Now contact, soon ignition: Tigers come to grips with footy restartGreg Baum
The Age
25 May 2020The oddest sight at Punt Road Oval on Monday was also the most reassuring. It was Bachar Houli's four-wheel drive and boat on its trailer, parked behind the St Ignatius end goals. When this training session was over, he was going fishing. It would be one tackle followed by another.
Until a week or so ago, the fishing was banned. Until just now, so was the tackling. Bit by bit, the world is being righted on its axis. Fishermen know instinctively to be endlessly patient. Footballers are learning it.
From all accounts, the Richmond players on their return to group training last week were apprehensive and uncertain as they tried to abide by rules that were so foreign. Figuratively, they were in straitjackets. They could feel the limits.
On Monday, they were freer, feeling now the possibilities. Coach Damien Hardwick was louder, talisman Dustin Martin harder. Richmond's full list was together for the first time since the shutdown, and chatter filled the dreamy autumn air. The distance in social distancing was growing ever smaller.
Footy training nowadays is minutely pre-planned – all those coaches have, or had, to do something – so the reintegration of contact was by carefully managed degrees. At first, it was in pairs, one player gently pushing the other as he jumped, to unbalance him. Two weeks ago, it would have been an indictable offence. Now, it was at worst a free kick.
Coaches and training staff kept their statutory distance, but you suspected now it was more dutiful than fearful.
Next came some body-on-body, but with restraint. Then, dividing into three groups, the Tigers rehearsed a bit of the fierce, in-close footy that is their marque. Voices rose an octave, several decibels too.
Tackles, bumps, grabs, shoves, scrambles and entanglements on the ground, and every now and then the distinctive sound of the slap of a hand on a bare arm. Their relish was obvious. This was footy.
Coaches kept the bursts short, but at the end of each, there were many hands on knees. As muscle memory returned, so did their awareness that footy's a tough game. Great, but tough.
This was not match intensity. Nothing ever is, except matches. But like Houli's boat, it was a touchstone. For the few watchers, doubtlessly as for the players, what was apparent was that contact footy did not look or feel in the least bit abnormal.
In a world newly and only half-conditioned to consciousness of space and its invasion, it needs to be said. In footy at least, the new normal will be much like the old, and that's heartening. When we're again arguing about what a mess footy has become, then we'll know that we have a part of our world back.
Footy wasn't dead, but like most other endeavours had been playing dead, by order and consensus. The return to full-scale training is a small step on the road back. At Tigerland, that could never be confused with a short step, not before, not now.
The MCG parklands and the city beyond were still ghost towns, but the Punt Road Oval had back a bit of its old bustle. A passing train driver joined in with two toots of encouragement, or was it recognition and relief? On the turf, the urge to pick up a footy and kick it, no matter what the drill, was ever present. Marlion Pickett, it has to be said, is chronic.
There was dew on the grass, and a few autumn leaves, too. These are the everyday sights and sounds in this pocket of Melbourne, latterly suspended, now raised again.
The voices of the Richmond players carried clear across gleaming but empty Yarra Park to the MCG. Soon, their bodies will follow. For football people, it won't be a moment too soon. For all others, we will have to trust the medical experts on its timeliness. But as footy begins to look more like itself, so footy will make the world feel more like itself.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/afl/now-contact-soon-ignition-tigers-come-to-grips-with-footy-restart-20200525-p54w4m.html
