May our current heirs to the spirit of Tommy Wills in the red and blue ‘find something’ to rally, gain momentum and show pride in the colours

Nigel Dawe

Well if you’re anything like me, in the space of a month and a half you’ve probably gone from gleefully scheming a week or two off at the end of September so as to see that elusive premiership number 13, to wondering what the hell has gone wrong?

Have we simply dropped our zen-inspired Roosy built bundle, did the rest of the competition work us out and just matter-of-factly make amends over the summer, was Jesse Hogan the ‘missing link’ to potency up forward after all, or did the Prelim debacle in Perth so utterly erode our team’s belief in achieving the unbelievable? If any of us could answer this Alice-like rabbit hole cluster of questions, then I guess Simon Goodwin would soon be out of a job.

The great battle-forged Winston Churchill once sneeringly roared: “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” And sadly, I can more than relate to this adage as a long loyal Melbourne fan (I was going to say ‘suffering’, but there have been many moments of joy over the years, however in times like these they’re easy to lose sight of if you let the down-turns determine your emotions).

I’ve more than once remarked to mates, that even if I played one solitary game for the Dees and I got absolutely pole-axed before I got a single touch and spent the next 6 months in a coma, I could say for the rest of my life, when I came to, that I played for the Melbourne Demons and it was the highlight of my life!

One of my favourite photos of the last 10 years (well there’s two actually) one is of the Jet & the second is of Big Maxy, both are sitting quietly in the rooms before a game looking immerse-fully at their guernseys – about to put them on ‘for real’, an honour your one-eyed fan could only imagine.

And it is that ‘magic’ of playing the game like men but enjoying it like little boys, that I hope each week’s first 18 might draw upon, rekindle and conjure within themselves for the sake of the entire team and the oldest footy club in the world.

As such, may our current heirs to the spirit of Tommy Wills in the red and blue ‘find something’ to rally, gain momentum and show pride in the colours as we head deeper into the business end of the season, because all is not lost, not by any remote stretch of the imagination.