The second cup of Nescafe has gone cold and long formed a skin over it, while the stupid birds outside the window welcome the day in their raucous cacophony, the score is still nil-nil and the clock is edging closer to the dreaded penalties. 120 minutes of sitting on the coach, in the wee hours of a frigid Melbourne weekday, the flickering glow of the oversized tellie breaking the darkness with tongues of colour and the low hum of a crowd thousands of miles away on the other end of the globe. 120 minutes (almost now… the stupid, red time added on box comes up and the 4th official has added 7 minutes to this mind-numbing atrocity of a game) of being wrapped up like some sort of medieval monk in my blankets and struggling to muffle the howls of anguish to protect the sensitive ears of the smart members of family sleeping peacefully in the other rooms….

The old man calls from the other side of Melbourne, knowing without having to prearrange, that I’d be up, like thousands of others, watching the same shite, screaming over and over again, cursing our collective fate over 11 overpaid pricks kicking a pig’s bladder around the pitch … “What the fuck are they doing?”, “Why did the coach NOT put *insert random player here on?”, “they always do this to us”… the same old laments heard over a lifetime of watching this obsequious pastime of ours… I might have grown up, moved out, got married, had kids of my own but Im still the comrade in arms in the eternal football battle of our team(s) vs the world… The confessor, the psychologist, the teacher, the student but most importantly the fellow victim to this round ball malarkey.

I wanted to write something to question WHY we love this game so much? What makes football an obsession and a religion? A schoolyard game, no more intricate than marbles, chasey or down ball? A folly that can stop a war, unite a nation and divide a family all in the one breath… What makes it so different to all the other sports and games we play? The age old “argument” in Melbourne is that “Soccer is boring, they never score any goals and the players flop around all the time… its NOT manly”. Sports like AFL, NFL and Basketball rule supreme in some markets because of that very thing. There is an “event” every few minutes to excite the crowd and keep the natives satiated. Others like Cricket hide behind the attraction of gentlemanly refinement and technique while rugby MMA and other martial arts tap into our primeval drive to hurt and physically dominate rivals to prove superiority…. Football offers none (or very little) of this yet dominates the world outside of the US, China, India and Australia… why? Who is wrong and who is right? What makes a sport “exciting” or “entertaining”? Who gets to decide which is more valuable? Is the agony and ecstasy of anticipation over a whole match with possibly no “release” more valid than celebrating a score every few minutes? Is the 90th minute bicycle kick to seal a derby win (Yes Max Mikkola. That’s YOU son…. still smiling weeks later) NOT the ultimate orgasmic peak of fandom?

Now I get that, just like with all things, “football fan” is very generic term for such a multi-faceted approach to the game… People engage with football from all walks of life, from every strata of society. Every age group, gender, socio-economic background. From the Parliament house to the commission flat, from the academic to the street sweeper…. MY question is WHY? Why do we care so much for this otherwise frivolous pursuit? – Speaking to an AFL obsessed mate his connection to the actual sport being played seems a little ambiguous. Complaints about how “footy isn’t what it used to be” or “the rules change every season” are balanced out by “How good is it when a certain team scored more than a hundred points?” My claim that I would rather watch a nil – nil draw if its end to end than a 145 t0 24 point drubbing by my AFL team was met with disbelief? “Where is the fun in that?” was the question. “Where did you get a chance to celebrate?” Apart from a vague “ yeah but the football was sublime” my answers seem to pale into insignificance against this desire to be constantly amused…. Am I (we) wrong? Should football abolish the offside rule, make the goals triple the size and get rid of goalkeepers? What is that intangible magic in our sport that outsiders find hard to grasp?

My personal connection with the game is one of lack of choice. I consider myself blessed and cursed that football is the ONLY sport and all interaction is through that prism… All else is a sometimes-thrilling distraction. Other sports are great (some I like, some I don’t mind, some I really don’t get or bother with), the Olympics are awesome. Excitement, crowds, joint national pride.. they are all drivers to enjoyment. When Australia wins the Ashes or a yacht race or a synchronised swimming medal, the pride is shared but football is beyond that jingoism… Football (for me) is the feeling of club and culture. Of family and shared emotions. Of enduring bad times and sharing the good. Of belonging to a tribe of people. Not that we all share exactly the same values over everything but standing in the terraces and riding every kick and pass with our 11 lads on the pitch unites like no other possible factor in life. Perfect strangers are embraced and kissed, squabbles and arguments are put aside in the agony of defeat or the bliss of victory. My father, my uncles, my cousins “baptised” me into this faith long before the priests got their chance to have a go… South Melbourne Hellas is the religion I pass down to my kids and hope they do the same to theirs…

… meanwhile, keeper saved 2, all of ours went through, the early morning wake up is justified. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, just enough time for a quick shower and off to work…….

FOOTBALL IS LIFE!!!!!