The year was 1999.
I’m sitting out the front of Melbourne Central, unsuccessfully trying to get a glimpse of the Grand Final Parade. I remember catching Adam White’s attention and telling him bad luck for being the one bloke dropped from the Grand Final lineup. He couldn’t be less interested. I remember the Sekem Carlton jumper I picked up that day. Painfully aware that it wasn’t like the real thing, uncomfortable around the arms, never felt like footy jumper material. It probably deserved to have Kris Massie’s number 3 added to it a few years later. Nandos had just arrived in Melbourne too. I miss the real Nandos, before it was franchised out to every available shopping centre. I remember the joy in the owner’s face when this bogan white kid enthusiastically gave it the thumbs up like the life-changing experience it was. Nah, I’m probably making that up in hindsight. He couldn’t be less interested, either.
It was the same venue where three years earlier in Grand Final week I made my TV debut at the ripe old age of 10 on a panel TV show for Foxtel, having recently been crowned the number one footy tipster in Australia. No mean feat to be the least likeable guest on a panel also featuring Wayne Carey and Ricky Nixon. I turned up late, I used the word “hierarchy” a lot because it sounded impressive for a 10-year-old. It was the most obnoxious thing ever. I wasn’t invited back. At the time, I felt dudded that there was no Grand Final ticket in it for me. I had to be at the big game. The be all and end all. At least give me a free Foxtel subscription. The rumours of their school holiday Simpsons marathons were the stuff of legend in the school playground.
I not only found myself in the same place, but with the same dilemma of searching for a Grand Final ticket that there was absolutely no way my parents could afford, let alone know where to look. TV made looking for scalpers seem so easy. Were the tickets going to be printed on some sort of cracker? Did I need to be looking out for this? Why aren’t there more shady looking men in fedoras and trenchcoats lurking on street corners with tickets in their breast pocket? Perhaps this story would have a different ending if that were the case. Do I really need to go back to ringing into breakfast radio shows with fake sob stories, hoping they’ll take the bait and offer me a ticket? I think Neil Mitchell is well aware of my voice by now, and Triple M won’t even pick up the phone.
Instead, I watched the game from home. Half interested, if I’m honest. The 1999 Preliminary Final was Carlton’s Grand Final, not only that year, but largely sustained us for two decades after. Who needs wins or good governance, when there’s schadenfreude readily available. I didn’t mind North Melbourne. If they won, so be it, we were an outside chance at best. And besides, I went to the Royal Melbourne Show after the Grand Final Parade and still had a metric fucktonne of Wacky Wizard showbag to eat.
It remains, 25 years later, the last appearance by Carlton in the grand final. Subsequently, I’ve made it a promise to myself that my first Grand Final attended would be one that Carlton plays in. Saving my football supporting virtue for the right one. Not just giving it away to the first Port Adelaide/Brisbane game that turns up with spare tickets available. My first time is going to be special, damnit. I’m going to go to Naughtons afterwards, I’m going to scull a beer and sing Stand By Your Man, because it’s what we do at Carlton after a premiership win. I refuse to entertain the possibility that the day doesn’t go as I planned.
Fast forward once again to 2007. It’s my first year at university. I’m working at the ‘G. In the corporate boxes opening Crownies for overawed bogan electricians out of their comfort zone. If I can recommend you anything, that’s the best job to do during uni. You get paid to watch sport, and occasionally open beers, before spending half your time out the back investigating why the party pies and scones for half time are about to be half a dozen short. For three years of a useless degree, I worked here and saw some of the best events the MCG had to offer.
And Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas.
Each year, I declined to work the Grand Final. Called in sick. Consider it a religious holiday. On my third and final year working there, I handed over my uniform and apron to a desperate punter for a few hundred dollar notes. Don’t know if the poor bloke got in to witness another Saints tragedy or not.
By 2010, full-time work allowed me enough spare coin to fund an AFL Membership. I became that scalper I needed in 1999. The fedora was a coincidence though, it was a weird period in my life that I regret. Not as much as I regret not being there for the people in my life who needed those tickets to see their team. Grand Final Day fed me and my membership(s) for a year. I’d love to help you out, but $800, take it or leave it, rather than doing a solid for friends and family and giving it to them for the $110 I’d paid. Never once did the thought of going to the game myself enter my mind. The thrill of low level ticket scalping, potentially becoming an empire, and before I know it, I’m in too far deep to get out, combined with the deluded idea of maintaining the virtue of my club support.
The Memberships inevitably get cancelled. I was less than discreet with my scalping endeavours. I was happy to move to a quieter life with kids on the way, not being obsessed with making an $8 profit on a Collingwood/West Coast game. Like Ray Liotta at the end of Goodfellas but without the witness protection required.
2023 comes around, and there’s an overwhelming feeling that we’re going to make it, and it’s our year. The overwhelming feeling and rush of energy when I successfully join the waiting list for tickets during Preliminary Final next to a long term friend. We recall our conversations over Zoom during COVID, and remember those who said that they’d given up on ever seeing another premiership in their lifetime, and as far as cancer diagnosis go, tremendously accurate and unfunny in their unyielding irony.
As history reflects, we didn’t make it. I feel cheated out of my $5 to join that waiting list. What goes around comes around.
The midway point of this year comes around, the Blues are sitting pretty second on the ladder, two games clear, and looking like a bonafide contender. There’s a reason. Nay, reasons to get excited. We’re the real deal.
In my excitement, I reach out to a rival club and hand over more than $2000 for a grand final ticket package. A lovely lunch on Southbank beforehand. A river cruise straight to the MCG. A seat closer to Richmond station than the ground itself. What more could you ask for?
I probably could ask for Carlton to win at least one more game against a non-bottom 4 side after this. The shame. The regret. This is what Essendon supporters do every year. They get ahead of themselves and do silly things like this. Or bring back Kevin Sheedy to the board. Or give Jake Stringer a long term deal.
Through creative accounting at the TAB and a realisation that we were absolutely cooked by about the Hawthorn game, I managed to recoup what I paid on the ticket, and given the lack of traditional big teams competing, that was very lucky.
But what to do with the ticket remains. Do I concede that I too will never see another Carlton grand final appearance in my lifetime? Do I realise that putting this on a pedestal for so long is a ridiculous notion to cling on to, and that I should just go along and rip the bandaid off? I’m not getting any younger, and the suitors are becoming less and less attractive. Do I return to the scalping lifestyle and look to find the excitement of on-selling this ticket for far more than its worth? If my Working With Children check is cancelled for hanging out in Yarra Boulevard in a long trench coat, I’ll take it. Volunteering at my kid’s school is often tedious, and it’s a good excuse to miss out.
I think I need to redeem those earlier mistakes from misspent youth and the arrogance that comes with it. For a donation to Doctors Without Borders, let’s talk…
