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The retirement of Australian football’s foremost religious figure hasn’t exactly rocked the church to its foundations, but it has left anxious and confused a small contingent of Melbourne Heart supporters who were among the thousands of Australians in Vatican City last year for Mary McKillop’s sanctification.
Let me recount.
Along with thousands of other pilgrims, we got to St Peter’s Square early for and were as surprised as anyone to find three blokes in Victory jerseys had beaten everyone to Position A right beneath the Papal balcony, where they were standing on eskies and waving Eureka flags.
Predictably, their club’s reputation had preceded them and the Corpo della Gendarmeria dello Stato della Città del Vaticano were out in force, their ominous-looking black Ultra-Sensitive Hatamoto Mk IV Aqua Cannons parked in a conspicuous line in front of the basilica facing the machine gun nests set up around the obelisk.
As you do at times like that, we were fully expecting one of the Victory lads to pull out a megaphone and ask who the hell it was up there on the balcony with Brian from Brighton Yacht Club, or for the Pope to come down and do the you-and-your-two-mates-can-pick-up-your-iceboxes-and-nick-off routine from “Paul VI’s Vatican II Compendium of Schoolyard Humour”.
But that’s not what happened.
One of the Victory blokes, “Muscy” his jersey said, was unwell – really unwell.
His mates, “Mate 3” and a “Robbie” according to their jerseys, said “Muscy” had a dozen one-in-a-billion incurable diseases. Worse, they said, he also had a head cold and a vino hangover. The 666 carved into his forehead went unexplained.
“He is what he is,” they said.
“Muscy”, his sunken lifeless eyes staring off into the distance, nodded in listless resignation. “I am what I am.”
Everyone agreed. He was what he was, and a miracle was therefore required.
“Robbie” turned capo and got a chant going while the generic mate banged on an esky lid. “Why him? Boom, boom, boom. Why him? Boom, boom, boom …God hates Victory. Why? Why? Why ”
Some of the crowd joined in, reluctantly at first – “Why him? Boom, boom, boom …God hates Victory. Why? Why? Why? …”
Eventually the whole crowd joined in — thirty thousand people pointing at “Muscy” and chanting at the sky demanding an answer: “Why him? Boom, boom, boom … God hates Victory. Why? Why? Why? …”
No one who was there that day would expect anyone who wasn’t there to believe this, which is probably why you haven’t heard about it until now, but this hand-shaped thundercloud on the horizon just grew and grew until it was so dark the pigeons flew back to their roosts and the streetlights came on — at eight o’clock in the morning.
All the while the active pilgrims kept it going though – “God hates Victory, why, why, why?” and clapping their hands in time – until there was a blinding flash and a deafening crack, and a female voice boomed out, “Because they s*** me! Go Heart.”
The smoke eventually cleared and “Mate 3″ and “Robbie” had disappeared, replaced by witches’ hats.
“Muscy” though, he was standing there between them having escaped without injury – as always, so that was no miracle – but now he had a whistle in his mouth and was wearing a polo shirt and a baseball cap.
The miracle was that they were red and white.
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