The Mangoplah-Cookadinia United Reunion

I was so sad to miss the 100th year reunion of my football team. No not rugby, that’s not football. That’s 26 arseholes chasing a bag of wind, an import by thickheaded Englishmen.
No I mean our game, aussie rules. In my youth, it was one of our only community entertainments. In those days your heroes were locals. Every Saturday as you came in the gates of the footy ground, families parked their cars in the same place and put the same rug over the fence so you always knew who was there. If by some terrible tragedy you were not able to attend the game, all you had to do was drive past the Mangoplah pub in the evening. If there were no cars there we had lost.
Game day was a kind of semi religious experience. It was the only time my grandfather cooked, steak and eggs for my father and three uncles, accompanied by precise instructions on the only way we could beat those mongrels from Henty today.
I can remember to this day the smell of the liniment in the dressing rooms as we all listened intently to the captains pregame instructions, and watched little Lyle (our medic and masseuse) rubbing down and strapping the players. If you got scattered, shirt fronted by big Bill Box from Henty who hated us all equally, laying there fighting for a breathe, everything hurting except the roof of your mouth and you saw little Lyle running out to attend you with his Gladstone medical bag, you did everything humanly possible to get to your feet before he got there. The only bloody things in that medical bag were Bex powders which he stuffed down your throat dry and smelling salts (now highly illegal). My uncle remembers running past some poor barstard being attended to by our medic, his heels drumming on the ground as little Lyle jammed a vial of smelling salts up his nostrils.
As a fifteen year old it was a dream come true to be picked to play in this team. My uncle H who was my hero taught me to kick with both feet when I was just a five year old. The family was proud to say that our boys were good enough to play in Melbourne.
When I got older and came home every year to help with shearing and the harvest, the first evening home was down to the pub with Dad. The pub walls were a shrine to the football team, a vertical history of triumphs and team photos way back to the one where they all wore hats and work boots with the odd pipe to be seen. Many of the players from my Dads generation would still be there leaning on the bar, I would listen with fond memories to the reliving of games where every year the kicks got longer the marks got higher, and the fights got tougher.
They were admirable men, we don’t make them like that any more, they didn’t play for money, they played for their town. They believed in sportsmanship. They took young men like me under their wing and believed playing the game fair and square could build character. My wonderful aunt sent me the photos of the event and as I write this I look at two photos years apart, as young men and old men. I was there in spirit, and I remember the ones not in the reunion photo who have passed away. I pay tribute to them all.