Free You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead by Marieke Hardy Page B

which point my mother propelled herself to the fence, hoisted herself up to eye level with both little gloved hands, and screamed at full volume ‘UMPIRE YOU FUCKING WHITE MAGGOT WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU CALL THAT THEN’ and my father sighed happily and decided then and there that this was indeed the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with.
    My mother went to Fitzroy games while heavily pregnant, a time during which I am told other mothers decorate nurseries and apply lanolin to their bosoms and pat the Dulux sheepdog or other such gaily maternal activities. She would pace up and down the stands, pausing occasionally to kick out at passing children or hot-dog sellers. If Fitzroy were falling behind in the scores she would shout firstly at the game, then directly into my father’s face. His long, thin frame would be swaddled in an enormous sheepskin coat, as though to cushion the brunt of her fury.
    â€˜WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING OUT THERE, ALAN?’ my mother would bellow, running her hands over her baby bump in an agitated fashion. ‘THIS IS A FUCKING SHAME, NOT A FUCKING GAME.’
    In utero I soaked up her demon song and emerged from the womb inextricably devoted to the Fitzroy Football Club. It ran through my veins.
    Fitzroy were always the joke, the patsy, the fat kid up the back of the bus who wore dental headgear and a Sugar Ray t-shirt and referred to his parents’ car as ‘the vroom vroom machine’. Tell a group of strangers that you supported Fitzroy and you were openly mocked, often to the point of physical violence. Following Fitzroy was the equivalent of wetting your pants at speech night and then having to perform ‘Hakuna Matata’ from The Lion King in ensuing squelchy torment.They hadn’t won a premiership in so long there were club bumper stickers that implored hopefully ‘Let’s roar like 1944’.
    My family was of course completely obsessed. While the leisure activities of other families revolved around cheery greeting-card bonding-type affairs such as Monopoly or It’s a Knockout, ours centered utterly on the club. We went to what was known as the ‘Ins and Outs Night’ which, despite its vaguely pornographic name, was less about standing around cheering as Barbara Windsor took on all comers and more guessing which players would be picked in the team for the weekend’s game. We went to training, where we’d stand in the freezing cold watching thirty sweating men running around frantically in circles and jumping over orange witches hats. As a child I would dutifully bake a chocolate cake for these sessions, wanting to reach out and nurture in some way. The players would hold a slice in their meaty paws like a delicate little flower, mumbling thankyous and regarding me with no small amount of curiosity.
    Saturdays were game day. Hour-long drives to VFL Park or Whitten Oval were fairly common, the relentless tedium of the traffic only relieved by endless games of ‘Name That Show Tune’. Sundays were sacred. We’d spread out the newspapers and hold Hardy family round-table post-mortems on who had played well and who had let us down, physically and emotionally.
    â€˜Richard Osborne was fucking wasted on the back line,’ my mother would lament as she sipped her Earl Grey and we would all nod glum assent into our muesli mix.
    I had a recurring dream where I would play in the forward pocket, like Bernie ‘Superboot’ Quinlan, and every time the opposition tried to return the ball to play I would interfere, manipulating my way into yet another goal, another triumph. I would lead Fitzroy to another victory single-handedly. My dreams allowed for no reasonable efforts on behalf of my opponents. In my subconscious, I was king.
    Before I hit puberty I was allowed in the Fitzroy changing rooms, likely due to the fact that I used to hide my long hair up under the Commonwealth Bank cap I inexplicably wore