Saturday 30 March 2013

Paradise Lost - Paradise Regained


Paradise Lost – Paradise Regained - Hawthorn 2012 to 2013


The new AFL season is upon us and like most football pundits, my thoughts have turned to the poetry of John Milton. In the seventeenth century he prophesised Hawthorn’s tragic loss in the 2012 Grand Final in his epic poem, ‘Paradise Lost’ – 12 books of verse that tells the story of the fall of man, from the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden and descent into hell.

A clearer allegory of the 2012 Grand Final you couldn’t hope to read. The 12 books represent the year 2012, and though his surname is not given, it is quite clear that ‘Adam’ is Adam Goodes. Milton even predicts the lasting effect that this match, or as he paints it, our descent into hell, has on Hawthorn fans, asking “What hath night to do with sleep?”

But he assuages us as well with a vision of a better dawn, writing, “This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.”

He even offers some inspirational titbits that Clarko could do worse than include in his pre-match address ahead of the Round 1 game against Geelong: “Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n”.

And should we meet Sydney again in the big one, Clarko might like to burst forth with,

“What though the field be lost?
All is not Lost; the unconquerable will, 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And the courage never to submit or yield.” 

As long as the boys pick up on the key phrases ‘revenge’ and ‘immortal hate’ they should be fine.

So while Paradise Lost tells gives an unhappy account of last year’s Grand Final, it does contain clues of future redemption, none more so that the sequel, Paradise Regained, published in 1671 – an even 300 years before our second flag. Coincidence? Methinks not.

Paradise Regained is based on the Gospel of Luke (Hodge) and his account of the Temptation of Christ – a fairly straight forward parable about Satan (rival clubs) trying to tempt Christ (Buddy) with better offers. But it also plays on the idea of reversals, thus all that is ‘lost’ in the original poem (the 2012 premiership) is ‘regained’ in the follow-up (the 2013 premiership).

A deep textual analysis of Paradise Regained will reward attentive readers with many similar parallels between the fate of man and the fate of Hawthorn. Reading the two poems together not only reminds us of what occurred in 2012, but more tellingly, reveals what will occur in 2013 – a Hawthorn premiership as told in the Gospel of Luke Hodge.


‘Malceski does murder sleep’


Milton’s existential enquiry, “What hath night to do with sleep?” is not the only literary antecedent that speaks to Hawk fans in the wake – and I use the word in all of its meanings – of the Grand Final, for no lesser figure than Shakespeare also offers a hint of our future when he writes:

"Sleep no more!
Malceski does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,-“

For what Hawk fan hasn’t been jolted awake by a sudden and blood curdling vision of Malceski’s match sealing goal floating through the big sticks. And once awake, who can regain innocent slumber without first rolling through a loop of truly shocking moments; Buddy’s two first quarter misses, Mitchell giving away 50 metres and a goal when all the momentum was with the Hawks, Buddy and Gunston’s final quarter misses, Young tripping over his own feet in the goal square…on it goes in an endless loop.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven” writes Milton in Paradise Lost. Or, equally, it can just make an ongoing hell. In the days and weeks after the Grand Final my mind to the exclusion of all other thought simply replayed these horror moments from the match.

English writer Martin Amis estimates that the average heterosexual male has approximately 1,000 ‘sex thoughts’ a day; from idle, passing notions when a pretty girl walks by, to deliberate, full-blown fantasies about a desirable women. In the weeks after the Grand Final, I was operating at a similar ratio, but instead of thinking about lingerie and lipstick, I was dwelling on Grand Final passages that turned bad. Indeed, it’s taken all of summer for these dark imaginings to dwindle to a manageable handful of GF horror moments. And thank God, because I can finally get back to my allotted quota of sex thoughts and fantasies…just in time for Round one.

The Young and the Restless



Footballers make strange decisions during games. You’ve only got a nanosecond to locate a target and execute your kick or dish off a handball before being tackled by some sweaty oaf, so it’s no surprise that players panic and fumble or make the wrong decision.

But outside the pressure of a match situation, when you’ve got time to consider all of the factors, weigh up the whys and why nots, deliberate over the moral rights and wrongs of any given range of possibilities, it becomes surprising, if not unthinkable, that a nice, polite Hawthorn player with a neat haircut, no visible tatts and all of his teeth would choose to move to Collingwood. Of all teams!

I mean I get it if a player wants to return home, or is offered the captaincy somewhere, but to just move to Collingwood? To fall back on the age-old complaint, who can understand the Young?

As a rule, I don’t ‘Boo’ former Hawthorn players who move to other clubs. To have worn the brown ‘n’ gold into battle is perhaps the highest achievement to which any human can aspire; well, short of enjoying a torrid night of passion with Scarlet Johanssen or P.J. Harvey that is.

I’m always happy to see former Hawks succeed, whether they’ve been delisted, returned home or just want to seek out greater opportunity at another club. But to leave Hawthorn to go to Collingwood is charting a whole new and shadowy moral path. As my friend Chan-Tha said, “He’s dead to us now.”

Even worse, I read an article where Clinton Young talked about using last year’s Grand Final loss as a spur for greater success this year. Hold on! That’s our Grand Final loss – not Collingwood’s. You can’t appropriate our tragedy for Collingwood’s dark purposes. How dare you!  Instead, Mr Young, perhaps you should reflect on the fact that if you hadn’t fallen over your own two clumsy left feet in Sydney’s goal square during the final minutes of the match, we might have actually won the Grand Final!

While I won’t spit on him as he walks down the race (after all, I’m not a Collingwood fan), nor do I wish serious injury on him, (though I do think in making his decision he might have at least considered Hawthorn’s patience and expense when he was out injured for the best part of two seasons), and while I may not “boo’ him when he collects a possession against us, I might emit a low-fi hum of disapproval. At least Issac Smith now has a full-time job running down the left-hand wing.

Lake’s Entrance



Our big signing over summer was Bulldog defender Brian Lake. The basis for this signing was that we need a big defender to deal with ‘monster forwards’ such as Tippet and Cloke, who both played well against us in the finals and who The Cobbler was unable to deal with. Of course we won our respective finals against Adelaide and Collingwood, but then lost to a team without such a ‘monster’. But now that Tippet has gone to Sydney, we may yet need Lake in a big game this season.

Lake has already distinguished himself by getting arrested in Sorrento over summer. It’s not unheard of for a high profile player to have a couple of drinks too many on a balmy summer evening; it’s even not that unusual for such a player to become involved in a scuffle or a fracas of some sort; nor is it particularly uncommon or remarkable that such a player might get himself arrested over such an incident; but where Lake distinguishes himself is that not only he, but his wife was also arrested!

Who has the sort of wife that can become so unruly that she is arrested at a beachside pub? What sort of people are we inviting into our club?

I was sceptical when we first recruited Lake – it seemed to be a media driven decision – and his arrest with his wife doesn’t exactly dispel my doubts. I mean she’s got to make polite conversation with Mrs Hodge and Mitchell, and whoever Buddy is squiring that week, preferably without getting into a fight with the opposing WAGs.

Of course it could be that both Brian and his better half are bringing to the club just the ruthless ‘no-holds-barred’ attitude that we need to succeed. In any case, I’ll happily eat my words, when they drape the Norm Smith medal around his neck later this year.


Save the Franklin



The biggest story over summer at Hawthorn was of course, Buddy’s decision to hold off the renegotiation of his contract until the end of the season.  A straight-forward enough business decision you’d think, and an announcement that pretty much draws a line under the topic. If only…

As the football media keep repeating, this decision simply represents the new reality of free agency. If that is the case and this will become commonplace, then why don’t the media accept their own analysis and stop banging on about it?

Quite aside from whether this issue becomes a distraction for Hawthorn and Franklin, it’s certainly going become a bore for the rest of us.

This morning as I write this, apropos of nothing, Jake Niall has an article in The Age about how there are not yet any offers from rival clubs. Firstly, of course not – because he’s under contract to Hawthorn for a whole season yet. But more importantly, it means there’s no story. Niall has written 12 paragraphs saying that there are no developments in this story. So another way to approach this reality might be to write nothing – just putting it out there Jake, Caroline et al.

This follows revelations that Franklin was drunk and ‘out of sorts’ at the Grand Prix. Journalists were quick to link this incident to his decision to put off contract talks, tracing a pattern of wayward behaviour that will see him leave the Hawks. Instead, it should be viewed in its correct context – which is, what else is there to do at the Grand Prix but get drunk? Once you’ve seen a couple of cars speed past, not a lot changes. Getting drunk at the Grand Prix is not only understandable, it’s really the only normal response to being there. Buddy was just behaving as any rational person would, ‘God, this is dull, pour me another schnapps.’

Referring to movie stars of the 50s, with whom he was intimate, American author James Salter writes in his memoir: "The truth is, in stars, their temperament and impossible behaviour are part of the appeal. Their outrages please us. The gods themselves had passions and frailties – these are the stuff of the myths; modern deities should be no different."

I don’t know how to interpret his decision to put off contract talks, but it might simply be that he thinks he’ll be worth more at the end of another season. It might be that if he can win another premiership with Hawthorn he’d consider going back to WA, or it might be that he wants to take a year off to trek around South America, run with the bulls in Spain, work with the poor in Calcutta or solve the Middle East crisis. All of them will be just fine with me, so long, of course, that he kicks 100+ goals and we win the flag.

And anything so long as he doesn’t go to Collingwood, Carlton or Essendon.

Thursday 28 March 2013

Season 2013 - Preface


There’s no dandies in Craigieburn


Hawthorn v North Melbourne practice match - Saturday 16 March 2013


The hallowed turf at Highgate
Footy season was upon us in a matter of minutes.  Just a few days after a record breaking hot spell of eight days above 32 degrees Celsius, we were still enjoying balmy autumn weather when my son and I decided to trek out to the Badlands of Craigieburn for Hawthorn’s practice match against North Melbourne.


Our departure was delayed while we applied sun screen, but by the time we arrived at Highgate Reserve, the temperature had plummeted, the wind was up and driving rain was spearing us as we walked into the ground. Footy season arrived while we were in the car!


The Hawks were 4 goals to 2 in front when we arrived and there was a good crowd in; a couple of thousand Hawks fans and a couple of hundred North fans – so the entire Kangaroos membership base. The field looked good and there was a pleasant old-style suburban footy atmosphere, with kids kicking footballs on the grass embankment and the mass pack forming behind the goals every time a player lined up a shot, which naturally enough turned into a sprawling stacks-on pile as kids fought over the ball – until Security arrived of course. All it lacked were cars parked around the boundary with horns to signal goals.


You could tell the weather had turned by the fact that the queue for coffee was longer than the queue for beer. But an even longer queue formed in the third quarter of Hawthorn players taking their turn to line up for goal.


The Hawks fielded a reasonably full strength side, although there were a few players that looked unfamiliar – no. 32, no. 37 and no. 35, and a few whose names I’d forgotten (Stratton, that’s right), but of course the big no. 23 was there.




Watching Buddy take the field in Craigieburn is like seeing Radiohead play the Burvale hotel in East Burwood.  There’s something incongruous about seeing a thoroughbred like Buddy in a place like Craigieburn – he’s certainly the most glamorous thing to ever hit the area. At least since the Hume Freeway.


As for the North side, well who’d know whether they put out a full strength team? Petrie and Harvey were there, but the others are all such no names you’d never know whether they were rookies or 200 game veterans. It’s no surprise that Harvey and North were behind the push over summer to have the players’ names printed on the backs of jumpers, as no one knows who the North players are. Most likely Harvey doesn’t know their names either and is pushing this agenda so he knows whose name to call for the ball.


A decent half-time lead to the Hawks blew out in the third quarter as they capitalised on a strong breeze and brought the ball inexorably forward. Buddy marked strongly and slotted a couple, although you couldn't help but wonder where he would have been without the sage advice of the pundit on the fence, who between sips of VB, gave Buddy directions (“Bud, drop back, drop back.” Bud, go right mate, go right.”), as if someone who’s won two Coleman medals and kicked over 100 goals in a season can’t read the play and requires personal coaching from a bloke sucking cans.


And our man was emblematic of the fashion sense prevailing in Craigieburn. On the eve of the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival, it was apparent that the look for men was trackie dacks and ill-fitting t-shirt, while for women, black leggings worn as pants was de rigeur.  Admittedly, the unexpected cold snap had forced me back to the car where the only garment I could rustle up was a white towel which I draped about myself cape style. So I don’t criticise Craigieburn couture with any sense of superiority, but it is perhaps telling that I still seemed to be the only one making an effort.


As the third quarter came to an end, a looming black cloud grew ominously blacker, and given the Hawks were 70 odd points in front and we were freezing, we decided to head off back down the Hume Highway to Melbourne. And lucky we did because the cloud opened in a biblical downpour that rendered driving nearly impossible, let alone playing football.


I subsequently heard the match was abandoned half way through the final quarter, ostensibly because of the risk of injury, but quite possibly the Hawthorn players were simply growing uneasy about leaving their luxury cars unsupervised for so long in Craigieburn. I mean how long can a Lexus or an Audi, to say nothing of a Ferrari, remain undisturbed in the Badlands of Cragieburn.