Football Stories

Hi Readers,

Thought I'd give you a rest from my deep philosophical writings from the past few days !

As much as they are very therapeutical for me to write, I still need to consider my audience !!

So what better way than to regale you with some funny and not so funny experiences I have had on the football field, back in the day when I played this great Australian game.

I can guarantee that some of you who read this will have similar memories triggered, please feel free to add them in the comments. You can be totally anonymous !!

Laney

I have been very good mates with a bloke who I'll refer to by his nickname, even though he'll recognise who I'm talking about. I'm pretty confident he wouldn't sue me !!

Laney was an exceptional footballer, highly talented and sought after by many clubs.

At the time I was playing for a team called Buninyong, and Laney was recruited by a rival team, Springbank. 

Ironically, a few years later Laney and I played together at Springbank !

Anyway, as usual, I digress. Don't I every post ?

Laney had been unable to play for a year due to a serious knee injury, something that is an unfortunate and all too common thing that happens in Australian Rules Football (for my overseas readers) If you are unlucky enough to "do a knee", it's usually a minimum of 12 months away from the game before it is strong enough to play again. There are always exceptions of course, but that's the norm.

As our two teams were playing each other that weekend, Laney and his wife came and stayed with Jenny and I for the weekend as we were all great friends.

Of course, we went to the game the next day in seperate cars so that our team mates wouldn't see that we were mates.

At the start of the game, before the first bounce it is usually a tradition to shake the hand of your opponent. As Laney and I weren't direct opponents, but playing near to each other, we walked across to shake hands.

For some reason, he had this cheeky smirk on his face as he approached me.

Just as we were about to shake, he quickly did a little spit into the palm of his hand then grabbed mine and shook it warmly.

All the while with a smirk on his face.

I can still remember how slippery it felt.

Before I could do anything else, or withdraw my hand and wipe it clean, some of my team mates who witnessed this immediately piled on Laney  and gave him a few well placed punches and roughed him up for doing what they saw him do to me.

Poor Laney was covering his head as the punches rained down, while I'm trying to stop my team mates by yelling "Stop, he's a mate of mine, he was just playing a prank !!"

Eventually they relented, but my team mates were watching him closely for the rest of the game and doing all they could to make him earn every kick.

Didn't work that well though.

We got smashed, and I think Laney kicked around 10 goals and was best afield !!!

What makes this great game so strange at times was that after the match the players and supporters from both teams did the usual gathering afterwards in the clubrooms for a few beers, and I introduced Laney to my team mates.

He hit it off with them immediately, and dominated the after match festivities just as much as he did on the field !!!

As I said earlier, I ended up playing alongside him a few years later, but playing against him was just as much fun.

When the supporters are rougher than the Players

This is another tale from when I was playing for Buninyong,

We were playing against a team who at that time we had a fierce rivalry with, Bungaree.

For some reason these games always ended up with lots of fist fights and players doing their darndest to inflict as much pain as possible on their opposite numbers.

The game started well, everyone going in hard, but none of the expected fireworks seemed like eventuating at all.

Yes, there were some hard hits, but all within the rules, but none of the players felt there was any need to take things further.

The game was actually really enjoyable to play as we were all doing what we were meant to be doing, rather than worrying about trying to take off an opponent's head !!!

The same couldn't be said about the spectators though.

I think they came expecting to see fireworks on the ground, but as the game wore on, the likelihood of this occurring seemed more remote by the minute.

As our games last around 100 mins, longer when the breaks are included, the amount of beer being consumed around the various fire drums place around the ground to warm the spectators increased markedly.

Not satisfied with hurling abuse over the fence to the opposing teams, the spectators started hurling abuse at each other.

As the amount of beer going down increased, so did the abuse and threats to each other.

Pretty soon a few scuffles broke out amongst the spectators, which was quite amusing for us as players, as usually we would provide this entertainment !!

However, late in the game an almighty scuffle broke out in the crowd, over an area of roughly 40m wide.

It was on for young and old, but the game kept going.

Pretty soon, a few people were thrown over the fence and onto the ground and the melee went up a few notches.

Within a few minutes there must have been 50-60 spectators covering one end of the ground having a good old ding-dong and doing all that they could to remove each other from the human race !!!

As for us, the players who were sort of expected to be doing this instead ?

The umpires stopped the game, and the players from both teams gathered in the middle of the ground and watched incredulously the scene that was playing out before us.

I can still remember having a bit of a laugh with the opposition players, as they did with us. We were all mingling freely and commenting on what we were seeing as the police eventually came and cleared things up.

How strange was it, that the people who were sort of expected to have some fireworks ( the players ) ended up being the ones witnessing it !!

The game restarted, I forget who won, but I can remember the abuse each team copped from the opposing supporters as we left the field, and how players from each team were doing all that they could to shut their own supporters up as we just couldn't see the point of it. We were in more danger from the opposition supporters than the opposition players!!

Maybe they were all just frustrated that we didn't provide the expected fireworks, so they just created some for themselves instead.

Happy Birthday Rails

For this story, I was no longer playing for Buninyong, but had switched clubs and was now playing for Springbank.

Once again, to prevent lawsuits, I'll stick to nicknames !!

One of my team mates, a bloke who I went to Boarding school with was Harry, and he was playing for Springbank too. And for this story, it once again involves Bungaree.

Bungaree and Springbank are two small districts on the outskirts of Ballarat. 

Pretty much everyone is related in some way to each other, but come Saturday in football season, all bets are off. I've never witnessed so much venom between two teams before !!

And then once the game is over, everyone is friends again !!

Digressing again 🤭

Harry once played in another local competition, and so did this other player who was today playing for Bungaree. His name was 'Rails".

Rails and Harry had played in opposing teams, and had built up what I'd describe as a "respectful hatred" for each other.

Now they were in the same competition again and just happened to be playing on each other this day.

Just as I mentioned in the Laney story above, just before the game started we all went to shake hands with our opponents.

Harry walked to his position to be met by a sneering Rails who shoved his hand at Harry and sarcastically hissed "Well, well, this must be my birthday !!"

Harry shook, but said nothing and didn't enter into the banter from Rails.

Obviously Rails thought this was going to be a great day for him as he was clearly intent on inflicting as much pain as he could on Harry.

The game was played and to cut a long story short, Harry made Rails look like a statue. He was running rings around him, jumping over him for marks and kicked a bag of goals as we went on to a great win over Bungaree.

It's always a tradition to shake the hand of your opponent after the game, as Harry walked over to a very sheepish, down trodden and embarrassed Rails, he put out his hand and said just three words.

"Happy Birthday Rails !!"

Bullets

There seems to be a pattern here with a team that features in these stories !

Yep, it's Bungaree again.

We had a team mate who had a reputation as being a bit loose, both on and off the field.

On this day he seemed more agitated than usual, and a few of us were more than bit aware of this as we ran onto the field.

Rather than doing the usual hand shake before the game started, he was going up to different players and chesting them and saying something very quietly into their face before pushing them away.

My opponent mentioned this to me by saying "You'd better get that bloke off the field, he's dangerous"

I asked why and my opponent opened his hand and showed me.

"Your team mate told me that if I get any more than a few kicks I can expect a few of these through my car window tonight"

In his hand was a live bullet !!

This team mate had taken it upon himself to go out and threaten a few key players from the opposing team by taking some bullets out onto the ground and issuing them to a number of players in the hope that he would totally put them off their game.

Surely he wasn't serious, but as we knew what he was capable of, we alerted our coaching bench and he was ripped off the ground immediately.

He still remained around the club for a little while after that, but I don't think he was ever selected to play for our team again.

What might have been seen as joke by him was clearly taken seriously by the rest of us.

Dirty

This story does not involve Bungaree !!!

However, it does involve my own flesh and blood, one of my brothers who we nickname 'Dirty'. If you want to know why, just ask him!!!

Dirty was playing for his local team in NSW and had a particular knack for putting off his opponents.

Overseas readers, this next bit is for you. 

In Australian rules, if a player takes a mark (catches the ball) or is given a free kick (penalty) an opposing player stands where the infringement/mark occurs and puts their hands up to cover that player as they take their kick. 

This is called standing the mark.

By putting your hands up high and wide it gives the player with the ball less chance (hopefully) of getting the ball past you, so they have to take extra steps backwards in order to create space to be able to kick the ball.

 Dirty worked out a way to combat this however.

If he received a free kick or took a mark, and the game result was pretty much already decided ( he played in a poor team then) he would make the person standing the mark really earn their stripes.

Rather than kick it over their outstretched arms, he would just kick it really low and hard and hit them in the stomach ( or lower 🥴) with the ball, leaving them doubled over in pain, while he and everyone else was usually doubled over in laughter !!!

He said that this was especially effective when using a wet ball !!

The result ?

Next time he received a mark or free, the player on the mark would be extra nervous, as he was in two minds as to whether he would use his hands to cover the space above his head in order to help the team, or cover the space between his legs to preserve his chances of being able to add to the human race at a later date !!

Dirty said that this was one of his ploys, but secretly I think he may have just been covering up the fact that at such a late stage in the game he just didn't have the energy left to roost the ball any higher than this.

Still, I'd be very wary !!

Mr Andropolous

As I mentioned earlier, I played most of my football for Buninyong, then switched clubs to play for Springbank. These two teams played in the same league.

I'll protect names here for obvious reasons !!

In order to swap clubs back then, clubs needed to complete a clearance form and had to have permission to swap players.

Clubs would usually have no trouble doing this as players often left the district or came from other districts. Just swapping clubs in the same league was often a little problematic, and often clubs would refuse to clear players if they felt they had no good reason to seek a switch.

This was what happened to me.

Buninyong weren't prepared to release me, while Springbank were quite happy to take me.

Leading up to our first game, I kept asking my new club if I had been released yet.

 "Yep, you'll be right" was what i'd get.

Game day comes and I ask if I'm okay to play and I get "Hmmm, we might just have a small problem". That was it.

Instead of getting my kit from the car, I just waited around, expecting not to play.

At the last minute a club official runs up and says "Moose, get your gear on, you're right to play"

Beauty !! I play and our team loses (hopefully not because of me ! ) and I'm looking forward to a great season with my new club.

However...

I must point out that I travelled to the game with a friend who was the Umpire for that match.

Umpires receive a list of each team and their numbers to sign before the game.

In the car going home it was very silent for some reason and I couldn't figure out why.

Then my friend turns to me and says slowly "Tell your club to get their S%$T together before next week !!"

He then goes on to say that as he read through the list of players, he saw my number with my name next to it, but my proper name had been scribbled out and something like D Andropolous written beside it instead !!!

Clearly I hadn't been cleared to play, so a fake name was used instead.

I sweated out the next few days, expecting a knock on the door from the Football League Secret Police, thankfully I was safe.

But I did make sure for certain that I was okay to play the next week, under my own name !!

All sorts of weather

Football is a Winter sport, and playing in Ballarat was an experience, as it is renown for having very bleak winters.

Many others who have played the game on really cold days would have been through this as well I'm sure.

During the breaks at 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 time the players are given water and cordial to replenish fluids.

On some of the really bleak days when you are shivering and covered in mud, the last thing you want is a cold drink !

I remember this one day in particular when we weren't even sure if the game would go ahead due to the weather, the fluid replenishment took a drastic turn.

As we gathered in our huddle at 1/4 time, the usual cordial and water was there, but another option was being offered also.

Hardly what you might recommend to a group playing sport, but a few bottles of the traditional Stone's were being passed around as an alternative to the usual offerings.

I'd be safe in saying that just about every player had a swig ( or two) before heading back to recommence the game.

While it probably had no physical benefit, the psychological effect was huge !!

And just to show how bleak it could be at times, check out the condition of the ground here.

In the background there is just a small strip of green, the rest of the ground was mud.

And not just soft mud, but thick gooey mud that your boots would sink into.

No chance of the ball bouncing, it just got stuck and at every opportunity there was just a wrestle of players ( a new collective noun ??) trying to get it.

Usually players would just try and kick it off the ground, so instead of trying to mark it, you were more often than not trying to protect your nether regions !! (Refer to the Dirty story above )

And this photo ?

In what was a very bleak year for Buninyong that year, I think we won only one game for the year, and it was the last round and we only snuck in by the meagerest score.

Still, I remember it as being my most enjoyable year of football with Buninyong.

We didn't have much to celebrate during the year, hence the banner, but that is what made my time with this club so memorable.

Well Readers,

There are many more sports stories to share, but that's it for today.

Consecutive days and consecutive posts - what will it be like when I eventually get back to work????

Until my next post...

Cheers 😁