tiger, tiger coffee bar

"These players still experience fear. It's about masking it. It's good when you're in the box seat and you can hammer the bloke. But when it's ‘jeez, I'm in the wrong position here; I'm running this way, and the ball's running that way, I just wanna pull out' but you've gotta say, ‘I've just gotta go on with it'."

I leave soon after, my head swimming with all the clues offered up to me like delicious football morsels, to savour forever. I picture in my mind perfect tackles and Jeansy and Brereton shrugging off trainers after Yeate's bone jarring hit and masking the fear. Jellyfish and boys in busted shoes and Yoda cloud around me. I try and list the fundamentals and the tactics and come up with waves and waves of ink looming up pregnant with footy lore from yellowing pages and one umpire and Lenny Smith and Norm Smith and Killigrew and nohandballinthebackline. And I walk away from Jeans' house knowing less about the game then I ever thought I did, and knowing that I could never look at the game again the way I always had. I looked at my notes as I walked away and I read the one I had written in the taxi on the way. Pretend you know nothing about the game.

And smiling, satisfied that I'd come away a bit wiser with the Force.