Magpie_Babe
Senior List
- Oct 8, 2006
- 158
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- AFL Club
- Collingwood
Heroes come unstuck
Terry Brown
October 19, 2006 12:00am
I PEELED Chrissy Tarrant off the garage wall this week. It sure wasn't easy.
For one thing, he was gaffer-taped on the asbestos with whacks and whacks of fat, black tape.
Every summer in the heat, footy posters in the garage grandstand flop down to the cat-hair carpet.
Sticking Taz up good and proper, I remember thinking, "You're not going anywhere."
Yeah -- so I thought! The hard part wasn't dislodging half a roll of tape. It was the hollow, sinking feeling doing it.
Pies fans know about sticking. It's in the song you sing to your kids when they're still in the womb.
But sticking together, side by side, is not what footy's about, is it?
Last week the Pies wheeled Taz out like you do the recyclables on Sunday night.
They swapped him for a Freo discard and ticket No. 8 in the AFL's annual November meat raffle.
It's not just the Maggies, either. Kids everywhere are peeling pictures off walls, and not just kids.
The Round 1 Footy Record should come with a tool to unpick the number off last year's jumper.
Around town, up north and across the Nullarbor, last week was one big bin night -- and had the same whiff about it.
Kids swap footy cards with more loyalty and my boy, Jamie, wouldn't swap his Chris Tarrants if you gave him a wrist burn -- still.
Minutes after the draft deadline, he was called to the front of class with his mate Harry, another Pies kid from Auskick.
"Tarrant's gone to Fremantle," they were informed gleefully under the Pies v World no-mercy rule.
Jamie fell to the floor dramatically, screaming "noooo" like a cartoon robot being sucked into a black hole.
That makes me so proud, and so sad. For all the theatrics, he really was hurting.
When I was his size, I wanted to howl when I saw Peter McKenna kicking goals for Carlton.
When Fabulous Phil Carman's white boots were given marching orders, I felt like I'd been kicked.
Micky McGuane in a Blues jumper? I couldn't bear to look.
And now Taz.
Footy players aren't brain surgeons, but Tarrant wasn't recruited by St Vinnie's cranial unit either.
He came down from Mildura to kick the bladder out of a lump of leather.
That poster plastered with tape shows Taz's 2003 Mark of the Year, taking a ride on hapless Geelong hacks.
In a year that ended so painfully, that, at least, was something.
By the end of this season, lots of Collingwood barrackers wanted to throttle Tarrant.
His wonky left boot scarred them for life. His body language infuriated blokes who couldn't get a kick playing on their grandma.
Plenty of others, though, would have given Taz a kidney -- hell, Chris, have 'em both!
For all their failings, the blokes on the field still ride teeth-rattling bumps for the rest of us.
They give us a dream for six months of the year and limp around in plaster for the other six.
As stupid and irrational as it is, and it certainly is, you get to believe in these blokes.
They're part of the family and all families have someone who drives you insane.
You don't take them out in the desert and leave them, though, tempting as it is.
Jamie still has his Chris Tarrant poster beside his bed and he's not taking it down yet.
Where it says Collingwood along the side, he's going to write in "former".
He will lie in bed at night and imagine taking a hanger like that when he plays for the Pies.
I've told him when he's 17, 2m of muscle with legs like bazookas, we are moving to Guam.
We are hiding him from the other teams' draft scouts because we're both pretty sure Carlton will still be getting top pick in 2014.
Until then, though, we'll be here in our black and white, but who knows who else will?
November 25 is the league's next recycle day, the meat raffle, the draft.
My daughter looks at Cameron Cloke's photo on her bedhead, signed "To Jessy". She's worried.
And I look at pictures in a garage with a poster-sized gap now between the pie warmer and the telly, not happy.
All those Clokes.
All that gaffer tape.
brownt@heraldsun.com.au
Terry Brown
October 19, 2006 12:00am
I PEELED Chrissy Tarrant off the garage wall this week. It sure wasn't easy.
For one thing, he was gaffer-taped on the asbestos with whacks and whacks of fat, black tape.
Every summer in the heat, footy posters in the garage grandstand flop down to the cat-hair carpet.
Sticking Taz up good and proper, I remember thinking, "You're not going anywhere."
Yeah -- so I thought! The hard part wasn't dislodging half a roll of tape. It was the hollow, sinking feeling doing it.
Pies fans know about sticking. It's in the song you sing to your kids when they're still in the womb.
But sticking together, side by side, is not what footy's about, is it?
Last week the Pies wheeled Taz out like you do the recyclables on Sunday night.
They swapped him for a Freo discard and ticket No. 8 in the AFL's annual November meat raffle.
It's not just the Maggies, either. Kids everywhere are peeling pictures off walls, and not just kids.
The Round 1 Footy Record should come with a tool to unpick the number off last year's jumper.
Around town, up north and across the Nullarbor, last week was one big bin night -- and had the same whiff about it.
Kids swap footy cards with more loyalty and my boy, Jamie, wouldn't swap his Chris Tarrants if you gave him a wrist burn -- still.
Minutes after the draft deadline, he was called to the front of class with his mate Harry, another Pies kid from Auskick.
"Tarrant's gone to Fremantle," they were informed gleefully under the Pies v World no-mercy rule.
Jamie fell to the floor dramatically, screaming "noooo" like a cartoon robot being sucked into a black hole.
That makes me so proud, and so sad. For all the theatrics, he really was hurting.
When I was his size, I wanted to howl when I saw Peter McKenna kicking goals for Carlton.
When Fabulous Phil Carman's white boots were given marching orders, I felt like I'd been kicked.
Micky McGuane in a Blues jumper? I couldn't bear to look.
And now Taz.
Footy players aren't brain surgeons, but Tarrant wasn't recruited by St Vinnie's cranial unit either.
He came down from Mildura to kick the bladder out of a lump of leather.
That poster plastered with tape shows Taz's 2003 Mark of the Year, taking a ride on hapless Geelong hacks.
In a year that ended so painfully, that, at least, was something.
By the end of this season, lots of Collingwood barrackers wanted to throttle Tarrant.
His wonky left boot scarred them for life. His body language infuriated blokes who couldn't get a kick playing on their grandma.
Plenty of others, though, would have given Taz a kidney -- hell, Chris, have 'em both!
For all their failings, the blokes on the field still ride teeth-rattling bumps for the rest of us.
They give us a dream for six months of the year and limp around in plaster for the other six.
As stupid and irrational as it is, and it certainly is, you get to believe in these blokes.
They're part of the family and all families have someone who drives you insane.
You don't take them out in the desert and leave them, though, tempting as it is.
Jamie still has his Chris Tarrant poster beside his bed and he's not taking it down yet.
Where it says Collingwood along the side, he's going to write in "former".
He will lie in bed at night and imagine taking a hanger like that when he plays for the Pies.
I've told him when he's 17, 2m of muscle with legs like bazookas, we are moving to Guam.
We are hiding him from the other teams' draft scouts because we're both pretty sure Carlton will still be getting top pick in 2014.
Until then, though, we'll be here in our black and white, but who knows who else will?
November 25 is the league's next recycle day, the meat raffle, the draft.
My daughter looks at Cameron Cloke's photo on her bedhead, signed "To Jessy". She's worried.
And I look at pictures in a garage with a poster-sized gap now between the pie warmer and the telly, not happy.
All those Clokes.
All that gaffer tape.
brownt@heraldsun.com.au
