Snake_Baker
The one true King of the North
- Apr 24, 2013
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- 153,169
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Special edition: North, Essendon and me.
June 26, 2018 / oshanassystreet
North take on Essendon this Sunday.
North take on Essendon and I’ll be thinking again of a man I never met.
My grandfather on Mum’s side passed away a few years before I was born.
I’ve seen photos, read letters and heard stories. I like to think that from Poppa I inherited a sense of the ridiculous in life.
Plus, after a game of under 17 footy for Hepburn back in the day, Mum said I looked just like him when I was knackered and had put my hands on my hips and gasped for breath.
I also share his name, although everyone that knew him, including his kids, knew him as ‘Bob’.
Why Bob? His name wasn’t Robert.
Like the mystical ‘Shinboner’ itself, there are a few theories getting around.
My favourite is that when he was a kid rolling around the Mount Pleasant footy club in the years after the first war (up Muskerry way) he’d earn a few ‘bob by holding the senior players’ hats for them during the game.
Everyone wore hats back then.
According to Nana he’d stack the hats on his head, one on top of the other, the result of which could be seen ‘bobbing up and down’ from the far side of the ground.
The oldest stories should never die.
It’s harder these days. When the blockbuster event is all that seems to matter to those broadcasting and running the game it’s harder to keep remembering the old stories and old rivalries that continue to burn in the hearts and minds of those that choose to live them still.
Maybe you don’t believe me. That’s ok. Maybe you only know rivalry as something sold to you via your big screen. Or maybe you play only by numbers, and anything under 50 thousand in the stands is to be met with a scoff and another sip of Crown Lager.
And again, that’s ok. But if you get a chance and you’re inclined to read a line or two, you could do worse than read up on some of the history of the North Melbourne and Essendon footy clubs, and you might realise why this contest is etched into some of us like blood into stone.
The old stories need to be retold.
One day at home, I asked Mum which club she and her sisters hated the most when they were growing up.
‘Essendon’, came the deadpan reply. I’m not sure she even looked up from what she was doing. Certainly, no thinking music was required.
‘Why’s that? Cos it’s close to North Melbourne?’
Then she looked up, her voice grew deeper and rasping, her accent became something older and harder as she clenched her fist and rattled out the phrase she’d rattled out a hundred times before, just as I’d asked her the same question a hundred times before:
‘They lined us up.’
Then we’d laugh. She was speaking her father’s words that had become a part of family folklore.
In 1958 North were leading Essendon in the final quarter of a then-elimination final at Windy Hill. A final, in the oldest of enemy territories, and the Shinboners were minutes from victory.
The energy churned from the hoard of flesh, blasphemy, beer, blood and piss that surged and breathed between fence and arena must have seethed over the ground like a gashed vein.
Then from somewhere amongst this madness, this tiny universe that existed only for those brief moments in that tiny space upon the earth, sport entered into the surreal.
Essendon called for a head count.
They lined us up.
Had it been proved that North had an extra player on the field, our score would have been wiped and the Dons would have progressed in the 1958 final series.
They lined us up.
They lined us up.
They lined us up, counted, and were wrong.
The game continued, North won and kicked Essendon out of the finals.
They lined us up.
Imagine if it happened today.
Was he there, Poppa? Was he there in the stands screaming blue and white murder with the aggrieved dignity that the sons and grandsons of Irish Catholic migrants surely felt seep through their very pores like sweat unto the paddock?
Or was he at home, walking the streets or shaking a wireless or maybe propping up a bar within a stone’s throw of Arden Street Oval?
It doesn’t matter. The audacity, the outrageousness, the arrogance, the petulance of it all stayed with him and stayed with him for years to come whenever the time came once again to confront the neighbours from over Racecourse Road.
‘The Bombers. They lined us up.’
They lined us up.
Anyway, it doesn’t have to mean anything to you. But it means something to me.
It’s honest, you see. Honest and silly and pointless and beautiful. Just like our silly, pointless and beautiful game.
It wouldn’t even matter if it didn’t happen as he remembered. Mythology doesn’t need a citation.
I’ll head along to Etihad on Sunday, scan my membership and stand somewhere at the back of level one. At some stage I’ll cross paths with a sibling, aunt or parent and maybe North will have a win.
I’ll be thinking of Poppa Bob regardless, and how I remember him and give his stories new meaning alongside those of Sheedy and Pagan and marshmallows and the VFA and ancient recruitment zones and religion and industry and everything else that’s straddled our clubs like the Flemington sky.
And for anyone wondering how a kid from a sheep farm near Muskerry ended up in North Melbourne – he and Nana upp’d stumps after the second war and bought a rickety weatherboard up the road from the local football club.
They had four daughters who walked to home games and got the train to away ones, ink from their royal blue and white home-made streamers running up their arms in the rain.
The house was on O’Shanassy Street.
A few years after that head count, the government knocked the house down.
But like the North Melbourne and Essendon rivalry, the old stories live on.
Long live the Shinboners and the Bombers.
Come on you Roo boys.
https://oshanassystreet.wordpress.com/2018/06/26/special-edition-north-essendon-and-me/
June 26, 2018 / oshanassystreet
North take on Essendon this Sunday.
North take on Essendon and I’ll be thinking again of a man I never met.
My grandfather on Mum’s side passed away a few years before I was born.
I’ve seen photos, read letters and heard stories. I like to think that from Poppa I inherited a sense of the ridiculous in life.
Plus, after a game of under 17 footy for Hepburn back in the day, Mum said I looked just like him when I was knackered and had put my hands on my hips and gasped for breath.
I also share his name, although everyone that knew him, including his kids, knew him as ‘Bob’.
Why Bob? His name wasn’t Robert.
Like the mystical ‘Shinboner’ itself, there are a few theories getting around.
My favourite is that when he was a kid rolling around the Mount Pleasant footy club in the years after the first war (up Muskerry way) he’d earn a few ‘bob by holding the senior players’ hats for them during the game.
Everyone wore hats back then.
According to Nana he’d stack the hats on his head, one on top of the other, the result of which could be seen ‘bobbing up and down’ from the far side of the ground.
The oldest stories should never die.
It’s harder these days. When the blockbuster event is all that seems to matter to those broadcasting and running the game it’s harder to keep remembering the old stories and old rivalries that continue to burn in the hearts and minds of those that choose to live them still.
Maybe you don’t believe me. That’s ok. Maybe you only know rivalry as something sold to you via your big screen. Or maybe you play only by numbers, and anything under 50 thousand in the stands is to be met with a scoff and another sip of Crown Lager.
And again, that’s ok. But if you get a chance and you’re inclined to read a line or two, you could do worse than read up on some of the history of the North Melbourne and Essendon footy clubs, and you might realise why this contest is etched into some of us like blood into stone.
The old stories need to be retold.
One day at home, I asked Mum which club she and her sisters hated the most when they were growing up.
‘Essendon’, came the deadpan reply. I’m not sure she even looked up from what she was doing. Certainly, no thinking music was required.
‘Why’s that? Cos it’s close to North Melbourne?’
Then she looked up, her voice grew deeper and rasping, her accent became something older and harder as she clenched her fist and rattled out the phrase she’d rattled out a hundred times before, just as I’d asked her the same question a hundred times before:
‘They lined us up.’
Then we’d laugh. She was speaking her father’s words that had become a part of family folklore.
In 1958 North were leading Essendon in the final quarter of a then-elimination final at Windy Hill. A final, in the oldest of enemy territories, and the Shinboners were minutes from victory.
The energy churned from the hoard of flesh, blasphemy, beer, blood and piss that surged and breathed between fence and arena must have seethed over the ground like a gashed vein.
Then from somewhere amongst this madness, this tiny universe that existed only for those brief moments in that tiny space upon the earth, sport entered into the surreal.
Essendon called for a head count.
They lined us up.
Had it been proved that North had an extra player on the field, our score would have been wiped and the Dons would have progressed in the 1958 final series.
They lined us up.
They lined us up.
They lined us up, counted, and were wrong.
The game continued, North won and kicked Essendon out of the finals.
They lined us up.
Imagine if it happened today.
Was he there, Poppa? Was he there in the stands screaming blue and white murder with the aggrieved dignity that the sons and grandsons of Irish Catholic migrants surely felt seep through their very pores like sweat unto the paddock?
Or was he at home, walking the streets or shaking a wireless or maybe propping up a bar within a stone’s throw of Arden Street Oval?
It doesn’t matter. The audacity, the outrageousness, the arrogance, the petulance of it all stayed with him and stayed with him for years to come whenever the time came once again to confront the neighbours from over Racecourse Road.
‘The Bombers. They lined us up.’
They lined us up.
Anyway, it doesn’t have to mean anything to you. But it means something to me.
It’s honest, you see. Honest and silly and pointless and beautiful. Just like our silly, pointless and beautiful game.
It wouldn’t even matter if it didn’t happen as he remembered. Mythology doesn’t need a citation.
I’ll head along to Etihad on Sunday, scan my membership and stand somewhere at the back of level one. At some stage I’ll cross paths with a sibling, aunt or parent and maybe North will have a win.
I’ll be thinking of Poppa Bob regardless, and how I remember him and give his stories new meaning alongside those of Sheedy and Pagan and marshmallows and the VFA and ancient recruitment zones and religion and industry and everything else that’s straddled our clubs like the Flemington sky.
And for anyone wondering how a kid from a sheep farm near Muskerry ended up in North Melbourne – he and Nana upp’d stumps after the second war and bought a rickety weatherboard up the road from the local football club.
They had four daughters who walked to home games and got the train to away ones, ink from their royal blue and white home-made streamers running up their arms in the rain.
The house was on O’Shanassy Street.
A few years after that head count, the government knocked the house down.
But like the North Melbourne and Essendon rivalry, the old stories live on.
Long live the Shinboners and the Bombers.
Come on you Roo boys.
https://oshanassystreet.wordpress.com/2018/06/26/special-edition-north-essendon-and-me/
