Words of a broken man

Last night as I sipped a cup of tea and stared into the distance, I felt cold, empty and left wondering, just wondering what happened.

Could I have done something different? Were my expectations wrong?

My wife sitting next to me on the couch, grips my hand. We exchange looks and her beautiful smile could only raise a forced grin out of me, but we both knew it had no feeling behind it. She knew she couldn’t help me, she gets up from the couch wondering how long I am going to be like this.

She says to me “Darling, I think…”

“Please, not now…I’m not ready”.

She looks long and hard into my eyes, I try to avoid eye contact with her and stare at an empty vase with great interest. She gets up, I hear her footsteps and eventually I hear her close the door to our apartment as she leaves.

It was not surprising she left, it was a terrible day and one of many over the past six years. But this, this was the worst.

I don’t need to spell it out to you. I am a Bombers fan. In some ways I have been much luckier than other bombers fans as I have been living overseas for the past three years and missed a large portion of the debacle involving our much beloved club. But yesterday, yesterday was simply soul destroying.

(Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)

I have been a Bombers fan since I was a tiny tacker, the next generation of Bombers fans in my family. After three years abroad, and returning to Australia to live in Melbourne for the first time in my life – you can imagine my excitement.

I have a wife from abroad who is unfamiliar with the game and unaware of the dramas of the recent years. Round 1 we beat Adelaide, the best team of last year (albeit, a losing GF team) but we couldn’t attend the game.

My excitement grows and builds from there with my membership in attend looking at the fixtures ahead. A disappointing loss in Perth was easily written off “always a tough journey to the west”.

My wife’s first live AFL game. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day, my friends sending me pictures from a sun-bathed MCG with the Tigers versus Hawks game already underway as we made our way into Etihad. Ironically, Etihad was dark and gloomy with the roof closed, perhaps a sign of what was to come.

I don’t need to go into the detail of what was to come, it’s simply too painful. I can only recall some of the comments my wife made.

“Why do they keep passing it to the other team?”
“Is this the first grade team?”
“why aren’t we ever down at there half”
“Who is number 9? Is it his first game?”

There are too many blunders to relive them blow by blow. It’s easy to point to Joe Danniher’s brain fade in the fourth quarter, and I will point to it.

Coming up to that moment there was a sense in the crowd, a hope, a will to dream. Despite three quarters of the worst football ever seen by a professional team, there was a chance.

A chance that we can walk away from that stadium with a “that wasn’t pretty, but grabbed the four points”. Danniher single-handedly snatched that hope away from me.

Yesterday, was the lowest point I have ever been as an Essendon fan. Words simply can’t describe it. I have been one that was critical of AFLW for the skill level (or lack thereof), however I will revoke that criticism. This game was probably worse.

Can I front up again next week? I don’t know.

I will sign off with one request. A request that one day (many years in the future), the day I pass away, that someone from the Essendon Football club attend my funeral and lower the casket into the ground. Just to give them an opportunity to let me down one last time.