THAT Mike Brady. He knew a thing or two about the intolerable burden of the average of footy fan. Sitting amongst the twenty two thousand pilgrims at the Telstra Dome last Friday night those words came readily to mind.
As I watched the game lurch from one end of the field to the other like a dinghy cut adrift on a Bass Strait swell, I heard That Song ringing in my head. I felt myself becoming increasingly sea-sick, watching as the footy ebbed and flowed on a relentless tide of flood and counter flood and I couldn’t help but wonder: surely there are better things I could be doing with my Friday night?
I was given the choice of watching the battling Saints take on faulty Freo, or a night at home with my darling wife and a couple of episodes of The Colbert Report or The Flight of The Concords, my own body weight in Haighs’ dark chocolate and a late night game of Boggle.
I choose the footy.
And as I sat there mystified as to how such a committed contest could produce such an ugly melange of a spectacle, I had to wonder just what kind of a grip this game – and this club – has over my destiny.
Don’t get me wrong. I love The Saints with an unyielding passion that at times has cost me dearly in terms of domestic harmony and stripped numerous coats off that thin veneer of sanity I hide behind.
No one who was of sound mind and spirit and whose soul was liberated from the shackles of Sainthood would have made an objective choice to bear witness to this game any more than they would have sat down and listened to the entire Phil Collins back catalogue on LP played at 45rpm (although if you did it that way, it’d be over quicker).
But there we were, lunatics in our chosen asylum, urging our team on regardless, and damn the consequences.
And our reward was the four premiership points which eased the burden of it all. It at least gave us justification for our pig-headed commitment to the cause. It was something to take home to your significant other so that the sacrifice they’ve made was worthwhile.
Not that our blokes lacked passion and industry out there. That was the one redeeming feature of the night. There was plenty of that. There still seems a lack of artistry and inspiration: the stuff that dreams are made of. It’s the thing that drags us to the game on a Friday night when everything and everyone says stay at home.
At the moment our Saints seem a little like a boxer on the ropes, gloves up, cushioning the blows and then firing back a few counter punches of their own just to keep the bout alive.
They’ve proven that they won’t go to the canvas easily and despite setbacks and disappointments, they’ve still got a taste for the fight.
As they head to the Gold Coast to take on a team that lives and breathes its battler status -- North Melbourne -- they’ll need every bit of that warrior mentality.
And also, just a little bit of that magic that sometimes makes a Friday night with The Saints the only place in town you’d ever want to be.
