Five Tracks For The Love Of Footy
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved footy. My love of music comes back to a moment. Four years old as I hit play on 'Bad To The Bone’ by George Thorogood & The Destroyers and then proceeded to turn my parent’s CD player up to full volume. At that precise moment, music came flooding into my life as a constant source of joy, a definition of personality and later a career path. Yet footy didn’t have that moment, as footy has always been.
I have footy jerseys from ages I can’t remember, photos of a three year old version myself lining up conversions and a prized cap that still sits pride of place in my childhood cupboard; signed by 1993 Daly M Rookie of the Year Jack Elsegood. Footy has been one of my favourite things since before I could grasp the concept of favourite things and for as long as I can remember I’ve lived in the cycle of of the football season. Expanding my love of different codes, picking up new teams and playing the game myself the fierce competitiveness of the football field has in many ways defined my life.
That is until this season came around and the final sirens of the season sounded like whimpers, rung out to empty stadiums around the world. A season of footy is a strange thing to have stolen away by an unprecedented health crisis. It feels selfish to say it when others a losing lives, but I miss footy. I would give my left lung to see Dustin Martin palm a player into oblivion, to see Latrell Mitchell run riot for a length of the field try or to pretend this to be the year I finally pick a A-League team. As restrictions ease, those things thankfully don’t feel so far away anymore, but to tide myself over, here is a collection of my favourite songs I think about when I think about footy.
Picket Palace - Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti
An ode to one of the AFL’s most explosive players. Phenomenal speed, strength, skills on the ball and a name that truly lends itself to a chorus, Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, burst into the Essendon Football team in 2016. Not since his debut has there been a cult phenomen rip through the AFL like Picket Palace’s tribute to the great man. Short, fast and infectiously catchy, it’s a stupidly fun song that will get stuck in your head for weeks.
Mini Skirt - Dying Majority
Dying Majority is one the greatest punk songs Australia has ever produced. Pointing the finger at the rugby league loving racist and asking for something better. It’s a song that surfaces the issues of race, immigration and intergenerational inequality that are accepted as normality in the aging majority of voters in Australia.
It brings about the challenging question of mob mentalities that football fans can grow to represent and what that means for the average fan. It’s something I’ve always felt conflicted by. How can I support a sport that has such a long running history of domestic violence? How can I feel comfortable pulling on the same jersey as Tony Abbott and George Pell? Does my team and the uglier sides of what their fans represent in turn represent myself as I pull on those colours and blend in? And how does an individual stand out from the crowd? Dying Majority hits home hard the cowardice of team colours; but atleast brings hope in that others are thinking the same.
Mount Defiance - Shackler
The comparison of the stresses of a failing relationship with that of a failing defensive line is the fiercly relatable deepcut that first made me fall in love with Mount Defiance. A band who have sat in my high rotation ever since my first listen of this song, Mount Defiance, weave together the two worlds with a beauty that makes sense of them both.
The vulnerability of a useless defensive effort, echoes through the vulnerability of a relationship on the ropes in a debut single that brings a big game.
Paul Kelly - Leaps and Bounds
Leaps and Bounds is Paul Kelly at his most perfect. All the quinessential elements of a PK song are there, Melbourne, football, the magic of memory and a great deal of relatable nothingness. Capturing the experience and elevation felt in walking to the MCG to watch a game; the song is as much about the nostalgia in memory as it is the game itself.
Sure, there is the argument it might actually be about getting high, but it makes me think of the football field and that’s the magic of Paul Kelly.
Life After Football - Top Order Collapse
It’s fair to say this song isn’t really about footy, but I can’t think about footy and music without thinking about Life Without Football. A blistering piece of post punk, Top Order Collapse, delivers one of the most satisfying choruses I have heard in years. Anxious and anthemic in equal measure, the band blend a whirlwind of sounds into something that verges on the edge of savage, yet remains reserved enough to ring out as one of the best songs of 2019.
