A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS - CHAPTER TEN

[Demonland 72,230]

WJ delving back into his own past?

A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS by Whispering Jack

CHAPTER TEN - SEMPER FIDELIS

They were huddled together inside their winter coats on the Saturday afternoon tram that rattled up St. Kilda Road in the direction of the Junction. The two small children listened attentively as the old man in front of them rehearsed his lines, the words bursting out loudly with graceful eloquence and in a strange tongue.

The few passengers in the almost empty carriage looked away sheepishly as if they were in the presence of a madman. Had they been equipped with the knowledge that the old man was a famous actor, renowned worldwide as the doyen of the Yiddish language theatre, it would have made little difference. Nor that he was saved from horrors of the Holocaust by an accident that stranded him in this far away land, half a world away from home when the hostilities of war broke out.

The war was now a thing of the past for the travellers as the carriage wended its way through the cold mist of a grim wintery day. The American sitting by the door was reading an edition of that day's Sun News Pictorial bearing the date, Saturday 4th July, 1953. The pain of the smashed shoulder, the migraine headaches and the long sleepless nights were almost gone.

He stared, then smiled at the actor who looked back at him to answer the question that was asked only through his dark eyes. The explanation that he was minding his granddaughter and a neighbour's son was followed by a nodding of heads and both of them returned to their roles, the American reflecting on the news of the day and the old man losing himself in a world of ancient folk tales and fire and evil spirits from distant lands.

They piled on in their numbers at the Junction. The majority were men, most of them half or fully drunk and some of them angry. They were the football crowd coming from nearby Junction Oval where 12,000 had witnessed a close contest. The old actor rolled his eyes when he heard one of the newcomers cursing and swearing to the effect that the Saints had just beaten the Demons by four points.

Apparently, errant kicking for goal, weak coaching and poor umpiring were offered as the causes of the defeat but it would all have been different if "that effing young 'un' Barassi would have kicked truly at the end".

"Fair go mate. It was really only his first game and he's going to be a player so bugger off you drongo. Fair dinkum, when they were handing out brains, you must have been outside taking a p ..."

They were fighting on a crowded tram, fists flying, bodies heaving and the old man grabbing hold of the two small children to keep them out of harm's way. By the time they made their way out of the carriage, he almost wished he would have listened to his daughter-in-law's suggestion about taking them to the afternoon matinee but he was a dramatic actor of quality and didn't want to be involved with "drek like those old Errol Flynn movies or with people dancing around and Singin' In The Rain."

As they stood at the tram stop, the old man saw the American who had also alighted, thumbing through a road map and looking confused. The offer of help to find his destination was accepted and, as fate would have it, he was looking for an address in Carre Street, Elsternwick right next door to where the families of the two children lived together in shared accommodation.

They walked home and the old man remembered it was American Independence Day. Congratulations were followed by shared wartime experiences. The American had fought with the Marines at Bougainville and then drifted back to the South Pacific and finally to Australia. He was bemused at the fracas they had witnessed on the tram between two supporters of the same football team.

"The motto of the United States Marine Corps is 'Semper Fi' and it means 'Always Faithful' or 'Always Loyal'. We succeeded in the end because we were loyal to each other. Those guys should be on the same side. When they learn that, only then will they win."

It was a simple philosophy for a time less complex than today. The last they saw of him was when he turned to salute as he took the path towards the door of number 4 while the old man and the two children moved on to number 6.

TO BE CONTINUED

For the record, Melbourne did play St. Kilda on Saturday, 4 July, 1953 at the Junction Oval and the Demons did lose by 4 points.

St. Kilda 6.2.38 7.4.46 9.6.60 11.7.73

Melbourne 2.2.14 4.10.34 5.14.44 8.21.69

Melbourne Goalkickers: Bob McKenzie 3 Ken Albiston 2 Geoff McGivern Maurie Reeves Peter Schofield

Ronald Dale Barassi made his real debut after having sat on the bench for four quarters in his 'first' game earlier in the season and had the chance to make a hero of himself in the last quarter but missed a clutch goal.

He went on to become the greatest Demon ever and played in six premierships in a decade culminating in a famous victory in his last game for the club on 19 September, 1964.

The hallmark of that successful team was the loyalty instilled into the club by the late Norm Smith but things changed in the following year. All that is a story for another time given that WJ has yet to make it to 1964 ...

[beelzebub 23,380]

Great stuff Jack

You must do a whole book one day. Put me down for a dozen !!

Look fwd to next instalment.

[Sir Why You Little 37,049]

Beautiful writing...send that into our CEO.

The Dawning...

[Alcho Dee 269]

Thoroughly enjoyable.

[DemonWorshipper 304]

Beautiful work once again, Jack.

Very vivid imagery, and some sage advice.

[The Great Pretender 463]

They were exciting times back then.

Six games a week in Melbourne (including Geelong) and you could recruit players from wherever you wanted except that you had an exclusive local zone.

No Vlad and the rules stayed the same from year to year and you knew who you were playing every week just by their colours which were constant.

Sometimes, I wish ...

[Whispering_Jack 30,233]

Thanks guys. While a great deal of the story relies on my memories as a young child, I managed to subsequently piece together parts from what older people told me and from some research.

The old actor was real and he was apparently, a perfectionist, so the idea of him rehearsing lines from a play in a foreign language is not as silly as one would think. The little girl who was his granddaughter grew up and married a Melbourne supporter whose twin cousins played with the club. Alas, he is no longer with us but I'm certain he would have enjoyed the story. Her younger brother (at the time of the story not yet born) is a member of the Collingwood board who is also married into a prominent family of Carlton people. I don't want to go further into it than that but, in the context of my story, their footy clubs obviously learned more from Semper Fi and tasted more success in our adult lives than mine.

The Marine was real too and I think he was the first black person I ever met. Three years later, we had moved to the northern suburbs where I came across many others at the Olympic Village.

I can't say for sure whether the passengers from the tram were coming from the Barassi debut game or not but I'd like to think it was and that I was close at hand when it all started. You can have your Leigh Matthews' and your Wayne Carey's but in my eyes, and in the eyes of many of my generation, Barassi was THE greatest. The chemistry he had with Norm Smith and what I consider to have been the outward unity of the playing group and the club for such a long period of time, led to our monumental success and six premierships in the decade 1955-64. It was all shattered in 1965 and we've never tasted true Semper Fi in the intervening years.

Perhaps when the current tanking crisis is overcome, we'll finally be united.

[Redleg 40,950]

Thanks guys. While a great deal of the story relies on my memories as a young child, I managed to subsequently piece together parts from what older people told me and from some research.

The old actor was real and he was apparently, a perfectionist, so the idea of him rehearsing lines from a play in a foreign language is not as silly as one would think. The little girl who was his granddaughter grew up and married a Melbourne supporter whose twin cousins played with the club. Alas, he is no longer with us but I'm certain he would have enjoyed the story. Her younger brother (at the time of the story not yet born) is a member of the Collingwood board who is also married into a prominent family of Carlton people. I don't want to go further into it than that but, in the context of my story, their footy clubs obviously learned more from Semper Fi and tasted more success in our adult lives than mine.

The Marine was real too and I think he was the first black person I ever met. Three years later, we had moved to the northern suburbs where I came across many others at the Olympic Village.

I can't say for sure whether the passengers from the tram were coming from the Barassi debut game or not but I'd like to think it was and that I was close at hand when it all started. You can have your Leigh Matthews' and your Wayne Carey's but in my eyes, and in the eyes of many of my generation, Barassi was THE greatest. The chemistry he had with Norm Smith and what I consider to have been the outward unity of the playing group and the club for such a long period of time, led to our monumental success and six premierships in the decade 1955-64. It was all shattered in 1965 and we've never tasted true Semper Fi in the intervening years.

Perhaps when the current tanking crisis is overcome, we'll finally be united.

Well done WJ.

I obviously did not see enough of RDB play as my best Dee has always been Robbie and best ever Matthews.

[beelzebub 23,380]

Twins !! Hmmm...

[Whispering_Jack 30,233]

Twins !! Hmmm...

One of the twins never played a senior game but he was a regular in the reserves and later won multiple b & f's in the ammos.

The twins once played on both wings for their amateur team with the cousin in the middle (same surname) so it was an unusual call of the centreline when the coach read out the team.

[Red and Bluebeard 2,084]

Great stuff, WJ. Well done! IMHO there are not enough stories about footy like this. There are plenty of player memoirs, but apart from 'The Club' and 'And The Big Men Fly', the cupboard is pretty bare.

Will definitely get a copy of the book when it is done.

[Dr John Dee 1,057]

Thanks Jack, and I don’t think it matters too much whether you’ve had to fill in a few gaps. All the best stories are a mix of fact and invention anyway, and what matters here is the way you’ve told it, which is just great.

I was probably at the Junction Oval that afternoon since I was carried to lots of Demons games from a pretty early age. Even though I was too young to remember anything about it, your post has some personal resonances for me.

I’m not sure about simpler times. In one sense that’s true, but in another the post-WW2 currents that changed this country forever were already at work and coming to terms with these wasn’t always easy. No doubt your actor and your marine would have had other tales to tell about attitudes and social relationships at the time.

On semper fidelis, the one thing I’d throw in that might have leavened the marine’s alarm is that Barassi’s debut/first full game (maybe even the whole season) had a real emotional loading to it, what with his father’s death, the work of those at the Club to look after him, the fact that he nearly wasn’t a Melbourne player at all. Expectations would have been extremely high, and not just about how well he might play, but about what his playing said of the club and its shared spirit and sense of responsibility to its own. So it was probably no surprise that things got a bit out of hand between supporters, but at a different level the Barassi story was itself a clear expression of semper fidelis.

Yeah, I know, he took the Bluebaggers’ bribe much later, but the years he gave us repaid any debt several times over. I agree entirely with your assessment of RDB; the thing about him was that he wasn’t just a great player but he changed the game itself. Not many do that, no one did it in the way he did. I’m just grateful that, if I don’t actually remember the beginnings of his career, I remember something of what happened in subsequent years.

[Whispering_Jack 30,233]

Thanks Dr. John - it fascinates me to think back on the time just before the club took off and to compare how things were then with today. There must have been moments in 1953 when our rise to the top within two years would have been simply unimaginable.

[Dr John Dee 1,057]

Thanks Dr. John - it fascinates me to think back on the time just before the club took off and to compare how things were then with today. There must have been moments in 1953 when our rise to the top within two years would have been simply unimaginable.

Even more extraordinary: the turnaround was fully shaped within a year since they made the GF in 54. But there were some pretty classy debutants that year, which probably helped. Things might not be as easy now but we can always hope, and the echo of the father/son signing with young Jack V is one note I keep hearing.