On Football

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“Sons of the 'scray, red, white and blue,

We'll come out snarling, we're bulldogs through and through,

Bulldogs bite and Bulldogs roar, remember '54,

'Cos you can't beat the boys of the Bulldog breed, that make ol' Footscray's name!”

~ ‘The Footscray Bulldogs Football Club Theme Song’, to the tune of ‘Sons of the Sea’

lyrics by Mike Brady, circa 1982

There’s a radio program on the ABC in Melbourne on Saturdays between 11am and 1pm called the Coodabeen Champions.  It’s a lighthearted look at all things AFL football in the hours prior to the live telecast, and it is at once nostalgic, amusingly cynical, and witty.  Some may suggest the program is a little old-hat, considering the relative age of the broadcasters and the fact that the show has been around in various forms since the early 1980’s.  One of the more amusing segments features talkback with a number of colourful identities, each actually voiced by members of the Coodabeens and satirically lampooning various football clubs and their supporters.  One such recurring “caller” is ‘Danny from Droop Street’.  Droop Street is a main thoroughfare in the western Melbourne suburb of Footscray.

Danny is perpetually hangdog.  He’s a stereotypical pessimist, never believing his club will ever achieve anything of note.  When his team is doing well, Danny is concerned, as this is merely the precursor to an inevitable fall from grace.  When the team loses, Danny is relieved, because at least he doesn’t have to wait any longer for the fait de compli.  When the captain of his beloved club was reported to being “quietly confident” about an upcoming match, Danny was quick to chastise him, saying “We can’t have that kind of talk around the club.”

Danny and I share an important characteristic.  We both support the Western Bulldogs Football Club.

The Western Bulldogs Football Club formed in the latter stages of the 19th century and was a force in the VFA, winning numerous premierships including a run from 1919 to 1924.  At the end of that season, the Bulldogs (then called the Tricolours due to their red, white and blue playing strip) played a game against the Essendon Football Club (the 1924 premiers from the more fancied and powerful VFL).  The Bulldogs won, hence being proclaimed the “Champion of Victoria”.  The Footscray Bulldogs joined the VFL the very next year.  That was pretty much where Danny’s and my misery began.

The Bulldogs have sadly only won a single, solitary premiership in their VFL/AFL history, that occurring in 1954, when my dear father was only 9 years old.  Since he was growing up in South Africa, he hadn’t likely even heard of Australian football.  I’m told that when we immigrated to Australia, we were reliably advised that one must support a football team if wanting to continue to live unhindered in the fine city of Melbourne.  My mother and father picked teams that opposed each other in the famous drawn Grand Final of 1977 (the year we arrived), Collingwood and North Melbourne respectively.  Older brother #1 picked Geelong, and older brother #2 picked Fitzroy.  Being an infant, deciding on a team for myself came down to colours and so my fate was sealed with the traditionally working-class team of Melbourne’s inner western suburb of Footscray, latterly the Western Bulldogs.

The Bulldogs have historically been a team of battlers and underdogs, often finding themselves the object of pity due to what former Carlton Football Club president John Elliott once controversially called the club’s “tragic history”.  Despite few actual Grand Final appearances, not many clubs have had as many seasons that have come close to winning that elusive premiership than the Doggies without actually achieving the ultimate reward.  Even very recently their so-called ‘premiership window’ has been at the very least ajar, with the Bulldogs contesting the last three preliminary finals without making it all the way to the big stage.  It’s a painful thing for a supporter, as Danny from Droop Street would certainly attest.

It must be said that winning an AFL premiership is very much like capturing lightning in a bottle.  A club needs to have a near perfect balance of players, coaches, intricate and timely strategies, a good run with injuries, generous portions of luck, and an often intangible X-Factor.  Sometimes, even if all these things are running your way, you can face a club that has all that and something infinitesimally extra, and you’re on the losing side anyway.

Think about it this way:  each and every week, half of the teams that play, play to win and abjectly fail.  Even if the game is a draw it could be argued that both teams have failed.  At least half the league’s teams are failures each week and around half the supporters across the country are at least marginally disappointed, week in, week out.  At the end of the year, 16 out of 17 teams currently in the competition (that’s 94.12%) have been entirely unsuccessful in the goal they all had at least tentatively set themselves at the start of the season, that is, winning the Grand Final.  How on earth do clubs and supporters keep going at it every year, considering the enormous and overwhelming failure rates?  

I believe it is because each new year, even each week, brings with it new promise, a new dawn and a new beginning.  Near infinite second chances.  That’s worth aspiring to.  Maybe this week will be the Bulldogs’ week!  If not, maybe the week after!  If this season is not our season, maybe it will be next year!  If not, then the team will rebuild, because after all, we’ve got a great crop of kids, all of them potential champions, coming through the ranks!  Then, maybe, just maybe, if the stars align, it will be our year!  I decided long ago to continue to ride the roller-coaster with my beloved Doggies.  Win, lose, or draw, they are my team, and I’ll support them, win with them and lose with them, until I draw my final breath.  If one day we capture that lightning in a bottle, I’ll be there, wearing a lunatic grin, wondering what on Earth Danny from Droop Street is making of it all.