Emma Race: Do you love the Hawthorn Football Club or do you love just the men's team?' Hawks Insiders Live event - 2024

28 August 2024, Glenferrie Hotel, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia

The Hawks Insiders hosted af series of panels at a live event in August including an AFLW panel which featured Lucy Race, Julia Faragher and Hawthorn’s #1 ticket holder Emma Race.

As part of the AFLW panel Emma was asked about the significance of the 2024 season for the team and supporters. Her answer was proud and passionate and evoked rousing applause from the packed audience of predominantly male fans.

As the Hawthorn AFLW team storm up the ladder heading into the mid way point of the season, it presents a great opportunity to revisit Emma’s impassioned message to footy fans, that it is not too late to be early adopters of the women’s game.

I constantly see this beautiful community of Hawthorn supporters who truly are family, band together. We've been tested over times, not necessarily just on the field.

I'm a very competitive person and I see that there is an opportunity for an AFLW team to get the full support of their members in a way that hasn't really been taken up. You know, when we talk about AFLW, the Brisbane Lions have been completely dominant, a lot of the interstate clubs are incredibly dominant in the AFLW. Being a Victorian club and being one of the last to enter the competition has set us back a little bit. We've had some things that have made up the distance, but when we look at the comparison, the Brisbane Lions have been in five Grand Finals and won two of them. For Hawthorn this will be our third season in the competition yet we have about one and a half thousand more AFLW members than the Brisbane Lions.

This season, we've got an opportunity to gather our 86000 members and say, do you love the Hawthorn Football Club, or do you just love the men's team?

We've had so many panels up here celebrating Hawks people who died a very long time ago and our love for them and their commitment to the club. We are about history. We are about legacy. And we're all about loving the brown and gold, whether it's at Box Hill or whether it's at Hawthorn. The opportunity that we have in the present is to make a difference to the story of this club. To stick our flag in the soil and say to every person who loves Australian Rules Football, that this club is different because this club truly values every single person who wears the brown and gold.

We've got the opportunity to support our women's team with as much passion as we support our men's team along with our blind team, our wheelchair team. This season, that might look like getting a membership. It might look like going to your first game. It might just be logging on and watching online. The truth is this, the women's team will not succeed without our support. And the reason for that is because the AFL will hold growth of the AFLW until they see us wanting to support it.

The women only get eleven games in ten weeks to make their mark. So it's kind of like dog years really. Every game counts more than one of the men’s games. We've got to make our mark straight away, come out of the blocks flying and we have to win the first four games or we are probably not playing finals. In the same way that every game counts, every membership- it really counts. Every time you watch it, at the ground or on TV it really counts in the women's game. When you do that, more commercial partners come on board, because they see the numbers, they see the data. When that happens, more money comes into the game, more professionalism comes into game, because we can pay the players more. The people who play AFLW are literally leaving their blood sweat and tears out there and then they're also copping hate online in volumes and in hideous violent rhetoric which no one deserves. So, there's a way that we can actually make a difference.

I believe in this club. I always have.

You know, for 47 years of my life, I was a Hawthorn supporter with no W team. So what I guess I am saying is, if you had the pleasure of watching people who look like you play the game I would love you to throw your support now behind people who are playing the game who look like us.

Shane Crawford: 'Footy was fun. Sam made it fun', inducting Sam Mitchell into Hawthorn FC Hall of Fame - 2024

17 April 2024, Regency Ballroom, Melbourne, Australia

[Congrats] to all the inductees tonight, a special mention to the Chief [Jason Dunstall was announced as an AFL Legend the same week] Well done. We all thought you were already a legend. So well done Jase.

Luke Hodge, obviously not speaking about Luke, but when he first arrived the Hawthorn, we needed him to be our saviour. There was a lot of pressure on him and he was our saviour. He was incredible. So good on your Hodgey.

Allan Jeans, he once babysat my mum. He was friends with my grandma and he gave me the best advice I've ever received. I’d just started training at Hawthorn, and we finished a skills session and I went over to Mr. Jeans and I said, how did I go?' And without taking a breath, he said, 'you don't train hard enough. When the balls come out, you go flat out. Darrin Pritchard, Tony Hall, they run through the ball. You need to do that.' And I thought, shit. I thought I trained hard. So that was the best advice I've ever had. So it's great that he's been inducted as a Legend.

Sam Mitchell. Okay, I'll be nice.

Sam Mitchell has always been doubted, even when he finally got himself drafted, there were always concerns and doubts and question marks. Is his endurance good enough? Is he quick enough? Can he play on both sides of his body? Is he tall enough? (He's not very tall. He's got a long torso and short little legs and looks a little like a little ball. But, that's as mean as I'm going to go. He's a little unusual and [to Mitchell] your head's probably too big for your body anyway.)

So anyway, he was doubted. There were lots of question marks. And the great David Parkin, and I'm pumped to be sitting next to David tonight, he gave Sam some wonderful advice when he started out, he said, 'You're very good at winning the ball. Don't be good. Be great.'

And guess what? Sam took that on straight away. He went to work on his strengths and he turned himself into one of the all time greats, especially when it comes to contested footy. And you've got to remember, he was tagged every game. And that's back when taggers were able to harass you, manhandle you and abuse you. Sam took it all in his stride. So much so that there were games when we played and Sam wasn't tagged, he used to come up to me and he used to crack the shits. He was offended the opposition weren't tagging him! He actually didn't know how to play without an opponent. That's how often he was tagged.

Sam had an unbelievable appetite for the game. He worked his butt off. He was so professional. A wonderful attitude. Amazing belief. Even when times were tough, it just made him more determined. He had so much courage. Courage to put his body on the line, courage to put his head over the ball. Courage to tell you what he thought, even though his teammates didn't appreciate it a lot of the times. Sam was always grabbing the ruckman after training and doing ball-ups and throw-ins nonstop. He was working at his craft.

Every pre-season, Sam would come at the end of endurance runs in the midfield group, which was good for some of the midfielders because they knew that they probably weren't going to come last. But, I always say that if you had a football and you took on Sam Mitchell one-on-one, no matter who you are, he would win eighty out of a hundred times.

Even if he was fatigued, he'd still find a way. Mental strength. I've never seen anything like it. I loved playing with Sam. You always knew what you were going to get. He was so reliable, so consistent. He was so good. He trained so much on the opposite side of the body that the coaches had to demand that he start kicking on his good side of the body.

There was nothing better than quick discussions in the middle of the MCG after kicking a goal. And this is sort of how it went, and this was later in my career when I had retired from winning the hard ball, and we would quickly talk to the ruckman. I would be in there with Sam and we'd go, ‘Okay, this is what's going to happen. Ruckman, you hit it to Sam. Sam, you take on three or four opponents and I'll be doing a fly by at nine o'clock or three o'clock and kick the ball into the forward line.' And sure enough, Sam would beat all the opposition, I would do a fly by, I actually felt like Tom Cruise from Top Gun. The ball would be handed on a platter and I would kick the ball inside.50.

Footy was fun. Sam made it fun.

Grand final 2008. Great day. [applause] That's what I'm talking about!. It was half time. It was hot. We were all sitting in the rooms trying to catch our breath. No one was making any noise. And all we heard from Clarko's rooms, the coaches' rooms, was someone absolutely copping it like I've never heard before. Deep down I was laughing, that it wasn't me. And it just happened to be Mitch. And I do remember talking to Luke Hodge at the time saying, 'we need to get around him. We need to get him going for the second half.'  When Mitch came out of the rooms, I locked eyes on him and I said, 'that seemed to go well.'

But what did he do? He didn't put up a white flag. He put up a premiership flag. His second half was magnificent. He dominated. He got away from his tagger, Cameron Ling, the mighty Geelong player he was. He kicked a goal. He turned himself not into a premiership player, but also a premiership captain. It was incredible. And that's what Sam was all about. When the times were tough, he'd find a way. He'd just find a way.

So I'm looking forward to coming back in a few years time to induct you as a Legend, after you coach the Hawks to your very first premiership as coach. But I’m not getting ahead of myself tonight, it gives me great honour to induct the great Sam Mitchell into the Hawthorn Hall of Fame. Good on you Sam.

Julie McCreery: 'When in front of the goals, make it count!' Mother's Day address to Collingwood pre game - 2023

14 May 2023, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia

Righto boys!

First of all I just want to thank you all for the hard work you’ve done so far this season.

Going out there and doing what you do best.

Playing exciting footy! And winning!

You make us all so proud, and what a special day today in front of all of your beautiful mums and partners, on Mother’s Day.

We’re going to be out there …

[shifts gear, impassioned]

So go out there, make us proud.

Believe in yourselves, believe in each other!

Chase that ball! Tackle hard! Win those contests! [fist pump]

And when you’re in front of the goals, make it count!

And when you do, blow your mummas a kiss.

So go out there and rip it up boys! [fist pump]

[The team roars]

Brendan Gale: 'I'm a proud Richmond man', Winning Together CEO launch - 2010

2 March 2010, Richmond FC rooms, Punt Road Oval, Melbourne, Australia

I’m a proud Richmond man.

All that I’ve been able to achieve in football – and after football – has come from what I have learned from the people, culture and history of this great club.

Everybody in this room has the same opportunity this club has given me, and I hope everybody in this room will do more – much more – with that opportunity.

I was privileged to have played 244 games for the Tigers from 1990-2001, a period in which we played in just two finals series.

From 1980 to 2010, we have had many, many fine contributors, both on and off the field, and indeed, we have been successful on a range of measures – but not on the measure that matters most. For a big, proud club that, historically, has been hard-wired for success, where premiership success is part of our DNA – collectively, we have been a failure.

Matthew Richardson is one of our greatest players, a Tiger through and through. He played 282 games from 1993, won the Jack Dyer Medal, kicked 800 goals, second on the all-time goalkicking list at Punt Road, and finished third in the Brownlow Medal in his second-last season. He played in just one finals series. A great career, for a club which failed him. I could go on, Campbell, Knights, Kellaway, Broderick, Free, Bowden, etc.

As much as it hurts me to say it, the fact is, we have been a collective failure.

In 2010, we have 16 players who have the chance to make their debut at our club this season – David Astbury, Pat Contin, Matt Dea, Mitch Farmer, Alroy Gilligan, David Gourdis Ben Griffiths, Dylan Grimes, Robert Hicks, Dustin Martin, Ben Nason, James O’Reilly, Relton Roberts, Troy Taylor, Jeromey Webberley and Nick Westhoff.

Twenty years ago, any of you could have been Tony Free, ‘Cambo’, or ‘Richo’ . . . excited to be joining a great club, a proud club, a club that had thrived on success.

Look at each other, and think – can you imagine the next 20 years playing at this club, AND PLAYING IN JUST TWO FINALS SERIES.

NEVER PLAYING IN A GRAND FINAL.

WINNING NOTHING!

Can any of us imagine this – reaching 2030 with NO MORE PREMIERSHIPS!

It’s an intolerable thought, and one that only we, yes WE, can eliminate.

This room holds the future of the Richmond Football Club in its hand.

This room is not our present; this room is our future – and all of us, board members, administration, football department, players.

All that is missing are out members, our loyal and hungry members. But the truth is, they are helpless.

They can only rely on us. We cannot fail them.

2010 is year one in the application of a plan that is based not on hope, not on a wish, not on rhetoric, but a plan that defines who we are and what we stand for; a plan that puts the right people in the right places; a plan that is ambitious, but patient; a plan that relies on all of us to succeed; a plan with real goals, expectations and accountability.

Our plan is based on TRUTH – on the recent success of clubs like ours, clubs that have been through similar droughts, and have come through to be dominant forces in RAPID TIME.

We will do the same.

Our plan is not based on wondering why things have gone wrong, and then blaming those who have gone before us, but on knowing why things go right.

We all know of the success of Geelong over the last three years. Was that a fluke? Of course it wasn’t.

The backbone of Geelong’s success was put together in a room like this, with a group like this, with a plan like ours, at the start of this decade.

Think of these names, and when they, like you, stood before their mates and started their careers. Ling, Corey and Chapman debuted in 2000, Enright in 2001, Ablett, Bartel, Rooke, Kelly and Johnson in 2002.

At the end of the 2002 season, a season where Geelong finished 12th, the Cats had not won a premiership for 40 seasons.

At the start of the 2010 season, Richmond has not won a premiership for 30 seasons.

Geelong did it by applying simple processes to maximise the opportunity that all AFL clubs have.

The Cats planned for their success, they brought in good people, who worked together. They acted and made decisions in accordance with a strong set of values. They believed in themselves and their plan. They stuck to their plan and remained loyal to each other when the really tough questions were being asked of them.

At the Richmond Football Club we will establish and entrench a “brand” or “culture”, or simply a Richmond way of doing things, that both defines and binds us.

From this gathering on:

• We will be a UNITED Club and all of us will unite behind our team.
• We will be RELENTLESS – in pursuit of excellence, in sticking to our plan and never deviating, and in the way we apply ourselves to our goals.
• We will be PROUD of our past and what we have achieved, and we will be ambitious about our future and what we plan to achieve.
• We will be LEADERS – in terms of our thinking and people, and in terms of our relationship with our community.

These are the benchmarks that will make Richmond a POWERFUL and GLORIOUS place to be over the next decade.

Occasionally, you will be reminded of our successful past and see players and officials involved with that era in and around the Club. Some are with us today. They’re not people that provoke jealousy.

They represent what YOU will represent –they represent WINNING.

Our coach – who has come from successful, united clubs – represents WINNING.

So must WE.

I’ve had a gutful of representing an era of failure.

Many of you are tired of failure.

Many of you newcomers have never known failure.

And many of you newcomers must never know failure.

Together, our entire club is motivated by the vision of our future in 2020. It’s a vision of greatness and leadership that we describe as THE POWER and THE GLORY. By 2020, we aspire to have won our 13th Premiership; consistently provide the most exciting and powerful match-day experience in the competition; once again have the strongest support base in the nation, and enjoy the strongest emotional connection with our members and fans.

We acknowledge that we have an enormous amount of work to do, in the most competitive of competitions, in the most competitive era of our history, if we are to realise our vision. Therefore, the next five years is about building the capacity, or “horsepower” of our organisation, to deliver. Our plan features real goals with real measurements that need to be achieved along the way in order to succeed. These goals relate to our football performance, the strength of our relationship with our members, commercial popularity and financial strength.

If we could boil the whole plan to its fundamental essence, it means that by 2014 we expect to deliver 3-0-75

• 3 finals appearances (including 1 top 4 finish)
• zero debt
• 75,000 members

This is a plan that aligns the efforts and expectations of everyone associated with the Club. It is a plan to succeed.

Brendan Gale is a guest on episode 48 of the podcast

Jack Dyer: 'Thank goodness you all came', Save our Skins rally - 1990

30 years ago today, @Richmond_FC SAVE OUR SKIN rally took place at the MCG. It raised $151,000.
Here's part of Jack Dyer's speech.

Its anniversary today even more sharply in focus, in the wake of the club's 2020 COVID season and survival. pic.twitter.com/GE6QOx1VMX

— Rhett Bartlett (@rhettrospective) August 25, 2020

26 August 1990, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia

Richard Fejo: 'I’m a Larrakia man of direct male descent of the Larrakia', Welcome to Country, Dreamtime AFL in Darwin - 2020

22 August 2020, Darwin, Australia

Ladies and gentlemen,
My name is Richard Fejo and I’m a Larrakia man of direct male descent of the Larrakia from my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather in what we Larrakia call grandfather lore.

We the Larrakia, the traditional owners and custodians of Darwin and its surrounding regions.
And since the time of the Dreamtime, our people have been the first people to walk across this land.

But as I see tonight, people from all over the world have joined us this evening. And I see you in the crowd, and I see you on the football field, and it’s my honour to welcome you to Darwin and Larrakia land.

I have a special welcome tonight because tonight I want to acknowledge all Larrakia who are in attendance. I want to welcome the Tiwi people, I want to welcome the Jawoyn people, I want to welcome the Anindilyakwa people, I want to welcome the Buranpatha people, I want to welcome the Warlpiri and the Wurumingal people, I want to welcome the Aranda people, because we are all countrymen.

I want to welcome the Yamatji, I want to welcome the Noongas, I want to welcome the Kooris, the Murris the Nungars, I want to welcome our brothers and sisters from Tasmania, and I want to welcome our Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters, and indigenous people from all around the world, and I want to welcome our non-indigenous people to Darwin and Larrakia country,

Ayyyyyyyyyy

Welcome to the Dreamtime in Darwin,

Look after each other and look after yourselves. You have come by way of Larrakia land. You will hear the voices of our ancestors. And when you leave you will take the Larrakia message with you.
Reverend W Fejo, ladies and gentlemen it’s an honour to welcome each and every one you to Larrakia land. May your ancestors guide and protect you always, and may the best team win! Thank you.

Rupert McCall: 'It is passion, it is Port', 150 Year Gala PAFC - 2020

2 March 2020, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Alastair Clarkson: 'When did you fall in love with the game of footy?' Peter Crimmins Medal speech - 2019

5 October 2019, Melbourne, Australia

To watch video of Clarkson’s superb address, visit the Hawthorn website.

Well, we're doing things a little bit differently tonight. Get away from the lectern, Harf [Daniel Harford] has got that controlled tonight. Take Care of Our Own great song by Bruce Springsteen. Always got a Springsteen song. Got my cheat notes here because I haven't got the availability of the lecturn.

I want to tell you a couple of stories tonight. It goes right back to my childhood. I'm hoping that I can bring back some memories for you guys in terms of your childhoods, as well.
To challenge you guys, where did you fall in love with the game?

I'll tell you where I fell in love with the game.

I can remember it was 1977, I grew up in a family or a football family household, three older brothers, and an older sister. She didn't like the footy too much, but my three older brothers did.

But 1977 was the time, is a long time ago, plenty in the room, especially the young folk and particularly the players, not even born in 1977.

But I was nine years of age in 1977 in the little wheat belt town in Western Victoria, Kaniva, the Centenary Tests of cricket.

In Kaniva, you had two options, was cricket in the summer, and it was footy in the winter.

As soon as cricket season finished, you would nuggeting your footy boots, getting the footy out, and kicking it around as soon as cricket season was over. Similarly, end of September last game of the year, cricket bat, cricket balls out the next day.

That was our life. Wasn't a hell of a lot else going on in Kaniva. Thousand people, little community town.

But I'll never forget this. 1977 the centenary test, 100 years of cricket - MCG, for those that are of my vintage or older. You remember the game, Lillee took six wickets in the first innings of the English. Both teams, both the Australian team made 140, then we knocked over the Poms for less than a hundred. Lillee took six wickets, big Tangles Walker took four. Then the Aussies batted, made 400 something and the poms had to chase.

We ended up winning that test match by 45 runs. Ironically, exactly the same margin as Australia won 100 years earlier, 45 runs. But the day after, the cricket bats were in the cupboard, the footy boots were out getting nuggeted, tanned up ready for the season. And the Tommy Sharon, which I used to get my birthday was in April. Still is mind you, I got a pair of footie boots, but I always got a Tommy Sherrin.

I was a bit of a smart ass with the Tommy Sherrin, because I'd kick the absolute bejesus out of the footy, and I'd send it back to Tommy Sherrin about August each year, and just say it's gone out of shape, and they'd send me a new Tommy Sherrin. So, mum and dad only ever had to pay for one Tommy Sherrin for about 10 years.

A really important part of that phase for me was a realisation that I just loved this game. Centenary Test was over. Cricket was done. I had a love for both sports. I can't even explain why.

I can, a little bit. The only game that was televised to Kaniva, on radio in 1977, round one of the 1977 season, Richmond versus Fitzroy. Oh, I hated the Tiges, and Fitzroy, I had a bit of a soft spot for them because they hadn't won a premiership since 1944.

On this particular day. They beat the Tiges by 23 points. The scoreline 142 to 119 —shit. What's happened to our game in the last 40 years? Where do we see scores like that — but always just captivated. I was captivated by players like Francis Burke, and Kevin Bartlett. Who played for the Tiges. I was captivated by players like Gary Wilson and Bernie Quinlan, Laurie Serafini. These guys played for the Lions.

As I said, for some of the younger folk in the room, they're saying, shit, who are those players? Never heard of him before? Doesn't matter in the context of this, because I want to challenge you to pick someone on your table that you can have a discussion. When I get down from speaking some of the shit I'm going to talk about the next five minutes. I want you to have a discussion with someone on your table. It could be someone sitting next to you. It could be your partner, it could be your friend. It could be someone who's on the opposite side of your table. Have a discussion at some point on the night. Where did you fall in love with this game? Because that's where I decided that I wanted to do something special in this game.

I didn't know, how I was a long way from Melbourne, but the essence of the game, and the passion of which we all have, which is the reason why there's 1200 that fill this room, tonight. The majority of which are just so passionate about our club, and the journey that we're all on.

Unfortunately, along that journey, we sometimes lose perspective. This cracker right here included.

Their perspective, you probably recall — some of you would've been in the room, 2012, when we came here demoralised after losing to the Sydney Swans, favourites. Some of our best footy that we've played in the last 20 years, was played in 2012 and we didn't salute, but we sat in this room that night, and we spoke about Jarryd McVeigh losing his daughter. We spoke about Jill Meagher losing her life and we spoke about my brother-in-law who died of a brain tumour at 39 years of age and left a wife and two young children aged less than five. We spoke about perspective.

Then we made it human. We gave ourselves a chance for the next three years to win it, and we did. Then peanut here loses all sense of perspective, and thinks, "Okay, this game is all just about winning every year, because that's what we've done for the last three. Let's just do it again"

The challenge for us in a sense is to say it's not, we're not here to produce, Pete Nankerville spoke spoke about us just before, we're not here to produce, we want to win. Of course, we want to win, but we're not here to be produce, just winners, we're here to here to produce good people.

Our footy club is here with us to do with our administrative staff, our coaching staff, our players, our volunteers. Anyone, our supporters, our members. Anyone connected the Hawthorn, we want you to be better for the experience. There'll be some players in this room, that unfortunately their journey will finish pretty soon. Big rough nuts one of those, what was the word, Pterodact-ile Rough. The big Pterodactile. Is that the word? Is that a dinosaur of some sort?

I say that, because he asked me just before, ‘you got to get that into your speech somehow Clarko’. So, there it is Rough. I've got it out for you, lad.

But you'll probably recall a time this year we played the West Coast Eagles at the MCG … round … someone help me … round 15 … and lost by six points. We kicked something like, Oh shit, someone in the audience will be able to tell me, 8.16 or some bloody … there were a few challenges around our goal kicking coach that week, but we played really well, but lost on the scoreboard.

I think Reevesy will sit here, and acknowledge this. Jeff did too. I was as low as shark shit after that loss, and no matter what Reevesy could try to do, and Jeff to try to give me some sort of perspective. Usually with Jeffrey Gibb it's the other way around. I'm trying to give him perspective and he's trying to have standards and expectations so high. But on this particular occasion he was trying to have empathy, and comfort for me and say, "listen, it's not so bad. We played pretty well, but we just got beaten." I was nearly inconsolable.
Not in tears, but in a pretty low spot.

Then fortunately, despite our season looking like it was on the brink, five and nine, something happened that was pretty significant. The next week we played Collingwood, on a Friday night, and the focus of winning &and losing just went straight out the door. Why? Because we're saluting to absolute rippers. Ben McEvoy, Luke Breust played their 200th games. Who gives...
In terms of what they do, whether we win or lose, who cares? Really? It's just like go out and play our best, but no matter whether we win or lose, we're going to open a couple of cans after the game, and salute magnificent contributions that they've made to our footy club. Well, just the bonus. We knocked off the Pies that night.

Two weeks later, we play the Cats, top of the letter at that point in time, Liam Shiels, played his 200th game, best on ground Pup, I hope you get the votes tonight, lad. Another chance for us to actually say, here's a celebration of our people.

Not long after the Bullet or Silk as you guys all know him. 372 games. Wow. Unfortunately, we lost that game, but in terms of perspective. We didn't say anything about the game, what we did well, or what we did shithouse after the game. It was just like "Bullet, well done, mate. You've played more games than any indigenous flyer has ever played in this game."

We're in a little bit of a worry at this point in time, however, because it didn't seem just like win, lose or draw. We're pulling out the esky and having a few cans after a game.

Then I'm probably forgetting one somewhere along the line. But we get to play GWS in Canberra. Unfortunately, I got my shirt off on the Friday night, or Thursday night.
Which I get a text message from my daughter and my wife, simultaneously "Put away the blubber", but celebration, because the forecast is that we're going to be playing in snow! There has never been a game of AFL footy played in snow, and the Hawks have got the chance to play in it. You fucking, beauty!

In addition to that, we have named a debutante player. He's a refugee from Sudan, who's come via Ethiopia. For those ain't great at geographics. Is that right? Geographics? Geography. That is desert country. He plays his first game in the snow. Wow. What an unbelievable story for his family. What an unbelievable story, for our club. He plays his debut. This is the only game in AFL history that's ever been played in snow. We play it and we belt the Giants on their home deck.

The next week because we're good blokes at Hawthorn, the Pterodactile, plays his last game for our footy club. We're playing a little bit of a game, me and Rough for probably six weeks. We planned this. We didn't want to disrespect. Dewy and the Gold Coast Suns by announcing it early, because sitting there "Oh, well, who cares if we just playing the Gold Coast Suns? We'll just play anyone. It doesn't matter.
We didn't want to be like that Dewy is a great friend of ours. Mark Evans is a great friend of ours. We've got a lot of respect and regard for their club. No matter how tough they're doing at the present time. Plus things can happen in footy. We were hoping like hell that Birch, who is tracking at the same time to play 250 in that Gold Coast game. He's a great mate of Rough Nut’s. We're hoping that there'd be a double celebration. This is the vagaries of the game. Birch gets hurt. He can't get there.

We tell Rough six weeks out, and tell the public six weeks out, that Rough's playing in that game. Anything can happen in footy and you look like an absolute peanut. So, we leave it until the Monday. Rough, and then it's like Rough was saying, let's just leave it till Thursday until selection. It's just like, mate I'm going to get lynched if we don't announce it on the Monday. So, we eventually convinced Rough, let's get it out there, and then by the end of the week you'll be ready to play, and play he did six goals big fella, what a send off!

So, naturally enough we put the beers on after the game, again! Bit of a celebration of our people. What a magnificent finish to a magnificent career for our club. 15 years of unbelievably decorated service. Not just in terms of what he's able to do on field, but what he's able to do off field for our club. How he developed as a man.

The next week we played the West Coast Eagles, we've got 190,000 paid up members from Collingwood and Richmond rooting for the Hawks! There was a fair few West Coast members that weren't too happy when we knocked them off, though. But Richmond, Collingwood, and of course our 81,000, and a little bit more, Hawks members, were rapt with our performance, but it was Isaac Smith's 200th game for the Hawthorn footy club.

Another chance win, lose or draw to celebrate a fantastic career for our club, and not worry about the result. Just worry about our people. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, I wish I could have maintained that perspective through 16, 17, 18, and the first part of 19, perhaps a little bit better than what I have, because for a hundred years or longer, this club has always been just about it's people. If we continue to make it about our people, then whatever happens, win, lose, or draw really, who cares? If you're investing in one another as much as you possibly can, then the results and that sort of stuff, we'll just look after themselves.

Something really special happened at our footy club in Grand Final Week. Thank Christ something cheered us up in that week, because when you’ve been in finals, it's hard to actually sit through finals knowing that we got the capability of getting there, and we don't, we didn't get there.

Being Grand Final Week, the club organised a couple of things. The first one is they got together a group of our players, and their partners, and their children, which was great to see. Lakey down at the club. Hodgey was there, Mitch was there. Shaun was there, Poppy was there. Jordan Lewis was there. Mitch helped me out. Who have I missed? Haley was there. Sewelly wasn't there. I've got it on my cheat notes here. I'm going to have to go to them. I got Lewis, Roughead, Howe, Mitchell, White, Puopolo, Burgoyne, Hodge. I've got them all. That was pretty good. Having all of those enormous contributors to our club. Plus their partners plus their kids who have now grown up, some of them five years later from what they were in 2013 when some photographs were taken off them, one on the MCG in the confetti doing this sort of stuff. Beautiful photo. Lakey driving around in that fucking Gatorade truck.
Some beautiful images, but to see their kids, and to also once again get a bit of perspective, because Lakey's been going through some tough times, and for us to understand that we're trying to make everyone better people out of being associated and linked to our footy club. Lakey strange enough will be a benefactor of that too. going through it tough at the moment. But what usually happens when you go through it tough like that the pride of the male says, "Oh, I'm not going to lean on the club." Lakey lean on us. Lean on us. We're here to help you, mate. Like we are for anyone at Hawthorn.

Two days later, we had another function which is organised by Axel Foley, Nathan Foley, who runs their academy programme and next generation, that sort of stuff. He ran a programme where he invited all the father, son, daughters, of players who have played at the club in the last 20 years or so. Now, I can't remember all these names, so I'm reading them off. Nathan Thompson, Kris Barlow, Clinton Young, Crawf brought his for boys with Olivia. Ben Dickson, David Hale, Rick Ladson, Rayden Tallis, Brad Sewell, Steve Green, Paul Hudson, Scotty Maginness, Timmy Hazel, Richie Vandenberg, Mark Graham, Shaun Burgoyne, Michael Osborne, and there was kids everywhere. It was gold, it was absolute gold.
Let's just go to the screens, we've got about a two minute video, I reckon, maybe even less than that of just...

That was a pretty special day, because it was all about our people was particularly special for me — There's two things. One is there's a lot of players there like the Maginnesses, and the Hudsons, and the Barlows, and the Thompsons, and these sorts of guys who were of an era before my time at the club. You'd understand why Lado would be there, and Ozzy, and Vanders, and Dicko, Crawf. ‘Just like, Oh, I've still got a connection to the club, and I've got a bit of a connection to Clarko’. What was really significant to me was that these guys were saying to themselves, "Listen, I'm Hawthorn. All I need is an invitation to come back again and the invitation was forwarded, and we'll be doing that every year. it was just like such a fantastic day for our footy club.

The second part about it that's significant for us, it's really the essence of my whole talk. Remember where you were, if you can with that conversation that you have with someone, when you fell in love with the game? Really the Hawthorn footy club in a sense is just the vehicle for these lads to be on a journey with their partners, and eventually their families, which we saw so many of them there, just then. The Hawthorn footy club is just a vehicle, I was at a function in Grand Final Week with Leigh Matthews, and Leigh said, unfortunately through his whole career either playing or coaching, he didn't really find much fun in the game. It sort of surprised me a little bit. No fun in the game. He found challenge, and stimulation, but not much fun. Through the challenge and stimulation though there is just unbelievable growth, because there isn't a footballer, Rough Nut included. Wow. What about his journey? He’s had unbelievable highs, and unbelievable lows, whether it's to do with injury or illness of which to endure over his 15 years at our footy club. He's had just amazing support from Sarah, his own family, Sarah’s family, these extended mates, and the Hawthorn footy club, and the wider football community I might add that's helped him through a really, really tough period in his life. And we don't wish that upon anyone but he doesn't succumb because he got so much support around him. Hawthorn support, family support.

And it’s the journey of life, and this is what I'm saying. What happened to me for a couple of years there, where I lost that nine year old passion, and love, and essence of the game, which was just, I just got to find a way somehow to find that nine years of age back in Kaniva following a game, Richmond v Fitzroy on the radio, and somehow on that day, cause it's the only game that's broadcast on radio. We didn't even have colour TVs back there in Kaniva back then, we're the last town in the state to go under the proper telephone exchange. I can still remember a number, Kaniva 238, and sometimes you could hear the actual lady who was doing the connection, she'd still be on the line listening to your conversation. That was the life that I grew up with. I had that passion for the game. I had to find a way somehow from Kaniva to live my passion, and get involved in this great game.

But if we lose perspective along the way, the game becomes a prick, and none of us can allow that to happen. If you let wins and losses be the thing that determined and condition how we have an attitude towards our players, our coaches, our club, one another, the workplace, then we're going down the wrong track. Let's keep some perspective. Rough, you’re a beautiful, beautiful man, because you've given us such an opportunity to actually keep perspective in our lives well done mate, great career.

They gave me five minutes to speak, and I've just taken 35. So, sorry if this night goes an extra half an hour for you guys, especially the girls that want to get on the dance floor, but keep things in perspective. One last thing. We've got a video to play now, goes for about a minute, or a minute and a half. This is perspective. This is a video of our volunteers that gives heart & and soul to our footy club. No money. They just love the club. They love our players. They love our people, and they give their heart & soul, because they just love the club. Thanks guys. Cheers.

Peter Gordon: 'It's better to die on our feet than live on our knees', Fightback rally, Footscray Football Club - 1989

8 October 1989, Whitten Oval, Footscray, Australia

I suppose we are all here today because we believe it's better to die on our feet than live on our knees.

This spot where I'm standing now is where Ted Whitten rubbed Dick Clay's nose in the mud one day. I can remember being here in 1985 when this ground was jammed with 32,000 people watching us take on and beat Essendon. I can remember Brian Royal that day bursting through the centre and kicking a magnificent 70 metre goal. I can remember later that same year Stephen McPherson taking a screamer in atrocious conditions against Hawthorn and kicking an inspirational 50 metre goal with the greasy ball - a kick which gave us second spot on the ladder.

I was there the day that Simon Beasley marked that famous Graeme Allen short pass on the back line and won the match for us on the last kick of the day against Collingwood. I can remember too Rick Kennedy hitting someone just about on this spot - and that spot over there - and over there. Matter of fact, I think he's hit someone just about everywhere on this ground.

When I was a kid I used to come to the footy with my dad, and my room at home was full of posters of Teddy Whitten, George Bisset, and Gary Dempsey. Now I come here with my little boy, and his room at home is full of posters and stickers, just like mine used to be.

That's a part of the tradition of this club and the tradition of this town; a tradition under threat from the faceless men of the VFL. Ross Oakley is trying to tell you that the VFL had no alternative for Footscray but this merger, or extinction, but that's simply not true. They could have chosen to support us as they choose to do the interstate clubs; the financially cancerous Sydney Swans, Brisbane and the West Coast Eagles.

There are some people I'd like to pay tribute to for their role in giving us the chance to fight. They are Steve Palmer and Tim Ginnane who donated their legal services for the court challenge to the merger. And I'd like to call Irene Chatfield up here. . ."

Irene receives the applause of the crowd, then Peter continued...

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with a great deal of pride and admiration that I now ask you to welcome out onto the field the Footscray Football Team for 1990.

The players came in close-knit group, proud and defiant, other players on holiday and unable to attend had sent messages of support, as Gordon paid tribute to their courage in attending the rally.

There's been a lot of talk about the VFL banning them from coming here today. They knew their careers could be in trouble, but they've still stuck their necks out, and I really admire them for that.

Peter Gordon then introduced the Footscray Board of Directors for 1990 and announced their first decision - the appointment of former back pocket player Terry Wheeler as senior coach for 1990.

You see before you the basis for a Footscray Football Club in the 1990s. We have a board, we have a team and we have a coach. Our players are still here, ready to play for the club; they aren't scattered all around Australia, playing for other clubs. But this may be the last time you see a Footscray football team assembled at the Western Oval.

It's up to you. I'm asking members of the Footscray football community who are here today to put in hundreds of dollars today. I'm asking for people, if they can, to put in a thousand dollars today. You have a commitment, backed up by the Footscray Council, that in the event that we fail, you will get that money back. I understand that to ask people like you in these harsh economic times to part with that sort of money is a very difficult request. It will hurt. But when you think of that hurt, think about how you felt on Tuesday.

Think of how you'll feel in four weeks' time when they announce the draw for 1990 and Footscray's not in it. Think of how you'll feel at the opening game of next year when Footscray aren't there, and the knowledge that they'll never be there again. We'll be there if you're prepared to commit, and I mean each and every one of you, the sort of money I'm talking about.

The people who are offering themselves as the board in 1990 have, I believe, the blend of talent and expertise necessary to turn this place around. We've got to take it on the chin that this place has not been as well managed as it ought to have been over the last eight years. We've got to take it on the chin that not enough people in our community have financially contributed to the club.

This is our last chance. Today we have the power to keep Footscray at the Western Oval. It doesn't matter what the VFL do. It doesn't matter what Oakley does. It doesn't matter how bad John Elliott feels sitting up there watching football at the Western Oval. Today, we have the power to stop these men in their tracks and wreck their plans.

We have the power to tell them all to jump in the lake.

Tables, staffed by volunteers, were set up in strategic locations as collection points. As queues formed, a succession of impassioned speakers urged the crowd on.

New coach Terry Wheeler said that for him, the importance of the struggle was in preserving the club for future generations. He wanted his own children, Tim and Sheridan, to grow up in a community that would inspire them to value Footscray as he did.

I believe there's nothing on this earth that we own. All we do is look after it for our children.

Matt Quartermaine: 'Thinking of you 2019', Footy Almaanc Grand Final Lunch - 2019

At the same event in 2019, comedian Matt Quartermaine penned this speech: ‘Thinking About You West Coast Eagles’

27 September 2019, Old Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne, Australia

(With apologies to Martin Flanagan... again)

Thinking of you 2019 AFL season, the 30th year of Australian Rules football under the AFL banner.
Thinking of you water boys, who can only come onto the ground now after a goal, or as it’s called on the Gold Coast; dehydration.
Thinking of you Joel Selwood a Captain who bleeds by example.
Thinking of you Nathan Buckley the most likeable Collingwood coach since...
Thinking of you Roaming Brian hoping your next segment is called Silent Brian.
Thinking of you stab pass, the only kick that sounds like a Game of Thrones location,
Thinking of you AFLX, especially when I need to cure my constipation.
Thinking of you Goal square. What are you doing here? Why do you even exist? What is your purpose anymore?
Thinking of you Kevin Bartlett and never ever forgetting Finey.
Thinking of you Premiership quarter especially all those teams that won the premiership quarters but not actual premiership.
Thinking of you AFL theme rounds because next year the AFL will expand the theme rounds to honour teams not going into the finals in the See Ya Round Round, the Italian community in the Rissole Round and the sexually ambiguous in the Bye Round.
Thinking of you GWS or as I like call you a team made up of players that could have been in my team.
Thinking of you sacked coaches, throwing empty tinnies at the TV, watching his ex team win the very next game with all the same people except him.
Thinking of you concussion.
Thinking of you concussion.
Thinking of you National Anthem when 90,000 people stand as one, bow their heads and think of their team winning.
Thinking of you Hawthorn GWS Snow game in Canberra, because that was the most snow in Canberra since the Christopher Pyne’s going away party. “(Sniff) Who wants to buy some guns?”
Thinking of you Dusty, a player so famous he’s known by only one name like Beyonce, Drake and Gasometer.
Thinking of you behinds. No not the football ones
Thinking of you Collingwood supporters... but only when I need cheering up.
Thinking of you Steve Smith, because if they drug tested him, he'd piss runs!
Thinking of you Willie Rioli, who has made coaches everywhere terrified of the Gatorade shower.
Thanking you 2019.

This was performed at John Harms’ The Footy Almanac’s Grand Final Lunch as a follow up to last year’s ‘Thinking About You West Coast Eagles’. The site is sportswriting written by fans, for fans. It’s motto, ‘Sport. From the Heart’.

Jonathan Patton: 'I may be wearing different colours, but the Giants will forever have my heart', Kevin Sheedy Medal - 2019

4 October 2019, Sydney, Australia

Obviously over the past few days I’ve announced that I’ll be pursuing a future at the Hawthorn football club.

The decision I had to make was definitely the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make and I had to put myself and my body first at this stage of my career.

These past eight years at the giants have been absolutely magical. From the day Stephen Silvagni and Craig Lambert told me I was going to be taken by the Giants months before the draft had even happened.
From the Breakfast Point days running around with 50 other eighteen year olds, just being like every other eighteen year old, egging cars and up until 3am and smashing FIFA competitions and all this carry on. Days I will never ever ever forget.

My playing career to date definitely did not go like I thought it would. Not a million years did I think I’d miss more than half my career at the giants with injury. But with great disappointment, also came great relationships and also great perspective.

I might be one of the unlucky ones in football in terms of my injuries in the past, but I like to look at it as I’m one of the lucky ones who has had an unbelievable club and people behind me.

The genuine love and care I’ve had from the Giants over the years makes me look back with no regrets and no sadness. It makes me very proud I was and am part of something so special in building a club from the start.

Again, the decision was extremely heartbreaking, but I genuinely think it’s the best thing for myself and for my career going forward.

If I were to write the script from the start, when I was drafted, I would have kicked more goals than Jezza (Jeremy Cameron), I would have played 300 games, and we would have won multiple flags together. But as life is, that’s not how it works. Nothing goes to as planned. And everyone has their own story, and this just happens to have been mine.

So now it comes to the thanking part, which is the hardest part because you want to thank so many people, but there are just too many people that I don’t want to miss out …

First of all the Lamberts, you guys … from the very start you guys had to come here from elsewhere too, and you were like us, and the fact that you guys brought in so many of us, from the start , when we were all eighteen from different states, and different cities, how you brought us in, you were complete strangers to us, but we embraced each other and you will forever have our hearts. Thank you very much.

To Leon, as we said yesterday we’ve had very tough and honest conversations over the years, but I’ve always felt we’ve had a deeper connection, you’ve always genuinely cared, even at the times when you’ve probably thought, ‘ooo Jonny thinks I’m going a little bit hard’, I always knew deep down you really actually cared for me, and I respect your family and you so much , I just don’t know how you’re going to break the news to little Jack about changing his number on his back … trust me guys, it definitely helps when the coach’s son loves you. Thanks a lot Jack.

To all the physios over the years, especially Leroy Lobo, Naresh, Luke, Heath, just everyone … thank you so much. You’ve probably had more time with me than any other player over the last eight years. Not only do you care for me as an athlete but for me as a person, it’s been absolutely amazing and thank you very much.

To Dave and Jane Matthews, who can’t be here because she’s in beautiful Noosa, which is understandable. I don’t know if there’ll be another relationship of CEO slash player slash employee like the one we had mate, honestly I don’t think there would be, and it’s only been proven over the last few months. When I was going through this decision, we’ve sat down over many expresso martinis, many wines, many oysters, many steaks, and we’ve spoken about it, and all your advice to me was to make me happy, it was never to do with a bias of the Giants, it was always that you care for me as a person, which is why we’ll always be great mates. And for that I will honestly love you forever, thank you very much.

Monty, where’s Monty (Brett Montgomery), he’s always been the coach I’ve gone to whenever I’ve needed to vent, to talk shit to, whenever I’ve needed to just speak and get advice on, and at the same time he would always tell me how it was … and for that, I love him so much and I’ll always miss Monty ..

The boys over the years … [names players] … everyone … there’s no wonder that the club is where it is, on and off the field. You guys are class acts. And I’ve loved playing every minute, and training alongside you guys. Thanks for supporting me through everything, through thick and thin.

I know at times I could be a bit of a moody guy, because of tough rehab days, but thank you guys very much, I appreciate that.

Heater, our first encounter was not surprisingly at a Melbourne nightclub called Motel, about a day after you were traded to the Giants, and ever since then we’ve been great mates, and obviously you lived with myself and Cogs for the first three years of your stint here, I don’t know if I can tell too many stories here in the public but mate you came here so misunderstood by the public, and you’ve always taken myself and Cogs especially under your wing, and the way you prepare, and the way you face adversity, is just amazing mate. And the lessons you’ve taught me not only with football but life has been amazing, and I thank you very much mate. You’ll be a brother forever.

Cogsy, where do I start. It’s funny because I was the first pick, you were the second pick. I always got that on vou bro, I always got that over you.

But no honestly you’d think we’d have some weird tension, or some weird competition, but straight away we were best mates. You were always there for me mate, through every injury, after every shit session I was fuckng getting over it, and you always picked me up. You were always there for me mate. I’m extremely proud of what you’ve done, but I’m even more excited about what you with this club taking them forward because this club is in no better hands that what you are mate. You will forever be one of my best mates, I feel very lucky I have so many memories with you, and shit man, we’re only 26, we’re going to have a lot more memories, right?

A finally my Mum, Belinda. I’ve honestly been amazed at how supportive you’ve been of my time here in Sydney. Every time that a contract has come up, you’ve just been ‘Sydney’s the best thing for you Jonny, and that’s what I’ve loved about my time here, I’ve never had anything pulling me back in terms of family or people, and Mum, you’ve been at the top of that. Like Cogs, you’ve been through the good and the bad with me, you’ve probably ridden the roller coaster a lot more than probably what I have, I know you’ll be happy to have me in Melbourne, just don’t get too excited because I have grand plans to come back here in Sydney one day, but I love you very very much Mum.

I don’t want this to be much of a goodbye.

I want this to be more of a ’ll see you soon.

I may be wearing different colours over the next few years, but the Giants will forever have my heart.
Thank you and I love you all.

Matt Quatermaine: ' Thinking of you West Coast Eagles' (with apologies to Martin Flangan), Footy Almanac Grand Final lunch - 2018

28 September 2018, Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne, Australia

Eagles devotee Matt Quartermaine performed this peice for The Footy Almaanc Grand Final Lunch. The Alamanc is a community of writers and sports lovers started by sportswriter John Harms (author Play On, Malarkey Press) . The piece is a parody of Martin Flanagan’s beautiful Thinking About piece, performed by Martin on SEN a week earlier.

Thinking of you West Coast Eagles who came to Melbourne in 1987 the same year as me.

Thinking of you my brother Simon, who was one of the Eagles fans who chartered a plane in 2015 when their Grand Final was over in the first quarter.

Thinking of you Ross Glendinning - barrel-chested champion and first Eagles captain who has a medal named after him and WILL decide who gets it.

Thinking of you John Worsfold Premiership captain, premiership coach and Chemist, hired by Essendon to fix their drug culture.

Thinking of you Paul Peos because no one else will.

Thinking of you Brett Heady who they nicknamed Jobby because... it's a football team.

Thinking of you Ben Cousins, a player so shy he'd rather swim across the Swan River than talk to a policeman.

Thinking of you Scott Cummings because you now look like you ate half your team mates.

Thinking of you Bon Scott - choking back the tears and a little bit of vomit.

Thinking of you Michelle Sweeney - who has nothing to do with the Eagles but she was the prettiest girl in primary school and I still think about her.

Thinking of you Perth the most isolated city in the world because Adelaide is 2,200kms away and they want to know if they can be more isolated.

Thinking of you Barry Cable trapped under a tractor and didn't have a footy to handball into the gear stick to move the tractor forward.

Thinking of you Polly Farmer the footballer and the freeway with easy east/west travelling across the city of Perth.

Thinking of you Chard Haywood- because only in Perth would Dudley from Number 96 get a chat show.

Thinking of you Lillee when you caught Marsh sneaking a ciggie behind the nets and both of you went to put a bet on.

Thinking of you Kim Beazley governor of WA who I spotted after the 2005 grand final wearing a Sydney Swans scarf. Boo.

Thinking of you booing because it gives everyone over East the irrits.

Thinking of you Sir Charles Court premier of WA 1974 to 1982 who pronounced the state WEStern Australia and sent a convoy of drilling rigs and police across a picket line to drill on sacred Noonkenbah land and start the mining boom.

Thinking of you Jan De Jong, Dutch underground war hero, former chief instructor to the SAS and at who's Ju Jitsu school I trained and still got beaten up by bullies.

Thinking of you Rolf Harris the boy from Bassendean- Who tied a kangaroo down sport and then may or may not have interfered with it.

Thinking of you Indian Ocean where the water is wee warm.

Thinking of you Karl Langdon - Na I'm not really thinking about Karl Langdon.

Thinking of you Winged keel of Australia II which won the America's Cup and enabled millionaire owner Alan Bond to bypass building codes and construct a monstrous hotel right on the Scarborough beach foreshore.

Thinking of you Dirk Hartog, Dutch explorer, who in 1616 landed on Dirk Hartog island. Coincidence? I think not.

Thinking of you Skylab which NASA chose to crash a to earth in WA where it wouldn't hurt anyone.

Martin Flanagan: 'Such extremes of poverty and wealth within one game', Norm Smith Oration - 2018

7 June 2018, Melbourne Cricket Club, MCG, Melbourne, Australia

If you drive through the Tasmanian midlands from Launceston to Hobart, as you pass through a clump of houses called Cleveland, you will see, on the left, Joe Pike’s paddock. This is where my father saw his first games of football as a child in the years immediately following World War 1. My grandfather, a railway ganger who could write no more than his name, was the backbone of the Cleveland Football Club. These were the years before electricity, before radio, and so my father’s earliest football memories were sitting around at night listening to his father and older brothers talk about the difficulty of getting a team because so many of the local lads had died at Gallipoli or on the Western Front. But when Cleveland got a team together, they played in Joe Pike’s paddock.  So that’s where it starts for me, what I like to call my footy dreaming.

Cleveland had something else. It had the memory of a champion. George Challis was a mathematics teacher who played football on the wing and was renowned for his speed and accurate passing. Challis had been one of Tasmania’s best at the national carnival of 1911, and one of Carlton’s best in the 1915 grand final when they overcame Collingwood. Within 12 months, Sergeant George Challis was blown to pieces in France. Nothing whatsoever of him remained but a large gravestone stands in his memory in the small churchyard opposite Joe Pike’s paddock. What have I got from football? Memories, lots of them.

In the aftermath of World War 1, a young returned solder who had been gassed and wounded and lost two brothers in the slaughter took up land outside Latrobe on Tasmania’s north west coast. My grandfather Patrick Flanagan followed Latrobe, having lived in the district since he was a boy. The story my grandfather told was that one day the returned soldier turned up at the cattle sales and had a kick with some of the local blokes and was persuaded to have a game with Latrobe. His name was Ivor Warne-Smith. He would later win two Brownlow medals with Melbourne and, as chairman of selectors, be the power behind the throne during the 1950s and ‘60s when Norm Smith’s Melbourne side won five premierships.

My grandfather only went to Hobart once in his life. That was to see Warne Smith lead the North West Football Union against the hated TFL, the Hobart-based association that thought it was the VFL and sought to rule accordingly. Warne Smith was injured early and the Union lost - or that was how the story came down to me 60 years later. That’s a long time for a story to travel, but something about the Australian game, some innate power it possesses, has been able to propel stories with rare power. That is also the reason why the pre-match entertainment before the Dreamtime at the G game may be the most powerful message Aboriginal Australia sends non-Aboriginal Australia this year. 

My mother’s family, the Learies, were farmers in the green hills up behind Devonport. They were musical people but they had footy stories, too. Before World War 1, when a 20-year-old member of the clan lay dying from what was then called a leaking heart, his brother went to the grand final between Ulverstone and Devonport with two carrier pigeons, one to send home a score at half-time, the other to send home a score at the end of the game.

My father, who was born in 1914, said that when he was a boy Victorian football results were just a paragraph in the Tasmanian papers. Everyone followed Tasmanian football. The biggest club in his world as a child was Campbell Town, 20 kilometres to Cleveland’s south. All his life Dad followed Tasmanian football. He never went to a single AFL or VFL game. I always said he didn’t barrack for an AFL team but when the Swans surged to that great premiership victory in 2005 I was amazed to find he wanted them to win. Why? Because of Laurie Nash.

Dad left Launceston High School just as the Great Depression hit. He later survived the war-time atrocity remembered as the Burma Railway, but he said that in some ways the Great Depression was worse. In the Great Depression, he said, “you saw whole families go under”. One of the few bright spots in that bleak reality was Laurie Nash. If the word genius can be applied to sport, it could probably be used in relation to Nash. He would open the bowling for Australia and offer to bowl bouncers back at Douglas Jardine’s English team during the Bodyline crisis. In Launceston football, he played for the City club under captain-coach Roy Cazaly. There were State premiers in 1930 and ’32 - in 1933, he joined South Melbourne, playing centre-half back against the wind and centre-half forward with it, and was a member of the Swans’ famous Foreign Legion premiership team of that year.

The City club, now called South Launceston, can trace its heritage back to the 1870s through the Cornwall club. In 2013, the AFL ushered South Launceston from the Statewide league and replaced them with a so-called “franchise” – the franchise folded within two years.  In the same year, the AFL foisted a name change upon the North Hobart Football Club which can date its heritage back to 1881. A club which had made a cumulative profit of $300,000 in the preceding 10 years made a loss of $100,000 over the next four years, lost three quarters  of its paying members and was headed, like the Tasmanian tiger, for extinction until, last year, when a group of determined North Hobart people won back control of their club. They now have no debt and some of the best juniors in the State. Go North!  

People ask me who I barrack for - I barrack for the game. An American who lived in this city for some years once wrote me a letter which began: “You seem an intelligent man. Why do you write so much about football?”. Because it’s the culture I’m from. Footy’s a language I can speak. I also happen to believe Australian football is, by world standards, a great game – that it is, in fact, Australia’s great athletic invention. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Victorian detective Sherlock Holmes, watched the 1920 VFL grand final between Collingwood and Richmond and declared that the Australian game was the most athletic of all the football codes. It is a game of courage and daring, of strength and physical grace. I was enchanted when I discovered it as an 11-year-old growing up in Burnie on Tasmania’s north-west coast. Five of the boys I played with or against went onto to play in the VFL/AFL. Between them, the two Burnie clubs. Burnie and Cooee, easily won the bulk of the premierships in that third of the island. I was therefore shocked to learn earlier this year that, unable to field a team, Burnie had followed Devonport in withdrawing from the Tasmanian Statewide League.

Popular sports like Australian rules football are constantly re-born in the eyes of children – in my case, between the ages of 11 and 13. I was 11 when the game captivated me. I was 12 when I listened – on a plastic transistor held against a steel girder to better the reception – to the classic 1967 grand final between Geelong and Richmond.  That same year, I also saw the Tasmanian State final between North Hobart and Wynyard which ended with the goal posts being pulled down by Wynyard supporters to prevent North Hobart full forward Dicky Collins shooting for goal, Wynyard supports having judged that he marked the ball after the siren.  When I spoke earlier this year at a function in Hobart celebrating the re-birth of the North Hobart Football Club, Dicky Collins attended and brought the ball – the ball he was holding when the goalposts were pulled down. The umpire, a man with the marvellously symbolic name of Pilgrim, never got to blow his whistle to end the match. The game is still being played, I like to say, out in the football dreamtime....

I have to thank football for the stories it has given me. Hundreds if not thousands of them. Here are  a few that come to mind. Liam Jurrah. I say in all seriousness that it is doubtful that ay professional sportsman playing in a major league anywhere in the world vaulted a bigger cultural gap than Liam Jurrah did to play AFL football. He may also come to be seen in the history of the game as Albert Namatjira as seen in the history of Australian art. My second story would be the Israeli-Palestinian AFL Peace Team. What was so moving about the Peace Team was that, through the medium of Australian football, two of the most conflicted groups on earth actually bought into the idea that they were one. The Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014 eventually tore them apart but, even so, one of the Israelis bravely continued the work. And, thirdly, in Tom Wills I found a character who is to me, like Ned Kelly, a figure who straddles a fault-line in the national psyche, who is best understood in the way that earthquakes are understood, the product of vast forces, mostly unseen, that suddenly erupt through an individual who may only be partially aware of what’s going on. Tom Wills, like Ned Kelly, is a big story in the continuing drama of what it means to be Australian. My fourth story is driving from Melbourne to Darwin with Michael Long, crossing this great land   of ours from south to north with someone who was known every time he stepped out of the car. My fifth is the Bulldogs coming from nowhere to win in 2016. I could go on....and on....and on...

I knew Tasmanian football in Tasmania was in serious trouble four years ago when I went to Hobart and the sports report on the evening news led with soccer – not EPL or A league but local soccer. Tasmanian soccer had replaced Tasmanian football as the dominant sporting story. This is not unrelated, I believe, to the fact that Tasmania has had only a single draft pick in the past two years. The power of Tasmanian football as a dreaming is much diminished. Four years ago, when I started asking around, I found to my disbelief that the Tasmanian Statewide League had been unable to secure a financial sponsor. Clubs were struggling to get sponsors for individual players. This was at a time when, back here in Melbourne, the AFL was congratulating itself on the fact it had secured a record sum for broadcasting rights to the game. How, I asked, could this be happening at the one time, such extremes of poverty and wealth within the one game, the one culture?

The answer is that the game has evolved into two very different cultures. Those at the top talk in terms of branding and product and market share, the language of corporate culture. The culture at the bottom was best described by Glenorchy Football Club president John McCann when he said two years ago that the ecosystem of Tasmanian football was sick. He was right on two counts - he was right that it was sick, and he was right that the grassroots game, that growth of more than 150 years, is best understood as an eco-system. The AFL and those around them talk about “the industry”. If football is an industry, it is at the most basic level a primary industry, but everywhere I go in Australia, I hear the same – that industry is struggling. And so tonight in moving this toast, can I say to all those who love the game and particularly to those who are responsible for its future – Ignore Grassroots Football At Your Peril.

To the Australian game!

Emma Race: 'AFLW is giving us something to hold on to', The Outer Sanctum editorial - 2018

21 February 2018, ABC, Melbourne, Australia

The audio of her editorial below can be heard at 29.30 on 'Rainbows and Twitter Storms' ep of Outer Sanctum podcast

A word to those offended by the skills and scores in AFLW

Since the opening night of AFLW this year it's been impossible to ignore the chatter about the skills, and the goals. It just continues. That their skills are bad, that there's not enough goals. I’ve even read comments about how some people are confronted by the mere fact AFLW is on TV.

I don't know if you read it, but a former great and current octogenarian Neil Roberts was asked his thoughts on AFLW, and he added to the negative chat, unsurprisingly.

Because he was a proud former great who played when the patriarchy went completely unchecked, he was asked what he thinks of women playing football, and you can read his response. It doesn't really bare repeating. 

But I wish he'd been asked what he thinks of the recent charges against Shannon Grant.

Because we hear a lot on twitter and from journos about the low scores and the bad skills.

But for fans of men's AFL, for women like me, for us in this room who love the code ...

We have been confronted by the game.

And by worse things than low scoring matches and imperfect skills. 

We have been asked to accept and believe in the redemption of Wayne Carey, as he hosts White Ribbon Round.

We were confronted with the Steven Milne trial.

If you've read Anna Krien's book Night Games, you'd have been confronted with allegations of rape, abuse and power.

So today Shannon Grant is back in court facing up to 18 offences, including assault, and we have been horrified by the violence perpetrated by Justin Murphy against his former partner.

In July 2016 we heard the graphic details of Nick Stevens assault on his then girlfriend.

And that story continues.

I have heard a prominent AFLW player admit she fell out of love with the game and stopped playing because she didn’t know how to process the St Kilda School Girl story ... while she was a member and fan of that club.

Just last year my sister and I slept out at the G to make sure we had a seat to cheer for the Tigers as they won the Grand Final … only to be confronted by Nathan Broad’s text message the following day. 

For decades, we female fans of footy, have supported the men’s game.

We have paid our memberships and bought the merchandise.

But we have also been asked by our friends and strangers, to justify the behavior of the players, the stance of the clubs and the morality of the code that we love.

I believe in second chances and I believe in redemption, and I have afforded all those “former greats” the benefits of a fair hearing.

I continue to pay my membership and I continue to love my team and I love this game …

But I don’t know how to reconcile the racism and the sexism and the misogyny around the game.

And I can no longer defend it.

On twitter I was recently told it was a “cop out” to cite the positive social ripples the AFLW has created in defense of the scrappy opening night game.

And this has stayed with me.

Because what I can't do is split the joy AFLW gives me into on-field and off-field experiences.

Because the AFLW gives us something to hold on to, to keep us invested in the code. It's a safe place for us to celebrate our love of the game.  

So, I can easily defend what lack of skills there may be. And defending the numbers on the scoreboard? That is so easy.

Because it doesn’t hurt my sisters or their kids, the code or the community.

Please subscribe to the Outer Sanctum podcast here. You can hear Emma and team on ABC Local radio, 11am every Saturday during AFLW season.

Shane Lennon: 'Climb the mountain, one more time!' 3\4 time address, RFL Grand Final - 2004

2004, Riverina Football League, New South Wales, Australia

Shane Lennon coached the Ganmain Grong Grong Matong Football Netball Club team. They won this premiership, and 2005-6 too.

Keep the engine goin keep the kettle boilin'.

Rightio boys that's three.

We always know, that our second half is better than our first. We always knew, that as the game progressed, we were goin' to get better.

Fresh legs.

We've done the work, haven't we? And we've done it together.

We're gonna climb the mountain one more time, boys. Climb the mountain one more time!

Pay the price, pay the price!

We'll take whatever they want to dish up.

We'll take the whacks in the head. We don't care.

Over there is where it matters!

Three gone, boys, one to go! Three gone, one to go!

Let's climb the mountain again, ay!

Quarter by quarter, ball by ball!

A game of footy, is like buildin’ a house, innit? Brick by brick. A game of footy is won a contest at a time and that’s how we’ve done it so far and that’s how we’re gunna do it again this quarter.

Remember the marathon runner? The whistle went, and he runs, doesn't he? And he runs, and he's focused and he keeps runnin' and when it gets hard he pushes through it and he pushes through it, and when he gets to the winnin' line he faints, because he's that rooted.

That's what we're gonna do! Like the boxer. We fight one more round. We get knocked down, we get up! We fight one more round.

And I'll tell ya something else boys. We've got em on the ropes! So we're gonna knock em out!

[Fucken oath]

Related content: Nigel 'Occa' Dransfeld, 'There was this marathon chick', 2002

Titus O'Reilly: 'Each year I can claim my Demons membership as a charity donation when I do my tax', Sydney Swans Redbacks Coterie Lunch - 2016

7 May 2016, SCG, Sydney, Australia

Titus O'Reilly is a footy satirist who has followed the Demons since 1809. He delivered this speech at a Sydney Swans Redbacks coterie function, that he was lured to by the prospect of an open bar. The Swans were playing Essendon that day.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I feel in good company being amongst footy fans.

What a great club you have in the Swans, so well run.

I’ll give you an example of how well run it is.

They saw that you play Essendon today and thought, these people are going to need a couple of hours of drinking to face that, so here we all are.

It must be nice to have your membership money go to a well-run club. Each year I can claim my Demons membership as a charity donation when I do my tax.

I actually felt quite nervous coming here and speaking to you this afternoon.

It’s hard to follow the comedic performance Collingwood put on for you all back in Round One.

Wasn’t that something? I bet you all felt very sorry for them and didn’t gloat at all.

They’re a club that’s caused you a lot of problems in recent years.

Not on the field of course.

Collingwood haven’t caused anyone trouble on the field in some while.

I mean how good was Eddie’s decision to take the Collingwood coaching position off Mick Malthouse and hand it to Nathan Buckley.

Collingwood have been lower on the ladder every year since and Malthouse going to Carlton has probably set them back a decade.

Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

I can’t remember a single decision that has made so many people as happy as that coaching change has.

At least not since no fault divorces were introduced in Australia.

Really, we should all be thanking Eddie.

Especially given you guys managed to also palm off Jesse White onto them.

That was just cruel.

They already had Travis Cloke and you gave them another forward that can’t kick goals.

Still, Collingwood have caused you a lot of problems.

You may remember Eddie McGuire’s disastrous attempt to promote musicals.

And as you know, they’re a big reason you lost your Cost of Living Allowance. 

That’s when a bunch of Victorian clubs got upset that you were correctly following an AFL policy.

There’s nothing more upsetting than when a club follows the rules.

So the AFL took away your COLA and that made the VFL people very happy.

Oh, except then the AFL went further and slapped you with that trading ban.

That really taught you a lesson for obeying their rules.

Remember, this is a sporting body that fined Melbourne for being found not guilty of tanking.

Now we still don’t really know the reasons why the AFL imposed that trade ban.

In all honesty, they can’t really come out and say they did it just to stop Eddie bothering them, even if that’s a perfectly understandable reason.

I mean, if someone said to me, ‘I’m doing this so Eddie stops contacting me every single day’ you’d understand.

Anyway, you guys seem to still find great players despite the ban.

I actually thought the lockout laws would cause you more problems.

At the very least, I expected the lockout laws to void a few of your existing contracts.

But despite all that you’ve got players like Tom Papley, Callum Mills, Tom Mitchell, Isaac Heeney, the list goes on and on.

The next move might be to just ban you from having players altogether.

What’s worse about the ban and the stripping of COLA is that hasn’t actually stopped the Victorian teams from complaining.

Now they’re complaining about zones.

They’re furious because the Giants have won a few games. This is a side that lost to Melbourne not that long ago.

Suddenly, the Riverina is being fought over like it’s the holy land.

It’s the heat that comes on any interstate team when they’re good. It’s lucky the Gold Coast are an absolute mess. No one is complaining about them.

Not even their six members.

I feel a bit sorry for the Giants, after all the AFL makes them regularly visit Canberra.

Surely that more than offsets any benefits they get in recruiting.

What we should look at instead is how many Victorian teams keep shooting themselves in the foot.

As a supporter of a Victorian club, I can tell you, they make enough mistakes to keep themselves out of the finals, let alone what anyone else is doing.

The problem with a lot of clubs is they’re run almost as badly as the Shane Warne foundation.

I was shattered when Warnie shut down his foundation. I don’t know how to donate to his parties now.

Anyway, speaking of badly run organisations brings us to today’s opponent, the Essendon Football Club.

Essendon are like the band Nickelback. They're terrible and the majority of people can't stand them but they still have a massive following.

The Bombers have been more a legal defence fund over the last three years than a football club.

That’s who have been the big winners out of this, lawyers.

Every year on James Hird’s birthday, lawyers light a candle to him.

Essendon members can actually choose when they sign up whether to sponsor a barrister or a Queens Counsel. It’s a lovely touch.

The Bombers, may not have the Riverina as a recruiting problem but they do have Melbourne University law school.

Today, you’ll get to see what happens to a team that has had its twelve best players banned from playing.

Yet they’ve still got one more win than Fremantle.

That’s also one more win than James Hird has had in court over the last few years.

This week he lost a case to get Essendon’s insurer to cover his legal coasts.

It’s the first time I’ve ever barracked for an insurance company in a court case.

Poor James. If the Victorian teams really wanted to stop the Giants they should try and get Hird to coach them.

It's sad that you can be run out of a club just because your players have been injected hundreds of time with unknown substances.

I’m going to go out on a limb here today and tip you guys to win.

It’s not just because I’m here at this event, it’s because I saw Essendon play Carlton last week.

It’s OK, I’m receiving counselling.

Did anyone here see it?

It was arguably the worst game of football I’ve seen and I’m a Melbourne supporter.

The whole second quarter had not one single goal scored.  

I would have been quite happy to have died during that game. I actively wished for it.

Yet no matter how much I wished for it, death did not come.

I must say in finishing, you really are very lucky to have such a well-run club, to have seen Premierships and great players like Tony Lockett, Adam Goodes and Paul Kelly.

I know it hasn’t always been that way.

Because the opposite is worse. So much worse.

I’m a Melbourne supporter and barracking for them has taken a decade off my life.

The only good news for me, is that means ten less years of having to watch them.

Good luck to your team today and thank you.

Bob Murphy: 'Long may we serve the game that at times let us fly', AFL Life Member induction -2016

17 March 2016, Etihad Stadium, Melbourne, Australia

I have long wondered if more books would have been written about Australian Rules Football if Mike Brady hadn’t penned the song ‘Up There Cazaly’.

In one succinct line he captured the whole damn thing, ‘there are days where you could give it up, and there are days where you could fly’

A love of football is not always an easy love – even as we gather here tonight basking in the optimistic new season and the glory it might bring, we all know that there will be a few potholes along the trail.

 In the beginning though the love of the game is free, light and full of fun.

For me it started with kicking the ball with my dad and brother – and if they weren’t around kicking the ball to myself.

Reading the bounce of the ball as it hit the power lines overhead and fell back to the bitumen.

A child’s imagination is boundless but for me the magnetic pull of the crowd was too much to resist.

Like many of the men standing up there with me tonight the schoolyard is where the dreams of becoming a proper footballer came into a sharper focus.

My primary school didn’t have an oval, in fact we barely had any grass at all, what we had was a car park with loose gravel.

As was custom at my school, play wouldn’t start until teams were picked – each boy or girl that wanted to play would line up with their backs against the red brick wall.

Captains were nominated and the brutality of the schoolyard would bare its teeth.

One by one players were picked until no one was left, then, the ball would be hoisted in the air to commence play – that’s when I got the bug.

That moment will be different to the rest of the inductees but if you ask them, and you should, there would be some good stories to be told.

A love of the game is one thing, but what does it all mean.

The pull of the crowd, the desire to stand on the wall to be picked, the exhilaration of running out with a swarm of teammates just with the expression of wanting to win or it could be about something much bigger.

It might just be that we want to belong to something.

It is my great honour tonight to speak on behalf of this year’s group of AFL life members.

Like a grand oil painting these inductees have brought different shades to the game with their talent, character and service.

Doctors, administrators, umpires, superstars and lowly half back flankers.

As has been done in the past on this night I was tempted to single out each one and sketch a portrait of them with a paragraph or two of my own.

But, are a few words enough?

After musing about the vision of Bill Kelty, the integrity of Matt Stevic, the grace of Shaun Burgoyne or the chiseled cheekbones of Scott Thompson I’ve decided to keep this year’s inductees together as one – a beautiful mish-mash of colours and textures.

Paul Chapman, Shaun Burgoyne, Brendon Goddard, Scott Jeffery, Chris Judd, Justin Leppitsch, James Kelly, Stephen Milne, Sam Mitchell, Drew Petrie, Matt Stevic, Scott Thompson, Dr Hugh Seward, Geoff Walsh and Bill Kelty.

If this were to be a painting on the wall, perhaps a landscape of the Australian bush it would surely have a river running through it that represents our common thread – a deep love for the game, the spirit that it’s played in and the reverence we hold for those that have gone before us.

If I was the last inductee picked by the AFL this year that would make me the 250th AFL life member.

What an art gallery that would be to wander through and sit in front of for a while.

These last couple of months have provided an opportunity to ponder the enormity of the honour.

When it comes to matters of football and ceremony I often defer to my Bulldog hero John Schultz, he himself an AFL life member.

He took me aside in the change rooms just last week and told me in his gentle way that the honour will mean more and more to me the older I get.

It already means a lot.

A life in footy means that time and again we put our backs to the red brick wall, hoping to be picked to play, to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

Perhaps never for once thinking that the game might eventually pick us – it doesn’t get much bigger than that.

On behalf of this fine group of men I accept the game’s invitation to join the blessed group of life members.

Long may we serve the game that at times let us fly, or at least feel like we could.

Titus O'Reilly: 'But when a bunch of racists are doing it too, maybe that’s a sign you should stop', Sydney Swans supporter group, Rnd 16 - 2015

AFL satirist Titus O'Reilly gave this speech ahead of the Round 18 Sydney v Adelaide game at the SCG. It was at a pre game function and it was the week Adam Goodes didn’t play because of the booing. The emotion up there was one of white hot anger.

It’s terrific to be with you all here in Sydney today and in a fairly eventful week.

I’m also very happy this game is at the SCG but I do miss the rustic charm of the exposed metal bolts of ANZ Stadium.

I came up from Melbourne yesterday where there is obviously a lot of talk about Sydney at the moment.

I’ve always found the Sydney/Melbourne rivalry thing a bit strange.

After all they both have their attractions.

For example, you have the harbour bridge, an engineering and architectural triumph, we have a graffiti filled alley with a dumpster.

You have the Opera House, one of the great landmarks on the world, we have another graffiti filled alley but this one has a hard to find bar that seats just four people.

Being from Victoria and a consumer of only Melbourne media, I often have to be reminded that there are teams outside of Victoria.

The whole Victorian thing of supporting any Victorian club over an interstate one has always concerned me.

I feel pretty uncomfortable with any policy that requires you to be on Collingwood or Essendon’s side.

I was honoured to come speak to Sydney’s top supporter group and I’m told this group provides a lot of money to the Swans.

It must be nice to see your money going to a successful organisation that puts it to good use.

I’m a Melbourne supporter and that’s a bit like putting your money into an alpine fireplace.

There’s an immediate feeling of warmth, but it’s quickly over and suddenly you realise it’s all gone up in smoke.

So when I was asked to speak here, I thought I should brush up on my knowledge of the Swans.

I wanted someone who’d spent time here and had flourished in this great city.

Someone who had an affinity with Sydney and the Swans.

So I caught up with Eddie McGuire.

Now I wasn’t sure if he’d have an opinion or be willing to share his thoughts.

You may not know this but he’s a guy who usually likes to work quietly behind the scenes.

Speaking publicly is not usually his style but I thought it was worth a try.

So I sat down with him and said ‘what do you think of the Sydney Swans?’

So Eddie carefully explained to me how you northern clubs had secret underground laboratories.

These laboratories use the DNA of great AFL players to create ‘super footballers’ who are then trained in your unfair academies.

Really, Eddie thinks anything North of the Murray is basically North Korea.

Poor Collingwood, with their massive membership, financial clout and wall-to-wall media coverage.

It must be tough.

It’s always been a bit strange to me the controversies surrounding the Swans.

I’ve said this long before I was asked to speak here, so it’s not playing to the crowd, although I’m never above that.

For instance, the Cost of Living Allowance.

Basically, the argument has been; ‘how dare Sydney do something they’re legally allowed to do.’

In fact, it was what you were told to do.

And that’s the worst type of cheating! When you’re not cheating at all.

As if the other clubs would have said no to any advantage they can get their hands on.

What really upsets people though is the Swans have been successful in managing their club.

You’re doing all those things we said they could do and being smart about it.

How dare you!

Don’t you know that good administration in an AFL club just highlights how bad it is in others?

No wonder they’re upset.

Why couldn’t you have just recruited Karmichael Hunt?

No one would be angry with you then.

Hasn’t the Gold Coast Suns been a wonderful experiment?

It’s like a bad reality TV show.

Let’s get a bunch of eighteen year olds, stick them on the Gold Coast and then put an NRL player in with them.

How could that possibly go wrong?

Putting a sport team on the Gold Coast is like invading Russia in the winter, it never works.

I mean even Clive Palmer couldn’t get it to work.

Anyway, Sydney’s real mistake was stealing Buddy from GWS.

That basically ruined the AFL’s entire marketing strategy for the next five years.

The AFL had learnt the hard way that NRL players can’t play AFL, which is not surprising to anyone that has say, seen both games before.

So they needed Buddy at the Giants. They were desperate.

And you all ruined it by obeying the rules and putting together a better offer.

The pain lingers for them as Buddy has been a massive success at the Swans, especially once he realised what side of the road you drive on up here.

It’s why the AFL absolutely had to stop you trading last year for no real reason.

The AFL had no choice but to send a very clear message that following their rules is no protection from arbitrary decisions.

You have to remember, not long ago the AFL fined Melbourne for being found NOT GUILTY of tanking.

Now everyone knows they did it, although subsequent years have shown that might just be their resting state.

The AFL could have found Melbourne guilty, but it was more fun to say they were not guilty and then fine them anyway.

So the AFL can punish you whether you did something wrong or if you are completely innocent.

So basically, being in the AFL is like being in a marriage.

Anyway, I thought I should address the big issue at the moment, which has dominated the media this week.

Every one can see the big impact it is having on your club;

That issue of course is the large amount of stupid people in Australia.

We seem to have as much stupidity as we have iron ore.

If only China needed idiots; we could be richer and solve this problem.

You may have noticed that I’m a middle-aged white man and that makes me the perfect person to talk to you about racism.

If there’s one voice missing from the discussion surrounding Adam Goodes and the experience of being indigenous in Australia; it’s that of white men.

To be honest, white men are always a bit intimidated by any man who can dance.

Have you seen a white Australian male dance?

It usually involves both feet being rooted to the spot and a clear lack of understanding of what to do with their hands.

Spilling a drink while doing it is often a key feature.

What would be funny about this, if it wasn’t all so very sad, is grown adults saying they were intimidated by this dance.

Although that’s easy for me to say.

I wasn’t in the crowd and can only imagine how sharp that spear was.

What has been great this week, is having some of Australia’s great public intellectuals weighing in on the debate.

There’s been ex-footy players, AFL journalists, Shane Warne, Jason Akermanis and Sam Newman to name a few.

It’s just a shame no one asked Dawn Fraser for her opinion.

That would have meant we’d collected the entire set of ill informed sports people.

Obviously, these are the public intellectuals you want leading a debate on the complex and sensitive issue of race.

They all bring a deep personal understanding of what it’s like growing up indigenous in Australia.

What I do love about this debate is the arguments you get from those who want to keep booing.

Like this is what this is all about, not that it’s having a profound effect on a real person.

They honestly talk about their ‘right to boo’.

That must be in the Bill of Rights Australia doesn't have.

I actually had someone on Twitter tell me their right to boo Adam Goodes is protected by the First Amendment.

The first amendment! Where do I start with that?

We’re dealing with really stupid people here.

I mean who’s going around booing people all the time anyway?

Do these people ever boo people when they’re not in the safety of a crowd?

Just walk up to people and start booing?

I don’t know, maybe at their Reclaim Australia rallies they do.

That said, there have been a lot of times I’ve been stuck in a meeting and just wanted to start booing.

Any of you whose been in a board meeting would know that feeling.

Perhaps corporate Australia would be better off if you could boo the next consultant who suggesting something ridiculous and expensive.

I'm not saying everyone who boos Adam Goodes has been doing it for racist reasons.

Who truly knows?

But when a bunch of racists are doing it too, maybe that’s a sign you should stop.

It’s like if you have a long held opinion on a topic and then suddenly Brian Taylor starts saying the same thing.

You would immediately start questioning your own thinking on the topic and would definitely stop expressing it publicly.

If this was just about football and not racism, you would see others being booed.

I mean how does Adam Goodes get booed and James Hird doesn’t?

I guess racists have always had a soft spot for the blonde hair and blue eyes.

I like to focus on the fact that despite this horrible situation emerging, there are a lot of powerful and very good people on the right side of this debate.

We will win this.

We have what’s right on our side and the tide of history is flowing our way.

It’s just a shame that a great Australian has to go through this for Australia to wake up to itself.

I’m truly hopeful Adam is strong enough to handle all this but we need good people being vocal and lending him support.

Now moving on, if you listen to the media at the moment, you’d think Australian Rules football is about to fall off a cliff.

I just want to go on the record and say I actually quite like footy and I don't believe it's on the verge of imminent collapse.

I’m told saying that can lose me the media gigs I have.

But congestion is not going to end the game and we’re not going to be overrun by ‘soccer’ as the media breathlessly predict.

There’s actually a lot of good going on in footy at the moment.

Just this week, I watched a wonderful documentary on some Essendon players who travelled to India to spread the code over there.

Did anyone else see it?

For those that didn’t it was mostly just them clearing customs before they got on the return flight but still very powerful.

Basically it was like watching an episode of border security.

Still, a great initiative.

AFL is just so big in India at the moment so sending about five players for a clinic should push it over the top there.

Last night, we also had a great game with Richmond defeating Hawthorn in a game that has huge ramifications for the finals.

It means the Hawks can be beaten and I think that Sydney, Richmond, West Coast and Fremantle are all still chances.

Your guys have to step up. We need the Swans firing.

We can’t have Hawthorn win three in a row. It’s a world I don’t want to live in.

I can’t stand the idea of there being any more happy Hawks fans.

Then we have today’s game.

This should be a good one.

Today’s opponent, the Crows, are a team that we all have a fair bit of sympathy for at the moment.

It must be terrible to be living with the threat of Mick Malthouse coaching you.

They have a lot of good players Adelaide and we’ll soon know if Patrick Dangerfield is going to stay.

What a lucky guy, choosing between living in Geelong or Adelaide.

That’s the glamour of AFL for you.

So good luck today.

A Swans victory would be a wonderful end to a frankly horrible week.

Let’s hope your boys get it done.

Titus O'Reilly writes footy and sport articles, including his hilarious 'The Weekly Knee-Jerk Reaction' that are a must for sport lovers.

Terry Wallace: 'I'll spew up!' speech, versus Collingwood, The Year of the Dogs - 1996

28 July, 1996, Footscray v Collingwood, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia

I don't know about you blokes but I can't bear fucking losing a game like that! Look, fantastic effort but what does a fucking fantastic effort mean? It doesn't get us anything! We don't get diddly squat! We don't get a point. They don't just give us something for just fucking getting close! It means nothing. If you think that I'm going to be happy walking into this room when we get beaten still, we can't be! We just can't accept it! I don't know about you guys, but if I see one bloke walk out of here, getting a pat on the back from people out there for a good effort, I'll spew up! Because it's just not acceptable! We were a rabble in that first quarter, absolutely bloody disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful. yeah, for three quarters we were worked our asses off, we worked our backsides off to get back into the game, but the game is about 120 minutes of footy, and that was the most winnable one that we get for a long time, and we just pissed it down the drain. We absolutely pissed that game down the drain. Don't any one of you forget about it. Take away one thing from this game. You have the ability to play in this competition and to play it very very very well. We cannot got from that [hand gesture] which we've displayed right in the three quarters, back to what we displayed in the first quarter ever again. Ever again.,

Go and have your showers, we'll see you back at the social club.

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Unknown: 'Cammo, dunno if I like ya', Coach post-game meltdown

Date unknown, a football ground, Melbourne, Australia

Was it seventy points we were up by at half time? Granty, seventy points? Yeah. We’ve lost by three. Go and f*** yourselves fellas.  I could rant and rave. I could rant and rave but I realised today that I am coaching a s*** football team. Today - today’s the day, not the day the teddy bear’s had their picnic, it was the day I realised I was coaching a bunch of blokes that aren’t - aren’t there? Physically, I don’t think we’re there. Mentally I don’t think we’re there. And it’s doing my f***en head in! I put the f***en time in each week, I’ll get Fammo to do the videos, I get bananas, I get lollies, I get Solo ... shove the f***en Solo up yer a***!

Seriously! Don’t open the can. Shove it up your f***en a***! I’m f***en sick of it! Each week, I put in till there’s no more to f***en put. I put in and I’m sick of it. Ben Kildo, you’ve had fifty five touches, win the f***en hard ball you red head c***! Cammo! ... dunno if I like ya. I love ya! But do you love playing footy? Morro, I’ll back you to the hills every week, cos I’ve got ya here. I’ve got ya here and I f***en love ya.  But get as a f***en goal ya c***! Ya f***en cost us the game! Go and root ya f***en mother! Cos yer shit! And we’ve lost! And you can all go f*** yourselves and next year I’m coaching St Albans.