This is the first football match we’ve seen since St Kilda were up here. We moved house recently, across the Rubicon that is the Cooks River. After 30 years of living within a ten minute walk of Oxford, Cleveland or King Sts, it’s a wondrous revelation to have a backyard and I’ve been mowing, planting, picking lemons and spraying lawn treatment.

We don’t have the internet, yet, and I dislike the tiny phone screen, so headlines and scores are all the news I’ve gathered. We have bugger-all TV reception – TVS, the community station, comes through bright and strong but every other channel is most often a pixellated kaleidoscope, a digital Jackson Pollock.

Entertainment in our beautiful 1920-ish home (we have an entrance foyer!) is all music and books and I only had 40 pages to go when we were due to leave so we missed most of the first term. Scoreboard stats told us that the Bombers had something like 100 touches to 60 and eight clearances to four. Satisfied that I’d been spared the worst of it, we settled in for what turned out to be a pig’s dinner (all slops) of a second quarter.

By the gods, it was excruciating. 36 elite footballers playing a clueless game of miskicks, running into trouble, not communicating, summed up by Cameron when he marked then decided to run around the mark and banana-checkside-whatever and didn’t make the distance.

Came the third and the horror ground onward. Several minutes of play in the Monaros forward line resulted in two behinds, an OOF and, oh mercy, a goal. Then the Bombers kicked an OOF. It was a fair summation of the play so far and some folks were already up and moving. Aesthetes, I figured.

Seventeen minutes in, Smith pounced on an error and drilled it: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs” then you might win the game, son. I’d been wondering if the clock was on geological time, the game having dragged on for an horrid eternity, but the Monaros found some composure from this goal and started to take control of the match.

Essendon hadn’t kicked a goal since the first minute of the second. They got one late in the third to keep the tally looking okay on the board, but the poor Bombers never looked like being a serious threat.

Come the fourth, the boys kicked three goals in five minutes. Was this the same team that had had us labouring through the second? Hard to believe, but such it was. They finally got some fluency happening but it’s hard to judge against such opposition. I looked at the faces of the Essendon fans around us and thought what a horrid few years they’ve had. I looked back to the field and thought the same of the players. As for the coach?

Around this time, a chant started, kids with the cardboard clappers going “GIANTS! Clapclapclap” and it continued for several minutes. All kids, all high piping young voices, it was beautiful.

A wonderful moment, punctured a few minutes later by Cooney’s hit on Coniglio. Once it was just a part of the game, but, late in a match with no chance of winning, all he did was risk depriving the team of his presence for the next week or two.

The Monaros’ last goal was kicked by Cameron after marking a beautifully judged kick from Patton. It’s good to see the big bloke back. He seemed to pick up confidence as the game went on and while I don’t expect to see him in the ruck he can do a bit of the enforcement in Mumford’s absence, that Phillips and Lobb aren’t yet up to.

Mumford’s absence may be a blessing, because it gives the young ruckmen game time they’d never have gotten otherwise. Of greater concern is the poor kicking, usually reflected more on the scoreboard than it was today, but a good team, one of the Contenders, would’ve punished GWS severely today. Perhaps it’s time to bring back circle work. Dump a few of the meetings and video analyses and get out onto the park with the footballs.

The Monaros are a unique experiment in the AFL – the Schoolies could’ve been, but they’ve blown it, so far – building a club and a team from scratch. They played some good football for 45 of the 120 minutes, but it was the kids’ chant that really demonstrated that something is starting to take shape. Mile upon mile of suburbs, where football has meant soccer or rugby league, give us the kid and we’ll give you the lifelong supporter.


Earl O’Neill was born in Sydney, grew up around Bankstown and was the only kid in his class to know that there were two drawn Grand Finals in 1977. His preferred seat is about 10-15 rows back on the right half-forward flank at the northern end of Spotless Stadium. He also proposes to change the name of the GIANTS to the Monaros.

More GWS stories, and other fan-writing can be found on the GIANTS page at www.footyalmanac.com.au