Southern Hospitality

A good week all round. I think I’ve killed the hex theory. I think I’m good for Geelong and Geelong is good for me.

Brian (second from the right) …

After spending every week at either the MCG or the Phone Dome, it was good to actually get to a ground where it feels like the so called “home” team actually lives there. It’s a dumb thing to say but Geelong feels like it belongs in and to Geelong in a way that none of the teams in the ‘G or at the Phone Dome really do. To add to the sense of being in a real community that really connects to its football team, my host Brian called me as i arrived from home, said he could see the ground out his window and that he’d meet me there in 5 minutes. I get the impression that its a well trodden path from home to Kardinia Park and that their corporate box gets well used week in week out when the team plays at home.

Nope, definitely not the MCG…

To Geelong with Dan and Drew

Our destination, Glorious Geelong…

There is usually nothing too weird about sitting in the back seat of a car while listening to the people in front of you have a conversation but this week it was very, very, very strange. For this week i got away from MCG and the Phone Dome for a change and headed out of mediocre Melbourne to glorious Geelong. Given that they were going anyway to commentate on the game, i managed to grab a lift to Geelong with Drew Morphett and Dan Lonergan from ABC’s sport’s Grandstand commentary team.

Dan and Drew didn’t let on but even before we met we’ve actually been through a lot together. They’ve been my companions on many a rainy winter afternoon, they’ve spent late nights under my pillow (so as not to disturb the girlfriend) calling a gold medal or anchoring a cricket broadcast from South Africa or England or Barbados, and they’re part of the soundtrack to a road trip i did in cricket season a few summers ago through outback Queensland and the Northern Territory. They and their ABC radio colleagues have brought as much triumph and tragedy into my life as anyone I’ve never met.

How weird it was then to be sitting in back seat of a car listening to them both talk. I’ve probably been listening to Drew from the back seat of a car since the day I was old enough to do up my own seat belt. Except that this time he was talking to me, offering up the occasionally libelous bit of off the record gossip and swearing a lot more than i’ve ever heard him do on radio.