Life and footy, footy and life.

Two rounds in and the 'water cooler talk' is all footy. Some things never change. Supporters of teams who have started the season brightly are looking forward five months. The office SuperCoach who organised the tipping competition keeps losing to Lim in accounts who has never watched a game in her life.
And as the intensity lifts at thousands of flood-lit ovals around the country, memories of my childhood come flooding back. To a time when players could bump each other without tribunal recourse, and money-driven outsiders hadn't yet dipped their fingers into football's pie.
I think of my Collingwood-mad uncle who rang me pretending to be Peter Daicos after a semi-final win. Of course, I believed him. This same uncle who showed remarkable constraint in not throwing his beer at the television as a wispy-haired Kevin Bartlett ran into another open goal.
I think of my father driving me and a bunch of grotty, wide-eyed boys to junior football on Saturday mornings. Later he'd take me to support the local team. I would hack away at his pay with purchases of pies, dim sims and cans of coke while dreaming of one day pulling on the boots for the senior team on my way to VFL stardom.
And every now and then, around this time of year when the temperature drops, I remember the old man who took the time to kick the footy to a grotty barefoot kid and help nurture his love for the national game.
It was 1987. I was almost ten. Dad had just accepted a bank transfer to Swan Hill. As dusk closed in, I ran around barefoot at the bottom of my new street, weathered Sherrin in hand. In my mind, it was late in the final quarter. Collingwood was five points down. It was my chance to kick the winning goal on the siren as I had done a thousand times before, when all of a sudden a stray kick landed in the arms of an old, bespectacled man. A twenty-metre handpass was fired back at me. This wasn't how I'd played it out in my mind.
Even though we'd never met he called me by my first name and knew I barracked for Collingwood. He was a Fitzroy supporter; said he wanted to see them win a premiership before he died.
His old bones hampered him somewhat, but he was skilful, his drop kicks spearing into my chest. We went back and forth until the headlights of Dad's car pulled into our driveway, which signalled dinner time.
The following evening I looked out the window to the street and there was the old man, hovering under the street light.
And so it became a nightly ritual. The seasons changed and in winter we'd come out a little earlier. Mum always reserved her best neighbourly smile for him, and Dad was relieved that his late nights at work weren't hampering my football development.
He would sometimes call around on wintery Saturday afternoons and sit with me and Dad in the backyard by the fire drum. The ABC footy crackled from the wireless and he'd sit bemused while Dad lined up empty VB cans and picked them off at a distance with his slug gun. The commentators would talk in excited tones about 'Plugger' Lockett breaking the old record for most goals in a game. The old man would agree with them; the best forward he'd seen since John Coleman. He wasn't so thrilled on Sunday afternoons, however, when Warwick Capper and the dancing girls stole the show.
And then later that year it was time for us to move house again. I went around to his house to say goodbye. There was a little kitchen, and a loungeroom with old china on top of dusty cupboards. Old Fitzroy paraphernalia competed with photos of his late wife for wall space. And on the coffee table was an old photo album filled with newspaper cuttings, curled up at the sides and yellowing. He was a footballer of promise, but the war years cut his career short. I remember him being sad that I was leaving. I made a promise to visit him again. I never did.
Fitzroy became my second favourite team, and I always associated them with him. In 1996, when Fitzroy folded, I wrote him a letter to say I was sorry. He would be nine years older, misty-eyed and now probably not even able to kick a football in frustration. I'd like to think he received it, but was too old to send a reply. Then there was the years Collingwood lost grand finals to the Brisbane Lions. The blow was softened by the thought of him in his armchair soaking it up. I hoped that he was still alive to see it.
This morning I was in a queue at the Centrelink office. The line kept growing behind me, snaking out into the street. People were looking up at a television, watching the financial news. Numbers flicked up on the screen with downward arrows next to them. The mood was grim. And then, the footy news came on. The drone of chatter building like a crescendo. Smiles back on faces. On my way home there was an old man kicking a footy with a young boy. The kid dropped an overhead mark and the ball bounced toward me. He thanked me with shy eyes as I handed it back to him. The old man waved. I walked on. And so things keep on keeping on.
Life and footy. Footy and life.