AFL Withdrawal

It is 2.15 on a Friday afternoon. The students have left. One of the benefits of working here is that we finish early on Fridays, we can go by 2pm if not sneak out even earlier.  What is not a benefit is that sometimes, like today, we have to do PD on Friday afternoons and SATURDAYS!!!!!

This sucks arse big time, just to lose a Saturday sucks arse but what really sucks arse is that tomorrow is the 29^th September.  The PD starts at 9.30 am, exactly the time that the live coverage of the AfL Grand Final begins.

I’m not a massive footy head. I have friends and family who have followed the whole season with far more dedication than I have. But I really like watching live games and I really like watching the GF.  I really like watching Buddy Franklin (and maaaany other individuals; Harry O’Brien, Eddie Betts, Juddy, all the Joey’s legends….but they’re unfortunately not playing) Who wouldn’t enjoy the spectacle, usually it is a very social event, lots of people, alcohol, food, alcohol, yelling at the TV, more food and alcohol. Sometimes people fall off things, or over things- not necessarily because they’re cheering hard.  And it’s Aussie. It’s our tradition, my tradition, to watch it with drink in hand trying really hard to concentrate despite feeding my very short attention span vodka. To feel a sense of mateship and appreciate big, beautifully shaped men chase a ball and each other displaying athleticism, grace and violence. My favorite place to watch it was at my friends’ house in Jan Juc. The match coincided with Gordo’s birthday, so he generally had a bottle of birthday grog to dispose of.  But he was not always the one to fall over. We’d have great food and great peeps and big discussions, about footy and surf and the holidays and the dread of term 4 and I loved it. In the early days people would continue till they fell off or over things, climbed things, got lost or passed out. Later days involved eating and drinking, women chasing kids around while men developed tunnel vision and pretended they didn’t have partners or kids. One year we all ended up lying around in that curious stage of long term drinking that makes you feel both drunk and hungover at the same time, watching Tele-Tubbies with some of the kids. And eating chips and chocolate and cheese that had been sitting around all day. But always we were together and sharing the experience and loving footy.

And last year I got to go to the Grand Final for the first, and probably the last, time in my life. It’s hard to get tickets so I tried really hard to appreciate it even though it was last minute and ridiculously freezing for September and I had been on a drinking binge in Juc the night before. I had to drive back to Melbourne through hail then try and find as many warm clothes as I could hiding at mum and dad’s and as a result I went to the Collingwood-Cats GF wearing tights, trackie pants, hiking boots, a thermal, a flanny, gloves and a ski jacket. I looked like I had just emerged from hiking trip through the Grampians that involved mad Bunyips dragging me through the bush then getting me drunk. Luckily, my last minute spare ticket was for the corporate section where all the guys were in suits and ties and the women were in designer skinny jeans, sky high heels, perfect hair and makeup and none of them looked like they’d been partying with mad Bunyips.

Once the siren went however and I saw some of my old Joey’s boys running through the banner, and I knocked back three pints of cider, I loved every freezing minute of it and will remember it forever. Especially ‘cause the Cats beat the Pies.

So last Saturday, after having had a pretty hard couple of months (no, that does not include beaching in Lagos..), I got to watch the semi-final with some fellow Aussies while we sat around chopping a thousand kilos of tomatoes, eggplants, onions and garlic to make relish. Earlier I had made the odd FB comment that I started watching the footy in my undies (and that Buddy Franklin was welcome in there anytime..), I’d like to clarify that was before I went visiting these new friends…Once dressed and as respectable as it gets I went to the relish extravaganza and had one of the best mornings I’ve had since I’ve been in Turkey and it alleviated some of my homesickness. Because I am homesick, which has caught me by surprise, I miss Australia and my life there. I miss the island and the random insanity of it. I miss my friends and my clifftop track. I miss the open spaces and the bush and the beach. I miss my volatile Pajero. I miss driving and the Tiwi dinner club and the food and the coffee. I miss gluten free bread and the quiet and the stars. But last Saturday, hanging with some really cool new friends watching the footy and bawling my eyes out form the onions was Aussie awesome. So I was very excited about being able to do something similar tomorrow. Instead, I will be sitting in a conference hall, listening to really loud Turkish being translated into really loud English through headphones telling me all about Learning styles. And by “listening” I mean streaming the footy and checking FB and my emails and maybe writing another blog. I am a Global Learner after all, I learn best by doing more than one at once. So I guess I’ll learn a lot. And you bastards in Oz or watching the GF somewhere in the world better FB me so I don’t feel so homesick! And Go Hawks!