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  • The tragician blog
  • About this blog
  • Bulldog stories
    • The true believers
    • 'There's always next year': goodbye to 2011
    • Days like these: the preliminary final, 1997
    • Calling all Bulldog stories

It begins

24/3/2014

4 Comments

 
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“I wouldn’t care if we were playing it in Nilma Darnum,” says Bob Murphy, on the eve of game number 250.
“I’m just happy to be playing in Round 1.”


The buildup
I hear Danny from Droop Street ring into the Coodabeens on Saturday morning. This perennially depressed and morose Footscray supporter caricature (far too close to reality for my comfort) has not enjoyed good times over summer, he tells the panel.

'It was far too hot, my air conditioner has broken down, and you can't buy any new ones at all out our way,' he explains with the traditional western suburbs defeatist chip on the shoulder.

Surely, though, he could concede some cause for optimism.. haven't the Dogs recruited well? he is asked.

'Papering over the cracks', is Danny's summary.

'They made Griff captain and look at him - now his back is buggered.

'And we've got to go over to Perth to play. It will be typical us. We won't get within ten goals. The season will be as good as gone. We could be 0-7 with the teams we play with this draw.'

That could be disappointing, ventures the presenter. 'Disappointment? that's what we specialise in: disappointment!'

Danny's gloomy monologue always gives me a guilty chuckle, but it's the chuckle of recognition, one that makes me squirm in my seat. Has he actually been taking notes of some of my conversations?

And then there's always the moment of alarm. Danny's prediction could very well be right.

In praise of Bob Murphy

Later that day I also hear an interview with Bob Murphy.

He's describing the balance between joy and pain as a footballer. I'm surprised to hear him say that 95 per cent of the time that you play as a footballer is not enjoyable. A football contest is such a hostile environment, he says. 

'There's only really five per cent that is real joy, where it all comes together, feels effortless and it is all worthwhile.'

Every time I've heard Bob Murphy speak in the buildup to his 250 game milestone, his thoughts stop me in my tracks (he also provides a welcome relief from the Essendon saga and a counterpoint to that pair of Freedom Fighters against AFL Injustice, James and Tania Hird). 

Bob represents something in danger of being lost in football, a sort of grace, a generous, even noble vision that the game is bigger, grander and more mysterious than his individual place in it;  a respect and reverence for what has gone before him; and maybe even more unusually for footballers, a deep appreciation of what will continue afterwards when his time inevitably comes. This came from one of his interviews:

Ask him to list his memorable moments across a career that has included three preliminary finals, and Murphy will talk just as passionately about things far from the madding crowds.

He points to one from last week, when he shared a car ride to the Whitten Oval with Tom Liberatore, whose father Tony played in Murphy’s first game way back in Round 19, 2000, against Carlton.

“When I first got to the club Luke Darcy would pick me up to go to training and you would just sit there and shoot the breeze,” he said. “Now that I’m older, you get to do that with the young guys around here.

“It’s nice to see how the wheel turns. You feel as if you are repaying some sort of debt. That’s what I love about footy, just giving a bit back, aside from winning games of footy, which admittedly takes up a big chunk.

“I am sort of just enjoying it at the moment. I still think I can do it (play good football), but I don’t want to look too far ahead. Footy has a way of upsetting grand plans, and I don’t want that to happen.”

Murphy says he has learnt a lot about football and himself over a 249 game journey, and not all from his teammates or coaches. 

“You just pick bits from so many different people,” he said. 

“I know it’s almost a bit of a cliché about the property steward but Eddie Walsh… [had] that sort of quiet dignity I think is something that he certainly showed, he was here for such a long time.

“So many people through this club are not household names but they have that quiet dignity about them which is probably something that I love about this club,” he said.

The match begins

Danny from Droop Street couldn't have scripted it better. 

Within seven seconds, a routine West Coast training drill was enacted as Natanui tapped it effortlessly to a team-mate, who speared it lace up to one of their hulking forwards. (I was unable to see which one as my hands were covering my face in horror).

The Dogs rallied from this misfortune, and proceeded to put on a clinic. A clinic of everything you could do wrong on the footy field. 

I wondered if there had in fact been a Foxtel malfunction and instead of live footage, we were actually watching an instructional package put together by Brendan McCartney, inadvertently uploaded by the work experience kid: "Things we don't want to do, under any circumstances, on Sunday night."

There was the high, slow, looping handball to the flatfooted team-mate (bonus points if he was standing alongside Nic Natanui). A personal favourite featured: gifting back a goal from a wayward kick-out, which went straight to a West Coast player (he looked too embarrassed to even celebrate it, a bit like a tennis player who doesn't want to do an unsporting drop-shot against a badly wounded opponent). Then there was the inevitable sight of Shaun Higgins in the hands of the trainers. 

In the first quarter I feared that someone (our old nemesis Ian Collins?) had drawn up the 50 metre arc lines incorrectly. That was my explanation for the fact that the Eagles' forward line appeared to be a roomy zone where players glided effortlessly into abundant space. Ours in contrast had the chaotic confusion that used to reign on the first day of the clearance sales at Forges. A change of ends and an even worse second quarter put paid to that conspiracy theory.

We were listless, hapless, clueless, leader-less, and skill-less. Sitting forlornly on the couch to watch the onslaught, inventing new adjectives ending with -less to describe the performance was my only entertainment. 

I thought of Bob and his 95/5 per cent split between pleasure and pain, and wondered: if I weighed up my years following the Dogs, just how much could truly be described as enjoyment? And I felt sad for Bob that his five per cent of joy was not going to include memories of his milestone occasion, which will best be forgotten.

The aftermath

So where to from here for the Bulldogs and the Tragician? Apart from stooping to childish and immature tactics such as posting photos which demonstrate that at least we're above Collingwood on the ladder.. how do we regroup?

Step one: Look to the past for inspiration. My mum always says: "We lost our first two games in 1954 when we won the premiership." 

Step two: Appreciate that Round One throws up many results that are meaningless in the scheme of things. Remember, the Dogs had a thumping ten goal victory in Round One last year, and then lost the next seven. And don't forget that false dawn when we beat the Blues by ten goals in the opening round of 1989. Well, that ended up with us finishing second last on the ladder, having won only another five games for the year, just before the VFL wound up the club and attempted to merge us out of existence!!

Step three: Re-think the merits of  Step Two.
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Step four: Call for harsh decisions to be made, pronto, on three quarters of the playing group and reconsider the future of virtually all the coaches except Johnno and Bubba (because they're OUR favourite sons), and insist - no, demand - that brilliant new talent should be brought in immediately! (or reasonably soon). Practise pronouncing 'Bontempelli'.

Step five: Dredge up some self-serving excuses. The heat. The Eagles are actually a top four prospect. The umpires missed a critical decision when JJ was tripped (ok, we were already eight goals down). Always a tough gig over there. Several of our match-winning champions were missing (Griff and...umm...). 

Step six: calculate how long it will be until Jarvis Murphy, who looked adorable running through the banner with his dad and sister Frankie, can make his debut for us. 

I hope I'm there to see it.

4 Comments
Neil Anderson
25/3/2014 04:32:07 am

I think Danny from Droop Street should be known as the Patron Saint of Tragicians.
I also heard his comments on the Coodabeens as I waited in anticipation for our boys to run out the following day. Nine days after the first match of 2014 and a bloody long time since the last fruitless September.
When Danny said we would probably get done by ten goals any positivity I had for the new season disappeared. Memories of the Carlton-swapped Kennedy kicking ten? goals against us and Cox reaching over our entire back-line to mark repeatedly came flooding back.
But then by chance I watched a replay of Bulldogs V Eagles at Etihad last year. I wasn't going to watch it initially because I forgot we actually won that match.
So as part of that mighty rollercoaster that we're on, I was reasonably positive just prior to the match.
The match started and all I could do was hang on to the bar in front of me as the roller-coaster plummeted down.
The nightmare start. The whole shebang.
That's when all the Dannyisms start to take over. The boundary-riders telling us it was still over thirty degrees. We never win over here anyway and the classic prediction we will probably get beaten by ten goals.
Whenever we face an impossible task to win, I always say to myself, " I hope we can keep it under a ten-goal loss."
So in true 'Tragician' form for most of the match, that was what I was thinking as I imagined next-day's headlines screaming words such as 'thumping,' 'shelacking' and the old favorite, ' Dog Day Afternoon'.
Would you believe we ended up one point shy of a ten-goal defeat. The Coodabeens would probably say that made it a thumping rather than a shelacking.
Sad for Bob Murphy, his family and his fans to experience that result so far from home. So much an after-thought match cobbled together by AFL fixture-riggers.
Someone like Bob Murphy deserves better than that. As I commented on the Almanac, he looks like being another champion footballer and person to be denied the chance to even play in a Grand Final.
Thanks for your calming words on what was a terrible day in Perth. They bring me a bit closer to the wider Bulldog family and I don't feel quite so isolated with my thoughts.

Reply
Bulldog Tragician
25/3/2014 05:48:28 am

Danny is funny because he's real and he's us!

As Guru Bob used to say about Tony Lockett: "There's a little bit of Tony in all of us. And a lot left over for Tony himself."

I too had the nightmare vision of Kennedy kicking double figure goals, ably supported by Darling and Natanui. That awful 100+ loss is still seared into my memory. It hasn't been a happy hunting ground for us though in fairness many teams struggle there.

There WERE some good signs that in the interests of my Tragician persona I downplayed - how good are Jackson Mcrae and Lachie Hunter! and even though he was not prominent, the way Stringer attacks the ball still convinces me that he will be in the competition's best 10 players within the next few years.

We have a lot of upside, but I wish the media would stop applying the blowtorch to Norf therefore ensuring that, as Danny would say, 'They will come out firing and we don't have a chance in hell this week.'

Thanks for your comments Neil and hang onto that bar for the rollercoaster - I think it's still going to be a tough year and the improvement is likely to be sporadic and often frustrating.

PS My mother emailed me yesterday to say 'I would have been happy with a five goal loss but not ten.' Agh, the Tragician spirit, where did it come from!

Reply
Neil Anderson
25/3/2014 06:06:04 am

I should have mentioned Lachy Hunter and Jackson McCrae, the future of the Buldogs. Unfortunately it takes me until about Wednesday to come out of my depression after such a loss. And you're right, I wish they'd shut up about bloody Norf seeking redemption on Sunday. Also in true Tragician luck, I see Goldstein has been to Lourdes and his left arm is as good as new!
Also what has happened to our great white hope and new CHF Tom Williams? Tell me he's not in rehab again!

Reply
Bulldog Tragician
25/3/2014 07:19:41 am

It's a running family joke that whenever we play Norf there is some sort of milestone to lift them, usually involving Boomer Harvey. I will anxiously await news that it is Glenn Archer's great aunt's 63rd birthday and the boys are incredibly fired up to do it for her! Not that having the Bob Murphy milestone game did much for our own motivation.

As for poor Williams - he has had such a rotten run of luck. I'm not sure what his current injury status is, but I suspect there has been another setback. I went to the website to find out and was taken aback because the Round One player review is now called the "White King Washup". What the hell !!!!!

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    about the Bulldog Tragician

    The Tragician blog began in 2013 as a way of recording what it is like to barrack for a perennially unsuccessful team - the Western Bulldogs.
    The team, based in Melbourne's west, had only won one premiership, back in 1954, and had only made one grand final since then.

    ​To the astonishment of the Bulldog Tragician, the Bulldogs pulled off an extraordinary fairytale premiership in 2016, all captured in weekly blogs and then collated in the book: 'The Mighty West' by the Tragician Blog author Kerrie Soraghan.

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