The 21st Birthday party is one of those strange American things that Australia has adopted. It carries no meaning here. All of the fun stuff that adults are allowed to do but kids are denied were granted three years earlier. The only age related milestone as yet conferred is the privilege of hiring a car at 25. However, next year I’ll be celebrating a 21st anniversary of a different kind. It will be my 21st year of going to the football with my Dad.
In 1996 my Dad took me to my first game of footy. Rugby league, if we're being pedantic. We were off to see the Canberra Raiders play at Bruce Stadium, as it was then known. I didn’t know anything about the Raiders at that time, or rugby league for that matter, but it didn’t matter. It was a day out with Dad. What could be better?
My recollections of those early games are vague. The stadium was different then. It was yet to be given the makeover it received in preparation for the 2000 Olympics. The thing that I can best picture about it from those days is the concession stand. It was nestled halfway up the grandstand and each patron was forced to walk through it on the way to their seat. Dad would hand me a couple of dollars to buy a packet of chicken flavoured chips. Clever stadium design, if nothing else. We'd get to our seats on the Eastern side of the ground and the team would run out onto the field to the sound of the team song. “We’re the bad and mean, Green Machine. Fierce and bad from the ACT. Don’t try to stop these men in green. Cos they’ll hit ya, hit ya, hit ya, till you see green”. It’s a terribly written song, but I enjoyed singing along. It didn’t matter.
We didn’t go to every game back then. Just those played on Sunday afternoons. I couldn’t say how many of those games the Raiders won. Or by how much. I know that I asked a lot of questions. I didn’t understand a lot about the game but I wanted to understand more. Dad always answered, though I'm sure the incessant questioning was annoying. I didn’t understand that the team that Dad had brought me along to watch featured some of the all-time legends of the game. Laurie Daley, Ricky Stuart, Bradley Clyde, Ken Nagas. Among that team were premiership winners, unstoppable titans, wiry magicians. Holdovers from the irresistible team of the late 80’s and early 90’s that reached five grand finals, winning three of them. I didn’t know who these great men were, but it didn’t matter.
The next year sparked the super league wars. The competition split in two and the Raiders sided with the rebel Super League. It didn’t mean much to me as a seven year old. All I thought at the time was how cool the Super League symbol looked on the jersey. The first game that I can fully remember happened during this season. Midway through the year the teams from the Australian and English super leagues played off in a World Club Championship. The Raiders’ first game of that championship was played against the Halifax Blue Sox, a team I neither heard of nor could possibly imagine where they were from. The Raiders thrashed them: 70-6. An absolute pasting. I can remember the disbelief in the crowd as the Raiders ran in try after try. Kenny Nagas scored six by himself that day. A feat almost unheard of in rugby league at that level. I didn’t know this. It didn’t matter.
In the next couple of years we started to attend more and more. Dad had decided that I was old enough now to go to night games. My sisters started coming to games too. By 2000 we were going to enough games that Dad decided to buy season tickets for the four of us. At this point I knew every player's name and everything about them. On our walk from our car along the bike path to the stadium (we parked away from the stadium to avoid paying for parking) I would annoy Dad with questions about who would win, along with facts and statistics. The talk on the walk back depended on the result. If the Raiders won I would annoy Dad with my favourite moments from the game. If they lost we would walk back in silence. What else was there to talk about?
Now i cared. I cared about the footy more than anything. Each win would sustain me for the week. Each loss I would think about and mull over in my brain everything that went wrong until the next win helped me to forget. I often cried when they lost. Far more than I’d like to admit. I cried because it mattered. My sisters would tell me to stop being a baby and Dad would tell me to cheer up. There's always next week.
The early years of the 21st century were rougher times for the Raiders. Those heroes of the early 90s retired. The players who came in to replace them would forever be in their shadow. Unfairly maligned for not being as good as their forebears, though how could they be? The wins became less frequent, but we still went. Me, my Dad, and my two sisters. Through every type of weather we watched our team play. Sitting in the driving rain and freezing cold. We even attended the only game in professional rugby league’s history in Australia where it has snowed. We’d come home wet and cold. Mum wasn’t a fan of rugby league, but she’d always be by the door to ask us who had won.
My sisters were starting to get really into rugby league by now. The fun of watching the game was made all the better by the laughs we would have together, making fun of the awful cheerleaders and the colourful characters in the crowd. The Raiders made the finals series here and there in the 2000s. Though they were always making up the numbers. Never true title contenders. It was easier to take the losses in those semi-finals knowing that they barely had a chance in the first place. The crying at losses became less frequent.
I had other interests by now. Still mostly sports related. Dad had by then engendered in me a love for rugby union, soccer, and cricket. By not having a singularly focused mind I was able to shrug off the losses more easily. Not care about the wins as much. Going to the footy was still as fun as ever. The familiar drive there. The walk along the bike path from the car to the ground. Waiting just long enough for Dad to put on his gloves to ask him for money to get hot chips so that he had to take them off again.
These days the gameday experience is different. I no longer live at home, so me and Dad no longer drive to the game together. The usual walk up the bike path from the car to the ground is taken separately. But when I get to our seats, the same seats we have sat in for the last 15 years, I know that he'll be there, wearing a beanie over a cap in his incredibly dorky way. And we'll sit there and chat for a while until my sisters show up and the laughter begins. We still make fun of the cheerleaders who have never gotten any better and the colourful characters in the crowd.
I hope that someday if I ever have a child, I'll take them to see the Raiders and they will have a million questions to ask about how football works. That they will wait until I've put on my gloves to ask me for money and they'll laugh at the daggy clothes I wear. Should they have siblings, I hope they'll laugh together at the cheerleaders who still can't dance. And if my beloved Raiders ever raise that Premiership trophy again, something not seen since 1994, I hope that my Dad will still be there by my side, answering the questions I have and giving me money to give to my kids who wants money. Because it matters. It really, really does.
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