The Middle-Aged Spectator

The Middle Aged Spectator considers the AFL’s proposed rule changes As the Coodabeen Champions ’ character, Digger, was known to say, “I’ve been following football for a very long time.” While never having played the game at anything but a very minor level, I have coached and managed teams, and been a club administrator, over many years. I do know a bit about the game. And I’m going to sound like an old reactionary – but rules shouldn’t be changed without good reason. The AFL’s Competition Committee will present to the Commission a number of suggested rule changes to be implemented in 2019. I fear that each of the rule changes could have serious, unintended consequences, and I am puzzled as to why there seems to be the need to implement them so soon, and without adequate trialling. Quite frankly, the game is in pretty good shape, but certain people in the AFL fold believe the game has become too congested. This leads to lower scoring, and consequently, the fans are ...

  Before I begin, I am not now, and never have been, a member of a political party. The last couple of weeks has been an exciting, and somewhat baffling, time in Australian politics. The governing Liberal Party spent a week in turmoil, cancelled Parliament for an afternoon, and replaced its leader – at the same time changing the Prime Minister of Australia, the nation’s highest political office. As in many western nations, politics here has become increasingly polarised in recent years. In Australia, the far right of the Liberal Party (a centre-right party which governs as the major partner of a coalition with the National Party and the Liberal National Party – yes it’s weird, and not to be confused with the Liberal Democrats) has become increasingly loud. This has happened for a number of reasons, not least of which is the rise of minor rightist parties such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Australian Conservatives and Katter’s Australian Party among others. Over a ...

Having entered the lottery for tickets during 2017, we were fortunate enough to secure tickets to five sessions of three different sports over a seven-day period, and had wonderful experiences. We went twice to the Netball, including the opening match of the tournament (Jamaica v Fiji) in the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, attended two evening sessions of Athletics at Carrara Stadium, and enjoyed a session of Beach Volleyball on the Coolangatta Beachfront. At each event we were greeted by friendly (and sometimes amusing) ‘Game Shapers’, or volunteers. There were professional ‘comperes’, for lack of a more suitable word, at each event who explained what was going on, entertained us between games, and generally ensured the crowd was involved. We thoroughly enjoyed it all. Before they had even begun, there was a great deal of cynical criticism about the Commonwealth Games. This took several forms, but a few in particular came up regularly: 1.   ...

I was born in Melbourne (no surf beaches there), and within a few months my family had moved to an inland area of southern Victoria. Since then I have lived inland, and have only visited the coast for holidays. As a child my family went to Queenscliff, a Port Phillip Bay town with no surf. As an adult, I have taken my own children to the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but the opportunity to learn to surf never really eventuated for me. As a middle aged spectator on the southern Gold Coast beaches I have watched with some envy the many, many recreational surfers doing their thing of an early morning. My big chance came at a primary school beach camp a few years ago when the group of children I was supervising (I was Deputy Principal at the time) had surfing as one of their activities. I enthusiastically took part in the various beach exercises, theoretically learning how to go from lying on the board to standing. But when it came time to enter the water, I was ...

8 February 1975 was a life-changing day for me. I had finished Year 12 the previous November, and was waiting for my Teaching study to begin. A friend suggested a group of us should go to the test match in Melbourne; unusually, this was a 6 th test in the series and the second of the series to be held at the MCG. With the Ashes already won (Australia had a 4-0 lead), there would be plenty of seats available. We four stayed in an apartment in the inner-city area which belonged to a brother or a friend of my friend (or something), there was a little bit of under-age drinking, and then in the morning we were off to join the queue to enter the Southern Stand. Australia’s first inning did not last the day (very disappointing in Test Cricket), and were it not for Ian Chappell (65) the English would have been batting much earlier. As it was, they only had to face a few overs before stumps. And this is where my first real memory of Test Cricket kicks in. Dennis Lillee, bowling fr...

In October 2012 I was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. By mid-November the tumour had been removed along with much my oesophagus and part of my stomach. Due to the nature of the tumour I did not have to endure any chemotherapy or radiotherapy. I am aware of four other men, all married, three of them with children, who were diagnosed with other cancers around the same time – between a year before and a year after. Brain tumours, liver and bowel cancers. All of them are dead. I can’t help but wonder when I cross paths with their wives, and for one of them it’s every few days at least, that when they look at me they think, ‘Lucky bastard. Why couldn’t it have been my man?’   Now, none of them has ever said anything remotely like that, and all have been as friendly and as pleasant as you would expect long term friends or acquaintances to be, but I think it. Every time. Now, I’m not losing sleep over this, and I don’t think I require any sort of therapy, but it gnaws a...

Again. The first visit by the MAS and his wife was last year, and we went back this time for a birthday party, and a short holiday. We like Bali. We like the crowded streets and the shopping. We like the range of food and the cheap beer. We like the weather and feeling so relaxed away from the hubbub of ‘normal’ life. But most of all, the Balinese people are welcoming, friendly, easy to get along with, and it seems, happy. Of course, with the amount of money that visitors are pouring into their economy it’s not surprising, and that leads me to worry about the colonialist or imperialist nature of being an Australian holidaying in a south-east Asian nation such as Indonesia. I have seen visitors exploiting the local situation, but I figure those people who treat locals rudely or in a mean-spirited way probably do the same thing at home. So I justify myself by being pleasant; being grateful; by doing my best to ask questions and engage in some conversation; by showing an interest in ...