Keep your eye on the red and the blue!
Need I say anything more, except for perhaps – stay true, and always be sure to “keep your eye on the red and the blue!”
by Nigel Dawe
Well, all-in-all I’m not sure where what I just saw sits in my overall experience of and yet undying loyalty to the Melbourne Demons. For a day that got underway so ‘promisingly’ with an article in the sports section of ‘The Australian’ about how Jack Viney (to the more or less stat and dimension) ‘is’ Ron Barassi re-incarnated in the greatest combination of colours known to man – red and blue. Not to mention the awe-inspiring front page of the ‘Herald Sun’ that featured no less than Jim Stynes’ very own family urging our team to ‘Do it for Dad’.
However fast forward a few hours and my first distasteful slither of journalistic creative license (to put it politely) is the seemingly accepted and utter farcical nonsense of a ‘Norm Smith curse’. I find the remote suggestion of such a thing fully-blown tripe and a sacrilegious tarnishment of a legacy that towers above all others in the game outright, let alone at the club we love.
For a bloke who ‘featured’ in 10 of this club’s 12 premiership successes and who I once saw implore in an old pre-colour TV interview: “I am Melbourne through and through!” – to suggest he is now concocting some beyond the grave vendetta against us is as fantastically far-fetched as it is outright treasonal, and I would challenge any one of the self-proclaimed know-it-all scribes peddling this ‘pitch’ to run it by Norm’s living protégée and arguable surrogate son – Ronald Dale Barassi – and see if they still have any teeth afterwards!
Anyway, I digress, I am skirting the major topic now, and that was the first half of a game which should have propelled us into a pre-destined showdown with the old foe – Collingwood in a Grand Final of all things, which was alas…not to be.
However, I am nothing if not the consummate optimist, the now rather tried and tested, out and out – Mr Glass Half Full, even at the darkest of darkest times, for I at least knew as our boys trudged into the rooms with 6 points to their name after an hour’s play that we had actually tripled our all-time lowest score of 2 points for an entire match, so we were well clear of that ‘distinction’!
But what a day, not to overly unpack or re-live again what took place before our wounded hearts and eyes, being the literary tragic I am I can’t go past two phrases that will forever sadly sum up for me the second preliminary final of 2018.
The first is by the great Aldous Huxley, who once chimed – “The martyrs walk into the arena en-masse, but they are crucified alone” – which was a pertinent line that quickly came to mind like a misdirected handball in your opponents forward line that results in a goal – sorry Jordan Lewis, I still deeply admire your output, presence and what you’ve brought to the club.
And the second ‘pearl’ I can’t offload from my mind is Ted Hughes’ missive, which I wish wasn’t so apt, but: “Like apprentice house painters in the company of architects” is how so many of our boys appeared in the heat of battle over there in the west.
And so when it’s all said and done, the most beautiful thing about our game I think is that it is one that ever affords you chances, absolute opportunities and reasons to go on – none more driving or pitch-fork prodding than that offered by redemption, and the eternally ‘re-granted’ moment to prove the world wrong and that you belong at the top of the tree, when you bide your time that is, and learn to steel yourself upon the searing coals of defeat.
That raised and re-dressed, I urge everyone to try to refrain from being overly critical, because none more-so than our players are disappointed right now. Show resolve, ‘support’ and take heart fellow demon die-hards, to rest assured that as each season passes we get one closer to re-living that greatest of all seasons – 1964, and thus need I say anything more, except for perhaps – stay true, and always be sure to “keep your eye on the red and the blue!”
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