And that's why they call it the blues

They say that sport is theatre. But I think it’s more than that. We all know that Juliet is going to die at the end of the play for example. But who can say with certainty how a sporting event will end? That’s what makes sport magic. That even the participants don’t know how it will finish.

I got up early (very early actually) some weeks ago to watch Ireland challenge for the Grand Slam. It could have gone either way and in the end it very nearly did. It came down to one last kick and as with penalty shoot outs, last minute corners where the goal keeper comes up and any time David Beckham stands before a free kick, half the watching public will be praying for a miss and half for a score. On the day of the Grand Slam, I was hoping for that last kick to miss and indeed it did. In my ecstasy, when that kick fell short, I jigged around my dark sitting room oblivious to the feelings of millions of Welshmen who were sitting with their heads in their hands.

Well fate got its own back on me last Saturday. Again, a kick fell short and this time I was the one to be found with head in hands while thousands of fans from the opposition were copying my dyslexic dance.

Australian Rules Football is a team sport with all the elements of catching, kicking and tackling that appeal to those of us reared on the unforgiving concrete of school playgrounds. I went to a game on my second day in Melbourne and was instantly hooked. I have a soft spot for Setanta O’hAilpin who plays for Carlton. He was a fine young hurler in his day and despite the fact that he can’t kick an oval ball properly or hand pass to save his life, he is a sort of folk hero among the Irish Diaspora here. The Blues were also bottom of the table when I got here, which appealed to my underdog sensibilities and also guaranteed that I’d be following a team that could only go up.

They finished 15th (out of 16) that first season and 11th last year. Their slogan this year is “They know we’re coming”, so expectations are high. I was sold and signed up as a season ticket holder before the season started. AFL is an amazingly democratic sport. Salaries are capped and new players are allocated to clubs on the basis of their lowly positions over the previous two years. Luckily for me, Carlton were crap for the five years before I got here, so they were entitled to a number of high draft picks. These superstars are now maturing into a half decent team and have started the season well.

Last Saturday however, presented the biggest challenge to date. Hawthorne are the reigning AFL champions with a couple of forwards who stand as giants and scare me even when I’m sitting in the 4th tier of the stand. They also have the biggest membership in Melbourne so the chance of a bumper crowd was also on the cards.
The weather did it’s best to help. We awoke to the sort of crisp, clear autumn day that you find in novels about New England. The early winter had disappeared and tee shirts were rescued from storage. Melbourne has nearly as many major sports venues as Dublin has pubs. Saturday’s game was held in the daddy of them all, the MCG, which was only fitting considering the epic that was about to unfold.

Hawthorne had the better of the first half but it was still close enough to allow fans from both teams to enjoy their half time Pot and Pie. We came back suitably refreshed for the 3rd period, or the ‘premiership quarter’ as it is known here. Apparently good teams only start playing after half-time, as though the proceeding period was just a rehearsal. Carlton used it to pull within 1 point of Hawthorne and it seemed they had obtained what our American cousins like to call, the ‘Big Mo”.

The Hawks weren’t reading the script however and Premiership champions don’t just lie down and die. They came at us like a train and were quickly 25 points up. Time was running out but as with all great sporting events, the true drama came in the last few minutes. For the first time all day, the bounces seemed to be going our way and we hit 5 scores without reply. This left us 5 points down with a minute left on the clock. Team sports are psychological at heart. Fear and courage can spread through teams quicker than the flu in a Mexican pig factory. Hawthorne drifted back towards their goal line as Carlton marched forward. The final winning play seemed inevitable.

And then it came. A long, looping pass that hung in the evening sky for an eternity. A gaggle of Hawks defenders stood beneath it, surrounding Carlton’s star forward, Brendan Fevola. As in most sports, defence is easier than attack. The defence just had to punch the ball away. Fev had to catch it cleanly and claim a famous mark.
As the drama demanded, Fevola caught it and stepped back to kick the winning goal. It was from an easier position than the eight successful ones he had already kicked. 70,000 people held their breath. The ball has to go through the posts cleanly in this game to count and at the last minute it grazed the post and with it our chances of one of the great comebacks disappeared.

Half the crowd went wild and the rest of us were left to wonder about the agony and ecstasy of sport. Except Fevola. He lay on the ground for ages as the crowd disappeared. And he seemed to be thinking that if sport is theatre, he always seems to find himself acting in tragedies.