THE TEMPEST by Whispering Jack

"There be some sports are painful, and their labour

Delight in them sets off. Some kinds of baseness

Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters

Point to rich ends. This my mean task

Would be as heavy to me as odious, but

The mistress which I serve quickens whats dead

And makes my labours pleasures."

William Shakespeare ~ The Tempest

We are in the eye of a storm whipped up by a magician. After living in exile on a desolate and remote island for many years while plotting the restoration and return to our rightful place in the universe, the time and the opportunity for resurrection has arrived.

The magician has created a storm borne of stuff far beyond the rabbit-in-a-hat; it transcends and envelopes everything - friend and foe, mankind and alien, stardust and shining lights from distant stars, the end and the beginning of the cosmos.

A little dramatic perhaps, but in recent times we must have been awakened to the realisation that the Melbourne Football Club needs to be shaken dramatically to its foundations to save it from itself. A firm new direction and radical list changes are exactly what that old Lion, Paul Roos is bringing us, not quietly but with a roar and his unique brand of magic.

We were all shaken when we heard the club was entertaining a trade of a loyal young man who was our youngest captain and once a member of a group that constituted our hope for the future. He lost so much in recent years carrying the heavy mantle of leadership through torrid times, carrying injuries and in more hushed tones, the possible repercussions of a brief, tenuous and innocent connection with Stephen Dank, the same man who is today bringing down the Essendon Football Club.

We were all shaken when we heard that Mitch Clark, who retired early in the year as a result of the terrible illness of depression after only 15 games in three seasons, was well enough to come back to play football but had turned his back on our club and wanted to go elsewhere.

We were all shaken when the sad news broke of the passing at a young age of our club legend Robbie Flower, who had been battling cardiomyopathy for a decade. We recalled his skills and grace on the field, his gentlemanly conduct and demeanour off it. I mean no disrespect to him and I once discussed this very thing with Robbie so I know he understood he played a team game and that his individual glory was always overshadowed by the fact he never tasted the game's ultimate success.

That sniper from Carlton, David Rhys Jones, once belted Robbie senseless in a cowardly act on the MCG turf and he copped it sweet, shrugging it all off as if it were nothing. However, his adversary can look back on his career and be known as a premiership player. Rhys Jones' team has won eight flags since Robbie's won its last (and that came nine years before his career started). The question on our lips back then and again now, is whether we have been too comfortable with the image of nice individuals without showing the hardness necessary to succeed in a tough competition like the AFL?

The magician is attempting without apology to change the mould of recent years that have seen us stranded on football's desert island. There must be no more nice guys; no more bruise-free football; no more inconsistency of attitude and lack of desire for the football; no more cancelation of training sessions to suit tired playing members of Gen Y; no more 186.

I am not singling out individuals but rather, the general mindset which allows the club to be seen as a joke, a sporting basket case. Roos is conjuring up his tempest around a club that mustered up only four wins in this past season and ten in the past three. It's the only way left to go.

We are in the eye of that storm but when the tempest subsides, we will land back home fifty years since our last premiership but ready for the next part of the journey.

As in Shakespeare's last play, it will be up to us, the audience, to show our approval or otherwise at the finish. I hope it all ends with applause.

Sunday, 12 October, 2014 on ABC1 at 10.17pm

Tempest at the Drop-in

Narrated by Eric Bana, this programme follows mentally ill and socially isolated members of the community as they stage a professional production of Shakespeare's The Tempest alongside professional actors.

The programme is being screened as part of Mental Health Week and features community members who receive loving care at Prahran Mission's St. Kilda Drop In centre.

Every person has the right to a decent life. Prahran Mission

Very poetic, Jack, although Mr Hird's lawyers may want to talk to you about unauthorised usage of the word 'magician' in relation to an AFL coach.

Indeed, I suspect Mr Hird may have some more general claims to authorship of the works of Shakespeare which you might also have transgressed.

Very poetic, Jack, although Mr Hird's lawyers may want to talk to you about unauthorised usage of the word 'magician' in relation to an AFL coach.

Indeed, I suspect Mr Hird may have some more general claims to authorship of the works of Shakespeare which you might also have transgressed.

Thanks Doctor John. As a matter of fact my lawyers have already had talks with the golden boy's lawyers on the subject and we're in the clear. They have conceded that their client no longer fits under the rubric of the magician but is more correctly known instead as the "alchemist" which brings me to my next piece based loosely on Paul Coelho's classic novel The Alchemist. My story however, tells the tale in reverse. It's about the alchemist James Santiago Hird who turns gold into shyzen. The lawyers are looking into it as we speak.

Nice words WJ. Think you are spot on.

I never really understood Shakespeare but if this joker from mediaeval times has got an answer to Melbourne's problems then I'll be prepared to sit through one of his plays again as long as it's not about witches and fairies.

I never really understood Shakespeare but if this joker from mediaeval times has got an answer to Melbourne's problems then I'll be prepared to sit through one of his plays again as long as it's not about witches and fairies.

Well, the bad witch Sycorax has been banished from the island before the action starts. No place for Caro then in Jack's rewriting.

Shakespeare, of course, is supposed to have an answer for everything but getting the MFC list right in the next 6 months might be beyond even him. Not Roosy though, I hope.

I think Elwood's referring to the witches in the opening scene of Macbeth because he knows I once played the role of one of them in my school days as a character assassin actor (also played the soothsayer in JC).

I think if I was doing a rewrite of The Tempest I would make more of the character in the play Ariel (in the bible Ariel was the lion and we all know Roosy started off a Lion).

On a serious note, please do watch the programme on the ABC tonight for a fascinating insight into the work of the Prahran Mission with the homeless and the mentally ill. Those on the site who have bagged Mitch Clark might have second thoughts watching it.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Development Committee for the Mission and we're trying to raise funds for the drop in centre ... but please watch the film and take in the message of the story it presents.

I think Elwood's referring to the witches in the opening scene of Macbeth because he knows I once played the role of one of them in my school days as a character assassin actor (also played the soothsayer in JC).

I think if I was doing a rewrite of The Tempest I would make more of the character in the play Ariel (in the bible Ariel was the lion and we all know Roosy started off a Lion).

On a serious note, please do watch the programme on the ABC tonight for a fascinating insight into the work of the Prahran Mission with the homeless and the mentally ill. Those on the site who have bagged Mitch Clark might have second thoughts watching it.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Development Committee for the Mission and we're trying to raise funds for the drop in centre ... but please watch the film and take in the message of the story it presents.

I'll be watching and I hope the programme gets the kind of audience it deserves (not easy for the graveyard shift on a Sunday night).