Joining The Black

10 September 2007

Watching through black and white eyes gives a whole new meaning to football, particularly with the barracker a-bellowing.

NIGHT final. All the bigger for the fact Collingwood's playing. A crowd of 65,000, a noise like the ocean and the game hasn't even begun. There's clapping and whistles and then a shrill roar as the Pies take the field. Nathan Buckley's playing, maybe for the last time. Another of the era's outstanding names, Adelaide's Mark Ricciuto, had finished his career earlier in the day, but that's of no consequence here. Not now.

Buckley has the first decisive touch, an omen that excites its own faint roar. The ball ends up with Anthony Rocca, double joy. Two good omens in a row. All the Collingwood supporters need is for Travis Cloke to land from a long way out and three of the biggest variables in the side will seem secure. I am sitting among Collingwood supporters.

When I was 13, I made my first trip to Melbourne, ended up in the outer at Victoria Park and was introduced to a philosophy of life previously unknown to me. It was the Collingwood view. It had nothing to do with fairness. It saw the world, literally, in black and white. We're right and the rest of them, the whole world if necessary, is wrong.

On Saturday night, there is an old-style Collingwood supporter a few rows behind me. He doesn't shout. He bellows. By the end of the night, his voice is a croak, but in the first quarter, he's in full cry, his immediate targets being Nick Davis ("Play for a real team, Davis") and Barry Hall. Davis attracts his ire because he dared to leave Collingwood. Hall attracts his ire because he's the Swans' intimidator. Someone has to take him on and the other side of the boundary line is a safe place to do it from. A free kick goes the Swans' way in their forward line. "Did you threaten the umpire, Hall?" Of course, the umpire cops it, too. "Grow some hair, McBurney."

The story for the night is that Collingwood can kick lots of goals and the Swans can't. Hall is not the player he was. For excitement, the Swans rely on Adam Goodes, who explodes magnificently from packs to create leads this way and that. Then comes a moment that brings new cheer to the already optimistic Collingwood crowd. Irishman Marty Clarke sells a dummy. To Goodes, the dual Brownlow medallist and the elite player on the field.

Clarke, in his first year of playing the game, is conspicuously equal to the occasion and the Collingwood fans around me have rewarded him with a nickname - Irish. It's not a terribly original nickname, but at least Clarke's doing better than Melbourne's 1980s recruit Sean Wight. They called him Irish and he was Scottish.

Collingwood has good players all over the field. Scott Pendlebury is like an old clock. Time passes more slowly when he has the ball. Dale Thomas runs straight at goal like a horse heading for the finishing line in the Melbourne Cup. Alan Didak slots a beauty from the boundary. The Swans' defence seems uncharacteristically rattled. The Collingwood supporter takes up what will be one of his dominant themes for the night. Hall should return to his former sport. "Take up boxing, Barry," he bellows. A Davis mark in the 25th minute is met with boos and another cry of "Get a real team, Davis". It's like a line in a chorus that recurs in a song.

The third quarter starts with a Michael O'Loughlin goal and new hope for Sydney. Collingwood bangs on three of its own. The sea around me is roaring. "Boxing for you now, Barry. Clear the ring." Despite the Pies' clear ascendancy, the umpires are not spared. Traditionally called white maggots because of their uniforms, supporters such as the man behind me have long struggled to accommodate the umpires' new multi-coloured outfits in their lexicon of abuse. On Saturday night, he responded by calling them "yellow scum", but he wasn't abandoning all his traditional beliefs. "Get a real job, umpire."

Such is his confidence, he declares the match won in the 26th minute of the third quarter, yelling, "See you next year, Swans", and dismissing one of their players (Ed Barlow) in the following memorable manner: "You're a dud, 41 - whoever you are."

"Spida" Everitt came near for a boundary throw-in. "Who'll you be playing for next year, Everitt? Geelong?"

My personal favourite of the Collingwood man's utterances comes in the ninth minute of the final term when the Swans' Nick Malceski kicks the goal of the night, running the ball through three lines of Collingwood players in a move that combines speed, skill and fine execution. It takes the Collingwood man a moment or two to find an insult suitable to the occasion. Then: "Bit late now, Malceski."

The Pies win easily, the crowd is in a state of delight. Bucks has lived to play another day, Rocca's knee doesn't seem as bad as it first appeared. The Collingwood song is sung so loudly the part of the crowd I'm in gets out of time with the music. But the words are the same. "Hear the barrackers a-shouting, as all barrackers should."


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