I was driving past an oval the other day and thinking about a game of Aussie Rules I had once played there.
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I missed a goal from straight in front! It didn’t lose us the game, but it lost me credibility as a reliable forward pocket and my stable place in the team for about a month.
But within two weeks, I had bounced back. I was up with the forwards one minute, then in the ruck the next, then I did the occasional stint in the backs and by all accounts, I was a very refreshing influence on every player in the team … because I was relegated to waterboy.
The scoreboard never forgives and coaches have long memories.
However, those days have passed and the broken-heartedness of those footy days are well behind me and so I’ve been locked in discussions with the Albury Tigers and the Wodonga Raiders of late.
After numerous and constant phone calls (I won’t reveal whether it’s them ringing me or me ringing them), I’m thinking one of them is maybe, possibly, almost, nearly thinking of signing me up for next season.
The contract that I’m offering them is really quite simple – every game I play I get paid $100; every game I don’t play I get paid $200.
Australian Rules is not a game for sissies (ah, not saying that I thought it was) and it is every bit as hard as rugby union, in fact, a little tougher on the fingers.
I still believe rugby league is the toughest game of all and certainly more dangerous.
But Australian Rules appears to be the fastest played type of football game I have ever played – even faster than soccer.
Having played rugby league, rugby union and soccer since I was a boy but not playing rules until I was a man, I found myself thinking again and again “Why didn’t I play this game earlier in life? Why did I think this game was for pretty boys?” (Ah, not saying that I thought it was).
The answer is simple: negative advertising.
I grew up in Sydney, so when I was a boy I was told by rugby coaches that only girls played Aussie Rules.
That sounds small-minded, and it is, but it was not until Warwick Capper started playing for the Sydney Swans that the average person in Sydney took even a passing interest in Australian Rules.
Love Warwick Capper or hate him, he got our attention and made over $100 million for the Swans and put our own home-grown game on the map in the nation’s largest city.
It’s surprising who in the end gets our attention.
We know Moses couldn’t speak properly and St Paul was visually ugly to his audience, regardless of how they may be portrayed in film and art.
Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition in Monte Carlo and the judges awarded him fourth place!
God doesn’t always see things as we do and we often don’t see things as they actually are.
God looks at the heart and those who are willing to get to know you, when they are willing to get to know you, will eventually look at your heart too.
Even visually beautiful couples have broken up when they’ve discovered that the beauty they saw only went skin deep.
Aim in life to have a beautiful heart, and it will go a long way to winning the hearts of those whose friendships really matter and last in this passing world.
FATHER BRENDAN LEE
Twitter: @frbrendanelee