Melbourne vs Brisbane
Alone in a corner I sipped my beer and for 20 minutes wondered why the hell I was a Roar fan. If it hadn’t have become “Brisbane Roar”, defecting to Gold Coast United would have been a no-brainer. I love Brisbane, but when it comes to sport I don’t really give a shit about ‘Queensland’. A sporting team should, in my view, represent an actual ants nest, a real community of humans, with a stadium in the middle. And while I was sitting there, watching my team play truly woefully, albeit attempting to play this ‘attacking football’ everyone seems to harp about, I thought, ‘Well, this is my lot. Thick or thin, this is my team. I guess they’ll have glory some time in my life, and other times they’ll probably be at the bottom, but they play for my town, which I live in, work in and love’.
Then Danny scored a cracker. Seconds later I apologised to the table next to me for my spontaneous reaction. They were good humoured about it – actually the smile from the girl was worth it. I was so excited I wandered outside the drinking area for a cigarette when Henrique was brought down and Dijk popped the penalty. 2:0 up, but I’m not really convinced by Dijk’s celebrations. Two goals in two games on paper, but both because he gets to take the penalties, which he didn’t earn, and he still keeps missing his chances from play. And God he’s ugly. Anyway he plays for my team.
I stll thought Melbourne were playing better and not once thought they weren’t still in the game. Just after Hernandez scored (The Roar’s defence up to that point so had that coming) a cop came over. He was a senior constable but I can’t remember his name. I noticed he didn’t look at the AFL screen. “Are you a Roar supporter?” “Aye.” He asked me who’d scored the goals and I told him. He’s from Wales and is a Leeds supporter. “It’s the only team,” he said. Now if that was true it would be a pretty small and uninteresting league, but I learned long ago to never argue with a policeman. Anyway, he wandered past a few times after that and got updates from me. Nice guy.
I’ve found before that when you go out alone to watch a football game you kind of spontaneously meet people who are also interested. It’s a contrast to going out alone to listen to music or trying to get laid, when I inevitably just get lonelier as the night goes on. The other bloke I got chatting to, who came in later, was wearing Celtic gear, a Scot. We reminisced joyfully about the Roar vs Celtic game, and he told me a wonderful story about a home Celtic game vs Liverpool where both groups (is 50,000 still a ‘group’?) sang ‘You’ll never walk alone’. I’m bloody jealous. Frankly I reckon the Roar should consider itself tagged with the Celtic germ and take the song up as our own. There is no greater soccer anthem in the world.
While I was chatting to the cop again Henrique scored his. Now that was quality – neither a somewhat lucky but brilliant bash like Danny’s nor a routine penalty like Dijk’s. A REAL goal. A goal to celebrate. Celebrating it with a yellow card (taking the shirt off) was a bit stupid, but he does have a nice bod – much prettier than Djik.
The mystery, which has almost become mundane, is that in the second half Brisbane actually looked better, but it was Melbourne scoring the goals. If someone has the time please drop me a line and explain to me what it’s all about. You know… soccer, life, whatever. Life is rich with metaphors for explaining soccer.
3:3. Jesus the A-League on this Saturday yielded 11 goals from two games. I don’t even want to talk about the Gold Coast. Frank Farina has put it on public record that he will bare his arse in public if the Gold Coast go through undefeated as Clive Palmer predicted. This is one of the most interesting things Frank has ever said and I almost hope it comes off so Frank is obliged to be so daring. Sorry I keep digressing. 3:3. A deserved draw, in a game of two halves where the teams took turns scoring against the run of play.
PS. I like the yellow nets.
Mnemonic Miscellanea
First getting to the game. For the first time I drove, and somehow got a park right next to the Paddo Pub, a mere block from the stadium. We were over an hour early but there was already thousands of people milling about (both the Paddo and the Caxton were packed with Orange), and we felt damn lucky to get the park.
Jacob and I were meeting a friend, Donald, at the Wally Lewis statue at 7pm, half hour before the game. (The game had already been rescheduled from 7 to 7.30 in order to get the expectedly large crowds into their seats.) So we had some food and wandered to the stadium, which took ages because of the crowd.
Almost there and a Sydney contingent of about 20 were marching directly behind us singing, “Oh, oooohh oohh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh.. SYDNEY!” at the top of their voices. They sounded great – a bit too great for me so immediately after they got to the second, “SYDNEY!” I rejoined, “CAN’T PLAY!” at the top of my own not-soft voice. I didn’t even look around to see their response. Didn’t dare. But they shut up. The little bit of truth in what I shouted comes back in a reminiscence of a shouting Sydney crew after a QRvSFC game last season, “WE’RE SHIT BUT WE BEAT YOU!” It was great humour at the time and I remember Jacob and I laughing respectfully at their militant honesty. But last night they were shit and they didn’t beat us.
Ok, we met Donald. It was obviously going to be a huge crowd and I’m glad I bought my tickets on the net, which I’ve never done before for an A-League game.
Later Donald said he’d seen the ominous clouds in the sky, but I knew nothing. Seemed like great weather for 35,000 people to be milling about in.
The tickets were for the second level – Section 526 – but accidentally we ended up on the top level (eventually in 722). On the way up the stairwell, caged from the open air outside the stadium, we noticed it was raining (the view’s great anyway btw). When we got to the top (we didn’t dawdle or stop for drinks from the time we entered) we looked out into the stadium into an impenetrable curtain of sheeting water. Jacob and I spontaneously sprinted to the gate – one of those adrenalin-from-nowhere moments. The boys were still training, but there was already a glisten of water across the whole pitch. There were thousands running from the stands to the back areas. A long ball would land on the pitch and stop dead.
It was an extraordinarily timed (potential) disaster. First, if the game had have kicked off at 7pm as originally scheduled it would have had to be stopped, with very little warning, and there would have been a horrible stampede of 35,000 people. As it was the 35,000 people had well-and truly mobilised – they were for the most part in the stadium or directly outside it (there were many waterlogged people in the stands by kickoff), when the torrent hit. As it was there was a brilliant scene of an almost empty stadium (for the front three quarters) with a ring of packed people. Cancellation? Impossible. But if that rain had continued it would have been simply impossible to play. Extraordinary theatre.
The icing on our spectacle from above (where we were dry incidentally, apart from light spray from the lashing winds, and I’m sure we weren’t the only ones to permanently migrate to the very back) was the home and away hardcore crews at each end. Many of them stuck it out, leaving a blue and an orange front section full at respective ends, dervishly dancing and chanting in this outrageous torrent of water (it was too heavy to be called ‘rain’), knowing, so I think, that to break and run was to allow the other side’s fans to win. The players had gone off, the world had evacuated the cyclonic zone, except for these fans. In ones and twos members of each crew fled, having had enough, but as groups they held out until the end of the inclement. If anything, my report is that the Sydney fans won the contest. At the end their group was bigger, until the stands were reoccupied of course.
The next piece of Miscellanea is brought to you by the letter M: Matty McKay, Massimo Murdocca, Moore, Miniecon, McLaren, McLoughan, McMaster, Michael, Mitch and Marcinho. If we still had Milicic we could put out a fit, fairly coherent M11 to maul Melbourne and mince the Mariners. I’ve left out injured Matthew Ham.
Finally, with no bearing on last night at all because Reddy had sweet F to do, I think it is time to tribute Roar coach Fernando vas Alves. We’ve heard about how great Frank Farina is and we hear about how great many of the players are. But when we hear about how good Reddy is, and he has improved enormously since I’ve been watching him, and now how good McMaster is when he had to step up, surely it’s time to mention the Goalkeeper Coach.
For example, we heard of how last season McMaster as number two was snubbed for import Tando Velaphi, as if this, and the subsequent faith in McMaster this season, was all Frank. Surely Alves would have had a big part in these decisions, as he is the one constantly working with McMaster. But more broadly, this Alves bloke can obviously spot and develop young goalkeepers. I’ve never heard about the international market for goalkeeper coaches, but I reckon Alves could get ambitious if he wanted.
Have a good weekend. And good luck to the Mariners. I haven’t got any really strong feelings about who I want to win, and neither is this post especially mnemonic, but I’m moving with the letter M.
