In my adult life it has been my pleasure to go to the football every weekend.
When I started going regularly by myself all games were on a saturday afternoon. In time games started to be held on friday nights. Then Sydney games started on TV on sunday afternoons. In time games were held on friday night, saturday afternoon, saturday night, sunday afternoon and sunday evening. Sometimes even monday nights. I think the enjoyment was more intense when all games were on saturday afternoon. When I was young my father used to take me to the local games at Moyhu but I didn't really enjoy it because we always had to come home to milk the cows. And it meant we were always late in milking. And I was always tired. Indeed there was one player who played with Moyhu who used to come off the ground in the middle of the third quarter and go straight home because he had to milk his cows. He didnt even have a shower. Seriously. He only played when Moyhu played at home. He was the only player who did this and in a way he was admired for it. He was seen as a hard worker who put his family farm first. My father always waited until the game was over and consequently we were late in milking. My mother disapproved of this behavior. She felt my father should not be frivolous and going to the football was a waste of time and money. And cows should be milked at the same time each day. She particularly admired the man who came off the ground early and went home to milk his cows. She felt he was showing what was really important. When I had the opportunity to go to the football every week without having to go home to milk the cows I was determined to take advantage and to enjoy myself. I would go to the football and then come home tired to have tea and relax. And hopefully watch the replay on TV. In my adult life and after I moved to Melbourne I went to the football regularly every week. Early on I became a member of Collingwood Football Club. I started barracking for Collingwood because they always lost the Grand Final to Melbourne except for one fantastic time. My father more or less followed the strongest team and Collingwood were always the second or third strongest team. I felt sorry for them and exulted when they won. Like in 1958. At the time I did not know that historically they had been the most successful team up to that time and in time I was to learn that seemingly every other person in the world knew this and consequently always wanted Collingwood to lose. Collingwood were the most hated club. I loved the winters in Melbourne. I always knew that Melbourne had different weather than Moyhu. You could feel the water vapour in the air on your cheeks for a start. In the summer it was sometimes hot but soon there would be a cool change. There were often clouds hovering over the Dandenongs. The weather was mostly overcast in the winter without any real heavy rain. And it was never really cold. No frosts. Going to the football was not always thought a good thing by everyone. In my circle many people expressed the view I was wasting my time. They looked down on football followers as being of a lower class. It could even be somewhat shameful according to some of the intellectual middle class. This was something you should not dedicate your life to. I had one acquaintance who always expressed the belief to me that going to the football was a waste of good time. He was an ex private schoolboy who claimed he had more important things to do with his time. But one day I caught him at the football. He was naturally a Melbourne follower and in this particular year Melbourne had lifted themselves from the bottom of the ladder and threatened to make the finals. It was a classic case of me finding someone in the wrong place. I saw him first and when he saw me he tried to hide but I had already caught him. The thing was he didn't come to the whole game - he organised his life so he went past the MCG late every saturday afternoon and he would secretly sneak in and watch the last quarter. He didn't let on anyone he was doing this. He could still claim he wasn't going to the football - he was going somewhere else. No one knew he was sneaking into the football. Not even his wife. But in secret he was going to the football. Even if it was for only one quarter and I caught him out. His words casting aspersions on me were proved hollow. I had sprung him. I didn't immediately take on the persona of a dedicated fan. I started off paying to go when I went through the turnstiles. I was always unsure about justifying the cost so I tried to keep it as cheap as possible. But soon I purchased a yearly match day membership. This let me into the game every game played at home. Later on I became a Social Club Member. This was more expensive but it gave me the privilege of entering the Social Club and attending the annual general meeting and to vote at elections. Later on I became an AFL member which allowed me to go to any game. I ended up having the highest priced membership available. But I always wondered if the pleasure I got justified the expense. I had my own routine. I loved Saturdays. I would sleep in slightly and get up normally after 9 o'clock. I would listen to Lou Richards at 10 o'clock when I had a late breakfast. I would turn over to The Couldabeens at 11 o'clock. I would leave for the game at about 11.30 and keep listening when driving to the football. I would take a thermos of tea and a transistor. This was before earphones and Walkman's. During the game I would put the transistor up to my ear and listen to Harry Bietzel calling the game. I would get to the ground early so I could watch the second half of the reserves. Sometimes I would also get to see the under 19's play. People took an interest in all 3 teams in those days. I would enter Victoria Park at the entrance near Johnson Street because it meant I would then have to walk around more than half the ground inside Victoria Park. This was quite a walk but I loved it. My favourite standing room spot was right at the end of the members stand. As I always got there early I always got my favorite spot. When you enter at the Johnson Street entrance you get to walk through large crowds all the way around to your spot. People milling. People talking. People young and old in a state of excitement. I found the feeling infectious. It was exciting. I could get into my place and watch the reserves and keep an eye on the members stand filling up. Just behind where I used to stand was the entry to a special supporters group that had their own premises. This group had strict membership and dress rules. The entrance reminded me a little of a concrete pillbox in East Germany and had much the same security arrangements. Security was all important. No riff raff were ever going to get in. Strict dress rules applied. I always amused myself by trying to apply Marxist theory to this example of the working class at play. There were all types in the Grandstand. Sometimes there were celebrities. Sometimes there were Politicians. A lot of times there were models. Sometimes there were TV stars. Footballers girlfriends. I saw them all. You could do it in those days. Now there would be no chance. Football is no longer played at Victoria Park and now every model would be safely ensconced in a corporate box. Some celebrities do sit with the public at the MCG but not many. They also are normally guests in corporate boxes. From my spot I could also keep an eye on the Collingwood coaching squad. I would sometimes listen through the wall of the nearest toilet to what the coach was saying to the team. He spoke to them in a room which was on the opposite side of the wall to the public toilet nearest me. He must have thought that this was a good place to talk in private. Mostly he was getting the team to rev themselves up. Some of them always watched the seconds game and I always watched for their reactions. Most people took their football seriously. But I was the only one in my circle of friends who actually went. This was the same as my working colleagues. We always had a tipping competition at work. Nearly everyone I worked with had a passionate interest in some team. But I was the only person I knew who went to the football every week. I have always considered it a privilege to be actually able to go each week. And indeed it was enjoyable. During the game I would lose track of the world. I would lose track of time. I was completely taken up with the game. Time would simply enter another dimension. I always drove rather than take public transport. I always had a special parking spot which allowed me a fair walk to Victoria Park. Collingwood Council had an exclusion zone around the ground. The council charged for parking but I has happy not to pay and to walk. I would listen on my transistor radio when walking. When I say transistor I mean quite a bulky radio that also weighed quite a bit. People did this type of thing then. I carried the radio on my shoulder blaring into my ear. After the Couldabeens finished at 12.30 the coming games would be discussed by the commentators and special comments men. I was a big fan of Harry Beitzel and always hoped he would be calling my game. At the end of each game at Victoria Park I would go onto the ground and walk across to the Johnson Street entrance. The public was allowed onto the ground after each game to have a kick of the football and I took advantage to both have a shortcut across the ground and to experience something of the game. I was always struck by how far it was across the ground when you had to walk across it. How big the ground was. Also the ground was always spongy. How did the players move across the ground quickly? And how did they run from one end of the ground to the other bouncing the ball at the same time? Later on Collingwood played a lot of games at Waverley. I paid the members parking fee because members had a special parking section which gave easy access and egress from the carpark. Parking at Waverley was always a nightmare. But after one or two years they did away with the special members parking section so I had to work out how to manipulate the parking system in order to not get trapped in the carpark. I learned to arrive a certain time and to park in a certain area. If I was directed away from my special area I would re park my car at half time. In this way I learned to dodge the pitfalls of parking. One would often hear horror stories of people trapped in the parking area. It only happened to me the first and second time I went to Waverley. After that I worked out my system which allowed me to leave the ground within 10 minutes of the game finishing. As I lived in Ferntree Gully I was always home in half an hour. Because of this I didn't mind going to the Football at Waverley. Amongst the football fraternity I was in a minority. People hated Waverley. When the league got the chance they built Docklands and knocked down Waverley. Its nickname was Arctic Park because it was always so cold. When I started taking my children to the football the most convenient place to take them was Waverley. Trouble was none of them wanted to stay seated. Tom especially always wanted to walk around. Waverley was split into two sections. One third for members and two thirds for the public. Whilst I was a member I couldn't take Tom into the members area without paying for an guest ticket but I could take him into the public section for free. That meant he had two thirds of this large arena to walk around in. For a few weeks I made him wear his bike helmet so I could keep an eye on him as he moved around the ground. But whatever I tried he was mostly out of my sight for long periods of time. He enjoyed his moments of freedom. James got lost often also and once he was found by an attendant and I had my name called out over the loud speaker system. James got an ice cream to eat while he was waiting for me to come and get him. I consider the most enjoyable time was in the 70's when Tom Hafey came to the club. We played in several Grand Finals but of course did not win one. Hafey was a super coach who took the team from bottom to top in one year. We were always on top during his time except for his last year when when we lost a lot of games in a row and he was sacked. The players played with an abandonment that was a pleasure to watch. I found Tom Hafey to be an inspiration and I was fortunate to hear him addressing the team on several occasions. He was super positive. I often wondered if he was ever negative. He must have been sometimes but I never heard him. Later on when Leigh Matthews came to the club we did win a premiership. The world changed on this day. It really did. Nothing would be the same again. It was enjoyable to be premiers and it removed some of the negative feelings that had come with always losing grand finals. We had lost about a dozen I believe. And I saw them all. I don't know if winning just one made up for all that we had lost but it was something to savor. The sunday after losing a grand final can be a very empty day. The most empty day of the year imaginable. Later on Mick Malthouse came to the club and he was a pragmatist who made the players play to a plan. Lots of people said he wanted them to be robots. We also won a Premiership under him. During this time Nathan Buckley came to the club and has not left since. Nathan was a genuine champ. It was a pleasure to watch him play. Privilege even. As I have got old football has lost its importance. I have become detached. The players are all so young for a start. I no longer feel I identify with them. In my young days I knew how they felt physically. I felt the bumps with them. I anticipated how they were going to feel when they knew another body was going to impact with them. I don't feel I am missing anything by not going each week. I am quite happy to only go once or twice a year. Of course I watch it on TV. Postscript: A few years ago a documentary was released about the Formula 1 racing driver Anton Senna. This is quite a good documentary by any standard. Senna was Brazilian and of course always wanted to win the Brazilian Grand Prix. He made quite a number of attempts. At this time he was the number 1 driver in the world. Every year he would race with his countries expectation he would win. Every year something would happen and he would either not finish or lose to his rival Alain Prost. His car would more than likely break down. Finally in what was to be his last year of racing he won. He had to nurse his car for the last few laps as he had wrecked a number of gears and only had a few gears left to use. Of course everyone watching seemed to know this and the atmosphere was quite tense even for a Formula 1 race. It was very tense. When Anton Senna crossed the line and won the Brazilian Grand Prix he had much the same reaction as I had when Collingwood won the Grand Final in 1990. Please watch this film to see what I mean.
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In my working life I mostly did jobs that no one else wanted. This is not exactly true but it is partially true. It really is. While I knew I was as good as the next man I also knew I was never going to be given power. People did not like me telling them what to do. In our society's strict hierarchy people felt insulted if they felt they were being told what to do by someone they considered inferior.
I always compared myself with the night cart man of old. Everyone had an interest in what I was doing and everyone thought they could do it better but no one else actually wanted to do my job. In the end I was a full time salesman. Previously to becoming a salesman I suspected that all salesman had it pretty easy. Salesmen do have a fairly easy time except for when the economy is retracting and a company employs a large number of salesmen. The infrastructure of a company cannot be cut back that much but salesman can be easily dispensed with because they will not be making the sales that justify their salaries. Salesman get paid more than people who work in infrastructure but they rarely get to work for long periods of time in the one job. It always seemed to me that a salesman's job was especially enjoyable when they came from a skilled trade background and they were selling complicated machinery or hi tech products in an industry that was not much affected by general economic circumstances. I became a salesman not exactly by accident but it was not planned either. The company I worked for had a small sales team and I thought they were not covering all bases. Specifically there was an industry that they were more or less ignoring. I suggested that more thought should be put into targeting this particular industry but my advice was rejected. So in my down time I started contacting the industry directly myself. Surprisingly I had some success and soon I had a small but profitable number of good customers. I refused to hand these customers over to normal salesman and insisted on servicing them myself. At approximately the same time the need arose for me to take an interest in production. The company was experiencing a severe downturn in sales and a number of people had been retrenched. And some had seen what was coming and had left for greener pastures before they were pushed. The whole industry was subject to changes in technology and we had been suffering a slow but steady downturn for the past 10 years. Technology had simply removed some previously skilled jobs and they had disappeared. There was some unhappiness on the factory floor and someone like me was needed to talk to people when organising the production schedule in order for production to improve. I was always interested in other peoples jobs and luckily my interest in keeping an eye on production was not resented. In keeping an eye on production I learned that I could put some of my new knowledge to effect in providing my new customers with what they wanted. I enjoyed being a salesman. It was an enjoyable change from my normal job and I was able to establish enjoyable relationships with some customers. In my normal job it was hard to establish relationships with other people. For several years I did both jobs. I was originally brought into the company to do several specific things. 1. To regularise the cash flow. 2. To stop the bad debts. 3. To ensure the invoicing was done correctly. 4. To collect the debts. Without any legal costs. 5. To ensure that no contracts were entered into without the proper knowledge of what the contract involved. 6. To ensure that all sales were covered by a written order, 7. To reduce Banking and Accounting Costs. 8. To ensure that all financial commitments were adhered to. 9. To keep an eye on all aspects of administrative procedures and delivery records. The above conditions gave me a certain power. I deliberately set out to be a salesman when I had the chance. However I never considered myself to be a real salesman. I was however a reasonable salesman. I was diligent and I had energy and persistence. I always tried to help my customers rather than sell to them. I always tried to establish personal relationships. I always followed up but I could never exert pressure like real salesmen. I was happy to cold call. I was happy to pound the pavement. I was happy to spend time on the telephone. I wanted my customers to take advantage of the service I was offering. And I always gave the best service I could. I had two distinct advantages over the other salesmen. I was able to do my own quotes and I was able to plan production. So I was able negotiate with customers and to promise delivery. I always knew the bottom line and never had to do a job at below cost. As I always knew the correct cost of a job I was always able to make a margin even if it was sometimes small. I never took advantage even though I knew a real salesmen would. My biggest weakness was that I did not have an attractive personality. I was introverted. I had a closed face. I did not have the ability to put people at ease. I had no joking manner. People could look at me and say no to my face without any feeling of regret. They knew I was the type of person who could be disappointed without them having to worry about it. All good salesmen have the ability to make customers feel bad when they refuse an order. I did not have this skill. I suppose I should have tried to make customers feel guilty. But I just wanted to help them. And to help myself at the same time. Don't get me wrong - I wanted to be successful. I certainly tried to be successful. But I always disapproved of Real Salesmen and always felt they had questionable morals. I could never admire them. I guess I was a bit of a snob but I could never approve of their methods or their over sized ego's. They probably realised this and I always felt the real salesmen held me in contempt. And at times they were not above telling me this. In the whole of my working life I always gave more to my job than it gave to me. I never took advantage of my employer. I always performed above and beyond the call of duty. In the whole of my working life I was never paid overtime. I always worked without pay when the work was required. At times if required I worked on weekends. I never took days off when I was not sick. I was always reliable. I did my work without complaint. In other words I was a good employee. Even if I say so myself. But there were times when I was not appreciated. During my working life I was sacked twice for no other reason than I was not liked. There are simple explanations for this. I always kept to myself. I wasn't above giving my opinion. I always kept my distance from everyone. I was never part of the pack or crowd. I never kowtowed to management. This behavior often results in resentments. In my experience most retrenchments and sackings were always decided on how well a person was liked or disliked. And depressingly decisions were always made using petty childish reasons of course disguised by management terms. Done by stupid people who had power. Unfortunately this is the way of the world. I always took solace in the knowledge that the place would be worse off after I left. I ended up a full time salesman. The company I worked for where I had a certain amount of power were taken over by a larger Australian Company who were in the process of expanding into Asia. They needed a small manufacturing plant in Melbourne to do speedy work that couldn't be done in time in Asia. So they purchased part of the company I worked for and took me with them. They seemed to like me and asked me continue with them but to only do sales. I worked as a full time salesman for two years but it was obvious I was not totally suited. It was like I was asked to get on a bus that was going in a different direction than I wanted to. And once on the bus I had to behave like all the others on the bus. Specifically like they wanted me to. I liked the man who owned the company and he deserves a story all on his own. He was inspirational in his own way. He was going against the grain in that he was expanding into Asia and his choice was to live in Vietnam. But he had a few middle management employees that I had to totally answer to and they were people who believed in modern management practices. They mostly spoke in slogans. This wasn't something I felt comfortable in adhering to. So I left. This wasn't a hardship as I wanted to retire properly. But I knew I would never get another job. So there was a bit of a feeling of loss. I had in fact retired twice previously and on both occasions I was happy to come back to work. I found I needed to work to relax. But this time I had no choice and I retired with some deliberation. I want several things to happen at my funeral.
I want 4 pieces of music played. 1. Soave sia il vento from Cosi Fan Tutte This should then be followed by some dialogue preferably by my family. My sons and my wife. 2. Accross the Universe by The Beatles This to be followed by some history of the life of Neville Gibb. I would hope that it would be stated that I considered that the apex of government to have happened with the election of the Labor Government in 1972 and that I considered Gough Whitlam to be the only real Prime Minister Australia has had. Gough Whitlam was my true political hero. And still is. And that I considered that Australian people to be unworthy of respect for the way they voted in 1966 and 1975. It should be stated that I was always against the Vietnam War and that this led me to feel alienated from most Australians. Plus the feeling of being excluded from my extended family. 3. Ave Vera Corpus by Mozart People should be made to sit in silence and listen to each piece of music through to the end. I am not sure if I want to much dialogue spoken. Especially by people I did not like. I want no hypocritical praise spoken over my body at all. I have always had a horror of hearing people praised to the heavens when they are dead by people who always spoke contemptuously of them when they were alive. I can quite easily believe that this could happen to me. I have always felt that most people I have known have disliked me. Most of my relatives have given me the impression they have disliked me. Some have been very pointed. Most of my work colleagues have been critical. At the same time I have not known many people I have truly liked. I have always been a moralist. I disapprove of other peoples morals. I would like it be said that I was always suspicious of intolerance. I would like it stated that I had a horror of prejudice. I would like it stated that I always had a horror of racism. I would like it stated that I looked on the majority of human beings with contempt. I would like it mentioned that I never felt Australian until I left it. In my youth I was always being accused of being un-australian - and because this was said with such passion converging on hatred I believed I was un-australian. I felt an alien within australia. I would like it mentioned that I had two years in England where I was happy and this sustained me for the rest of my life. I would like my wife and children to all speak and say something. Other relatives and friends may want to speak and are to be allowed - no matter how unimportant or unsuitable the people may be thought to be. I want it stated that I loved my wife and children to distraction. This may not have always been obvious to every one involved. But no one could have loved their children and their wife more than I did. I want it stated that I always had a temper simmering below the surface. Always there. Always close to going off. And I used it unfairly on people who did not always deserve it. I want it stated that I was not a particularly happy person. But I knew when I had done the wrong thing and always tried to recant when it was required. I definitely do not want a "professional" funeral planner speaking at my funeral. I want no funeral director organising my funeral. I would prefer that no funeral director even to be in attendance. 4. I want the modern utube version of Please Pleased Me shown on a video screen to wrap things up. This can be found on Utube and has Paul McCartney singing lead. Once again people must be made to sit in silence until the video is finished. |
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