OK, this post is slightly confessional, and I sort of hope it doesn't sound like bragging, well, it will, so I'll be really brief. One of my first ever relationships (as they say in bible studies and political studies) was with a local girl who played netball. It was at a time when I was very depressed and anti social and didn't have a lot of direction, so I would disappear under the pretext of going to library and looking for work and go to her house to watch TV and have relationships. The good thing about this was it was casual and secretive, but the really best thing about it was we met at a local sporting event, probably a public holiday meeting
Actually, the very best thing about it was she was really way out of my league. I think it was a bet.
So anyway, I hope this will encourage you to go to a local sporting event. And that's not a big team comes to town and plays a game for the peasants, Collingwoods VFL team style. That's real local down home in the mud at Kermandie local sport. To be honest here in Tasmania, local sport is dead except for small tiny pockets. The most spiteful local sport is probably the local basketball on the North West Coast, which regularly descends into chaotic on court rioting and freestyle rapping dissing the participants, but local football is now just an excuse to drink beer and eat lukewarm hotdogs. When I was growing up I lived on the back lot of Penguin football ground and it was always buzzing, with people abusing the umpires and cursing the parentage of people from East Devonport, while old ladies up the back of the stand would knit a jumper and somehow know what was going on in the game despite paying no attention. I learned to swear at Penguin, I had my first beer, Chokito and Cherry Ripe at Penguin, and I was home two minutes after the final siren. Sure, it was completely freezing, and usually quite pointless, but where else but 80s Tasmania could you see the WAGs of the players not wearing Gucci handbags or talking on the phone, but coming into the changerooms at 1/2 time with Paddle Pop sticks to scrape the mud off their boyfriends boots? And who could forget the local beauty contest, the Miss Queens Quest, will all the innuendo, smut and glamour that entailed in one night of all the delicious prawn cocktails and atrocious stand up comedy you could handle at the Wynyard RSL?
To further convince you, I've dug out the Football Record from rougly one year ago, June 16 2007, to find the essence of proper local sport. I read today about Cristiano Ronaldo interrupting a Munich service to point angrily at his watch and tell Wayne Rooney to get on with it, and I have a picture saved on this computer of Ashley Cole and Chezza posing in front on a white limo, but this, THIS, is what I consider real sport. take it away the Sorell football club notes...
Our Colts team have had two byes in a row and the overnight stay at Tubby's Evandale property last weekend for a team building exercise was well supporter with approx 20 participants. Wood chopping and Orienteering brought out the best in all of them whilst the culinary skills of the minders would put Jamie Oliver and the Iron Chef to shame.
I find that strangely uplifting. 20 people, one property, people opting to actually spend a weekend in Evandale of all places for some bonding. The idea that everyone chopping wood will make a better football team. Wondering how big Tubby's property was people were able to Orienteer and knowing someone said "I want to orienteer my way to the fridge" - and thinking about this wonderful weekend, I know that local sport will always be alive in Tasmania, as long as young footballers are stuck in the pissing rain chopping wood for Tubbys fire just to help the club and their own careers. The kids of Sorell, I salute you. Not only should you play local sport, you should watch local sport, you never know what will happen.
I didn't even need to write/blog about Cygnets Pimps and Pros fundraiser...
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