Chapter 2: on Carlton (the cursed and cussed)

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And so it is with Carlton. There are exceptions, but theirs is a born-to-rule mentality. It comes with geography, but also with a belief they occupy football’s higher ground, with a supporter base swelled by intellectual conservatives (B. A. Santamaria), political dries (John Elliott) and business elites (Dick Pratt). They are a club for the big end of town, not immune from bending the rules if it suits them. They have been known to be corrupt. They are for now bankrolled by a man who’s made his riches from poker machines – from other people’s vulnerabilities and misfortune.

Slay them this Thursday night under lights for all to see, my dear Tigers. Put them to the sword. Seek redemption for a generation of misery at their hands. We appoint you in charge, Dusty, of ripping out their hearts, of condemning their coach (a canny old Tiger who’s changed his stripes so many times he’s lost his way) to football’s purgatory. Silence them all, Jack, bind their mouths so no longer can they speak ill of us. Tease them, Trent, with a glimpse of the future, and how their promised future is but an illusion.

We are boys from Struggletown, my dear Tigers, and for too long they’ve looked down upon us with scorn, mocking and taunting us, and beating us more times than I care to remember. For too long, we have succumbed, we have been under their yoke.

Only once in the past 12 outings have we vanquished them (and it was by a solitary kick). Remember the false hopes and humiliation of Ben Cousins’ first game, and our 93-point public flogging for all to see at the MCG? Remember the first-round loss a year later, by 56 points, or the Round 15 home-game humiliation at the MCG in 2011, when the margin stretched beyond 100 points and they played with us on the field and in the aisles?

Remember the second-last time we played them at Princes Park? I do. I was there, on a hot August afternoon, standing in the terraces, blinking into the sun. It was 1994, the second-last round, but our last roll of the dice, dear Tigers. We had to win that afternoon to make the finals. We were to play Geelong in the last round, and as with now, we never beat Geelong. My beloved Tigers, how we all turned up to watch and how we needed to avert our gaze. It was a bloodbath. We turned on each other. Carlton embarrassed us. Fraser Brown kicked seven, Kernahan three, Craig Bradley two. Anthony Koutoufides and Adrian Gleeson ran rings around us. Their score was 161, ours was 48. Wounds cut deep. A week later at the same venue, Geelong beat us 171 to 95, to again condemn us to 9^th on the ladder, on percentage from Collingwood and Melbourne.

Is this the way it’s always to be, my dear Tigers?

It is our time this Thursday night, my beloved Tigers, to overcome this litany of defeat. It is our time to turn the tables. It is our time to rise from the lowlands and take the ascendancy over Carlton for now and for a reign we hope never to end. Extinguish their flame. Snuff out their hope. Burn all their crops. Seed their minds with doubt, then despair. Expunge all their dreams. Slay them, dear Tigers, slay them – not for the loss last September, but for all the losses in recent living memory, for all the poverty they’ve reaped upon us.

I have known Carlton supporters, and some of them are decent folk, but this Thursday night I wish upon them only misery and despair.

This chapter in our Book of Feuds is now closed.