I have a very unfortunate physiology. I have the fainting goat gene. Look it up, it’s on YouTube. The upshot is that I can play sport but I struggle with being a spectator. When the going gets tense, I turn weird.
My vision washes out to a sepia orange like I’m watching history being made and I see things.
First time I got it was an under-13s basketball grand final – about 400 people jammed into a tin shed up the bush – the orange mist descended and I was lifted up to that place you go in your near-death experience, up there somewhere.
About three seconds to go of extra time, his team a point down, a bespectacled midget mate who was only on the court because the go-to men had been fouled out, who’d never scored a basket in his life, not even at training, did the dumbest thing you have ever seen in the grand realm of sporting endeavour.
I heard a voice beside me and there was his coach. He’d died on the spot. “Squirrel just took a hook shot from backcourt.”
We sat up there together and watched the Moulton Gold Cup for about a week before it re-entered the atmosphere and dropped in, all net.
It couldn’t possibly happen.
My memory says it did happen. I won’t ever forget it.
Nor has Squirrel, who’s still feeling pretty good about himself decades later. He was struggling with his four eyes before that but he became a believer that day; a believer in Squirrel. Tinny bastard.
It became an addiction for me, chasing the orange mist. It’s not just on the big stage the legends are made; every weekend kids take wickets and kick goals that set them up for the long haul, the concrete evidence that they’re a player.
A million positive verbal messages can’t beat the reality of having your teammates climbing all over you for getting the side over the line.
That’s what it’s about for me – the moment where it turns all citrus and a match bursts through the conditional reflex barriers and changes the probabilities, when all things become possible for all men.
It’s the land of personal redemption, and except for maybe Dermott Brereton, I’ve never seen an undeserving type rise up in the orange mist to make the difference. It’s always a deserving recipient, a square off from God for some sh-t they’ve had to go through just to be there.
I came to soccer late – about thirty seconds after footy. I grew up among British and European migrants on a Housing Commission estate.
It took me years to learn to talk Australian. Spent my teenage years being accosted by Geordies who figured I was one of them. Em noot.
What I am grateful to those neighbours for, ratbags the lot of them, was an appreciation of the game’s rhythms. I don’t think you can set out to win soccer matches so much as survive their cruel turns more efficiently than the opposition and pray like hell.
I still think it’s a miracle a goal has ever been scored, it’s like golf with a holekeeper. What are the odds?
There’s a reason I like soccer a lot, and I learned it from the neighbours – there’s more orange mist around soccer than any sport I know. It’s crazy.
Sometimes the whole match is played in the murk, on the frayed edges of very tenuous reality and I find myself up there above the pitch looking down at the scene gobsmacked not even by what I’m watching, but by what I know is about to happen. That’s the weird part – you kind of know it’s on before it’s even on. It’s in the vibe, man.
Time and time again soccer has delivered me to that ethereal place. Sometimes I’ve been one of a handful and other times it’s been the whole world except for my mate Ken who went to bed at halftime when Liverpool came back from 0-3 in the Champions League final.
I saw Danny Allsop bullock his way across the top of the box and bang one into the far corner and the orange mist descend over Docklands stadium before James Robinson’s looping header dropped in with seconds to play. Robinson had been through a lot after Altrincham. God knew. Fixed. Smile mate. They’ll never take that one away from you.
With one thing and another, the orange mist was a pea-souper on Sunday at Suncorp. If ever it was going to happen, it was there and it was then. I was gone by full time, the synapses gone.
Whatever happened after that, it was always going to be outside the realm of possibility. You just knew.
Indeed, it was off the charts; sepia-toned memories galore. Take a bow, gentlemen, every last one of you; that was really something.
Be proud Mariners, as good a defeat as there will ever be. Wouldn’t mind my team going down like that.
I watched Michael Theoklitos at Victory and adored him. I saw him head off to England with every reason for optimism and I saw his humiliation as the home end gave him hell. He didn’t deserve that; he’s a class act, Theo.
Watching what I think might be the best club team that’s ever been assembled on Australian turf with a record that’s likely to be around for a very long time leaping all over Theo at the end for getting the side over the line and, well, you don’t want to know – I had tears. For a while there my whole world was one big mélange of orange.
It couldn’t possibly happen.
My memory says it did happen. I won’t ever forget it.
When it came to the crunch, Theo was always your man – God owed him big time.
And Ange, I suppose; all of them really – what a team. I dips my lid to ye all. Respect.
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