My son and I take to the road happy to be out of a house full of synchronized women.
We arrive at our trusty secret parking place and we begin our stroll down swan street.
My son asks me if I want a beer? His shout....nice.
After the beer we continue our trek toward punt road oval.
Punt road always gives me a great feeling. I enjoy experiencing the colours sights & sounds of another day at the footy, the slight nervous feeling of anticipation brings back fond memories of my childhood & the tail end of successful era but dawn of a terrible one.
We make our way into the G and find our seats.
My son tries to convince me of our chances considering the Pies have twice as many decent outs as us, he puts up a decent case.
The bounce down, my son is up and about early still pretty excited about our prospects in the game.
After a couple of good passages I see the same mistakes often take place...missed tackles, the no shepherds, the two foot handballs over & over. I find myself more annoyed than anything else & I look away in disgust at faux toughness.
After a fairly close first half, my son is once again buoyed by our prospects of winning as we seemed to dominate for periods in the second without nailing it on the scoreboard. There's the predictable third qtr 10min fade out as the pies slam on 6 goals straight to make it a tough in the last. My son reckons if we can get the first couple we are still in it. After kicking the first two in the last it looks as though he might be right but I know better....the boy still isn't scarred by 34 years of mediocrity and have never seen success so he doesn't know better. He screams at the umpires for inconsistency, I used to be like that too.
I glance at a pies supporter who starts baiting my son all in good fun and I smile at good memories.
The pies slam on another 5 unanswered goals in the last to put the nail in and Jack gets his last two junk time goals when the team decides to deliver the ball correctly into the forward 50 for the first time in the game.
As we walk back to our car talking about what could've & should've been he repeats my reply as I'm about to speak...
Yeh yeh I know dad, it's the culture!
I enjoy another day at the footy with my son even though I don't enjoy the game as I used to but Im glad he still enjoys the footy and spending the day there with me.