… in the VFL that is.
Real footy by the bay…
Before everything went wrong at Richmond on Sunday evening i was having a great afternoon. If you listened to the ABC last Friday would have heard that my regular bit got hijacked. A bloke called Trevor Monti, the President of the Williamstown Football Club in the VFL competition called in to try and get me to come and check out some “real footy” last weekend. His Seagulls were taking on the Bombers of Bendigo and he wanted me to check out a bit of it…
Apparently, something similar happened to John Harms (who was also not doing anything about VFL at the time) over at The Age:
A FEW weeks ago, I received a phone call from someone called Trevor Monti. I had never met him before. He was ringing me in his capacity as president of the Williamstown Football Club. He kindly invited me to the lunch before the Seagulls’ opening game of the season against Werribee. He was very friendly.
I am always attracted to a bloke who is free-spirited enough to drop the Kennedy crow call into the opening minutes of his first conversation with you, and by the time I put the phone down, I had made a mental note that he was one of the more creative users of the word in its various forms. So I accepted.
Fortunately Trevor didn’t drop any F-Bombs on the sensitive folks over at ABC radio although he did drop a few after lunch. It looks like Trevor’s on a mission to preach the Willi word and if he needs to commit more hijacks than Al Qaeda to achieve it then so be it.
Trevor even offered to make me his guest for lunch. Someone described the whole experience of going to a VFL game in a real suburban ground, as being a bit like a time warp. So the only fitting way to get there on the day was in some equally time warped transportation.
VFL Transportation, circa 1950s
(it handled the down bit of the West Gate much better that the up bit…)
The lunch event in question was the Willamstown Seagulls VFL Club President’s lunch with special guest speaker Essendon icon Matthew Lloyd. All i knew about Matthew Lloyd was that he was a bit of a legend and that his dad played for Carlton. If you’re wondering how a guy like me with basically no AFL knowledge knew about his dad’s playing history you’ve obviously never spent an afternoon with or near the Essendon Grog Squad. “Matthew Lloyd’s dad played for Carlton!” (to the tune of Deck the Halls or something a lot like it) is one of the few Grog Squad tunes that i can repeat in front the easily shocked denizens of the internet. No, why they bother to chant it when they’re not playing Carlton doesn’t make any sense to me either.
Guest Speaker Matthew Lloyd (and his Dad – who played for Carlton)…
Trevor ensured that we had the full treatment by seating as at the table with Matty Lloyd and his dad. Very VIP and yes, of course i am shallow and it worked on me [That was for you, Saintsational fans that claim i'm a ho]. I also got to speak to a few people that were involved in the VFL competition in marketing and administration and some of the people that have been sponsoring the club for years. A real grass roots community effort that should be applauded.
Me looking like i work on the radio and !@#$ing Trevor
As far as i could tell there were two purposes to having Matthew Lloyd speak to the assembled crowd. One was to entertain the crowd and raise some money for the club. The other was obviously so that Trevor could conduct an extensive pre-contract negotiation to try and lure Lloydie to the Seagulls. While i knew his dad had played for Carlton, i didn’t know that two of his brothers had worn the number 18 for Williamstown and played in Grand Final winning sides and that Trevor’s great ambition (but possibly not Matthew’s) is that he will follow in their footsteps.
No toilets like this at Telsra Dome…
I have to acknowledge the good work of Essendon here. Not only Matthew Lloyd but the club President and a small army of Essendon officials turned up and lent support for what was essentially a fund raiser for a club affiliated to another team (the Seagulls are affiliated to their mortal enemy Collingwood!). They threw a guernsey autographed by the entire team in the for the raffle and they got behind the event in a big way. Fortunately or unfortunately i didn’t win it – winning an autographed Essendon guernsey probably would have been taken as an omen and prematurely ended my search.
Maybe i just caught them on the wrong weekend but the Collingwood contingent was nowhere to be seen. Ahem…
Just to prove that Bombers blood runs deep i managed to catch up with Carla (the Godmother of the Grog Squad?) in the outer supporting their reserves. And just to show that its not all competitive she even tried to ring a friend who she thought was going to the game at the dome to see if he could lend me some Richmond gear for the evening. Unfortunately (or fortunately as it turned out) he wasn’t going to the game – he probably should have warned me.
The View from the Barry Round Room
I also met former Williamstown legend, VFL legend and Brownlow Medal legend Barry Round who told me that i should bite the bullet on my anti Sydney bias and get behind The Swans. Other clubs take note: Sydney is now winning in the Recommendations from Brownlow medallists category 1-0. Not sure if this statistic will hold up but 100% of legends consulted so far support the Swans.
I could have happily stayed there all afternoon but unfortunately duty called me away to see Richmond. As i left the Seagulls were trailing by a couple of goals but the one high point of an otherwise miserable evening was that Trevor rang me to let me know the result. The Seagulls had got up by 3 points on the siren. My team!
Go you good things!
