Learning Australian Rules

Fitzroy Stars 

My bosses at the Fitzroy Aboriginal Health Centre, where I worked many years ago, decided that it would be educational for me to do a bit of volunteering at the Saturday footy games—to do some bonding with the local Koori community, to immerse myself in the unique complexity of Koori relationships, every Saturday—rain, hail or shine. My Australian-trained colleagues, once they learned that it was unpaid, ignored the invitation, citing extreme professional learning commitments.

The home base of the Koori team, the Fitzroy Stars, was at the old Lions ground at the furthest-from-the-City end of Brunswick Street in the Melbourne inner suburb of Fitzroy—at the time a defiantly working-class area. (It is not that any more—people who buy real estate there now need six-figure incomes.)

A relatively young, moderately enthusiastic and rather inexperienced doctor, who arrived in Australia from the USSR two years previously, I arrive at the ground early to prepare. Having been raised on a diet of soccer and ice hockey, I have no idea what to expect.

Kiddies swarm around me, loudly demanding (“Doctor Michael! Doctor Michael!”) the obligatory bribes of Vitamin C tablets with glucose. Clinical and developmental benefits apart, I am aware that if I fail to deliver, these kids could make my life complicated.

Tools of trade ready, kids bribed, I have time to look around. The pitch looks different from a soccer field. There aren’t the customary goal posts, guarded by a goalie. In fact, there is no upper plank above the vertical poles. Weird.

The coach, a genial giant of a man, wearing the team colours and a big toothy grin, comes over. His name is Jock Austin (may his soul rest in peace). After a loud, good-natured “How youse going, Doc!”, Jock gives me a friendly slap on the back. I am quick enough to catch my glasses in mid-flight, about a yard away from my face. I put them back on my nose and ask: “Why don’t you have a goalie between the goal posts?” Jock tenses up, slightly opens his mouth in thought, rolls his eyes heavenward and creases his forehead in concentration. Being a polite and kind man, he does not know what to say, lest he offend me. After making sure I am not trying to make fun of him and am, in fact, serious, Jock opens his mouth several times, but no sound comes out. After a minute or so, when the pause in conversation becomes unbearable, instead of wrestling with the impossible dilemma between calling his volunteer doctor an idiot or starting a long and exhausting comparison between two distinct games (really, why does Aussie rules not have a goalie?), he decides, instead, to “notice” one of his friends—with whom he happened to have come to the game in the same car.

“Mate,” he says, pumping the hand of the astonished man, “Mate, good to see ya! Long time no see!” Like Jock a couple of minutes ago, the man goes through the same pantomime. I could not explain to the puzzled man that this was Jock’s way of getting out of his predicament. Jock and I, reading each other, burst into laughter.

The game starts. I freeze in astonishment. I have no idea how this game is played—there is barely controlled chaos all over the field, with the players determined to do as much damage to each other as possible. Burly, muscular, rough-looking men deliberately collide with each other at considerable speed; tackle the opposition and wrestle them to the ground, making horrible crunching noises; the players casually throw heavy punches at each other, as if distributing souvenirs of the game, seemingly unconcerned about black eyes or split lips. In the real world of law and order, this would qualify as intentional physical assault, resulting in grievous bodily harm.

I am called onto the pitch. My white coveralls and red medical bag are clean, but not for long. This time it is a trifle—a dislocated finger phalanx, which I quickly slide back into place and tape to another finger, standard practice of the “on field” ambulance.

“Are you done, Doc?” That is the umpire. Without waiting for my response, he bounces the egg-shaped ball off the hardened ground about a yard away from my head with a distinct “tboom”. I need to be quicker getting away from under the players’ feet. I am immediately surrounded by a heaving mass of running, writhing, struggling bodies, fighting each other to get the ball.

I am lying on the ground, trying to cover my head lest it be perforated by the spikes on the soles of the footy boots. I can see a man flying high above me, catching the ball and landing on somebody’s head. The siren sounds. The man whose head was used as a landing strip gets up on all fours, shakes his head, takes the opposition’s boot out of his mouth and helps the owner of the boot to get up. “You’re right, mate?” he asks the guy who has just assaulted him. “She’ll be right, mate,” answers the aggressor. They hobble off the field together, supporting each other, both covered in a grime of dirt, green grass smudges and red streaks of blood.

Interval. Everyone goes to the players’ rooms. I am left behind to collect the pieces of my lower jaw from the ground. This game, I learn later, was of a medium level of violence—one broken ankle, one broken collar-bone, one brain concussion—which necessitated evacuation to hospital—and a plethora of subluxated finger phalanges.

The next several seasons of The Game made me reasonably proficient in taking care of cramps (a serious matter for footballers), motivational speaking (I was entrusted with this psychotherapeutic ministration after the players learnt I was from Russia—“Russians are good at sports, aren’t they, coach?” I assumed as confident a look as I dared and just did it), fixing of dislocations and subluxations, field wound suturing, and many other emergency skills.

This game has made me suspect that Aussie rules footy is a localised, low-level civil war, intentionally kept smouldering to give the participants an outlet for any latent tendencies to violence possibly lurking in the subconscious. Observing The Game from such close quarters has also raised several interesting possibilities—what if the Australian national character has been formed by it? Or the other way around? Or both? 

Wantirna Trash and Treasure 

An unlikely setting for an epiphany (is that a legitimate word for a Jew to use?) is the 1982 Wantirna Trash and Treasure Market in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. We three recently arrived refugees are strolling along the rows of stalls, looking for books, utensils, pots and pans—anything to start a new life on the cheap.

I think I’ve won it in the raffle; my daughter Lena is adamant that it is her trophy. In any case, we have a prized possession—a black-and-white Collingwood (“Magpies” or simply “Pies” for those in the know) football, covered with the signatures of present and past players. I do not appreciate the preciousness of what I am holding in my hands. Had I known at the time that my daughter would marry into a family of generations of diehard Magpies supporters, I would have kept it to give to my son-in-law.

My path is blocked by a mountain of a man—the guy is huge, hairy and fierce-looking. He looks at me with the intensity of a sniper observing his prey through his gunsight. He is trembling. I am perplexed—what does he want? He is taller than I am by at least two heads and his arms are as thick as a fifteen-year-old tree trunk. I am not sure whether he would be able to buy his gigantic shoes from a shop or have to get them made to order. The man is standing in front of me, looking at the football I am holding.

Silently. Well, almost silently. He makes small, high-pitched guttural noises of the kind a golden retriever puppy makes looking into the window of a butcher’s shop. His bearded face creases into a tentative smile—“G’day mate, where did you get this beauty? It’s not for sale, by any chance, is it?” His eyes belie the calm his words are spoken with. His voice, however, is a dead giveaway—it is so filled with longing and desire that one could be forgiven for thinking he might be talking about the woman he loves.

He puts his huge hand in his pocket, pulls out a wallet, opens it up for all to see and says: “Look, all I’ve got is forty bucks here, but if this is not enough I could run up home, which is close by, and bring the rest.” He is not intimidating or threatening, just pleading.

I look at Valentina. She nods almost imperceptibly. Our daughter Lena is more forthcoming: “Daddy, give it to him, you see he wants it bad!” I do not say a word, just stretch out my arm and pass the football to him. He looks astonished, as though he does not quite believe he has it in his grasp. His face is red, his eyes full of tears, he is trying to say something—but makes no sense. He pushes his money into my hand, mumbling, “That’s all I’ve got. Thanks, mate, thanks an awful lot.” My attempts to refuse the money are ignored. He does not look the type who would resell it. We go our separate ways, both shaken by the experience.

That was my first encounter with the strong emotions engendered in this country by The Game. 

South Melbourne 

We were walking past the South Melbourne Town Hall when we noticed a sizeable group of men, women and teenagers, holding placards and handwritten signs, and all dressed in red and white. The signs read: “Please don’t go”, “South Melbourne belongs to South Melbourne”, “VFL take care of our team” and things like that. We already knew that the South Melbourne football team was being relocated to Sydney, but did not realise the depth of local resentment and despair. The intensity of feeling was comparable to the later emotional explosion of British people at the time of Princess Diana’s funeral—the tears, the sobs, the consoling hugs, the longing, and the clear feeling of losing something precious, the important if not easily formulated something which made a group of disparate individuals into a community.

It seemed surreal to a newcomer—the “mere” relocation of a footy team to another city because of financial problems triggering such a strong feeling in the local community! It was an awesome demonstration of the power and emotional pull of The Game.

A similar outpouring of mass grief was in plain view a few years later during the Melbourne funeral of the Aussie rules legend, Ted Whitten, who seemed to be a friend of everyone. Everyone felt entitled to call him just “Ted”. I think Ted would have been surprised if someone had called him “Mr Whitten”. This inborn, inbuilt, ever-present egalitarianism was just there, in understated Aussie fashion, eschewing the histrionics and pomposity of the loud French protestations of Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité. The French proclaim it, the Aussies live it. 

The MCG 

We had friends from Europe visiting and, as a true-blue, authentic Australian experience, took them to a football game at the MCG. Our friends were delighted to observe the native fun and games. We got our coloured identification gear—scarves, beanies, mittens and flags—wrapped ourselves and our friends in it and off to the battleground we went. The usual feeling of pleasant anticipation was in the air. The crowd, dressed in all colours of the rainbow, was, as usual, good-natured and boisterous. The sparse police presence was low-key, joking with the fans, smiling. All crowd control was done by polite and obviously well-trained security people in their distinctive uniforms.

Adults and children were everywhere, fathers discussing the game with their kids, obviously enjoying a family bonding time. In other words, everything was as it normally is at a footy game about to start.

What surprised me was the behaviour of our guests. As soon as they found themselves in the midst of the crowd streaming towards the MCG entrances, they immediately, without speaking to each other, pulled their colours off and stopped looking around, staring straight ahead instead. They stopped using their native language and became tense and watchful. Thinking that if they wished me to know the reason they would tell me, I did not ask why. Their strange behaviour continued after we found our seats. They were looking about nervously.

Each goal or point scored made them jump in their seats and look around apprehensively. When they saw fans drinking beer, which was freely available at the stadium, they asked me, in near panic, to take them home.

They were my guests, so I did not argue—we went home. Only when there did they explain that their unease had started from the moment they realised that the fans of different teams were all sitting together. There were no separately designated and reinforced areas for the different supporters. When one team scored, the other team’s supporters did not interfere with their jubilation. This they found strange, as they were expecting violence. When the beer appeared, our guests were convinced that there was going to be a massive clash between fans fuelled by the alcohol and that everyone would get hurt. That was why they wanted to go home. Having seen soccer violence in Europe, they could not have imagined how different it would be in Australia. 

Ararat 

A dusty country town in western Victoria, Ararat was distinguished by two unappealing institutions—Aradale, the psychiatric hospital for the chronically unwell and the forensically challenged (which no longer exists), and Ararat prison, still around.

Both contributed in large measure to the town’s economy. One half of the town worked in a prison and the other in a psychiatric hospital. Fun and games everywhere.

My story is about the prison which, at the time, contained a number of Koori prisoners. Because my duties involved visiting Aboriginal prisoners locked up in prisons around Victoria, I had a pass allowing me access. I became known to prison authorities as an “Aboriginal doctor”.

The Fitzroy Stars were playing a friendly game against the Ararat prison Koori team. I, as unofficial official team doctor, was emphatically asked to come along. Naively, as it turned out, I tried to get a clear answer to my feeble question: “If the game is friendly—why do you need a doctor?” I really did not want to drive 400 kilometres on a Saturday afternoon. It turned out to be one of those eternal questions of the type—“Is there life on Mars?” or “What is the meaning of life?” I did not get an answer. I had to drive to Ararat.

To those fascinated by prison exotica, such as heavy metal bars on windows, clanging doors leading to dark and musty dungeons, sirens wailing when an escape is attempted—I have to disappoint you. None of that in Ararat. Well, once, many moons ago, a prisoner, sent to town to pick up pizza for the guards, ended up in a local pub and had too many beers. He lost track of time and had to be picked up by the nervous guards. It was not difficult—all they had to do was to check all of the town’s six pubs, and get the happily drunk miscreant into a truck.

Ararat was a low to medium security prison, an “easy does it” place where guards and prisoners lived as one big, happy family. The biggest security threat was considered to be boredom; the hardest chore for prisoners was the choice of the evening movie; and the most common health hazard was overweight. A footy game with visitors was regarded as just what the doctor ordered—largely because constant fraternisation between guards and prisoners on and off the football pitch was considered bad for morale. Prisoners’ morale, that is.

In short, Ararat prison was not a gulag. I really did not expect civil war on the pitch, considering that the teams consisted of relatives and friends. How wrong I was!

It was not a game. It was fratricide. I spent more time on the field than off it. By the end of the third quarter, I had run out of splints, bandages and painkillers. The injured, arranged on a neat row of folding stretchers next to the pitch (everyone refused to be evacuated), were, without taking their eyes off the field, gingerly nursing their injuries. All the guards were present, cheering wildly. I noticed a lone guard by the open gates. The locals, tipped off about the sensational game by their prison rellies, were streaming in, cheering as they walked.

I was looking at this pandemonium and thinking about the “Geebung Polo Club”, where “a spectator’s leg was broken just from merely looking on”. The raw heat of emotional explosion hit me like a steam engine.

It turned out that it does not matter whom you play against—if you play, you give the game all you’ve got. It did not matter that it was a prison, it did not matter that the opposing side were relatives and friends, it did not matter that the injuries were soberingly real—nothing mattered, only the game.

When it was over, the field was covered with players lying down, breathing heavily, covered with sweat, grime and blood, exhausted. Only after ten or fifteen minutes were they able to line up and shake hands with the opposition. They had become friends and relatives again.

I did not realise that I was holding my breath, in awe at the magical transformation of each individual into a member of a group, and then its unity of purpose, its magnificent disregard of the price the players had to pay to win. For one fleeting moment, this group of dysfunctional, sometimes personality disordered and socially inadequate people was transformed into a collective knight in armour, objects of crowd adulation, heroes to look up to.

Driving home and thinking about what I had seen, I did not regret this Saturday trip. 

Is this really a big deal? Yes, it is 

How big? Extraordinarily big. Huge! How does one put a price on social glue? What is the price of an idea, a code of ethics, observed by millions?

Consider this—the game is an outlet for families from different social, economic, ethnic and political backgrounds to be together, to enjoy an outing and to re-affirm the guiding principle of the Australian way of life—live and let live.

It is a seasonal weekly re-affirmation of the social compact of public safety—who would bring their kids to a game otherwise?

It is a school of fair play—rules are rules and serve both winners and losers.

It is a school of respect for the opponent—without a worthy opposition, there is no game, there is no enjoyment, there is no contest, there is no yardstick by which to measure excellence.

The Game is a triumph of gender equality—women are seldom seen in the stadiums of Europe.

The Game is a vital component of Victorian and national discourse—without learning the language of the game the prospect of success in Australia’s competition-oriented society is reduced. At the same time, The Game has the potential to enhance upward social mobility—a young apprentice has every right to argue the comparative merits of various game points with a member of the board and, if he knows what he is talking about, his opinions will be taken seriously.

The Game is a training ground for the societal acceptance of freedom of speech—nobody in his or her right mind would dream of stopping a fan of an opposing team from expressing an opinion different from his or her own.

The Game is an important emotional safety valve—instead of taking accumulated work tension home, people can discharge it—without emotional or physical harm to themselves or others. This well-established and safe process of emotional discharge in public also maintains the principles of autonomy, non-maleficence, and respect for the privacy of the individual.

The Game is an important conduit of personal, as well as communal, continuity in a young country, where history, uniquely among nations, does not provide the ties of blood shed on the home country’s battleground. It provides a group identity for many people, an identity without which various unpalatable alternatives would fill the vacuum.

The Game is also a symbol of maleness in today’s increasingly feminised world, where gender roles are increasingly blurred.

It could be argued that practically every sport has the same merits as Aussie rules. In principle—yes. But no other sport has such a huge following, especially in Victoria; no other sport has such a positive impact on the nation’s psyche; no other sport has the capacity to instil the qualities of fair play, perseverance, bravery, mateship and chivalry in such multitudes.

To come back to questions I asked earlier—has the Australian national character been formed by footy? Or the other way around? Or both? Frankly, I think it is academic and, therefore, irrelevant. Whichever way it went—thank God for footy. First and foremost—it is a magnificent game.