Aussie Rules & Heartfelt Moments

Gabrielle Trainer is a Sydney lawyer, business woman and a Commissioner with the Australian Football League. She is also a devoted supporter of North Melbourne. In 2015, she joined other to contribute to the edited Aussie Rules & Heartfelt Moments – a collection of well known Australian contributors each writing of moments they hold dear from the team of their heart. Every team in the AFL is represented. On Monday 21 March 2015, Gabrielle Trainer joined the editor of the volume Ross Fitzgerald and journalist and commentator Chris Kenny for a night of laughs and celebration of a game that is known as a metaphor for Australian character.

AUSSIE RULES & HEARTFELT MOMENTS

GABRIELLE TRAINOR

Thanks Gerard. I acknowledge we meet on Cadigal land tonight and pay respects to all the elders and thank The Sydney Institute for inviting me here tonight.

It was a Saturday in 1969. North Melbourne was at the rock bottom of the ladder. They had never won a premiership, had not made the finals since 1954, and were considered perennial easy beats. But the administration had begun recruitment.

Recruiting Sam Kekovich – “Slamming Sam” as he became known – the year before from Myrtleford, and already showing the form that would soon win him best and fairest after booting 56 goals. Slamming Sam takes up the story.

With the exception of yours truly, North in those days were dead-set hopeless. But we had recruited the brilliant Western Australian rover Barry Cable. He and I were the only two you’d feed.

That day we were playing Geelong, down at Kardinia Park. Barry and I drove down the Geelong Road in Barry’s new fluorescent green Monaro and the rest of the team were following in a bus. The two of us arrived at the rooms and spent a good half hour doing our warm up, idly wondering where the rest of them were. It got to 1:15pm, and still no sign of them. There was a knock at the door and Jeff Crouch, the field umpire came in looking a bit worried.

“Where are they?” he said. “You’ll have to forfeit.” He told us. I looked at Barry and Barry looked at me and we said we felt confident we could start the game regardless. So at ten past two out we went. I had appointed him captain. Barry won the toss and elected to keep with breeze to the Barwon end.

The siren sounded and it was on. I won in the ruck from the first bounce and made a perfect tap down to Barry who took off, baulked around two players, bounced it three times as he raced down the flank and let rip with a beautiful left-footer 40 yards out for our first goal.

Umpire Crouch bounced it again, and I again won it out of the centre, passed to myself and then popped a perfect shot pass into Barry’s waiting arms at centre-half forward. He lined up and goaled again. By quarter time I’d kicked two majors from shots and we had handy lead of 15 points.

Barry was on fire in the second quarter and dobbed three to my two. The Cats were still struggling and at the main brank the Kangas were in front by 20. Still no sign of the bus, but both Barry and I felt pretty fresh after a couple of Peter Stuyvesants and half an orange and we went out for the third term.

Big Doug Wade kicked a couple at the other end, but we responded with some superb run and carry supported by Barry’s characteristic sprint-like hand balls, to stretch our lead to 32 points at three quarter time. At the twenty minute mark of the last I took a screamer near the boundary line of the Reg Hickey stand and slid across the line. As I got up to take my kick I noticed an old racing cobber in the third row. Our eyes locked and he called to me, “Sam, Sam, number 5 in the last at Werribee. I glanced at my watch, deep in thought I goaled from an impossibly acute angle and as we loped back to the centre for the bounce I said to Barry, “Cabes we’re seven goals up, they can’t catch us now. I need to find a TAB so I’ll leave you to clean up here and meet you after the game at the Werribee pub.

Cable was agreeable so I took off. An hour later Cabes wanders into the pub and I order him a beer. The mongrel horse finished 10^th so I was a little testy as I asked Barry how much we’d won by.

“But we didn’t win, Keka, we lost by 4 points.” I was incredulous.

“But we were 45 up with 10 minutes to go, what happened?”

“Well Keka, the bloody bus turned up.”

I must apologise for the mild profanity – I’d planned a worse one – but also to Sam for appropriating his ripping football yarn which he tells with far greater zest than I.

So, Ross Fitzgerald has brought us an excellent anthology. Giving 37 different answers to the question – why we love, how we feel in our hearts, about Australian Rules Footy. Truth be told there are hundreds of thousands of answers to that question.

We love it because it does produce characters like Slamming Sam, like Lou Richards, like Boomer Harvey, who at the age of 38 is lining up again this season and still playing like a midfielder. Like Amna Karra-Hassan of the Auburn Giants women’s team, mostly comprised of young Muslim women. Like Alf Trebilcock who has been volunteering as a boot starter at Port Adelaide Football Club since 1968. Like Kevin Sheedy, like Michael Long, like the poet player Bob Murphy and like the remarkable Daisy Pearce, number one pick in the first AFL women’s draft.

We love it because it’s our game. Invented here by Australians, for Australians. The story of Tom Wills who founded the game is itself the stuff of legends. Every footy fan should read Gregg de Moore’s book Tom Wills. First Wild Man of Australian Sport. It’s a game that catches our spirit and our imagination. One in every 28 Australians is a member of an Australian Rules Football Club. How extraordinary is that statistic.

We love footy because of the good it can do. It’s the great equaliser. It connects and brings individuals, families and communities together in one joyful conversation even if your team has lost. It inspires kids to do their best. To run and to shout and to play together. It gives them heroes and in some places is an incentive to go to school to read, to do your sums. It speaks to important things about living as a member of society and people listen. Footy gives people hope.

Of course there are issues, disappointments, examples of bad conduct, scandals. No doubt footy has had its share of that. How it responds is the test. But there are many, many more good things about footy than those that let it down.

I love football, it is deep in my DNA. It has given so much to me and my family going back generations. It’s been a great privilege to be involved in the most exciting project in sport, that is, playing a part in creating a new AFL team in the west of Sydney. That is the GWS Giants. And now to have joined the AFL commission at a time when it’s on the cusp of what Bill Mcloughlin calls “a revolution” in the shape of the AFL women’s league. And at a time the AFL is investing significantly in the next 30 or 40 years of our game. It’s a privilege to have been asked to contribute to this book. It was absolutely a labour of love to write about what Kevin Sheedy means to the Giants and to our game.

But most of all, I love it that it’s only three more sleeps until season 2016 begins. And that there are so many more heart-felt moments in footy to come. Thank you.