Covered in mud, brow creased against the falling rain, I looked back at the ground as I made my way through the gate for my last ever footy half time. I took a moment to capture the miserable image in my inner camera’s memory drive and, like the playing surface with water, I was flooded with emotion. I was half way through my last game of footy, a grand final no less, and was approaching a life playing no competitive sport.
I’ve always loved playing sport. It was two sports for me, footy and cricket. I was always better at cricket, and played a lot of games from age nine to about 33, but family and work made it obvious that I had to give it up. That was ok, at least I still had footy.
I was never all that much good at it, which was part of the joy. I had absolutely no expectations of myself and could revel in turning up with no pressure and have a red hot crack at it. Scrapping and competing, fighting to make position, or out muscle an opponent, and then coming out with the ball and getting it out to the advantage of one of my more talented team mates was, for me, a joy.
Yep, I’ve always loved it, initially just playing, but in recent years the social aspect too. Footy club blokey stuff was never my go, but by the time you get to vets the blokes still hanging on and playing are pretty much all at the same place in life. All of the hero, knob stuff is gone and all that is left is a bunch of dads all escaping the pressure of life for a scrap of time.
Cricket for me didn’t really quite have the same alpha male thing going on, although I spent some time at a Premier Cricket Club and a Sub-District Cricket Club that was not all that enjoyable. At local level the blokes all seemed friendly and up for some banter with everyone. Perhaps its like the old saying, if you’re on a train and there’s no weirdo, the weirdo is you. Whatever the case, in footy I grew up loving playing for playing’s sake and tolerated a culture that didn’t suit me, while in cricket I played for the feeling of doing well, struggled somewhat with expectation, but enjoyed the culture.
The actual sport of cricket is a cruel mistress. Unforgiving. There is no greater joy than making runs, and nothing worse than failing. It’s a stats-based game, and while the stats can lie, often they don’t. They definitely do enable every bloke at your club who is under you the capacity to judge, regardless of past results or any other factors that may not appear on the scorecard.
I had some incredible individual highs in cricket, and nearly some great team highs as well. These, of course, led to some lows. Those team lows never got me too down but, perhaps selfishly, the personal ones did. By the end of my time in cricket it was a relief that my life, through work and family, did not allow me to play. Reality would also suggest that the increasing load each of those aspects of my life was having was impacting my ability to perform. Whatever the case, I no longer wanted to play.
Footy, as always, was different. Even now I don’t want to have retired. My last game was in August, and by the AFL finals in September I was watching one of the Melbourne games when all of a sudden I felt from within the unmistakable desire to play. It’s a feeling I can’t describe, but I’ve had it as long as I can remember. If I see footy, hold a footy, talk footy, I want to play footy. But that last season was so hard. I wasn’t really wanting to play during the year.
The very reason I loved to play had become a compelling reason to stop; I’m not good enough. All of my wins are through effort, and not talent. Whenever I walked off feeling ok about how I’d played I was wrecked. I’m 38 years old now and a lot of my working life is spent sitting down. When I go home I’m fatigued but trying to muster the time and energy for my kids - talking with them, reading to them, playing with them, disciplining them. You know, being a dad.
Playing footy became the last thing on my mind. No time for training, no time to exercise, no time for footy. Having my kids starting to play sport means our weekends are jammed full of stuff, and me playing footy increasingly seemed like a selfish desire. It was their turn.
My last footy moment is a premiership with an ace bunch of blokes, defending our flag. The actual last moment has me tackling a bloke as Healesville made a last desperate attempt at taking the day. I didn’t know how long was left in the day and was the last man in the way. The man with the ball was charging forward and made an attempt to baulk. I lunged and wrapped myself around him, pulling him down.
There was a cheer from the ground, from the bench, from the crowd. Then the siren. Joyous scenes erupted and man-love was on display for all to see and enjoy. Hugs and tears and laughter and beer. I had played my part well, and it was a nice moment, but truth be told my tackle didn’t win the day. Others had done that, but it was a great moment for me nonetheless. It’s a memory I have forever. It is the perfect ending to my 26 year footy career, and it’d be stupid to ruin it by going on when everything says to stop.
At 3:07am, while still up the morning after the game, I sent out a tweet summing things up, I think, quite well: “We won!!! I’m ridiculously happy and sad at the same time. Hard bloody game of footy. What am I going to do now?”
What indeed? I love my family, and my work, but everyone needs stuff that is just for them, something that relieves the pressure, the weight on their shoulders from life. Perhaps one of these years when the kids are older and things are sort of easier I can take up cricket again. But that doesn’t help me now, and even if it did would that decrease pressure? My shoulder is knackered and I can’t play tennis. I suck at golf. I’ve enjoyed some running in the past, but usually my motivation for that is to prepare for footy.
What to do now? I don’t know. Maybe I can train with the team from time to time, just to stay out there involved and having a kick. Maybe I can fill in if they’re short here or there...
Follow Greg Gibson on Twitter: @GregGibbo28