Shane.

 

Indulge me a second. This one hurts.

Maybe it’s the tragedy that’s already surrounding us in Eastern Europe.

Maybe it’s the sight of floodwaters in place of where my high school used to be in Northern NSW.

Maybe it’s the second person of significance in my life to have died in Thailand.

Maybe it’s the second cricketer who I’ve never met but felt deeply affected by their death.

Maybe it’s just all of this. Wrapped into one.

Nothing sobers you up faster than bad news. There’s an ironic dichotomy of when news filtered through that Shane Keith Warne had died at around 1.00am on Saturday morning on Australia’s east coast.

Most of us were ‘on the lash’. Earlier in the evening most of us had raised a glass to the death of Rodney Marsh…nothing prepared us for what came next.

 

“And he’s done him.” – Manchester, 1993

 

Put simply, he is the best to have played the game of cricket.

And there will never be anyone better than him because we’ll never see anyone like him ever again.

There are those who have more wickets, more runs, more matches and captained their country in Test cricket. Statistics don’t lie because statistics are measurable and objective.

But you can’t measure impact.

You can’t measure the ability to change a game.

You can’t measure how watchable someone was, or how captivated you felt as they did their thing.

And you can’t measure legacy.

There’s an interesting psychology into how a hero develops in a child’s eyes.

You could study pages of journals of what defines a hero, and there’s probably very few characteristics that align with Shane Warne – cricketer or person.

Deep down, heroes are quite often the ones you want to emulate. They make you proud, because they make you want to make other people feel proud of you.

Some heroes are personal. But in the cases of sporting athletes, indirectly, they have a relationship with many more people than just yourself. The reason so many are then affected by the tragedy of their death, is that in this instance, everyone had a relationship with Shane Warne.

There have been athletes who have come and gone and been so representative of their peoples, their cultures, and their countries, that they transcend just their skill set.

Like Maradona to Argentina. Like Kobe Bryant to Los Angeles. So loved was he, universally, that Shane Warne was just so ‘Australia’.

 

“A great moment in his career.” – Melbourne, 1994

 

So many of us Gen-Y types who grew up loving cricket will almost certainly admit to that one Christmas where ‘The Shane Warne Ball’ was unwrapped from beneath the Christmas tree.

The yellow ball with the red dots and an instruction manual of where to place your fingers and grip to emulate the various balls Warne had perfected on the international scene.

This is how to hold the leg-break. The slider. The zooter. The flipper. The wrong ‘un. The top-spinner.

We all tried to do what he did. And none of us were able to. None of us will ever be able to.

I so badly wanted to be him that, aged six, I demanded my parents legally change my name and ordered people around me to start calling me Shane. Probably fortunately, it didn’t catch on.

Possibly more than any other player of that generation – the likes of Ponting, Gilchrist and McGrath – he was the safety net of heroism, team success and just straight-up individual brilliance.

Would we all have loved cricket if it were not for Shane Warne?

Of course, there were layers. There was the pride. How he’d always lift and we’d always beat England, and win World Cups and mesmerise us with the mystery and magic that was leg-spin bowling.

And then there was the larrikinism. So progressive are we nowadays, it might be more termed ‘arrogance’. There was the sledging, the pre-series predictions, the Rockstar lifestyle, the on-field showmanship and the cheekiness behind all of it.

Mostly, it was all just representative of why we love cricket: it was fun.

 

“This game is coming alive.” – Birmingham, 1999

 

“Warnie’s on!”

It was a connection of the triangle between myself, my father Bob and our love of cricket, which he had been fostered in me at an early age, largely because of what Warne brought to our cricket experience.

Those two words were either bellowed out if one of us wasn’t in the lounge room watching the cricket, which drew a response of Usain Bolt-like speeds to return to the couch.

If we were both in the room, it drew the response of sitting up either straighter or leaning forward on the couch, intent on not missing the show.

Watching him was just theatre.

In his documentary, released a mere few weeks ago, he would admit that his art could be defined as such.

It wasn’t so much the skill execution; he would intimidate.

He’d move a fielder one metre, bowl the ball for no consequence, and then move the fielder back to their original place before the very next delivery. It would be for no reason at all other than to fascinate the umpire, the batter, his own teammates, the attending crowd, and TV audience that there was some sort of scheme in development.

For the catalogue of Warne highlights, three stand out: the 1999 World Cup semi-final, his entire 2005 Ashes series and his Day 5 performance at Adelaide in 2006.

They were moments where at the time of their happening, you felt all the emotions and energy of when your team succeeds.

In some cases, 20 years later, YouTube provides an endless supply of highlights to re-watch and to re-feel all the feelings of euphoria you felt back then.

My own YouTube algorithm has understood me very well following the hours I’ve spent on the website, from around 2.00am on Saturday morning, when I first typed in “shane warne highlights”.

 

“Bowled him! How about that!” – Birmingham, 2005

 

I’ve never been particularly massive on the phrase: ‘Never ever meet your heroes’, largely because it identifies that it’s the hero, and not yourself, that lets down the experience.

It’s as if we hold the hero up to the impossible standard that they have been so excellent in all of their endeavours, that their chance and fleeting interaction with you also needs to meet some level of expectancy. And that anything below being treated like the royal-est royal whoever did live would be a let-down.

Most often, we get so tongue-tied or nervous that it dents the interaction.

In Warne’s case, I never met him. Not that I ever sought him out, but there was a sense of trepidation that anything that I did say to him would be meaningless because there’s so many other things that I could’ve said in that one moment.

A few weeks ago, I was unbelievably fortunate to sit down with Ricky Ponting for a six-minute chat to talk about his MCG experience.

As he spoke, I did lose myself momentarily in the trance of ‘Punter’, my own childhood and the fact that his poster was on my wall until the age of 14 and that it embodied everything I wanted to be as a cricketer and a leader of men.

Then the chat was over and I was left with a lot of things unsaid that selfishly I just wish I’d said. Just so Rick had known. Like: “thank you”.

What do you say to someone who gave you so much of what you loved?

In Warne’s case, I agree with The Grade Cricketer’s Sam Perry who spoke on this subject in very raw terms on a special podcast recorded on Saturday evening: Warnie also needed the love thrown back his way.

Sure, that search for affection adjoined the ridiculous, the callous, the absurd and the general head-in-hands reaction.

But it was part of the man and part of his realism. As ‘Pez’ said, he needed the love, and we were both encouraged and happy to give it.

 

“What a cricketer. What a match-winner. What a ball.” – Adelaide, 2006

 

Over the last 48 hours, we have well and truly moved into tribute phase.

We like to think that, individually, Shane Warne meant the most to us, largely because he was so generous and giving of himself as a cricketer and a person, that we all feel we have a slice of the pie of Warne to take away with us.

Indeed, my relationship to Warnie felt personal because he was my first-ever memory of cricket.

But ultimately, there are friends who are in true guttural mourning of their mate who won’t be around to share that next laugh, and a family that is still mulling over the question of ‘why’. Why their son, why their brother and why their father.

That’s where my head and heart is at.

This tribute is in response to Shane Warne the cricketer – it is the start and end-point as I did not know him personally – and the idol that he once was, although it’s a status that probably never truly left me.

As has been passed around – he was most definitely flawed.

But the flaws probably endeared us even more.

The worldly, mixed with the outer-worldly.

And fuck he was good at cricket.

 

“And they can’t catch him!” – Melbourne, 2006

 

All in all, many other people and friends have probably summed the affect Shane Keith Warne’s death has had on them in much more succinct terms than I.

On the Australian side, friend Dan Toomey posted of Warne: “Thank you. You changed my life.”

On the English side. Yes, the English side, one friend, Charlie Thomson told me: “He was cricket.”

Another Pom and friend, Tom Meredith called Warne: “My sporting hero.”

But back in Oz, Ian Higgins of the Grade Cricketer summed it up perfectly: “I just hope he knew how much he meant to us.”

I don’t really know why this has affected me. ‘Celebrities’ and ‘heroes’ and death might not register on the emotional scale and nearly every other time – with the exception of Robin Williams – for me, it has not.

But…

Maybe it’s that with Shane Warne dying, the private lie that you might be still in connection with your childhood has died alongside with it.

Maybe it’s a level of guilt that you were waiting for the most mature time to thank your ‘hero’ for everything that they gave to you, but time ran out.

Maybe it’s just that it couldn’t have been him. Not now. Not at this time.

Maybe it’s just all of this. Wrapped into one.

And maybe, it’s just another reminder to tell your friends you love them.

Rest well, Warnie.

One more time for you, Eddie Betts

Late June 2012 – and we’re sitting in the amphitheatre of the Carlton Football Club for a full playing list team meeting, reviewing the previous weekend’s game.

I’m pretty sure it was a loss, so there’s a sense of walking-on-eggshells trepidation among the boys as we wait for the meeting to start.

Then-assistant coach John Barker stood up first and announced that something had come across his desk, and our eyes turned towards the screen.

It was a soon-to-be released TV advertisement for X-Box Live’s voice-command for live TV, featuring Chris Yarran.

Unfortunately, a deep-scour investigation of the worldwide web from this author, couldn’t uncover a link to a video of this ad…so you’ll just have to bear with a written description of the visual.

Essentially, as ‘Yaz’ is in his living room, describing to the audience how you could press play, pause and rewind live TV.

The ad reaches its dramatic conclusion after the TV shows Yaz’s famous ‘goal of the year’ against Richmond back in Round 1 earlier that year. He then turns his head to look down the barrel of the camera and says, before he voice-controls a rewinding the highlight: “And one more time for you, Eddie Betts!”

The entire amphitheatre shook with laughter, no one laughing harder than Eddie Betts himself.

Nine years, five children, four Club leading goal kicker awards, three All-Australian jackets, three Goal of the Year awards and two states of travel later, I couldn’t think of a better theme than Yaz’s beautifully-delivered one-liner to look back at the impact of the man, Eddie Betts – who just happens to play his 350th and last AFL match this weekend.

***

One more time for you, Eddie Betts. 

Meeting someone like Eddie when he turns from someone that you paid your hard-earned to watch dazzle the opposition from behind the fence, to becoming a teammate and colleague, is a unique experience. 

He is probably without peer, the most-loved footballer in the current era, delighting his own set of fans at two clubs and levelling an adoration-respect by opposition supporters. 

But I can truly say that meeting Eddie Betts and knowing the person beyond the persona has been one of my life’s most treasured experiences. 

For at least the first 12 months of knowing him, I got to ride somewhat shot-gun to witness his incredible on-field impact. Although, the closest I got to pull on the same jumper as Eddie Betts was the team photo day. 

However, I was fortunate enough and stupid enough to take him on in enough post-training goal kicking competitions to know that the freak goals, the anticipation to read the ball off hands from a marking contest and to seemingly read the bounce of the distinctively shaped Sherrin was much more the result of travail than trematode. 

He has brought opposition defenders to their knees and his own fans to their feet. 

The fact that he’s managed the feat at two separate clubs, with two separate fan bases in two separate towns is extraordinary. In Melbourne, where the conversation of football is brought up as frequently as the weather, and in Adelaide, where parochialism is held as a badge of honour. 

He’s made opposition coaches smirk, and his own teammates guffaw with incredulity at his on-field exploits. 

Individual highlights? There are simply too many to list. But maybe a top three? 

1. The real estate of both the left and right forward flanks at the Northern End of Adelaide Oval to be immortalised as ‘Eddie’s pockets’

2. The collective stadium’s crescendo-ing of “Eddieeee” just about any time that he strolled near the footy, anticipated by both Blues and Crows fans; and

3. That he did, as he said he tried to do: “For me, all I want to do is put smiles on people’s faces.” 

As Greg Baum put it on Tuesday in The Age, Eddie put a smile on the face of footy. 

***

One more time for you, Eddie Betts.

That Eddie’s actual legacy will carry on much deeper than his on-field achievements, speaks everything you need to know about the man. 

Eddie has, for nearly his entire footballing life, been the elder statesman and mentor to Indigenous players right across the code, and particularly within the four walls of the two clubs he has played at.

He is not perfect, nor lived the perfect life. Ed has been forward that the mistakes he made both at the start of his career plus his early-20s battles with alcohol, shaped who he is. 

In my direct experiences, his relationships with Jeff Garlett and Chris Yarran saw the welfare advice he provided them hold equal importance to any score-assisting disposal on the park. During the second iteration of the infamous AFLX, Eddie took the entire ‘Deadly’ squad to MJ Bale, to ensure they were ‘suited up’ for the player arrival catwalk on game night.

Those sorts of relationships and influence have extended to non-Indigenous players such as Mitch Robinson and Mitch’s fiancée Emma – a Yamatji Martu woman – who have become mentors in their own ways when Mitch moved clubs to the Brisbane Lions, taking on the same influence that Eddie had on him.

Much has been made – and rightly so – of Eddie’s interview on FOX FOOTY’s AFL 360. 

It was in fact the second time he’d had to front a footy panel show and broken down in despair that – for all the education, the backslapping of a majority-white establishment becoming ‘progressive’ and certain individuals posterising for the sake of good PR – the trust he had in humanity had been broken again as racial vilification continued to rear its head. 

Not just to him personally, but to all the Indigenous figures that make up the Australian Rules footballing community – past and present. 

As Tony Armstrong put it succinctly on two separate occasions: “Too often it is left to too few”, and “We (Indigenous peoples) always have to — with a smile on our face — be the ones who take the higher ground, not be angry, be the ones to put the olive branch out and educate”.

As someone who has had the privilege to get to know him, it has been hard to grapple with how we got to the position that we’re in; where someone with such an infectious personality and spirit as Eddie’s, could be broken. 

For those who, like me, have got to experience Eddie – the person, not just the footballer – have left better people. As generous with his spirit as he is his time, one distinctive memory I have of Ed was at Carlton’s Family Day at Princes Park.

At this stage, his now-wife Anna was pregnant with first-born, Lewis.

And at this Family Day, Eddie must’ve done close to 5,000 autographs for kids, mums, mums with kids, and dads who acted like kids when Eddie shook their hands.

But it was when Eddie laid his eyes on a baby being held by a Carlton supporter mother – after five thousand smiles for cameras, five thousand handshakes and five thousand autographs – that his widest smile came out. The look on his face is something I’ve not forgotten.

The Carlton-supporting parent might have been thrilled to see Eddie, but Ed was much more excited to see the baby and asked questions about the baby’s sleep patterns, what they fed him and nappy changes.

At the time, in a few short months, Eddie was going to be a father himself and the look of excitement then has seemingly carried him through every moment of his life. And, from watching from afar, the effect that Lewy, Billy, Alice, Maggie and little Eddie Jnr have had on how Eddie uses his platform to give back to the community, has been as heart-warming as his exploits on the field.

Kindness has been at the heart of his every breath – as a footballer, a husband, a father, a mentor and an author… 

***

One more time for you, Eddie Betts. 

…and as a friend.

Unlike 2012 – we don’t talk to each other every day or see each other every day.

When we stopped being ‘colleagues’ and stopped calling Princes Park our mutual workplace, Eddie kept going with his storied football career, while I chose a different path, a long way from being even a remotely-decent footballer.

But when we do catch-up, the 350-gamer has a way of making me feel like I’ve won three Brownlow Medals.

In between, he sends the odd ‘Happy Birthday’ message. He always takes the time to respond to a message congratulating him on the new arrival, new book or latest milestone. He has always asked and been interested in what I’ve been up to, and then he always remembers the details of our last conversation the next time we catch up.

During the AFLX tournament, I’d managed to secure GQ Australia to cover the ‘fashion of AFLX’ during the player’s entrance, with Eddie one of the players interviewed.

At the end, Eddie asked the reporter which team they followed, to which they replied: “Carlton”.

Eddie then pointed at me: “See him? Carlton legend.”

He cackled, gave a handshake followed by a quick embrace and said: “Make sure this one’s front cover, Lodge,” before he disappeared.

Far be it from me wanting to further crowbar a very short and disappointing AFL career into this article, what the said career has done has brought me in contact with some very special people, and Eddie Betts III is at the top of the tree.

His football career has encapsulated every emotion that could be felt in football.

The rest of life is set to encapsulate a positive impact that I hope is felt for generations to come.

The one thing for Eddie that I hope this week, is that since he wrote “I hope at some point in my career I was able to put a smile on your face” on his Instagram on Monday, that he has felt the outpouring of love and adoration that justifies exactly what he had hoped.

My GWS GIANTS come up against Carlton on Saturday night in what I’m sure will be an emotionally charged match for one club wanting to secure the most unlikely of AFL Finals places, and the other club desperate to appropriately send-off one of their very best footballers.

In a world experiencing a week without a lot of hope, here's to one last bit of magic.

One more time for you, Eddie Betts.

Gratitude, Northern Blues Football Club.

138 years of history and a little part of me died yesterday.

If that sounds solemn – it’s because it is.

The Northern Blues Football Club has meant many different things to a lot of people over its journey.

To some, it meant the death of the Preston Bullants, a powerhouse of the VFA of years gone by, at the executional hand of the Carlton Football Club and the modern-day AFL landscape.

To others, it was their first taste of senior men’s football, the trampoline to a sustained AFL career and the breeding ground for friendships and memories that always seemed to provide the sweetener to a club that was largely devoid of recent premiership success.

To me, it’s a football club and community that saved my life.

I arrived at the Northern Blues at the end of 2011 as a rookie for the AFL club; it was Northern’s first year of re-branding from the Bullants to the ‘Blues’.

Carlton had strengthened their affiliation with the VFL club and therefore a name, club colours and logo change was imminent. The red jumper and the white bullant had gone. And just a few months after a pain-staking Grand Final loss and what would be the last time the club would participate in a VFL Finals series, so too had a number of senior VFL-listed players.

Everything had changed – co-captains, a new coach, a complete list overhaul and a new identity.

2012 ended up being my one and only playing season – four games, two of them injured and four losses…but in a personal sense, at least I got that one major win: the 2012 ‘Sir Bullant’ title…

What was lost in my enjoyment for football through injury and getting flogged on-field, was more than made up in the relationships and friendships made with players, volunteers and the staff off it. For however bad things were going at a match on the weekend or, in my case, every other day away from the footy club, the sense of brotherhood among blokes who were thrown together from all parts of Australia, and all different ages shone through.

There was always someone with an arm around you, inflating your ego with words of reassurance or the offer to go and talk it through over a plate of pasta on Lygon Street or over a steak and a pot at The Great Northern Hotel.

The club became the place I would go to, when I often felt like I had nowhere else to go to on a daily basis.

And to this day – nowhere I’ve seen does a social function quite like the Northern Blues.

But more importantly was the way the football club looked after me – firstly as an 18-year-old ambitious, but naïve teenager with selfish and ignorant tendencies. And then just a few years later when I rocked up on the doorstep of the club’s Preston City Oval home base and begged for a job.

If I was a bit aimless at the end of 2012 when I was told my AFL dream was over and lying in a hospital bed following surgery to essentially fix a broken leg, I was stone-motherless lost at end of 2013; one-year post-football.

And then came the offer…

”Why don’t you come and do the media for us?”

When then-Northern Blues General Manager, Garry O’Sullivan mentioned that, my heart leapt.

There were no guarantees I would be paid, Garry had said, but I didn’t care. I had a purpose, I still got to hang around the footy club that had essentially welcomed me to Melbourne and I was still going to be able to spend time with blokes who I genuinely cared about.

It was the closest thing to playing footy I was going to get to. And it was also an opportunity.

At the time, no one was covering the VFL or Northern Blues players in-depth and Carlton fans had virtually no regular content around their ‘second-tier’ players.

It was an opportunity to try anything and everything – videography, photography, match report writing, social media copy, podcasting, graphic design, marketing and everything else.

But above all else, feature writing and storytelling was where I wanted to make a difference.

The beautiful thing about football clubs at a state league level, there are around 40-50 blokes with 40-50 different stories to tell.

They differ from the AFL-listed players who venture down to pull on the jumper on the weekend, because they consider it ‘reserves footy’ in that football is not ‘life’ for them. They are teachers, labourers, tradies and white-collar workers. While their AFL-listed counter parts get specialised skills training and access to world-class gym, fitness and injury prevention facilities during normal working hours, these VFL players are working on the tools or at the desk in the ‘real world’.

But that’s absolutely not to say that my role excluded the AFL-listed players. VFL has always been the environment where you find out a lot about footballers as people, when they’re striving for higher honours.

And the story arcs followed everyone; from those who were looking to build their career with consistent footy from the ground up, those who were on the praecipes of selection, those who had been harshly dropped and trying to prove themselves and those that knew their AFL career might be gone, but always had the team and club at the front of their minds.

No – I couldn’t join these players in battle, but I had the privilege to know them as people, what made them tick, and share in their successes and their failures without feeling there was an arm’s length between us.

Some of these players I have the privilege of being able to call mates. Other players, no matter where we come across each other in the world, will be able to look back on times of the Northern Blues Football Club with shared connection.

And not just the players either – the volunteers, the admin staff, the coaching staff and the on-field support staff. Whether it was a club function at Cramer Street, a night out at ‘The Big House’/CQ, a standard night’s training session at Princes Park or the days in between at the office at Preston City Oval.

What the Northern Blues Football Club did for me was take in someone that was very much ready to give life away, set him back on his feet and give him the push and belief that he was more than just a dumb footballer whose body and mind couldn’t hack it.

Memorable moments include being in the rooms just after any win to hear a rendition of a club song, the vibe and energy the Development Team used to bring a pre-game warm-up, Brent Bransgrove’s 100^th and last VFL game, having 20 players attend my 21^st Birthday in Byron Bay while they were on a footy trip and being greeted at any training session or game day by a chorus of blokes: “What the f*** are you still doing here, Lodge?”

Character building moments include the fact that Northern always had to go the extra mile to make ends meet financially, and that often we, as staff, would turn up at the Preston office of a morning to smashed windows and other heavy vandalism.

But everything that was ever done, was done out of love for the club. Yes…even that #Project1000 membership campaign…

These days we are living a day-to-day existence, as we try and predict the cost of what COVID-19 will impact upon. For all the things that I thought this crisis would claim, I honestly didn’t think it would spell the end of the football club that had given so much to me.

Amid all the sadness, yesterday I spent the day trawling through old articles, video content and social media posts. The Bloopers reels from the 2014 and 2015 seasons brought back the best memories, purely because they are what I take away most from my time at the club.

So, here’s some gratitude to conclude with:

To Carlton fans, football fans or anyone in general who read spelling-mistake-riddled articles, watched sub-quality videos, listened to podcasts and engaged with social media posts – thank you.

To the volunteers whose livelihoods depended on the operation of the football club and whose positive outlook on life ensured that you couldn’t help being around the club without a smile on your face – thank you and I can only imagine the hurt of the last 24 hours.

To the Northern Blues board and President, Stevie Papal, who never once tried to curb my enthusiasm, but rather always sought to encourage me – thank you.

To the football support staff who tried to keep my football career alive as a player, and then later put up with my constant lingering as a Media Manager – thank you.

To the coaching staff who never complained about me asking questions. And to Luke Webster in particular who never wavered in his support of me in my life after football – thank you.

To every single player that pulled on a Northern Blues jumper, who let me tell their stories, celebrate their success, overindulge on night’s out and, most importantly, trusted me – thank you.

To James Avemarg, Andrew Gommers, Morten Webb, Ben Tucker and Cristian Filippo; days out at Cramer Street fighting the good fight alongside you have shaped who I’ve become. For the endless laughs, support and everything in between – thank you.

And finally, to Garry O’Sullivan. For me, you’ll always be the General Manager. What you and your whole family have done for me since I arrived in Melbourne is something I probably won’t ever be able to repay in full. Without your generosity, I would’ve been joining the Centrelink lines back at Byron in 2012. Thank you so much.

138 years of history and a football club died yesterday.

But memories of the Ants Spirit is what will live on.

#ProudlyNorth

A two-part friend, one-part fan account of 'Box'.

I don’t remember how many beers we’d drunk, but I remember that inhibition had departed us both hours ago.

It was the Northern Blues’ Mad Monday 2014 at the infamous Cricketers Arms on Punt Rd in Richmond. Folks who know the venue, need no further explanation. To keep it PG, it can be confirmed that two ‘entertainers’ had already frequented the venue, and one of the younger players had already fallen in love with both of them.

Outside and removed from the main group, I sat with Brent Bransgrove, chatting about all the things blokes talk about when the blood alcohol level is well above 0.05. Suddenly, his face sobered a little and his tone – which previously had been a confident ramble – resembled more of a croak as he uttered his next sentence.

“I think I’m done, Lodgey. My hips are cooked, my hamstrings aren’t much better, we didn’t win a game from June and my mates are all gone.”

There was a tear or two. Alcohol in its descriptive form as a depressant probably didn’t help. But this was raw emotion brought about by his love for football, his physical health and his emotional stability being as balanced as an Indian cricket umpire at Eden Gardens.

Brent Bransgrove will play his 100^th and final Victorian Football League match on Sunday at Preston City Oval – where it all began – against crosstown and suburban rivals, Coburg. As our great game pulls itself away from its grassroots traditions, the script is set for once-sacred customs to be upheld for one final time.

As he retires from competitive football, Brent – arguably – goes out as another footballer in the grand scale of things. But in VFL circles, he goes out as one of the most courageous players to have ever played. In Preston/Northern Bullants/Blues circles he goes out as one of the club’s best captains, a deeds-before-words leader and a Life Member.

To me, he remains a legend – both defined by the vernacular term and a memory to those who got to watch him play. Brent is a footballers’ footballer, all the more impressive as the fact that he stands at just 170cm tall.

Brent. Glovebox. Boxer. Boxman. Boxy. Box.

My first memory of Box was during the 2012 pre-season at Carlton, when I thought my own football was going pretty well.

It was a mid-week session, and I remember that we had some of ‘the VFL boys’ come and join us, so they got a taste of what a proper AFL pre-season training session was really like.

Upon looking at Box, I thought it was great that the VFL side, the Northern Blues, was taking on a 16-year-old to foster his footballing development.

It took me a quick introduction to realise that Box was actually five years my senior.

It took me a couple of game-style drills to realise that he was pretty quick.

And it took me the rest of the session to realise that I had seriously underestimated him as a person and a footballer. Fortunately, I’m not alone in that camp. Unfortunately for the rest of those in this bracket, they’ve had to play against him and find out how wrong they were the hard way.

Despite playing four games for the year in 2012, my relationship with Box quickly turned from respected teammate, to genuine mate.

For the last four or five years, that mateship has un-wavered. The disappointment that I only got to spend one game on the same field as him is balanced by the joy I had to still work at the club during his leadership and playing tenure.

As my football petered out into uselessness and shifted my focus into a job as a club media figure with the Northern Blues, Box has been the most constant clutch of support in my endeavours.

Over the years of watching, supporting and reporting on Northern Blues matches, I’ve rode every one of Box’s bumps, hard ball gets, ferocious tackles and scream of delights when he kicked a captain’s goal.

On the field, moments stick out.

It was late 2014. Williamstown vs Northern Blues. It was the first time that Brent, in a depleted Blues side, was lining up against best mates Nick Meese, (now Richmond players) Kane Lambert and Adam Marcon for the Seagulls. In fact, it was the first match they’d played where they hadn’t shared the same jumper, going back almost 15 years.

There was plenty to play for, amid the personal motivations - the Blues needed a win to play finals. Box lined up on the edge of centre square for the first bounce as the opening siren rang.

As the ball was punished into the ground for the opening bounce, Box took off as Meese’s tap found Lambert, who had barely begun his pivot goal-ward before he was collected by an irresistible force.

Lambert – to his great credit – brushed off the opening bounce assault and carried on, but Boxy’s act signalled the tone for what was to come. He harassed, mauled, bashed and crashed his way for 120 minutes during a cyclonic day at Burbank Oval.

The final siren eventually sounded: advantage Williamstown, by 40-odd points. Box’s stats read 21 possessions, 12 tackles, plus physical and mental exhaustion.

That year he battled hip, groin and hamstring issues. This match occurred just weeks before the scene I set at the beginning of this article. Football was starting to take a toll.

Box has always kept it well hidden though, through an always positive demeanour and a laugh that could be heard from two suburbs away.

The reality was that former Northern Blues physiotherapist, Jay Anderson, was the only one who understood the sacrifice that Box made each week. Only Jay was privy to just how much of a risk the decision was when Box made the call to play on in 2015, let alone this year in 2016.

Success has been sparse for Brent Bransgrove, the footballer. Lost Grand Finals, seemingly always on the wrong-side of nail biters…and then there are the injuries.

It has never been about him. But Sunday will be – and fuck me, it deserves to be.

It’s not just 100 games. And it’s not just another VFL player retiring.

It’s a celebration of a chapter in Brent’s life that has had a profound impact on opposition coaches, opposition players, VFL commentators, prominent coaching figures in AFL circles, his own coaches, his own teammates, his friends and 19-24 year old girls who used to frequent Eve Nightclub.

If you do nothing else aside from nursing an anticipated hangover, get down to Preston City Oval this Sunday at 2pm, as the curtain falls on a football career belonging to one of the bravest I’ve ever seen, with a heart of gold.

Your day, Brent.

An excitable pup, an uncontrolled mutt, now a respected old dog.

It’s a clip through mid-wicket, a scream of delight fighting its way over the decibels of 30,000 boisterous Indian fans, and several punches in the air with that glorious royal green cap on his head to compliment a century on debut.

It’s the busy rush that hastened a batting collapse and rewarded bowling figures of six wickets for nine runs.

It’s the pull through square leg on the last ball before lunch in his first Test in front of home fans at Brisbane.

It’s the patrolling of cover point next to Andrew Symonds; the catches, the stops, the run outs, the theatrics, the energy.

It’s this boyish youth amongst a dominating army of aging modern cricketing greats, driving fast cars, a diamond ear stud, spiky blonde hair, flash restaurants, thumping nightclubs, the Arabic scripture tattoo, a Slazenger bat sponsorship and the dream girlfriend.

Then it was the getting out, the getting dropped, the getting recalled, and the getting dropped again.

Then it was becoming a figurehead for everything that Australia supposedly wasn’t. The brash enthusiasm became arrogance, the youthful cheekiness enticed intolerance.

Then it was the run-ins with bloke’s blokes like ‘Katto’ (Simon Katich). ‘Haydos’ (Matthew Hayden) thought he was an ungrateful see-you-next-Tuesday and ‘Warnie’ (you know, the guy from the Marshall’s Battery ads?) was no longer his babysitter, grooming into the superstardom lifestyle.

Then it was quitting a tour of New Zealand to tend to that dream girlfriend’s insolence of trusting Brendan Fevola with a camera phone in a bathroom setting.

Then it was unseating ‘Punter’ (Ricky Ponting) as the captain of the Australian Cricket team at it’s lowest ebbs in two decades, and his announcing as the captain of the Australian cricket team being about as welcome to the Australian public, as a fart in a space suit.

An excitable, bubbly, clearly talented cricketer who burst on the scene at 22 into a cricket team with the average age of 32, and embraced the nickname, ‘Pup’.

Who knew that a nickname and its evolutions, could so clearly detail one’s man rise, fall, then second rising and imminent final bow?

The second rising of Michael John Clarke came from so many low points with glitters of resurgence that were hushed back down by an unrelenting and, at times, unappreciative cricketing public.

At one stage, a national newspaper apologised to Clarke on behalf of the public four years ago. But now that Clarke’s end is nigh as at some stage tonight, or in the wee hours of tomorrow morning while Australia sleeps, it’s this same public that is divided on what the outgoing captain of the Australian cricket team could, would or should be remembered for.

Let’s go back. It was the start of the career that was so tantalising.

Clarke – then known, and probably eternally, as ‘Pup’ – strode out to bat in Bangalore, India, a place where Australians, in the past and the present, have had their Test careers spun into a daze and hung out to dry.

Against Zaheer Khan, Anil Kumble and Harbajhan Singh, where his colleagues saw minefields and hand grenades that spun, bounced, stayed low and bamboozled, ‘Pup’ saw runs. 151 of them in fact. On debut if you don’t mind.

Australia went on to win the series – the first in India for years and years. The year was 2004. We’ve never won there since, and look about as likely Bronwyn Bishop accepting a gift voucher for helicopter ride this coming Christmas.

Then he came home to Brisbane, took the New Zealanders to task to become the first batsman in history to score a Test century on both overseas and home soil debuts.

Michael Clarke could bowl, bat, field, smile, and jag Lara Bingle. As an 11-year-old, I thought he could lecture on the subject of Life 101.

He was young. He was the prototype for young cricketers. The cricket apparel company Slazenger picked him up and brought out Michael Clarke bats. I wanted to bat like ‘Pup’, bowl left arm off-breaks like ‘Pup’, field like ‘Pup’ and tie down a fit bird like ‘Pup’.

Sadly the latter went as successfully as the pursuits of bowling with my left hand. We’ll leave that there…

The point is this: Michael Clarke was the idol for young cricketers, with confidence and talent to boot.

But as is the way society can be puppeteer-ed by the media’s influence as we consume the printing press’ content like a 4am McDonalds quarter pounder, Clarke fell out of form and favour.

The losing of wickets just before a break, the hitting the ball in the air to fielders, heightened the criticisms to the point that we felt like when ‘Pup’ made dig-deep centuries, the cricketing public felt that was the least they were owed.

As the aged champions ‘Pup’ started his career playing under retired, ventured into the media and discovered a thing called ‘hindsight’, things continued to unravel while Clarke took the leadership reign.

Then with the Australian public’s hatred, no bat sponsor and an experienced, touring Indian side wanting to rub salt into the wound staring him in the face, Clarke let his sticker-less bat do the talking.

A triple century, two double centuries and another hundred just for good measure. A 4-0 home whitewash. The Sydney Morning Herald’s apology.

The wheel was starting to turn, before a trip back to India jammed the revolution and sent proceedings the other way.

Big series losses in India and South Africa, a third Ashes campaign loss in England (out of four, and his first of two as captain) and it was back to square one.

A return home ashes series had everyone ironically predicting a 5-0 whitewash in favour of the touring Poms, after consecutive series defeats, including a home series 3-1 loss for the first time in three decades back in 2010-11.

A summer later, Australia played England 13 times across the Test, One-Day and Twenty20 formats, for a result of 12 wins and one loss. Clarke had the respect back.

But for all these trials, tribulations and periodic celebrations, nothing came close to the tragedy of Phillip Hughes.

10 years had passed since the ‘Pup’ had made a debut in India. He’d outgrown the nickname to be known as ‘Clarkey’ and was starting to outgrow his personality of being a ‘mutt’ in the eyes of everyone outside of the cricket team he was leading.

While Victorians submitted votes for their next premier, cars slowed, televisions were turned right up and people stood to listen, watch and take in Michael Clarke at his most vulnerable.

This pup and one-time mutt, was now an old dog, with sad, old eyes and breaking voice for someone who had long barked with confidence.

The press conference and eulogy was the mark of a man representing his own heartache, Hughes’ family’s despair and Australia’s hollow anguish at losing a man so young to an incident so cruelly infrequent.

Unlike Tony Abbott, when a leader was required for a nation in grievance, Michael Clarke stood up.

It was hard, it was tear-jerking, it was moving, but it was done.

Just as impressive was the hundred made after retiring hurt to a troublesome back with a broken heart and severely limited technique. It was classic Clarke in strength of character, but not by any means vintage Clarke in aesthetic.

Captain-in-waiting Smith made a century with Clarke and celebrated calmly, creating everlasting of raising his bat to the sky while standing on the grass-painted 408 – Hughes’ test number – on the Adelaide Oval. Clarke could barely walk through the two runs that took him past three figures, but his face as he accepted the applause of the Adelaide crowd spoke volumes.

His greater reward would be lofting the 2015 Cricket World Cup in his own backyard; all the while his own countrymen continued to vulture his and his teammates’ shortcomings.

Captains of sports teams will be forever remembered by their legacy they left behind. For all the shortcomings that Clarke may have had playing beneath former teammates, the teammates he led well have the enduring memory of Clarke as the leader when all around collapsed.

To think any less is to fall in line with society’s view that our judgement of people can be subjective to individual wants and needs, plus Australia’s tall-poppy syndrome and eager search for the negative.

Tonight, Australia will officially hand over the Ashes; Michael Clarke will hand in the captaincy, put down his Baggy Green and take off the black armband embroidered with the initials PH for the last time.

In the narrow view of things, Clarke will bow out on a winning note.

In the bigger picture, Clarke will bow out as a battler who fought every battle, on-field and off-field, in the search to be ‘great’ and the best he could possibly be.

To scale levels of ‘greatness’, and where the young 'Pup', turned battle-hardened old dog, sits will divide pub talk, couches and the Channel 9 cricket commentary team.

From the young kid that once wanted to be you, Michael: congratulations on what you wanted to achieve, sorry for what we thought you should have achieved, and thank you for what you did achieve.