“Any minute now, my ship is coming in. I’ll keep checking the horizon.”
– Colin Hay
Years ago, a friend pleaded with me to stop introducing newspaper columns with song
lyrics. We don’t talk much any more. He followed the Demons.
Max Gawn leads the beaten Demons from the field.Credit: Getty Images
Last weekend, a Saturday, I watched the Melbourne footy club capitulate against a plucky Suns team. I turned it off well before the final siren, but my last thought was, “I wonder what is going on in the hearts and minds of those players who were a dominant force not so long ago.”
On a lazy afternoon at home the next day, I accidentally watched the documentary on Men at Work frontman and solo artist, Colin Hay, Waiting For My Real Life. It was just there. I held the remote control in my hand, outstretched from my horizontal perch like a drunk knight. Before I knew it, I was engrossed, by the man, the story and the title song in particular.
The power of hearing certain songs at a certain time in your life can hit the chest as hard as a Paul Hudson stab kick into a draftee’s chest on a winter’s night.
Later that afternoon, I drove out to the West Footscray Writers Festival event alongside the celebrated author, Helen Garner. Her latest opus, The Season, a first-hand witness account to her grandson Ambrose’s under-16 footy team. The book captures the uniqueness of any football season and its familiar rhythms, through the eyes of Garner, the invisible witness, the innocent grandma, the devastatingly candid grandma.
One of the themes that I took away from the book is the sheer wonder that football can be in our lives at times. The best kind of wonder. The glorious possibilities. Fresh horizons.
I drove home in the afterglow of the author’s aura, listening to Hay’s solo stuff the whole way home. On repeat. With the road under me, I was cajoling the songs to fit into my world, manipulating their malleable nature to help me navigate life’s internal twists and turns.
“And you say, be still my love, open up your heart, let the light shine in.”
Later that night, unbeknownst to any of us then, Andrew Krakouer, the former Tiger, Magpie and Swan Districts footballer, suffered a heart attack and passed away. He was 42.
Andrew Krakouer celebrates for Collingwood in 2011. Credit: Paul Rovere
In the days that followed, a different kind of wonder would set in, the worst kind … gone too soon. “Feel the waves come crashing …”
For all that he was as a footballer, and Andrew was a serious footballer, his gentle grace was a symbol of redemption and resilience. To be in his presence was to feel his sincerity. His kindness.
As is life’s way, days roll into each other, the chaos of life in the city stealing time from the external and the internal worlds we inhabit. For many of us, footy is the distraction of choice. And that’s how it was for me this week. By Wednesday, I had officially worn out the family with my Colin Hay obsession blasting through the speakers. I was resorting to headphones now. Again, my thoughts drifted towards the Demons.
When a team, like Melbourne, is in a slump, the human instinct is to break the problem down to individual parts to be fixed individually. It’s easy to be overwhelmed about where to start.
Have our skills deserted us? Are our stars fully committed? Is our forward line up to it? How does a captain, like Max Gawn, sweep up all of that information, problems of both the head and heart and put them back together and align the team once again?
“Manage with facts, lead with heart,” was how it was once put to me. I always liked the sound of that. Sometimes leadership is a performance before the performance.
The truth is, a lot of park footballers could complete an AFL pre-season; they might even string a few games together of league footy, given a chance. What separates them from the really good ones, the proper league footballers, is this: Can you perform this week? Can you perform when the chips are down?
It’s a week for Melbourne’s leaders, there’s no getting around that, which isn’t to say anyone else is off the hook. Those of influence at the Demons must inspire an effort that drags a critical mass to the selfless side of the seesaw.
There’s quite a menu of footy cliches on offer for Simon Goodwin and co to pick from, but you could do worse than “play your role”, but it’s got to be with fanaticism, and it has to be everyone.
Max has already proven himself. So many times. But I wonder how he’s approached his role this week inside that footy club. I wonder if he went off script at any stage, stood in front of them, holding his own space with poise, and painted a verbal picture to quieten down the noise from outside and say, “Just be here now, forget about the past, your mask is wearing thin; Let us throw one more dice, I know that we can win.”
