Purple Prose (19 page)

On Saturday September 21
^st
, 2013 though, I find myself humming with anticipation, filled with a sweet, uncomplicated buzz that takes me back to sunny childhood days of East Freo triumphs, and bounces me forward on the balls of my adult feet across Hadyn Bunton Avenue to meet Caroline at an appointed spot outside Gate 24. Around me the building crowd is a carnivalesque swirl of purple, tempered with the white trim, with chevrons and anchors and thick, bold
FREO
and
DOCKERS
lettering, flecked here and there with occasional hints of red and green, tangible reminders of the club's original red, green and purple strip, officially abandoned in 2010 for the superior recognition and marketing value of pure purple. The faithful are swaddled in scarves, caps, beanies, jumpers, hoodies, shirts and jackets; kids and adults shoulder Dockers bags and flags, carry banners, swish streamers and balloons. White inflatable anchors bob around, faces are painted purple and white, and someone hands me an A3 size poster, a wobbleboard to wave and shake our boys to victory. It's purple of course, with
GO FREO
in white block letters on one side and includes a triptych of heroes on the other: Danyle Pearce, Stephen Hill and Michael ‘Sonny' Walters, all key team members and part of the Dockers' great tradition of fostering Indigenous talent – one of which I, like so many supporters, am genuinely proud.

I see a guy strolling past, fully rigged out in a snappy purple velvet suit – shades of 60s Carnaby St, barring the finishing touches of white trainers with purple stripes and a dark purple beanie. In my modest way I too wear my passion. I don't own a team jumper or jacket but I do have a non-merchandise purple polo of just the right shade which I wear over a black jumper. I have a Dockers cap too, a cheap knock-off, closer to maroon than purple, a joke gift from a tennis mate, a rusted-on Eagles fan, who won it in a Christmas work raffle and handballed it to me with pantomime
disgust, on strict instructions that I never wear it against her on court. Local footy rivalry being what it is I've made sure to ignore her on key occasions, but for this serious footy outing the oddly maroonish colouring worries me and I shove it in my bag prior to reaching the ground. Getting your footy colours wrong is not an option, and heaven forbid anyone should mistake me for a displaced toothless Brisbane Lion! One sartorial touchstone is beyond doubt though: I have my Dockers scarf. It's an old and treasured item bought some years before from the store down at club headquarters at Fremantle Oval. And, because it predates the 2010 rebranding exercise, it's not just purple and white; it's red, green, white and purple.

I'm actually a fan of the new all-purple kit: after all, it's blue+red, it's distinctive, it's unique as a footy colour and, well, it's so wonderfully, unintentionally queer. But nevertheless, I have remained true to the old scarf because it seems to me (and comparing notes with others I know I'm not alone) that it signifies endurance. Call it overcompensation in my case at least, but this scarf says (to me at least) I'm no blow-in, I haven't just climbed on board because the team's started winning big, with a likely chance of a grand final. I've suffered, in my rather sheltered way, through near two decades long of winters of Dockers discontent that have now led to this glorious sun of September. The Shockers, the humiliating on-field cock-ups, false starts, the nearly made-its, the drubbing defeats, the endless ribbing from the commentators and the supporters of other clubs, especially Eagles fans, the next year in Melbourne predictions that fall flat, the brand new starts with another coach or a new repertoire of players, an important (albeit ageing) interstate star who turns out to be a dud, or else does stalwart but limited service before puttering out to grass-ture with a bung back or a dud hammy. I'm still here; we're still here – and now it's our turn.

Caroline and I touch base, both grinning, and begin the mountainous assent to our seats, scaling the stairs to the top
tier of a big lump of ugly concrete behind the goals at the Subi end. It's normally the sort of windswept Stalinist tower I'd cite as evidence for the virtues of TV viewing, even though the big screens at either side of the ground these days provide more than adequate compensation. On this day though I'm as happy as Hillary, surveying the swarm of excited Dockers fans as they buzz in below and around me, interspersed by the blood-red of the Sydney Swans' faithful. I feel the concrete under my feet throb with the crowd's excitement. As we settle in, the boys are warming up, thumping practice shots into the temporary nets behind the goals, much to the thrill of kids pooling close by to watch. Then there's the hoopla of the pre-game entertainment, so banal I struggle to remember it, the bum-wiggling, foot-crunching manoeuvres as new arrivals in our row weave past, the juggling of beverages and the wafting aromas of richly fried and salted, onion-saturated and sauce drenched fast food, comparing notes with Caroline, killing time snapping photos on the mobile, the eruption of cheers and chants as the players finally run out and crash the banners, the due diligence to a national anthem that's about as daft as our club song (just who is this old duck Gert-by-sea?) the coin toss, the crowd exploding at the bounce … our giant of a big man Aaron ‘Sandy' Sandiland's fist crashing like Thor's hammer through the clouds …
so this is why people GO to the footy!

In the first quarter the game is as ugly as a street brawl. The Dockers mount a relentless forward press and lock down Sydney in a rolling maul of tackles; the pressure is blistering, but the kicking is wild, and by the siren we've managed a disappointing 2.9 to their 2.2. We should be streets ahead, but instead we're stuck revving at the intersection. The crowd vibe is still festive, but my gut tunes in to a collective twitching of nerves; an understandable reflex when you've spent twenty years watching your team invert the triumphal cliché – snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Two old guys sitting next to us, with drawn, leathery faces
beneath weather-worn Dockers caps, both with an ear dangling the small white cord of a transistor radio, exchange terse, worried words. I think of my dad, suspecting he'd tune a ready eye to these characters, and I imagine the impossible pleasure of having him beside me. Then I realise that ‘the old guys' are probably closer in age to me at fifty-two than to him, at what would have been ninety-one. Time can be a relentless bastard of an opponent, and a trickster to boot, and in that moment I miss my father more intensely – and yet feel closer to him – than I have since his death.

Meanwhile, the game is on again and our boys – revved up by Ross Lyon – are flying goal-wards with a precision that now matches the intensity of their play. The crowd is ballistically pro-Docker, but just behind us a young guy in a Sydney jumper, chosen, so he informs the mates he's sitting with, not for affiliation, but with the express intention of pissing the purple people off, persists in niggling, offering spicy if increasingly redundant advice to Freo, until eventually one of the old guys tells him to ‘watch his effing language'. The unfortunately contradictory choice of adjective brings guffaws from the recipient, but (and for all the daft, blokeyness of the exchange, I'm more than happy enough to own this) the last laugh is with us (me, the Dockers and the old guys) as a spectacular – and very accurate – second quarter closes with the purple firmly ahead 7.11 to 2.2. Now for a carton of those delicious salty, hot chips – crisp on the outside, and warm and juicy with potato squish on the inside after the crunch. Junk food never tasted so good.

The Dockers maintain their dominance for the rest of the match, although a Swans fightback and a slight easing of scoreboard pressure by our boys towards the end of the game unleashes an eleventh-hour quiver of worry, with the final margin closing to twenty-five points. In the last five minutes, though, it is clear we simply can't be beaten and the ground begins to echo with one short repeated riff. It's not the seesawing Freeee-ohh, Freee-ohh we've come to expect, but something cryptic that I find myself chanting like a mantra before I fully grasp its meaning: MCG,
MCG, MCG, MCG, and MCG. Yes, that's where we're going. Tomorrow in Jerusalem; next Saturday in Melbourne. We're off to challenge for the Holy Grail.

A week later, unable to make it away from Perth, I watch the game on TV with my mother at her nursing home, proud but ultimately gutted as, despite the gusto of the mighty purple army that floods over to Melbourne to cheer them on, the Dockers falter horribly at the MCG – a slow start, wasted opportunities in front of goal, and then a desperate, gutsy lunge to come back too late at the end. I speculate, like many a pundit, that maybe the big occasion overpowered the ingénues. I concede that maybe – just maybe – our wily and experienced opponents Hawthorn were just too good. I wax mythical too – we stumbled because we were forced to wear our away strip for the match: the white jumper adorned with purple chevrons and white shorts. Unfair advantage to the Vics of course! We're just like poor old Samson with his hair shorn. Mum listens to all this with a sympathetic, diplomatic nod and a cheeky, happy little glint in her eye. She's a Melbourne girl by birth and upbringing, and a football lover who accompanied us to all those East Fremantle games, gamely supporting her husband's team, then went over to the Eagles with the AFL entry in the late 80s and stayed there. Whenever the Eagles are out of the equation though, she gets a double dip, reverting to the Melbourne team of her youth – Hawthorn.

Normally that cheeky little glint would rile me – smug Victorians! Given her increasing frailty, the slow but relentless tax that a recent diagnosis of Alzheimer's has begun to impose upon her memory, I find myself – however frustrated by the Freo loss – checking my response, pulling back into perspective to cherish her enjoyment of the occasion and my luck to be sharing the experience of ‘that one day in September' with my mother one more time. Later, when I start to write this essay, I will remember that purple is the chosen colour of the Alzheimer's Association.

Colours, as I observed earlier, are not just decorative whims or markers to flog brands: they can indeed show our loyalties, point to our passions and our vulnerabilities, shape and mark our identities, signify subversively, and sometimes, without intention, result in very strange bedfellows, in improbable points of unity. At the close of the preliminary final, as the chant ‘MCG MCG MCG' continued to ring out amid the ecstatic celebrations after the siren, anything seemed possible. While many stayed behind, continuing their celebrations, Caroline and I began our descent down the grey concrete tower, a journey that allowed me to see through the back of each tier and into the bays just below. In the crisp cold air of early spring dusk, enhanced by the beams of the activated stadium lights, these bays full of faithful seemed bathed (blessed, dare I say it?) in a luminescent purple glow. The intensity of the colour was heightened, hypnotic – like the illumination of a stained-glass window by a gently setting sun. I felt infused – there is no other verb to describe it – with an odd blend of awe and serenity, with a sense of connection, an effortless melding into a communal spirit which I suddenly recognised as akin to the emotion I'd experienced as a participant in Pride parades, walking in solidarity with my tribe through Northbridge, amid the cheers, the glitter, the dazzle of the streetlights, the swirling rainbow colours.

In early 2015, at the same time as this piece was being finalised for publication, the AFL announced that one NAB Challenge pre-season clash would be themed as an official Pride match. The teams involved would be the Sydney Swans and the Fremantle Dockers and the match, to be played in Sydney, would coincide with Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Mark Evans, the AFL
football operations manager commented: ‘Diversity and inclusion is essential to our game. We say, “no matter who you are, where you are from or who you love, we can all love footy” .'
¹²
On March 15
^th
, on an oval featuring distinctive rainbow markings, Sydney defeated Fremantle by nine points.
¹³
I have never been prouder of my team.

Life without Krishna has no joy for me. Tell me what is good for me. I am a wanderer with a hollow heart.

Mahabharata, Book Sixteen: The Battle With Clubs

I fell in love with Krishna when I was three years old. I gazed at the wall fresco in Gopal's restaurant while my parents took turns feeding me sultana
halva
drowned in custard; I would point at the peacock feather tucked in his turban, the flute, the bangles circling his ankles. His skin was a deep blue, almost purple – his eyes luminous, pink palms turned upward.

Krishna was adopted and raised by a
gopi
in a rural village. He ran free in the forest with cowherds and goatkeepers, farmers and cows, indulging in pranks and stuffing clay and soil into his mouth. ‘Come now, open up. What's in there,' the
gopi
said, tilting his head back and gazing in. In his mouth she saw the universe. The galaxies whirling at the base of his throat; the planets and stars and cosmic dust; even hundreds of reflections of her own self taking Krishna onto her lap. ‘Millions of skies are within me,' he said.