Tigers

How is a victory made? I’m trying to think of what makes this win against Essendon feel the way it does.

Probably some seven weeks ago, Damien Hardwick was asked what the team needed to get out of the season now that it was effectively over –i.e. having no chance of making the finals. He replied to say, ‘we need to win. We need to give something back to the fans.’ He also said that the Tiges were a better side than what they seemed to be by their 3:10 record.

This was a risky statement to make. It would have been easier for him to talk in generalisations, about improving more generally so that they would be able to be in their best form for 2015. But, he put it simply: wins on the board, now. Ugly, boring, grinding – matter.

***

The first five wins of this streak have been underwhelming and forgettable. The thousands of disappointed fans and members have been slow to get back on board – burnt by the early to mid season listlessness of the team. Perhaps they have been somewhat unconvinced by the pedestrian nature of the wins, coming against team playing beneath their best.

Imagine, for example, if the Tiges had beaten Port Adelaide at the Adelaide Oval in the middle of their streak, their hot form, with their masses of fans creating that wonderful sense of game day. But no, it happened at the Telstra Dome – or whatever it is called – with a small crowd and those who were there were probably already feeling put out by having to attend a home game at an away venue.

The AFL has a tendency to overstate the centrality of football in the lives of the good citizens of Melbourne and the surrounds. And thus a crowd of some 70,000 was hoped for. Damien Hardwick and some of the Richmond players, though, should be commended for recognising that the team had done much to disenchant and disappoint the fans. The disappointment of this season being felt all the greater because of the high expectations that the Club built up over the long cricket-full summer. The crowd turned out to be 58,000.

The consistent excellent form of Dustin Martin, the instant arrival of Miles as a player (after his much anticipated debut for Richmond) and the development of Riewoldt into a much more rounded player couldn’t provide sufficient succor for a team and fans expecting not only to play in the finals, but also for a win in September. The righting of the good ship Richmond has been as sure as it has been unspectacular. Until Friday night that is.

***

I had planned to watch the game live. But, I got caught up in a long Skype conversation and so, rather than resuming watching the game from third quarter, after having seen most of the first quarter, I watched the full replay from the second quarter onwards, some six hours after the game’s completion. A media blackout was enforced for those hours in between.

For twelve years I have loved the jumper. For twelve years I have been with Richmond. I have not been to as many games as I would have liked. I have been far from 3121 for the past four years. But followed them I have. Each summer, I have been convinced that the next season would be ours. Folly and naivety most think. I have admired our good players; I have respected their characters. I did my best to find something good to say about Terry Wallace during those years and many days in which he came under so much criticism. Much of it warranted. I wrote him a letter: wishing him all the best, despite the difficulties. I wrote Danny Frawley a letter after an uncouth fan spat towards him. Frawley, polite, replied and wrote of the many other fans who had also voiced their outrage. I gave Richard Tambling the benefit of the doubt: he would become a player in the right circumstances, I was sure. I almost cried with happiness when the Tiges thrashed the Hawks in the wet at the MCG a couple of years ago. For twelve years I had loved the jumper and admired the players. But it was Friday’s game in which I fell in love with this team; with each of the players; one by one; one at a time. Purely platonic, of course – I don’t want Brian Taylor to get uncomfortable.

In days gone by, with the luxury of watching the replay, I would have skipped to the end. I would have checked the result on Richmond website to see if it was safe to continue watching. But this time, I stayed put. My knees against my chest, peeking out at the screen. I convinced myself that ‘surely this is more stressful than watching soccer’ – longer than 90minutes and so many chaotic possibilities. So many players who could make a single mistake that could lose the game for the team. I thought of Cameron Wood’s mistake against Freo a couple of weeks ago. I thought: how ironic – Richmond are playing so well, so beautifully – just as we want them to, but, we might suffer a tortuous loss.

***

On the commentary, Bruce kept on writing Essendon off. I don’t know why he does it. Bruce seems to belittle the opposition. ‘One more goal here could make it really difficult for Essendon’. Didn’t he see last year’s Brisbane-Geelong game up at the Gabba? Didn’t he see the third quarter of Richmond-North Melbourne this year? 30 points means nothing. But despite even Bruce’s best efforts to put the Mozz on Richmond, the Tiges didn’t wilt. I saw the superb skills of Dyson Heppel: a player I couldn’t really appreciate up until now. I saw the stoicism of Paul Chapman; the ingenuity of Goddard: two players who were perpetually on teams humiliating my, your, our Tiges. Tonight, not so. I see Goddard depart the field: frumpy and bad-tempered. His nose put out of joint with this team now in jeopardy of missing the finals.

Enough of them. Brett Deledio: let him be underrated never again. He is athlete, aesthete, footballer. Edwards: so light on his feet, adroit, lithe and balanced. Miles: the man is tenacious. Gordon: he came to the fore – not for long, but, when his moment came he was there; and he delivered. Griffiths: the MCG is your play thing.

But my moment of the match came a few seconds after Ivan had marked Ben’s long kick into the forward line during the game’s dying moments. Ivan lined up; the siren sounded –the crowd roared, roared, roared. And Ivan – did not blink. No smile, no relief, no nothing. The man was looking in between the goals: that is where I shall send the ball. And goal he did. No concentration lost by that booming projection announcing the Tiges as victors. Ivan the Maric. And the team swamped him.

This was a win for the Believers. Ivan believed in the Tiges when he no doubt told the Team that they could be better. Ivan believed that the Team could respond to criticism; to take it on board and then improve and improve some more. Ivan leads by example and the Team follows. This was the Beautiful Game.

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

What Makes a Win

Jakarta versus Footy