Greta Football Club Reunion/ Leigh Candy

Last month there was a back to Greta for the 30 year anniversary of the 1980 premiership. I did mention it but not in any detail. I've struggled to find time to blog recently.

One of my old teammates is a fellow blogger. The enigmatic Leigh Candy and I had instant reconnection and learned we have more in common than we realized previously. We both love to write and are both bloggers although Leigh hasn't posted since Feb 2009. That's a pity as he's talented in my opinion, as he was on the football field. He had the knack of coming up with something against the flow of the game just when we needed it.

Leigh wrote a piece about the reunion which he sent me as an attachment to an email. I'm hoping he starts blogging again. I put his reunion piece here on my blog, not because he says nice things about me, but it makes interesting reading and shows his talent.

REUNION

Late Saturday morning I leave Mansfield via Dead Horse Lane, then drive through the arched canopy of eucalypts on the gently winding road toward Swanpool, green sunlit undulations through the trunks striping the roadside. I zigzag my way to Greta via Molyullah.

The ovals at Swanpool and Tatong are vacant: both teams are away today. The Greta Football Club is at home to King Valley and already at half past noon a big crowd is in. The gatekeeper recognises me—“Leigh, isn’t it?”—and relieves me of $10 despite my special guest status as premiership player returning for a 30-year reunion. I don’t mind.

I park away from the fence where the dog can be tied to the back of the car and not bother passers-by. Outside the clubrooms I scan for faces, adding thirty years’ wear and tear, but don’t see any in the crowd swarming at the function-room entrance or queuing for pies and beer.

Someone says hello and I winkle his name out of a crevice in the memory-box. “Hello, Paul.” We watch the second quarter of the reserves game. I comment that I might still get a kick at this level and he tells me that the standard has declined since our time.

Greta isn’t a town; on maps it’s designated as location. The football oval is Greta, the ground surrounded by late autumn poplars and oaks.

“I don’t recall it being this beautiful thirty years ago,” I say.

“Rain,” Paul says. “Been a good season.” He’s on land 500 metres up the road opposite the Catholic church, which is for sale, despite Paul being one of eight O’Brien siblings, surely enough to keep a small country church afloat.

At half-time we enter the function room. Half a dozen familiar faces, three more O’Briens—Bill, Frannie and Gerard. There’s Pat McKenzie, the full-back who single-handedly kept us alive in the prelim final against Beechworth. And Tony Fisher, the team’s youngest member, who liked jumping on heads to pull in speccies. Maxy George is chomping gum, Barry Tanner is big Barry now, Bushy Dinning greyer than the grey he was 30 years ago.

A table is loaded with food but vegetarians needn’t bother. Although there are rolls stuffed with olives and sun-dried tomatoes, some part of a dead animal adorns every one. I nibble dry biscuits and cheese.

Everyone asks where I am now, what I’m doing. Each volunteers a memory of me, most forgotten by me: walking barefoot across the mid-winter ground to the changing sheds on game days; cogitating in a corner with a billowing pipe before the game; sitting on the footy in the centre circle while 35 blokes biffed each other on the wing.

The club president climbs on a bench and welcomes the 14 of us who’ve made it, and four survivors of the ’48 premiership team. He doesn’t introduce himself, utters some appropriate words of welcome, and excuses himself to prepare to play in the seniors.

Bushy Dinning mounts the bench. Like the current president, Bushy was a player while president in 1980. He presents each of us with a plaque engraved with an oval and the team in starting positions. I’m in a forward pocket surrounded by O’Briens.

Three of the team are deceased. The year after we won the flag Brains stuck his arse out of a speeding car window and unfortunately the rest of him followed. Keithy Rowan was killed in a more conventional car accident, and Mark Kelly drank himself to an unhappy death, according to Billy O’Brien, who works with the ambulance.

Bushy gives Lace, our coach, the 1980 grand final game ball, our faded autographs barely visible on the pigskin. I have no memory of signing that ball all those years ago, but I vividly remember the five times I kicked it through the major uprights at Moyhu that day.

Lace says he regrets not coming to more games, but can’t because it’s too painful not to be out on the paddock. Ditto me.

I catch Pat McKenzie and thank him for keeping us close enough to stage a monumental reversal in the prelim final when we came from eight goals down at the long interval to beat Beechworth and win our way to the grand final against Whorouly who beat us by a point in the second semi. Pat tells me I won the game with five second half goals. I tell him Gunna won the game because he got us back in it in the third term. Gunna hasn’t turned up yet.

We disperse and go out to watch the main game. The Greta boys are now the Blues, but today they wear the purple and gold we wore in 1980 in honour of the occasion. They get off to a flyer against an opponent that knocked off last year’s premiers a few weeks before. I circle the ground with the dog, taking photos. Gunna’s arrived when I get back to the clubrooms.

Thirty years ago I heard the pre-season thuds of boots on leather and walked up the road from the old farmhouse I’d moved to with a woman and our new baby. I asked if I could join in and ran a warm-up lap. Someone came alongside and said a bloke on the other side of the ground reckoned he knew me. Gunna Williams. Never heard of him, I said.

Gunna’s real name is Carey. We went to school together, but he was a year below me and we didn’t really know each other. I didn’t know he captained under-age A teams, didn’t remember that he got expelled. He says he was a troubled adolescent, dedicated to nothing.

The man in his late 20s was a great footballer—compact, robust, ruthlessly efficient, utterly understated. He was the club’s centreman, my preferred position, but I never played it better than Gunna. I don’t remember playing in any team or with any bloke like I enjoyed playing with Greta and Gunna.

He was an apiary inspector based in Wang and the week before the grand final I drove him over half of Victoria—his patch—to meet beekeepers and inspect their hives. He lost his licence and had to pay drivers so he could do his job. We talked bees and football and life. Now we chat during the second quarter and he tells me he goes to a writing group and has a blog—“Just something in me I like to do,” he says.

At half time I venture back into the almost empty function room and photograph the premiership flag, my name on the honour board as the best and fairest player of 1980, and the team photograph—blokes with masses of hair and porn-star moustaches.

Davy Kemp, quiet unassuming half-back flanker, comes in, says he wouldn’t mind a cup of tea. I could murder one too. There’s beer aplenty and any amount of canned fizzo and luminous energy drinks, but no cups of tea.

During the second half I concentrate on the game while my team-mates suck cans and no doubt the stories get better and better. Not being able to talk with drinkers has always been a shortcoming. That I could play the game better than most was the only thing that made it possible for an unclubbable bastard like me to be part of the club, but there are still limits.

Greta plays an attractive attacking game romps to a 21.21.147 to 6.6.42 victory. During the final quarter I buy a muffin for the journey home and write my current details on a piece of paper. As the siren sounds I slip it into Gunna’s shirt pocket—the paper, not the muffin—and quietly mosey off to the car. The sun will set in half an hour and I want that time to meander through the hills