By Maria Millers
Life Cycle by the late Bruce Dawe is a humorous but gently ironic take on how obsession with AFL football can take over at the expense of all else.
Even the timing of major life events such as weddings and honeymoons postponed till after the grand final.
He takes us through the life cycle of a fanatic from newborn to old age, ‘That passion persisting like a race memory, through the welter of seasons’ and ‘—the elderly still loyally crying Carn…(if feebly) unto the very end’ as decked out in club colours they’re holding out for the Holy Grail, their team’s victory. For them a strong emotional experience: a kind of emotional cleansing: a catharsis of sorts.
But what Dawe sees happening beyond the passion and the drama is the human need for community and belonging. Not unlike what religion used to provide, particularly when modern lives can often seem bereft of purpose and meaning. Dawe emphasises this with words like ‘rapture’ and ‘behold their team going up to heaven.’
Not everybody agrees with this positive view and see this obsession with the game as a distraction from more substantive issues facing us. Back in 1967 journalist Keith Dunstan felt this and founded the ‘Anti Football League’ with its own awards for those who ignored the football frenzy. If he were alive today, he would undoubtedly be critical of the endless panels and commentary in the media as if the country’s future solely rested on the outcome of big men chasing a small ball.
Moreover, since AFL left its local /suburban roots and become a national game, the game has changed. Players are now professionals with no day jobs as in the past and command huge contracts. Instances of players behaving badly (and spectators too) have tarnished the game. Accepting difference is improving but intolerance still exists: race, ethnicity, sexuality. Gambling has also entered the game. Thankfully there is more understanding of the future implications of head trauma/concussion and its potential for dementia.
But as Dawe says, for many the ‘covenant is sealed’ long ago, and ‘the tides of life will be the tides of the home team’s fortunes.’
This year’s final will be tinged with sadness for those who remember Ron Barassi and Kevin ‘Cowboy’ Neale who both died last week.
May the best team win.
Life Cycle by Bruce Dawe
When children are born in Victoria
they are wrapped in club-colours, laid in beribboned cots,
having already begun a lifetime’s barracking.
Carn, they cry, Carn … feebly at first
while parents playfully tussle with them
for possession of a rusk: Ah, he’s a little Tiger! (And they are …)
Hoisted shoulder-high at their first League game
they are like innocent monsters who have been years swimming
towards the daylight’s roaring empyrean
Until, now, hearts shrapnelled with rapture,
they break surface and are forever lost,
their minds rippling out like streamers
In the pure flood of sound, they are scarfed with light, a voice
like the voice of God booms from the stands
Ooohh you bludger and the covenant is sealed.
Hot pies and potato-crisps they will eat,
they will forswear the Demons, cling to the Saints
and behold their team going up the ladder into Heaven,
And the tides of life will be the tides of the home-team’s fortunes
– the reckless proposal after the one-point win,
the wedding and honeymoon after the grand final …
They will not grow old as those from the more northern states grow old,
for them it will always be three-quarter time
with the scores level and the wind advantage in the final term,
That passion persisting, like a race-memory, through the welter of seasons,
enabling old-timers by boundary fences to dream of resurgent lions
and centaur-figures from the past to replenish continually the present,
So that mythology may be perpetually renewed
and Chicken Smallhorn return like the maize-god
in a thousand shapes, the dancers changing
But the dance forever the same – the elderly still
loyally crying Carn … Carn … (if feebly) unto the very end,
having seen in the six-foot recruit from Eaglehawk their hope of salvation
