Almost there

They say you can’t choose your family and that’s true for the most part. For many you can’t choose your football team either. I was born in Canberra and my Dad is a Raiders fan. He took me to my first game in 1996. I didn’t choose to be a Raiders fan but that’s my lot in life. It’s just the way things are.

It hasn’t been easy. There hasn’t been a lot to hang my hat on over the years. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching the Raiders play. I have adored so many great and not so great players over the years. But seeing your team fight valiantly to finish 7^th and then lose handsomely isn’t the same as winning it all.

Imagine that: winning it all. That thing that other teams do. That thing 12 other teams have done since the Raiders last won in 1994. I sit there every year and watch other teams do it. I try to imagine what it must feel like. To win it for the first time in forever like the Bunnies in 2014 or the first time ever like the Sharks in 2016. I imagine what it must feel like to be a Storm fan and greet another grand final win like an old friend you haven’t seen in a couple of years. A joy to see but still so familiar. So comfortable. But I can’t. Because I’ve never been there.

I have experienced them losing. I’ve watched the Raiders finish 9^th, 10^th, 14^th. I’ve watched them lose 0-40 at home in the driving rain. I’ve listened on the radio as they lost 44-2. I’ve sat through heartbreaking close game after heartbreaking close game. Watched club legends come and go without a trophy to their name. Seen talented juniors escape for the brighter lights of bigger cities. Leave for the chance of glory they knew they couldn’t get if they stayed.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought I might die without ever seeing them win it. I may have said it aloud once or twice too. I want it so bad. Not just for me but for all the other fans and the city. The people who’ve given this team so much. Have been there in the icy cold, the rain, and the literal snow. The people who’ve willed them to do what they haven’t done before.

And that brings us to Friday night. 26,500 people packing out the stadium and going completely troppo for 80 minutes. Plenty has been said about the performances on the field by people far better equipped to write about it than me. Not enough has been said about what was happening in the stands. It was bedlam. Passion like you’ve never felt. Noise like you’ve never heard. People hugging strangers. People crying. Many just standing there in stunned disbelief. Because they did it. We did it. All of us willing each other on. We made the grand final.

Are they going to win? I don’t know. Can they? You bet. This team is special. More than any Raiders side since the glory days, and perhaps even more so. This team plays for each other. They don’t have the brilliance of other sides. They don’t have the superstars. But they never give up and they never give in. 

Opposition fans can joke and taunt and put them down. It only makes them bolder. The refs can send off as many players as they want. It only makes them stronger. The media can discount them as making up the numbers. It only makes them wonder.

I didn’t choose to be a Raiders fan, but I chose to persist with being one. And in the madness of the final minutes on Friday night I can’t think of any better choice I’ve made. There was a moment this season that says it all. After a particularly tough night, battered and bruised, our fullback, Charnze Nicoll-Kolkstad was asked if there was any part of his body that wasn’t hurting. His answer was simple: my heart.

Stars So Bright and Shorts So Big

Whenever I walk outside at night I like to take the time to stare at the sky. I am lucky where I live to be afforded with a clear sky that is abundant with stars. A lack of light pollution presents a wonder above that is easy to dismiss yet hard to comprehend. The lights we see above us are impossibly far away and yet can be so bright to our eyes. Without wanting to go full Neil DeGrasse Tyson, from our simple vantage we can look millions of years into the past.

This strange angle of reality has hit home for me recently as I have seen a weird personal story morph into minor online notoriety. Many if not all of the people reading this will know, I saw Mark Latham wearing a dirty polo and oversized shorts at the PM’s XI in Canberra three years ago. This statement, on its own, means almost nothing. It is a happenstance in a single person’s life. Yet sharing this personal moment brought a certain level of joy to some people. And repeating this moment through increasingly different or politically relevant lenses brought the moment to a greater audience.

I know how wanky it is to refer to twitter followers but it is very weird to me that on the back of a single joke, however differently expressed, I have gone in the space of less than a year from around 300 followers to nearly 3,000. Having this larger audience has made me think more about what its value is if your only contribution is a (very) short story about seeing a public figure looking less than publicly acceptable. It’s so dumb, and endlessly surprising to me just how much people have bought into it, but in light of recent events I hope it has a lasting value.

Mark Latham is now a member of the NSW senate. There are so many people that are more qualified than myself to comment on his shortcomings on race or sex or sexuality or religion. I know enough to know that he falls short on each of those things and that I’m not the guy to call it out. Yet with my very minor reach I hope that I have made enough people aware of his strange indiscretions of public fashion that it makes it difficult for him to express himself publicly without someone reminding him of his sartorial choices at a cricket match in Canberra on 20 January 2016. If my posts have any success at all, the man himself will feel apprehension before considering going to any cricket match at all because someone will ask him about the dirty polo. I hope this otherwise inconsequential decision will continually have consequences for him.

Mark Latham has a level of power now that he hasn’t wielded for well over a decade. There are avenues to take on his views that are far more direct than the tactic I’ve taken. Barring some disaster, he will be a NSW Senator for the next eight years. It is impossible to predict what sort of destruction he will cause through his anachronistic views  in that time. What I do hope is that there are enough people that follow me and spread my posts about him that there will always be a level of criticism and cynicism and silliness that follows him everywhere.

As far as I know I am one of the few people he has ever blocked on twitter. It wasn’t because I was overly aggressive or abusive toward him. It was because I got under his skin. More than being abused what he hates most is being humiliated. He will never stop being an awful person, but he can be diminished by enough people continuing to remind him of what a small and awful person he is.

The stars in the sky might appear to be impossibly far away. They may seem completely out of reach. But you never know how big your reach is or how bright those stars are until you test it. Mark Latham wore a dirty polo and oversized shorts to the PM’s XI in Canberra three years ago and don’t ever let him forget it.