AFL / John Harms / 16 April 2010 / Leave a comment Bet Now

In the shadow of (yet another) buck's night, John Harms ponders last week's Essendon-Carlton clash.

A buck's day can be a very good thing. A very good thing.

I've been to a few - all pretty tame affairs, by yobbo Australian standards.

Thankfully.

(Like the night I had a rest from the card table to find many of the other lads watching The Sound of Music on TV.)

My own started at the Shield final at the Gabba and turned into a night at Silks at the Albion Park trots. It was also the Canterbury Guineas night meeting: Universal Prince was hot favourite. But we paid for the day many times over when seasoned campaigner Shogun Lodge, resuming, won the sprint at 25/1. (He ran second, a nose to Sunline in the Doncaster on the day The Handicapper and I were married, and Geelong got flogged by Essendon in the opening round of the season.)

One of my favourite buck's days was for a bloke called Choiv, who had his at the First Test of the 98-99 Ashes series. His mother-in-law-to-be was waiting at the Stanley St gate at stumps and whisked him away from what turned into a big night - without him.

Another favourite was the night the stripper-to-the-suburban-house was ordered out of some mindless male duty to the prescribed order of buck's day festivities. I recall sitting at the laminex table with a piece of capricciosa in my hand as my dear friend I. Lamb (Australia) - who played a few (television) games at full back for Eastern Suburbs (and will show you the videos) in the BRL - asked, "How did you get into stripping?" She was making a big effort at the time. She'd carefully placed the ghetto-blaster (as they were called in those days) on the lino, got the tape cranking, and was in the process of removing kit. But I. Lamb's line of questioning killed all mood and eventually it was decided she put the tasselled cow-girl's button-up back on and have a couple of bits of pizza herself.

It was memorable.

Then, there is The Spring Carnival, which is littered with the living corpses of blokes down from the bush on buck's days. Specially-made t-shirts on. Silly hats worn with dead man's jackets (dull blue with wide lapels) from Vinnies at St Arnaud. And that even sillier sensibility that blokes get when they are travelling together on an aircraft or better (worse?) still, a hired bus (with designated driver).

"Fang it," someone will be heard saying; the two most common words heard inside hire vehicles.

I recall another Gabba buck's day of blokes from Newcastle ("The girls went south and we came north"). The Novacastrians had gone to a lot of trouble with the t-shirts, which were individually named on the front with a sort of spreadsheet on the back. Down the left hand column were the names (You had your Nugget, your Macca, your Robbo, your Muzza, your Chucker et al, and of course you had The Buck) and then each column had a figure for odds in it. So, across the top were choice categories like 'First spew' (Chucker was 4/7) and 'First refusal' (which I took to be a drinking term with equestrian origins) and the most choice of the headings: 'First shag'.

Interestingly, The Buck was at un-backable odds for that, and their was even some suggestion from a few of the boys that the bookies had already paid out, which was quite impressive given they'd been in town all of 12 hours. A bloke called Goodyear was at 365/1 for "First shag." Not being a commonly offered price, I inquired why he was at $365. I was told that if he happens to find the woman of his dreams once a year, then it's a good year.

There was none of this stuff going on at The Park Hotel, just up the road from The Sullivans' pub in Abbotsford, on Saturday evening for Paul Daffey's buck's party.

I was down from Canberra for the occasion.

Daff has played with a lot of footy clubs over the years, and has written about many more, and has a rather fat address book. Being a particularly loyal character, Daff invited most of this address book to his party and so, for a few hours, Abbotsford held the record for the finest collection of blokes-aging-poorly in the history of the planet.

However, they did like footy.

Thus, after the parmas' were downed, and the red drained, the boys wandered back to the front bar to watch Essendon and Carlton over a few cleansers.

Which is what I want to talk to you about. (Those recognising the Alice's Restaurant format of this piece are to be congratulated).

Because this fixture, between traditional rivals, was a thoroughly modern game of football.

Some would say painstakingly modern, the only thing redeeming it being that it was a genuine contest.

But for forty-somethings brought up on the sanctity of centre-half-forward (the position), and the deity of blokes like Dermie and TD and Vander, and the preponderance of blokes walking around with their hands on their hips after the 19-minute mark of the first quarter, it was a test.

It started well enough, with Jobe Watson, who defies trends, playing like it was Dimboola in 1968. He pirouetted as gracefully as a surveyor changing the direction of a theodolite. And plodded. But two blind turns beat the paddock, one resulting in a goal to Lovett-Murray who smiled at the beauty of it all.

The maverick Watson led like a country captain-coach all night. I was waiting for an old-fashioned Dick Reynolds baulk.

That was unlikely in a high-pressure match that turned in to a two-headed rolling zone, throughout which the ring-a-ring-a-rosy skirmishes happened wherever players congregated. It was truly ugly in one sense, particularly when pressured handballs missed targets. All choked. Yet occasionally, a defender would over-commit, and the Chinese Checkers opportunity would be presented.

I sometimes sit on the 112 tram wondering what would happen if no defenders were drawn lemming-like into the handball smother, and for a while all just stood off. Whether we would be returned to the 'Seven Seconds of Corey Jones'. That infamous day at Manuka when Geelong, trailing by five goals, decided not to approach Corey Jones, who stood touching the pill on the ground for an eternity on the back flank.

The other thing that made this Essendon-Carlton game thoroughly modern, apart from the fact that players all look the same to a bloke who grew up with Gary Cowton, Mick Nolan and Scratcher Neal, is the zone-beaten goal. These are destined to be a blight on the game. They were scored in matches right across the round (with the exception of the Freo-Geelong game, which had its origins in the 1980s). These are goals where the infallible zone is proven to be fallible. And three attackers are suddenly 40 metres in the clear.

Chris Yarran kicked a classic of the genre in the first quarter, and there were others, but I can't decipher my notes after Freo Neil arrived and started ordering Bundy.

These are ridiculous games, and there will be plenty of them, if something isn't done. I'm pretty tolerant, but it's going to take the stealth of eight games a weekend before I'm converted.

And then I probably won't even realise.

Which makes wonder why wouldn't those who administer the game try to keep it as the great game we knew - for the period that coincided almost precisely with the existence of the Berlin Wall.

The thoroughly modern game is a new code.

I want the old code back.

And here is how it must be done.

There must be limited interchange. Players must be left to tire. When they're tired, they can't cover the ground. Hence, they must defend other players. Not space.

This is simple. Obvious. Basic.

Otherwise, we will get games of keepings-off, like this Essendon-Carlton fixture, mistake-ridden; games which make some talent-less automaton as important as Paddy Ryder.

How dumb is that?

Paddy Ryder should be allowed to shine.

Of course, this was buck's (mid)night analysis.

Someone sang the Bombers song and we got moved along.

Daff and a few stayers headed towards Smith St.

I went home to my hotel and was of insufficient character to withstand the temptations of the mini-bar. I needed something to pass the time while waiting for the Grand National. I slept through fences 5 to 34.

It was a thoroughly good night.