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 100th and last VFL game, having 20 players attend my 21st 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
