. The only other major match I missed, to my eternal shame, was the 1977 Centenary Test.
My “Test debut” was back in the draw-strewn 1970-71 series - the same game Kerry O’Keefe made his. Memories included being pinched on the nose by Dougie Walters as he walked up the players’ race, umpire Lou Rowan giving me a squash ball that he’d found on the ground, and Boycott and Edrich batting out the final afternoon as only they could to a symphony of clanking steel cans. I was hooked.
Those Ladies’ tickets were only valid for children up to the age of 14, but we stretched them out to our final year of secondary school without going to the trouble that some did of donning their school uniform complete with cap. There followed the difficult years when I could no longer use the Ladies’ ticket, awaiting membership.
So it was off to the old Southern Stand for a while, and the steel cans started to take on an attraction of their own. We caught the train down from Trafalgar for an apogee of the Ocker era, the opening day of the 1975-76 Test against the West Indies, along with 85,000 others. One particularly evocative newspaper report the next day described the rivulets of melted ice, beer and other fluids running down the ancient concrete terraces of the standing room areas.
Just before my 21st birthday I finally headed in for my first match as a Restricted member, a one-dayer against the Kiwis. My fellow members had little interest in the match and sat sedately. Until Trevor Chappell rolled the last ball of the match along the ground when they stood to a man and booed.
Then came the naughty years, particularly on Boxing Days. When we were warriors. Add the pressure of male peers in their twenties and thirties to that of the mightily efficient handheld Long Room bar taps, and you didn’t need to be an engineer to predict the outcome. Especially in the early nineties when a single hour’s play was all that survived the rains of successive first days against South Africa and England.
In the midst of this was a celebrated “Hat Incident”, which resulted in a Please Explain letter and much mea culpa. Since then the rules on headgear in the Long Room have changed. Letters from the club still hang framed on my study wall.
Life in the members necessarily settled down afterwards. An early warning sign was nominating Fiona as a member the year we were married in an even stronger show of commitment. Over time the Long Room faded away and the family moved in. New regular fixtures appeared, such as lunch for a good friend’s birthday on Day 2 of the Test. Happily, there was also the renewed acquaintance with my old amateur footy opponent and fellow Carlton fan Marcus. Old habits can die hard and as usual Marcus was standing in front of the members’ pavilion today, as he often does to escape the chattering classes.
Other highlights included bidding at the Members’ Pavilion demolition auction in 2003 on behalf of Sydney friend Tinker. I missed out on a piece of Long Room carpet, but stretched his 5K budget to buy a dining room door, two seating benches, a Committee Room wine table and 200 red bricks (enough to build a BBQ). I always thought that it was an easy decision to tear down the old Pavilion, which had bits added on everywhere and was like a favourite old teddy bear whose stuffing was always coming out.
Today the stuffing certainly came out of the Blues from late in the second quarter. Before then, Dennis Armfield had been kicking goals from outside 50 like Brendan Fevola, and big Levi chipped in for another before brain departed body with a gut punch to Kyle Hartigan. Jack Silvagni’s first goal in the AFL had the faithful in raptures, his welcome from them on returning to the bench befitting a messiah – but he’s still just a boy. It was goal for goal, alas only for a while.
Compounding factors hurting the Blues included ex-team-mates Jacobs and Betts, a couple of ordinary decisions near goal for Adelaide, a lack of crumbers and numbers generally inside their forward 50, and especially their unclean ball handling. The Crows hardly missed an opportunity to capitalise, and the likes of Laird and Sloane running off half-back and through the midfield all but stopped the Blues from scoring as they notched a mere 10 points in the second half. Once the margin had stretched beyond four goals it was clear there would be no coming back, and the game ran out in the disinteresting fashion we probably expected at its start.
But we’ll be back again next week as hopeful as ever, seeing if the good start can be pushed into the second half against the Eagles.
David Southgate is a Melbourne optometrist, collector of cricket literature, MCG tour guide and long-time MCC and SACA member. His other football loyalties are devoted to Old Haileyburians in the VAFA.
GAME SUMMARY
CARLTON 3.0 6.1 6.2 7.5 (47)
ADELAIDE 4.3 9.6 12.10 16.11 (107)
GOALS
Carlton: Armfield 4, Casboult, Silvagni, Wright
Adelaide: Betts 3, Jacobs 3, Jenkins 3, Crouch, McGovern, Walker, Lynch, Douglas, Lyons, Mackay
BEST
Carlton: Armfield, Cripps, Tuohy, Gibbs, Rowe
Adelaide: Laird, Sloane, Henderson, Talia, Lever, Jacobs