Aussie Rules & Heartfelt Moments

Journalist and commentator Chris Kenny is an associate editor at The Australian and presenter on Sky TV. He is also a contributor to Ross Fitzgerald’s 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, Chris Kenny joined Ross Fitzgerald and Sydney lawyer Gabrielle Trainer and for a night of laughs and celebration of a game that is known as a metaphor for Australian character.

AUSTRALIAN RULES AND HEARTFELT MOMENTS

CHRIS KENNY

Across most of Australia, albeit not as viscerally here in Sydney or in Queensland, we know what our greatest game is, especially when it comes to winter sports. It is our great indigenous game, Australian Rules. In Perth, Hobart or Darwin, in Adelaide, Alice Springs or Crystal Brook, yes, even in Melbourne, Aussie Rules is the game that matters. We are born into it. We choose a team early, or inherit it as Ross Fitzgerald mentioned, and stick to it with a tribal loyalty all our lives.

Whether we sit on the High Court, or collect garbage, whether we cut hair for a living or we cut major financial deals at the big end of town, footy is a common interest, a common language, a common passion. Man or woman, adult or child, famous or obscure, in the footy states, the Aussie Rules states, we all identify with our code and our team. It’s a great leveller Aussie Rules, it’s a truly egalitarian game and one that we love to share.

Sure, it’s spectacular to watch – attacking and aggressive in a way that few games can even attempt to match – it is high flying and high scoring, fast and furious, it is all of those things and that’s why we love it. But when you turn your mind to it, as I did for this book, it’s the way the game binds us together, even across the tribal loyalties, that s what I truly treasure most about Aussie Rules. And I discovered this fact, actually, largely through an absence.

I hail from Adelaide, hence my Adelaide Crows scarf and my great honour to be an Adelaide Crows ambassador, but I’ve been living in Sydney for more than seven years now. I love this city – what’s not to love about Sydney? Except for, perhaps, the traffic and the fact you can’t get a drink after 10:30 at night. I do love Sydney and I love the culture of this town. But when you come from a footy town like Adelaide, what is obvious immediately is the way the sporting culture is fractured. It’s Balkanised; its sectarian; it doesn’t have that unifying sporting culture that we have in the Aussie Rules states. At least in winter that is, because cricket tends to unite all of us in summer.

You turn up for work on a Monday morning in Sydney, and there’s a bunch of blokes – and I will say blokes because the other codes are a bit more “blokey” (to be controversial) than Aussie Rules – it’s a bunch of blokes over there talking about League. And there’s a bunch of blokes over there talking about Union and the Wallabies. And there’ll be a bunch of other people talking about some soccer game, either here or overseas, and another group you can find that’s talking about the Swans or the Giants. They all have their separate conversations.

In most of the country, you don’t have that. Outside of NSW and QLD you just turn up and talk about the game. Everyone knows what you’re talking about. And there’s a bit of a class element to the way that you have those divided loyalties in NSW. It’s the private school boys who are talking about the Wallabies. And it’s the workers talking about League and the immigrants and the poms are talking about soccer. They even have a go at the AFL people for being the “gay AFL” supporters.

I have Rugby League friends, who always jokingly refer to the “gay AFL”. Now, I object to that, on homophobic grounds of course, but also in defence of my code. They’re trying to suggest it’s soft, which, of course, it isn’t (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Still, once we settled in to Sydney we discovered there was a touch of reality in this jibe. We started to go to Swans home games quite regularly and our usual companions were a gay couple. We met many of their friends at the games and we learned the Swans deliberately market to the gay communities close to the SCG in Darlinghurst and Paddington. So, see what I mean about unifying? And egalitarian? That’s Aussie Rules for you.

Having come from Adelaide, loving our footy and obviously loyal to the Crows, we still like to watch the Swans. We need our “fix” of footy. We go along to the Swans home games and support them; we’re happy for them to beat anyone, except Adelaide of course.

Some of you may remember Imre Salusinszky, a good friend of mine who lives in Sydney. Imre now works for the State government here. He loves his footy and he’s a Hawthorn supporter. He told me a great story, a true story, about another friend of his who had grown up in South Australia and, like me, was a Crows supporter. He moved to Sydney and, like me, got his regular footy fix at the SCG, watching the Swans. The difference was that he was transgender. Having moved to Sydney, he’d become a woman and was watching the Swans and barracking for the Swans against anyone but Adelaide, as a woman. So a few years ago Imre caught up with his friend, now a she, and as usual their conversation turned to footy. Imre asked his friend whether, since she had been in Sydney for seven or eight years and looked like staying here, would she perhaps switch allegiances from the Crows to the Swans?  “No mate,” she responded instinctively, “there are some things you just can never change.” And after a short delay they both then fell about the place in laughter realising, of course, just what that frank remark said about football loyalty.

For me, footy started very young. We played early, we went to watch Dad play, then we went to watch Dad umpire. I would play in the mornings and then earn a few dollars boundary umpiring in the afternoons. My mum was the sports coach for the local school, so she would coach footy teams and umpire some of our games. We all know how hard it is to get a free kick sometimes, let me tell you when your mum is the umpire, it’s bloody hard. I played footy into my mid-30s in amateur league, in country footy and the like. Early in my career, I tried to have a semi-serious crack at it, training with the SANFL, the State league in South Australia.

I’ll never forget being picked for my first proper game (only the reserve grade mind you). I had played a lot of trial games and then was picked for an Anzac Day clash at Adelaide Oval in the Reserves. I had hurt my wrist in a practice game the previous week and the day after I was picked the hospital called me to say they had rechecked my x-rays and found that it was broken. What does an enthusiastic young player do in that situation? You shut up about it, of course, you’ve been chosen for a game and you want to play it. The opposing team was South Adelaide and, having been named on a wing, I saw in the paper that their two wingmen were D. Kappler and D. Kappler. I thought they’d mucked this up, they’ve named the same player on both wings. I rang a mate who was playing at South Adelaide who told me the paper was right, they were separate people, they were brothers, Darren Kappler and David Kappler. So I was going to be on one or the other and I asked my make what they were like. He told me they were teenagers and I’d be fine – no worries.

Now, I have two abiding memories of that game. One is the throbbing wrist. The other is Darren Kappler getting the ball about a metre from me on the Members’ wing and sprinting away, bouncing the ball and kicking long into the forward line. He went on to play nearly 200 AFL games with the Swans and Hawthorn. His brother David played nearly 300 League games for South Adelaide and they both played for South Australia in the State of Origin. Me? I just went off to the hospital and ended my footy career.

In Heartfelt Moments, I focused on my beloved Crows, of course. I’ve given a short history of our club. I didn’t grow up supporting the Crows because they didn’t exist; I barracked for a local club, Sturt. The Crows were formed in 1991 and we jumped on from the first game. So I was able to tell the whole story of the Crows, including our magnificent premierships in 1997 and 1998 – which seems a long while ago now. This club history is encapsulated within –  bookended if you like – the story of an incredibly heartfelt moment that you’ll all be aware of, the tragic death, last year, of the Crows coach Phil Walsh.

The night of his murder, I was at a game in Sydney. The Swans were playing Port Adelaide. A mate of mine has a son who plays for Port and Port were having a tough year – very much below expectations. The Crows had recruited Phil Walsh as their coach from Port Adelaide where he’d been an assistant coach. My mate and the Port supporters with us were troubled by why Port was not doing so well and I teased them; “No Phil Walsh, no Port.” My mate winced and suggested many people at the club thought he was a big loss.

Little were we to know that within a few hours, Phil’s tragic death would happen in Adelaide. And the Adelaide Football Club, the footy community around the country, of course Phil Walsh’s family and friends, all had to muddle on without Phil. It was – and remains – a terrible tragedy and his loss has been felt by so many people. But there was inspiration in the way the other footy clubs, and other sporting groups such as netball clubs and the like, got together over those ensuing weeks to signify their support for the Walsh family and their recognition of this man.

Being involved in this book has been a real honour and treat because I spend a lot of time talking to politicians. I’m not very proud of the media much of the time; we’re there to chip everyone down, lop off tall poppies, that sort of thing. But when you’re dealing with sport, it’s wonderful just to revel in the brilliance of some of the people you deal with. No need to trip them up.

So I had a long chat with Mark Ricciuto, the former Adelaide captain, premiership player and Brownlow medallist. It was wonderful to talk to him about his career and about Walsh – in particular the Showdown 39 clash, when the two Adelaide teams did battle less than three weeks after the death of a man loved and admired by both clubs. It was an incredibly testing time for the Crows players who had suddenly lost, in the most horrific circumstances, their leader, their mentor; a man who they spend anything up to 50 hours with each week.

Roo (Ricciuto) said something I found really moving. Let’s remember he is a man who missed out on the premiership in 1997 when he was injured, played in a winning grand final in 1998, had played in other finals and State of Origin clashes and, of course, was at that Showdown to commemorate Walsh when the Crows played Port Adelaide. He was no longer playing – he was at that game as a television commentator and an Adelaide Crows board member. I asked Roo whether given that was such a special game, an enormously emotional and brilliant game of football, then perhaps it was the Adelaide Crows’ greatest victory outside of finals football. And Mark Ricciuto – Brownlow Medallist, champion and hard man – said; “You know, I think, forget everything, all the finals, the premierships. I think that game may have been our best win ever; for the players to come back and win in those circumstances”.

That really spoke to all of those other values about footy. Everyone wants to win the grand final, everyone wants a premiership and, yes, it’s all about success. But for Mark Ricciuto and both clubs – the Crows and Port – the game was about character. It was about friendship and it was about solidarity across the tribes of footy. The courage, skill and aggression on the field honoured a friend, and paid tribute to the way he liked the game to be played. It was a very special moment and a reminder of the depth of feeling we get from this shared love of our great game.