Come the third Sunday of winter, Carlton had won a mere four games. Having missed finals the previous year by a single kick deep in the shade of time-on, the Blues were additional proof of history repeating itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
The previous Sunday, Carlton were the footballing equivalent of chewing black rubber in a listless six-goal loss against arch rivals Essendon. The only time the Blues struck sparks that dark night was as they scraped against pre-season expectations.
It was a loss that left most supporters entirely devoid of spirit, others riled enough to place angry calls to talkback radio, and some considering joining lesser-known Mathiesons at Florentino’s over a few bottles of $350 Shiraz to figure out how to sack Michael Voss.
A promotion for kids to get in free at the MCG when Carlton hosted the Gold Coast the following week, read more like a sting by the Department of Health and Human Services than it did a genuine AFL promotion. But this was when my daughter’s journey with the Carlton Football Club began.
I figured the crowd would be sparse and that the most virulent vitriol towards Carlton had already been spat. And despite all available evidence, it felt our best chance to, well… win, which makes any sell to a seven-year-old that little bit smoother.
Of course, fandom is more than just about winning. In The ABCs of Sports Fandom, Dr. Daniel L. Wann from Murray State University in Kentucky says: “People’s lives are enriched [by sport] – there’s very clear research showing that the more you identify with a local sports team, the better your social psychological health is.”
After the first quarter this sounded like fiction cut from whole cloth. Carlton started in a manner the same as it ever was – sluggish, with long pauses sagging between any play that felt coherently threatening. It hardly seemed worth the bother. My daughter looked at me as if to say “you signed me up for… this?”
Having sat through 10 years of this, I consider myself no stranger to footballing fatigue. This, however, seemed designed to try the patience of the toughest fan. But before I could explain to her that into each life of fandom some rain must fall, Carlton had changed before our very eyes.
A goal to Charlie Curnow made it five goals in nine minutes. A further six-minute spell saw goals to Harry McKay, Tom De Koning, Matt Kennedy and Patrick Cripps, before a half-time standing ovation.
It was a reminder – notedly a timely reminder – that sport is about moments. It doesn’t matter who you support, premierships are incredibly rare. It is those moments during the year that sustain you. That Sunday, sharing the experience with my daughter for the first time, was one of those moments.
But as pleasing as a 10-goal win was, there was nothing to suggest it was a portent for a run of moments that have sustained us through to spring – Jesse Motlop putting the Blues five goals up on Collingwood; Paddy Dow putting the crescendo on a comeback against the nemesis, St Kilda; Caleb Marchbank’s left finger (right wrist, thigh… whatever) saving the game against Melbourne; and Curnow’s mark in the dying seconds on the Gold Coast that guaranteed a September of consequence for the first time in a decade.
A 2015 UK report into the Social Impacts of Culture and Sport found that in terms of the social capital impacts from sport, there is evidence that sport is a type of “social glue”, increasing social connectedness and a sense of belonging.
It is this sense of community and belonging that my daughter has started to experience. She can spot a Carlton bumper sticker from 50 yards, recounts parts of games to her four-year-old sister and refers to all matters Carlton as “us”. Even in primary school, the social connection that it can help establish demonstrates the value of sport beyond participation.
Which isn’t to say supporting Carlton for her – or for her more jaded dad – hasn’t felt participatory, that the fans are disjoined from what happens from inside the boundary.
On Saturday morning I took her to an open training session at Princes Park, which was to see proof that, in Parkville at least, sport has displaced religion as Marx’s “opiate of the masses” (although Marx, it must be said, would hardly be the Carlton Football Club’s philosopher of choice).
The two of us were part of the thousands – the Carlton commonweal – and I felt a part of September for the first time since before she was born, and she supposed that this is how it ever shall be.
For Carlton’s captain, Patrick Cripps, who will play his first final after debuting in round four of 2014, it was a reminder of when club stalwart Shane O’Sullivan told him that he wouldn’t understand just how big the club is until you got to finals and got rolling.
“I’m starting to feel that now,” Cripps said on Saturday. “They [the fans] have been huge for us in the back half of the year, and we’re going to need them on Friday night. I’m sure there’ll be people on the light towers, they’ll be coming from everywhere.”
From what I saw on the weekend, I’m comfortable enough to make a confident bet that he’ll be right.
