A moving tale of footy jumpers, giants and woodpeckers

They say that moving house is one of the most stressful events in your life. Having just completed a move I am not so sure, but one thing you do notice is how much you take sport for granted.

It started when I wanted to watch the Asian Cup. It suddenly hit home that my Foxtel had been disconnected. The following night I thought I would catch the Big Bash on free-to-air. But no, the TV had been packed during the day.

The next night I didn’t even have a couch to watch the world globe I had placed where the TV was. Cursing, I turned to grab a cold beer from the fridge – oh wait, no fridge. My familiar world was now upside down. I may as well have been living on the moon.

As sports fans we like to think of ourselves as free spirits, not confined by the arbitrary constraints of time. However it becomes apparent that we are slaves to TV guides. I can’t watch the Friday game at 7:30? No tuning in to the ODI on Sunday afternoon? Miss Tuesday night’s match between Timbuktu and Turkmenistan? The upside-down nature of this pack-at-all-costs lifestyle reveals itself when sporting banalities such as, ‘pack one box at a time’ and ‘grind out to the finishing line’ accurately describe what you are doing.

Luckily some paraphernalia catches your eye to give you a sporting lift. That cricket trophy from the under 12s, a couple of football medals, a karate ribbon (for turning up I presume).

I went to check on my nephews, who had the job of cleaning out the back shed. After a nasty experience with some huntsman spiders near the door we had let off an insect bomb. When we cleared out some stackable plastic chairs, each one contained the corpses of at least a dozen overly large hunstmans. As we cleared away from the centre, the spiders were less affected and were even bigger. This rarely used shed had turned into an arachnid Jurassic Park, which clearly evolved separately from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Working my way to the back of the shed I called out to my family helpers, “I have found some grey, fibrous material”. While some bolted and others began suiting up in anti-asbestos gear, I was able to convince them that it was only a football jersey.

And what a strange jersey it was. It was grey with a white stripe and black sleeves. It dawned on me that this was the original jersey of the Gold Coast team in the NRL (the NSWRFL in those days). I remember now that it was supposed to be sleek and silver but in the end only resembled Grandpa’s Y-fronts when Grandma washed them with his grey overalls. When they played in these uniforms, the dye on the shorts and jersey never quite matched. Unfortunately the team never quite ‘matched’ either and eventually they were consigned to the football clubs of history.

The emblem is an interesting one. They were not just Gold Coast, they were Gold Coast-Tweed. In fact they weren’t really a Queensland team at all but based in the New South Wales town of Tweed Heads. It was the vagaries in gambling laws – in NSW they had pokies but Queensland didn’t, that allowed big licensed clubs to exist on the NSW side with heavy patronage from the Queensland side. They are the only top-flight rugby league club to have a country town in their name.

My dad used to travel around the country with his work and always brought us back a few jerseys from the local competitions. As a result, I had garnered an eclectic stock of not-so-well-known footy jerseys. This leads me to the mini quiz:

Can you identify the Queensland rugby league clubs jerseys I found, based on these descriptions:
1. Medium blue with a white ‘VFC’ monogram on the front
2. Green with red sleeves
3. Red with white on the shoulders

How about these SA/WA aussie rules jumpers also discovered in the clean-out
1. Yellow and green vertical stripes (as pictured). This club were known as the Woodpeckers
2. Blue with a broad white vertical stripe down the front
3. Navy blue with red collars and cuffs

Bonus question: Which other current NRL club was originally based and had a home ground in a NSW country town? This was also a border town of sorts and the leagues club also did well out of laws regarding poker machines.

The removalists are waiting and it’s time to leave the old house, the only one my three daughters had ever known. It’s hot work in summer clearing and packing but when I ponder the memories of generations past who have lived under this roof – grandfather, father, myself, daughters and a grandson – it’s not just sweat trickling down my cheeks but a tear or two.