UNREAL - Part Two

UNREAL - Part Two by Whispering Jack

By coincidence, Queens Birthday 1965 occurred on 14 June as it did this year. On that day 45 years ago, the Beatles released their album "Beatles VI", John Lennon's second book "A Spaniard in the Works" was published, Cincinnati Red Jim Maloney no-hit the NY Mets but his team lost in 1-0 in the eleventh inning, composer Guido Guerrini died at the age of 74 and battles were raging in the jungles of South Vietnam. At that particular time, none of those things mattered much to me. I was too busy coming to terms with the shock and the awe of witnessing the demise of my football team because that very day marked the end of an era for the Melbourne Football Club.

A little over a decade earlier, the legendary coach Norm Smith took over a rabble and quickly turned it into the most formidable combination that ever graced the field in the history of Australian football. The Demons dominated the scene as none had ever done before. Perennial finalists, they won six premierships in a decade culminating in 1964 when they overcame the traditional enemies, the Magpies of Collingwood, in the grand final.

The joy of success continued into the following year when Melbourne won its first eight games despite the defection of its greatest ever player Ron Barassi to Carlton. When the Demons beat the Blues in Round 8, 1965 it was a case of the master (Smith) besting the pupil (Barassi) and, on the face of it, all was well with the world.

Underneath the surface however, storm clouds were looming and they manifested in the following round with a crushing defeat on Queens Birthday by 61 points at the hands of St. Kilda (the first 10 goal defeat since Smith became coach in 1952) and in the sad events of the following month that culminated in Smith's dramatic sacking and the reversal of that decision a week later. The wheels had fallen off, Melbourne floundered and failed to even make the finals. There was to be no more finals football for the club in over two decades and, while they subsequently made two grand finals, the Demons never seriously challenged in those games.

I remember waking on the morning of Tuesday 15 June 1965 wondering how I was going to face the inevitable taunts of my schoolmates. My once great team had failed without even raising a whimper. They were old and had lost the will to win. I knew already that Mr. Davis, my geography teacher who later joined the priesthood, was going to greet me with invocations on the biblical theme of "how are the mighty fallen," and while the radio on the school bus played the soothing acoustic tones of the folk group singing "Don't Think Twice It's All Right", it wasn't "all right". On that very day halfway across the world, the author of that song turned his world upside down by going electric and introducing his new face to the world. While it might be a long way from the MCG to the Newport Jazz and Folk Festival, on that day everything in my world converged. The times had changed.

Forty-five years later to the day, I celebrated my son's birthday and we mused about the unreal game of the previous day. This time, a Melbourne team had graced the field at an MCG that hardly bore any resemblance to the ground it was on Queens Birthday 1965. This time it was a youthful team that was hungry and fought tooth and nail against a physically stronger foe. Unlike its counterpart of years gone by, this team was not tired of battle. This team wasn't going to give in easily and it fought out an honourable draw against a premiership contender.

The line has been drawn and the times are a changing again.