He's my home town hero (and he's 112)

So I was reading this morning in the Herald Sun (before I boycott it for going off about Alan Didak) about the Gippsland netball team (as you would know, netball has a special place in my heart) and how they didn't get a licence to be in the new Victorian State League. This was really sad to me, not just because the young gun of the team who was pictured, Mary Livesey, was super cute, and shoved up to the front of the photo little red dress Chinese girl style, while two of the older players were shoved up the back. It turns out the team will fold, which is something I always hate - any time a local sports team disappears I get really sad, unless it's Airdrie - because the community really suffers. I lost my Australian Rules team in Tasmania, Sandy Bay, who ridiculously became the Southern Cats, and didn't have a social club, due to economic rationalisation or some such gubbins, and one of my favourite ever teams, South Burnie, because they all smoked pot on the team bus (dude). Obviously, the Gippsland team folding ruins a lot of social events, causes bitterness and takes away something for people to do, but it's more than that, because you lose not just local heroes and identities (if Mary Livesey wants to move to Hobart, call me) but several levels of junior competition where the kids can get involved. At a time when Kevin Rudd is probably maybe possibly formulating Fatwatch to get the kids less tubby, and Grant Hackett is patronising us with his get fit campaign, why take away a sports team? Sport in places like Gippsland and Tasmania has always represented a vital element in community life, It's enough to almost make me write an angry letter to the Mercury...almost...

Our home town sports hero as best I can remember growing up in Penguin was a bloke called Bill Fielding. Puffing Billy they called him, and we all loved the bloke, and his mad skills on a football field. I think the major inspirational feat was that he was roughly 112 year olds, and played about 923 games. Any time some old bloke would yell out something like "I'm 50 and I could do better!" they would know they couldn't do better than our Bill, so it was a crap thing to shout out. I presume he retired to a farm and is one of those blokes who's able to walk into a pub and just say "easy fellas" and calm down any situation. Of course, the great thing about Bill aside from probably his right wing views (well, I presume he retired to a farm, being of that age) was his sphere of influence wouldn't have extended beyond Penguin. In Riana or Natone, someone else was the hometown hero, with apple cheeked girls lined up to be impressed by the football star. As the years have rolled on, the influence of local football heroes has diminished at the same rate of influence as the local team (hence why I'm outraged by Gippsland et al), and it's AFL stars who visit their home town once a year who seem to be more feted, which is just sad. In Penguin, it's Russell Robertson who they are most proud of - the Melbourne footballer who I knew as a kid, and who broke my calculator when I was a kid by kicking it off a balcony. He was actually in the pub the last time I set foot in Penguin, round about New Year in 2001, and he was playing pool and chatting away. Someone ran up to him, flicked his ears, and said "Hey! Well done! You came second!" because his team had lost the Grand Final and he was smiling because it was someone he knew, but really, you knew that if we wanted, he could have him killed. I find that with AFL footballers, their spheres of influences are now all encompassing - their associates more evil, their outlook much broader. The days of a local footballer who's idea of an entourage was their best mate Kev who bought them beer after a game and organised their testimonial and meat tray raffle are slowing dying, and it's really sad...

A staple of any local sports team is unquestionably the fund raising. Where an AFL team can simply conjure up a new multinational sponsor, the finances of local sporting teams depend on people buying tickets to meat tray raffles (you can be a smart arse about in your ad Luke Ablett, but I don't like that) and women selling lamingtons. My girlfriend, the netball player who I dated on my gap year (I prefer saying I was rested), was the best maker of lamingtons in the world, which was great for when we smoked funny things (thanks Kid Rock). She refused to share the recipe with me, and I think now works in a bakery, with piles of lamingtons being sold and no one buying the custard tarts (they were awful babe). I've mentioned before that on the North West Coast, the local identity around the football club in charge of the fundraising was the Queens Quest representative, a local footballers wife or, in a pinch, the girl with the best reputation for not being a skank, who would compete Miss World style to raise funds and interest in the local football team, and organise the working bees that were needed to keep everything painted. As a further sign of my world slowly dying, apparently men are now entering as Penguin's Stuart Whiley won the Queens Quest award in 2005 - that's somehow even less man than the guy on the Electrodry advert with the ginger tache. Anyway, this one time at the Penguin club rooms the prize was like 500 bucks or something, in cold hard cash, not just 500 bucks worth of lamingtons. Everyone was very impressed with the efforts of our Queens Quest representative and how chaste she was, and the MC announced the winner was someone called Johno (all football clubs have a Johno, or a Boof, but never both) who proceeded to get up, tell everyone they were a wanker, should get stuffed, and stick various things up their arse. Except when he got to the stage, the MC said "Nah mate, only kidding, you didn't win" and he had to go back to his seat with everyone returning the compliment. I just don't see this kind of hilarity coming out in a corporate, franchised Scott Wade future, or at an AFL club - unless Spider Everitt runs the raffle of course...

Of course, when a local sports team dies, the youth teams die off as well, which denies people their one lifetime moment of sporting glory. Mines are fleeting, long lost on muddy Tasmanian fields. My best moment was a soccer hat trick against Natone in the semi final of the school six a sides, on a freezing awful day at Montello - Montello, incidentally, a long time enemy of my school, with some ginger kid on their team who used to cry if they lost. I kicked him in the stomach one day. That might have been my highlight. Anyway, I tried out once for the local team when I was a kid, Burnie United - I know, I know, I lived in Penguin, but the population wasn't going to extend to a basketball team AND a football team, and besides, Penguin wasn't going to have a soccer team, way too gay - and I lined up shyly with a lot more talented kids. I had watched Rocky, I had watched that weirdly homoerotic film where Pele teaches the American kid how to do the overhead kick, that I always thought was called Flashback but which was called Hotshot, the video I rented out when I stayed with my friend when I had to hide in the cupboard to avoid being axed. I believed in miracles, I believed that this muddy field was my field of d...oh who am I kidding, I was rubbish, I didn't really do anything but faff about and get muddy a bit. I was definitely not identified, I had no Soccer Superstar style coming out (wait, that should be coming of age these days shouldn't it?). As I came off, I saw my Dad sitting in the car looking downcast, and my Mum said something like "Nae way would I a fucking picked ye son", I realised that thanks to local sport, I'd learnt a valuable lesson. Life wasn't fair, but life went on, and a new day would come - but my dreams died on that muddy field, and I realised I'd never play for Celtic, or even Riana. I think every day on local fields, courts, and courses, dreams are born and die, in seconds. I find that quite inspiring, and powerful. Local pride in Gippsland will go down now they don't have their netball team, no young 9 year old will win the game with a last second shot, no fat kid will blow a game with a turnover. It's the circle of life Simba, and it's slowly being lost...

Incidentally, Mary Livesey is 17...oh well, she should still move to Hobart, she'd get into Syrup pretty easily...