footy

Painting After Playing

13/08/2014 By Andy 1 Comment

I met Rupert at a concert by The Necks in January 2010 at the Corner Hotel: spitting distance from Punt Road oval. I was talking with Tina Douglas, a Melbourne-based painter, before the show. She had brought her friend, Rupert along with her. He was agitated, talking a lot – annoyed about something. I only exchanged formalities with him. Curiously, he left before the show started. The Necks played their usual two sets: one hour-long piece, slow and improvised, followed by a shorter, probably 20minute piece after a beery interval. Mesmeric, atmospheric, hypnotic being the usual words the crop up when talking about The Necks. There’s something special about seeing their music unfold live. Something that can’t be captured by listening to it on CD or through one’s little machine.

It was only at the end of the concert, that Tina started talking about Rupert. She talked about him being obsessive and never knowing anyone so fully taken up with their own painting. She mentioned how he used to be a footballer, but, he had given up after a falling out with the coach. She didn’t mention the names ‘Collingwood’ or ‘Mick Malthouse’, but, it slowly clicked that the Rupert who had been earlier and then left also early was Rupert Betheras: a member of Collingwood’s grand final sides of the early 2000s. He was also known for his role in bringing Liam Jurrah to Melbourne: a venture that would have its own trajectory. Rupert was known as an industrious player; hard working and probably not the most ‘naturally gifted’ as they say. I remember him playing in long sleeves. I also remember that I liked something about that valiant Collingwood side that only lost by a couple of goals to the mighty Brisbane.

***

Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies, London: Penguin Books, 2012.

Here is Leanne Shapton’s website: leanneshapton.com

I am reading Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies, yes I am.

Shapton is a Canadian artist and former elite swimmer, who almost made it to the Olympics. Nowadays, it seems that she is equal part author, publisher, illustrator and recreational, but regular swimmer.

Swimming Studies tells the story of her rise as a swimmer, or rather, her experiences as a competitive swimmer. For, in this book at least, she cares little for the glory of winning or setting of personal best times. Instead, she focuses on the sensations of being in water, of using her muscles, and the smells that are a part of the everyday life of a swimmer.

The book – perhaps it is most easily classifiable as a memoir – is also a tale of family and domestic life. Leanne shares her swimming with her older brother, Derek. She eventually becomes a faster swimmer than him, for she has, according to her coaches a natural affinity with the water. She asks if it bothered him and he replies to say, no, ‘it meant more to her’. Yet, Leanne never really betrays this sense of full emotional engagement with her competitive swimming. Although she states that, at one point, she is ‘clinically depressed’, this is not directly linked to her swimming. It’s just another temporary sensation. The reader is only left to guess that perhaps it might be.

Shapton seems to swim because she is good at it. And that it is something she has grown up doing. Swimming is a skill that she has developed through her 5am morning practices for which she depends on her mother’s endless to-ing and fro-ing from training. There seems to be much love between them; but, it is not the tenor of the book. Shapton instead recounts the smells and rhythms of her mum’s life, rather than stating open affection. Her mother becomes another part of the aesthetics and everyday life around the thing of swimming.

Swimming Studies is enhanced by the inclusion of photographs of the swimming suits Shapton has collected throughout her times as both elite and recreational swimmer. The suits are neatly photographed on a vintage cloth mannequin, and each suit is accompanied by a brief note on where it was brought and where she wore it for the first time. The suits give an indication of the the changing attitudes towards the female body: something to be covered as much as possible, to being something athletic and capable of moving fast. The suits shift from hindering mobility to enhancing it.

The shapes of pools

Shapton addresses swimming in an original manner. She remembers the textures of swimming, its smells and its sounds. Her portraits of other swimmers, her re-drawing of the shapes of pools (above) and her paintings of swimmers swimming capture something very watery about the feeling of swimming. For me, the weakness of this book is its relative absence of plot or central focus. The plot, the subject matter, the focus are somewhat diluted. It feels like reading a series of disconnected notes on the practice of swimming. So be it. Perhaps it is aimed at being a Walter Benjaminian encounter with the overly focused and directed world of competitive sport. The strength for me, of this book, are the very personal and bare insights Shapton gives regarding her ambivalence as a swimmer. The inclusion of her paintings make up for any textual weakness.

***

There is a helluva lot of action in Betheras’s paintings. His paintings are full and thick. There is no place for the eye to rest. They must be made quickly – at least in the After Collingwood (2008) series. Marking Tracks (2011) indicates a quieter, more refined style. Finally some empty spaces emerge on the canvas. A difference between Shapton and Betheras is in that Shapton makes her painting from her experience as a swimmer; what she learned as a swimmer. Betheras’s works are an indication of someone breaking away from his identity as a footballer; leaving footy, perhaps. And thus, in one image, there is a Collingwood player with its face erased. Betheras must have been an enigmatic footballer to Collingwood fans; for indeed, so few players give up the game when they can still play it. Moreover, he gave up the relative fame of being a footy player in Melbourne for the insecurity of being an artist. Shapton and Betheras that the doing and playing of sport is a productive partner in the development of an aesthetic.

Soccer Short Stories

28/06/2014 By Andy Leave a Comment

This is a terrible season. This season is one disappointment after another. And yet, we keep coming back for more. We have to show our loyalty. We have to show our resilience. Yet again. Yet a-bloody-gain. The team is lost for a solution. Dimma’s demeanor has evolved from being angry at losing, to being convinced that ‘we would work our way through it’ to accepting that ‘we an average team’ to ‘doing it for the fans’. ‘No we are not even thinking about finals.’ Yes, that is true. But, over summer, the pass mark was not only to make the finals but to also win a final. I hear that line from The Castle, ‘tell im heez dreemin’.

The pleasures of literature seem considerably safer than the losses of footy, sport. The irony being, if one doesn’t emotionally invest in a football game, or doesn’t invest in a team, it’s intense vicarious pleasures are also not enjoyed. Perhaps ‘Indonesian literature’ is distant from the everyday life of the Richmond Football Club and the weekly habits of going to games or watching them with friends at pubs or at home on a quiet evening. But, during the 2010 season I set myself a task of translating at least 2-3 poems by Afrizal Malna per week before I would go to a game or watch a game. They were the minimum tasks I would complete before giving myself the fraught pleasure of watching the Tiges.

Now, I’m maintaining my reading, but doing it more so in parallel with watching footy, watching sport. The two have to become united. The sport of literature. The literature of sport. There are cross-overs and divergences. Sport is a creative act, neither beneath nor above the arts. I disagree with Coetzee and the snobs who snub sport as being beneath their consideration. Sport – in its multiplicity of forms, cultures, practices – is a universal part of human culture. And thus it is worthy of serious consideration, analysis. Below, I continue my reading of sport – this time, a brief analysis of some soccer-based short stories by Seno Gumira Ajidarma.

***

Seno Gumira Ajidarma (born 1957, Boston), one of Indonesia’s most prominent authors, has contributed to the discourse on soccer in Indonesia through the means of short stories, journalism and academic writings. These writings reflect his trajectory as a writer and also the professions and jobs that he acquires. The earliest of Seno’s writings on soccer that I have found are his two short stories: “Kematian Seorang Pemain Sepakbola” (Death of a Footballer, 1988) and “Sukab Menggiring Bola” (Sukab Dribbles the Ball, 1996). The former is in the collection, Manusia Kamar (Room Person, Jakarta: Haji Masagung) and the latter is in Negeri Kabut (Fog Lands, Jakarta: Grasindo).

“Death of a Footballer” tells the story of Sobrat, the striker of a team that is on the brink of winning the Indonesian domestic league title. Sobrat has been transformed from a hopeless and untalented youth, into the team’s and competition’s leading goal scorer. His mother discouraged him from playing soccer; and his coaches ordered him to find other jobs rather than waste his time at soccer. Eventually they would give in, owing to his persistence, and let him train with the team on the condition that he would do other jobs such as the cleaning of the club rooms, as well as the massaging of the other players after training. Although supposedly Jonggring Salaka’s third-in-line goal keeper, he is finally deployed in attack after injuries to the other strikers. This turns out well, and, he seems to be fulfilling his wish of ‘glorifying the name of his country’. He is idealistic about the meaning of sport: it should not be corrupted by money. And indeed, he turns down overtures to engage in match-fixing. Sobrat meditates in the centre of the pitch at Senayan stadium and imagines the goals he scores. His 17^th goal for the season, which he scores in the last minuted of added time, seals the team’s fate as that year’s champions and his fate as the league’s top scorer. But, it is also at that moment which he dies, instantly. Spectators think he has fainted, overcome with emotion: but no he is dead and the coach is crying. No one can explain his death.

“Sukab Dribbles the Ball” takes the discourse of soccer into a more fantastic and literary realm. The character of Sukab is a recurring feature of Seno’s stories, and, in this story, once again he is a figure of whimsy, reflection and gentle resistance. Sukab embodies a desire towards artistry and play. In contrast to the aforementioned Sobrat’s goal scoring and league-title-winning feats, Sukab, on the other hand, is a soccer-player as artist. Sukab dribbles the ball throughout cities, jungles, amongst the ruins of civilisation, deserts, across seas in search of the greatest goal keeper so that he can score the greatest goal of all-time. As he dribbles from town to town, city to city, each city confronts him with their best team as a means of honouring his skills. He dribbles past them all. His dribbling-journey attracts crowds and the media; a helicopter follows him and broadcasts his adventure live. His journey comes to an end when he reaches the North Pole, and in his white uniform, becomes disguised against the backdrop of the great white-expanse. He kicks the ball into the last remaining goal: the gaping hole in the Ozone Layer.

These two short stories are typical of Seno’s style: they are elaborations of everyday life in Indonesia. The two characters – Sobrat and Sukab (perhaps they are interchangeable) – are whimsical losers who perform something great, spectacular and admirable and are lauded by those around them. Yet, they have no interest in their glory and the adulation they receive. Both stories offer little in the way of conflict and provide only indeterminate conclusions. Through these two brief stories, Seno asserts the importance of the play, aesthetics and critical possibilities of soccer.

Soccer pitch, Yogyakarta, photo by Onyenho

***

Methinks that perhaps it would be comforting to watch a Tigers game and only treat it as an aesthetic event. Perhaps: watch the first quarter and leave or turn off the television. Perhaps only listen, watch or attend the last quarter. Here is the irony: the people that do watch the game irrespective of the scoreboard, are those for whom the scoreboard matters the most: the coaching staff, the players. Dimma et al always find something to appreciate or critique regardless of what happens – win (occasionally), lose (frequently) or draw (sometimes). It is us fans who are so fixated on winning and losing. We’re addicted, perhaps to the Tiges losing. Perhaps the players know this and thus they returned us to our natural habitat of turning up and watching them lose. I’m imagining Sukab playing for the Tiges. I imagine him in the shape and form of Dustin Martin. Sukab as Dustin Martin endlessly fends off defenders, takes his bold strides and endlessly looks for that goal off in the distance – some 60meters away so that he can kick it through post-high. His chest swells, he looks up, he gives the don’t argue over and over again. Win good Tiges. Or, lose brilliantly, aesthetically, playfully.

Do we have songs?

16/05/2014 By Andy 9 Comments

At the Melbourne Victory – Liverpool match at the MCG in July 2013, some 90,000 sang the classic ballad, You’ll Never Walk Alone. This has become the anthem that unites Liverpool fans throughout the world. It is sung when the team enters the playing field and during games in order to heighten the intensity, the drama and to further encourage the players.

You’ll Never Walk Alone is also the song that is played in the lead up to running marathons in The Netherlands. As I waited at the start line in the Rotterdam marathon, I felt an odd sense of convergence: on that day Liverpool would play Manchester City, the winner seemingly to be in the primary position to win the League title. I was one of 10,000 or so: in my starting block there were mostly men, upwards of 30, dressed in the bare essentials of running gear. I imagined the different crowds of (mainly) men at Liverpool football matches, with fans holding aloft the red scarves: chanting the song in a stoic and reverent manner.

In the week leading up to the game against Melbourne Victory, Liverpool had also been in Jakarta to play against a composite team, known as the Indonesian All Stars. That there were still two main leagues of soccer in Indonesia made it difficult to form a single national team that could best represent the best of Indonesian soccer. But, the crowd, on this day at least, was just like the Melbourne crowd: they were the to see Liverpool. And so, packed into the Gelora BungKarno stadium, some 90,000 sang You’ll Never Walk Alone with a passion and exuberance equal to that of Anfield or Melbourne. The match was as dull as it would be in Melbourne: but, all could state that they had seen the Liverpool play.

But, Liverpool’s victory against Manchester City turned out to be a false sign of the eventual winner of the EPL. A disappointing loss to Chelsea, a shocking draw with Crystal Palace and the title became City’s with ease. City won the title through being consistent and not slipping up along the way. Liverpool played the exciting football and captured a enraptured audience throughout the world. And soon after the title became City’s, subscribers of Instagram were uploading videos directly from Anfield with the hashtag #ynwa.
The 15 second clips of footage were showing the Liverpool fans defiantly singing, chanting You’ll Never Walk Alone at the game’s beginning and conclusion: as if singing along could claim the title that seemed to be within Liverpool’s grasp. Suarez, of 31 goals, left the field with his face covered beneath his shirt, guided by Kolo Toure. He wasn’t walking alone, but this was a disappointing moment. He had given so much joy, hope and pleasure to Liverpool fans throughout the season, he should have looked them in the eyes – each 44,000 of them – and thanked them for their unwavering support.

***

Pasoepati, the supporter group of Persis Solo in Indonesia’s second division – the curiously named Divisi Utama (Main League) – have several main chants which they also churn out during important moments in the football game, but, also during the quiet moments of play when nothing much is happening on the field. The anthem for Persis Solo is Satu Jiwa, or, ‘One Soul’, by a group called The Working Class Symphony who play a kind of folk punk. Like You’ll Never Walk Alone, Satu Jiwa, also implores steadfastness in the face of changing and difficult circumstances: “kita tetap satu, apapun yang terjadi”, that is, “we’ll stay together, whatever happens.” Satu Jiwa greets the players as they walk onto the field, just as You’ll Never Walk Alone greets the players at Anfield. These two songs weren’t written for the clubs, but, they have been appropriated into becoming their anthems.

The Pasoepati supporter group state that their aim is to provide a vibrant and lively atmosphere throughout the full 90minutes of each match. One of the chants that is sung is “Alap-Alap Samber Nyawa”, “alap-alap” indicating a sense of threatening, “Samber Nyawa” being the name of a famous prince from Solo and thus indicating their identity. But, the chant of “alap-alap samber nyawa” wouldn’t be sung if it weren’t for its combination of vowel sounds; it almost rhymes, it’s easy to chant. The subsequent lyrics don’t make much sense, too, but no matter: “fly us into the galaxy, you will surely shake the legend, [we are] Persis Surakarto (the old name for the city of Solo)”. And in between there is a big oooooohh—–wwooohhhhh. The chant is sung to the beating of drums. One doesn’t need to be able to sing; one only needs a gut full of energy and a heart full of passion for the team.

***

But a footy game is not a soccer match. Footy grounds differ from soccer stadiums. Footy crowds contrast with those of soccer. A footy game is much longer and the action is more easily dispersed across a bigger playing field. Arguably, one needs more concentration to watch a footy game than a soccer game. Or, perhaps, it is a different kind of attention that is required. Soccer crowds in England or Indonesia are overwhelmingly male, the footy crowds of Australia are much more diverse: a roughly equal number of men and women and of course many children in attendance. The unified macho chanting of You’ll Never Walk Alone, Satu Jiwa, or Alap-alap Samber Nyawa might be not so easily created at a Richmond home game. But, part of me thinks it is possible, to a degree.

Do we have songs to sing at games? Is there a pop ballad that we could appropriate as our own song? A song that we all know the lyrics to, that we can chant during a quarter to rouse our team? Can we write a 4 line chant in homage of our great coach, Tommy Hafey, in the manner that Liverpool fans have songs for their captain Steven Gerrard? Can we have another four line chant in ode to Matthew Richardson who gave us so much pleasure during the long years of hopelessness? (We don’t have success at the moment, but at least we have a degree of hope.) Me thinks we have it in us as a supporter group to come up with songs and chants which can show our passion for our team. Regardless of how our team performs off the field, us fans can devise ways of making the experience of watching the Tiges play more and more enjoyable. Players, coaches, administrators come and go. For 10, 20, 30,40, 50, 60 years – or longer – the fans stay loyal. The fans maketh the club.

Soundscapes of the Outer

08/05/2014 By Andy 3 Comments

Each stadium has its own architecture. The gently rising terraces of suburban football grounds or the steep stands of the MCG. Stadium architecture is a response to the size of the field upon which the game is played. Australian football developed in borderless paddocks: and the grounds we have now reflect the early expanses. I wonder: when did the grounds become oval, when was the scoring system developed, entrenched? Behind posts, apparently, were added to the goals in 1866. During the earliest games a round ball was used. A 100 minute time limit was enforced from 1869.The game was initially played by cricketers to stay fit in the off-season: and how quaint this now seems, given the extraordinary athleticism of so many footballers in comparison to relative slowness of cricketers (although that too is changing). And so footy made it onto the turf of the MCG in 1876 and that perhaps entrenched the ovalness of footy fields. But, I wonder if other shapes of fields remained in use. Although footy is ‘Australia’s game’ many of the cricket fraternity regard footy as a little too rough and its fans a little too uncouth. And this too is a generalised cliché: the sport doesn’t define the behaviour of player, supporters.

Footy ovals – even in the streamlined AFL – remain of varying shapes and sizes. Teams become more comfortable playing on their home ground. The Tiges look best when playing on the MCG and always look as if they’re playing away at the Dome even when it is a home game. The SCG is short and narrow. Geelong’s ground is long. Subiaco has ‘broad expanses’: and one can be reminded of the emptiness of the Australian landscape. The intense tackling of Sydney’s teams in the mid-2000s and Ross Lyon’s St.Kilda teams were honed at the smaller venues. The Tiges are proud of their ground which now has the dimensions of the Dome – at least they can become more familiar with their other home ground. The poor quality of the training ground was considered as one of the reasons for the long years of underperformance (not that they are necessarily over). Geelong famously plays through the corridor, probably in part because their home ground has shallow pockets.

The crowd of a footy game is easily distinguished from the crowd that watches a theatre performance. Indeed, those who a performance of the arts are classified as an audience. A crowd watches aggressively: interjecting, shouting, abusing, supporting. An audience watches (consumes) silently and in considered appreciation. This distinction is not necessarily stable or inherently true: there was a time when audiences too would interject, abuse or break out into cheering. Upon the premiere of Gustav Mahler’s fourth symphony, the audience (crowd?) demanded that it be played again – immediately. During performances of Wagner operas, the crowd (audience?) would demand that particular sections be sung again (immediately) such was their beauty. In an age when instant replays and DVDs of highlights weren’t available, there were other ways of re-experiencing what one imagined to be beautiful. And, of course, there is the famous incident of fights breaking out after the premier of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The so-called fine arts can also arouse hostile reactions. These were times, arguably, before such music became classified. Audiences didn’t go to performances of Mahler’s symphonies looking for a safe and comfortable night’s entertainment: they went looking for something new. And sometimes this new was shocking – and the audiences were unsure of whether or not they enjoyed it.

The footy crowd/audience differs not only from that of a theatre going audience/crowd but also that of other sporting crowds. The tennis crowd is admonished by the umpire who sits high upon a chair. The players can complain to the umpire regarding the crowd. Officials at golf tournaments hold up signs bestowing silence upon those watching. The players are expected and regard it as obligatory that they perform their sports in the mythical silence of a library. Silence is dignified: allowing for concentration. I think of religious sermons and the audience of the faithful watching on – few probably listening attentively – in earnest, showing off their piety. Many take the moment of silence as an opportunity to sleep; just as many do in a cinema. But, perhaps this act of falling asleep in the dark of a cinema is less voluntary; and perhaps an accidental and passive act of film criticism. The darkness of the cinema alerts one’s senses to sound; the acoustics of churches magnifies the slightest of sounds. To be noisy is to interfere with the concentration and pleasure of others, or to be irreverent and insulting of the preacher.

The silence expected at tennis matches and golf tournaments is also a result of the proximity of the audience to the players themselves. These are considered games that require a high degree of finely tuned concentration: logic, reason, scientific judgement. But the crowd of a boxing match (not ‘game’) is also close: so close that those in the first row may be struck with the boxer’s sweat. Boxing also requires an intensity of concentration and judgement surely equal to that of tennis or golf. Players of sport will talk about being ‘in the zone’ and not hearing the crowd. At other times they will speak of how the crowd’s noise, and the support of their team in particular, was instrumental in raising their performance. At boxing matches, crowds will cheer on the final frenetic moments of the last round: willing the boxers on to give their all. While fools in the audience (crowd?) of a tennis match will interject seeking to distract a player at the moment before he or she hits a shot. It is up to the players themselves to choose when they do or do not hear the crowd. In these cases, listening/hearing is not something passive and automatic. The incident in which Adam Goodes pointed to a member of the crowd for racially abusing him was a case in point: Goodes was hardly listening to everything the crowd was shouting. But, he heard the racist statements and couldn’t un-hear them and thus he acted in the manner he did.

The broad expanses of footy stadiums gives rise to a soundscape of diffused support and abuse. There is little collective singing, chanting. The slow ‘Col-ling-wood’ ‘Col-ling-wood’ or ‘Free-yo’- ‘Free-yo’ chants are rare exceptions and are only possible, or heard, at moments of great or impending victories. Most common are the individual shouts of the crowd whose voice probably reaches no further than a few rows in front of him or herself. Synchronised chanting, supporting takes the form of ‘Team name’ followed by clap-clap-clap. But this is tedious and hackneyed. Again, it only emerges during a team’s run-on, or emerging victory. The gestures of so-called cheer squads are exaggerated partly in order to make up for the easy manner in which their shouting dissolves into the empty space of the stadium. The fan who was pointed out by Goodes was shocked not only for having being put into sudden public attention but for the realisation that Goodes had heard what she had said. Her racist statement had been heard by the target; it hadn’t dissolved into the noise of a stadium.

Jakarta versus Footy

09/04/2014 By Andy 2 Comments

Durian juice

I wake up and turn on the footy. I know Deledio is not playing and this is odd. The young man had played a lot of games in a row; several seasons with barely an injury or dip in form. He is tall and slender: an athletic figure in the style of Chris Judd’s. Deledio has the swagger, self-confidence and looks of a great sportsman; yet, most of the time he has been very good and very consistent. For some this has not been enough. His absence from the team, however, perhaps will indicate his contribution sometimes missed by some critics.

I have slept through most of the first quarter, but, no matter. I see the Tiges are trailing and the Dogs are up and about. It’s too easy to blame it on the venue. The Richmond supporters are thin on the ground. The Docklands stadium is a couple of kilometres from the MCG, but far away in the Tiger’s fans imagination. The second quarter is a shambles and the goals fall in. The commentators are impressed with the pressure of the Dogs. Richmond fans see only a lack of interest from their team’s players. It seems like the days from not so long ago: the punishings from Collingwood, Sydney, Geelong, St.Kilda, Carlton, whoever. Chris Newman and Joel Bowden and others staring at each other as the ball sails, yet again, between the white poles. Today the half-time damage is hardly fatal: the ground is small, the surface is slick and the opposition are yet to have established their reputation.

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Nap time

The next morning I wake up and it is six o’clock on a Sunday in central Jakarta. I step out from the hotel and onto Jalan Cikini. It is raining heavily. I am here for a small literary festival and I am going for my run. This should be the day of my long run, but, I know my body hasn’t adjusted to the heat and humidity, so, I will run for an hour only. A sluggish and short run is better than no run. I tell myself that I need to do it to maintain my rhythm and to feel that I am in Jakarta despite the brevity of this visit. A run to feel a part of a place.

The rain is heavier than it looked from the window on the fourth floor. I have just become a part of the rain and it feels unrelenting and as if it is spread uniformly across the Jakartan cityscape. But this is Sunday morning, car free day and I will be going back the next day. I have no time to think about how to spend my time; I must consume the city rapidly before I go back to the Soekarno-Hatta airport and back to Schipol. This is a pleasure I tell myself and it is for myself. I have time to run, time to be with my sense of what Jakarta is and to see how it moves on a slow, rainy Sunday morning.

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In search of lost books

I run along the left side of the road. There is a pavement and it is a mixed bag of holes, missing bricks and rubbish bins. Occasionally, there are stretches of smooth, uninterrupted footpath. But the meters pass quickly, even on a slow run, and the road, even if it is slightly more dangerous in terms of passing cars, at least it offers a degree of consistency in terms of smoothness. The puddles, though disguise the holes and bumps in the road and I try to land at their edges.

I run past Bakoel Koffie cafe, Holland Bakery with its kitsch windmill, Vietopia Vietnamese restaurant and towards the Aryaduta Hotel standing behind the Tugu Tani. It was there that I watched Barak Obama’s mistake riddled inauguration from one of its floors. The man who had given countless unblinking speeches slipped up on a prescribed formality. This was a significant moment in history, the commentators repeated endlessly. ‘America’s first black president’. At the time, the Jakartan taxi drivers and many others spoke of their enthusiasm for Barak. He too knew Cikini, Menteng, after having lived and gone to school there as a child. When later gave a speech at the University of Indonesia, south of Jakarta, he said, to a rapturous applause, “pulang kampung nih”, “I’ve come home”.

I turn left and run past the former US embassy – looking like the leftovers of a military campaign – and towards Jalan Thamrin: the centre of Jakarta and the meeting point for many on car-free Sunday mornings. But, it is still early and the rain is putting off those who somewhat doubtful about whether to go out for their morning run, jog, bicycle ride, or to do their aerobics. I pass a couple of teenagers running in their basketball uniforms. There is a listlessness to their gait. I feel it too: the rain, the heat, the meals I’ve eaten which I wouldn’t have eaten were I at home. My eating patterns have been disturbed by the flights, the change in cooking oils. I have found some peanut butter and some thin, sugary bread as an attempt at my standard breakfast, but, it too proves slightly off what I was looking for.

Jl.Thamrin becomes Jl.Sudirman and Sudirman’s sculpture stands erect at the street’s starting point. A still, upright and authoritative body language. There is a rise in the road – it’s not a hill – but it’s a couple of hundred meters long and it goes upwards. I run past a stretch of five star hotels. There are runners in groups, wearing their club’s t-shirts, led by their coaches in their most-up-to-date gear. Cyclists too are in their essential lycra; chatting in Indonesian, English, Russian.

I return and run through the Monas park. Here, a different set of exercises are more common: those that are contained in squares, rectangles. Tai chi practitioners perform their slow movements with the gently undulating tunes of classical music. There are perhaps a dozen different groups: some with a few members, some with a couple of dozen. How things change: up until the late 1990s, public displays of Chinese culture were forbidden. The changes brought about by reformasi have made Chinese-ness increasingly consumable and comfortable for the Jakartan cityscape. Chinese New Year decorations adorn the malls, the Chinese New Year is celebrated as a national holiday. Others do line-dancing. There are small courts for football and basketball. Joggers do laps of the park on the brick paths which feel hard beneath one’s feet.

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The game ends and the Tiges are on 98 and the Dogs have the digits of one zero zero next to their name on the screen. Ah, that was frustrating, entertaining, disappointing. It was another footy game for the catalogue to be filed under ‘perhaps we really didn’t need to lose that one’, ‘lack of hunger in the first half cost us in the end’. The captain was brilliant all day and in the first half all others were hanging about somewhere in the background. The captain says a couple of days later that the team is yet to nut out how to stop other teams getting a run on. This kind of honesty is all a little unbecoming. “Well, nut it out would ya!” I feel like shouting at the screen.

This was a game of little sustenance to fans beyond the teams involved. The players played their roles – providing hope, frustration and pleasure in equal measure. The commentators got excited as usual. Another job that has trouble with honesty: so it is easy to say at the end of the Melbourne-GWS game: “well, that was a great game, it really opened up towards the end.” I found it to be a repeat but dressed-up performance of Glen Iris Gladiators under-12s versus Richmond Citizens circa 1988. Indeed, this game had no-Rioli moment of poise, balance, artistry: just Giansiracusa’s guile and Brandon Ellis’s rawness which led to the Tiges unnecessary defeat.

Brett Deledio is in a suit and hanging about the change rooms at half-time, looking out of place. Alex Rance is a guest in the commentary box – looking neat, handsome and smiling and staring straight into the camera – and he is sounding out of place. A 50meter goal from Deledio would have been welcome. Rance’s defending too, would have been welcome. But, they’re suited up, rather than bedecked in the Yellow and Black. That is the game, too. I turn it off knowing that I’ve seen a game: again I liked the new assertiveness of Griffiths, again I wondered if King’s reputation is doing all the talking rather than his playing. Brett, play next week, being in a suit during a Tige’s game, doesn’t become you.

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I leave Jakarta and come back to the brief anonymity of Schipol. The festival too, was like the football game and my run. Somewhere between being and becoming, frustration and realisation.

A civilised discussion between author and publisher