In 2020, you take your pleasures where you can get them. A hug. A 90-minute booking at the pub. An hour without Eddie McGuire flapping his gums. And a tied football game.
Let’s not tiptoe around this – Thursday night’s Collingwood-Richmond clash was a fully-fledged stinker. The skills were dire. The reigning premiers did not turn up until the second quarter. Brian Taylor was as objectionable as ever. And the atmosphere was decidedly weird.
But it was something. It was a beginning. It beat watching Nordic noir on Netflix. With the world on its ass, it was a welcome distraction. It was good to have you back, old friend.
The night began with 44 players gathering around the centre circle and taking a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. There were murmurings of approval – or a noise resembling a gently crashing wave – from the canned applause box. The cardboard cutouts stiffened in the winter breeze, but seemed mainly supportive.
The night’s strangeness was compounded by the fact that the Tigers, the premier team of the past three years, were so slow out of the blocks. They conceded four first quarter goals. In full pomp, they could peg that back in a few minutes. Under these modified conditions, with a slippery ball and with several of their superstars seemingly still in lockdown mode, it was more of a grind.
To state the obvious, it wasn’t football as we know it. It wasn’t even remotely the same. The canned applause, for one, was almost unnerving at times. The cardboard cutouts were just creepy. And many of the players looked short of a yard. It’s understandable. They’ve probably spent the past few months living like so many of us – stewing, bingeing, baking, zooming and churning out questionable looking pushups in the living room.
There were some notable exceptions. Steele Sidebottom managed 20 first half possessions, a mighty effort given the shortened quarters. Scott Pendlebury – not the sort of man to let himself go during a pandemic – played with his usual leisurely economy, racking up 31 touches. Dustin Martin was comparatively quiet. Six or seven years ago, the thought of him left his own devices in lockdown would have been cause for considerable concern. He presented in pristine condition but clearly needs more than a few hundred cardboard cutouts to get his juices flowing.
No-one needed this match more than the Collingwood president. Eddie McGuire has not had the best pandemic. For two months, he’s been in a highly agitated, permanently aggrieved state. The face got redder. The fights got nastier. He locked horns with pretty much everyone with a pulse. He’d light spot fires here, throw grenades there. One minute he was trying to save the game, making Churchillian speeches over Zoom. Then he was proposing to dismantle it and start all over again. It was hard to figure out what he was on about, or why he was so worked up.
In the end, simply watching a game of football was a respite from all the bullshit, all the rants, the retractions, the feuds and the “industry conversations”. Now that the season is up and away again, there are bigger issues to grapple with – avoiding any Covid-19 outbreaks, making this season semi relevant, ensuring the clubs and completion remain solvent, and saving grass roots footy.
The Scottish sportswriter Hugh Mcilvanney once wrote of “the magnificent triviality” of sport. Footy is a mere trifle in the grand scheme of things. But it helps. It’s something. It’s back. Now, let us never speak of that game again.