Geelong Fans Unite Around The Globe

The Age

Monday September 24, 2007

Dan Silkstone

From Antarctica to Afghanistan, Dan Silkstone tracks down some fanatical, and nervous, Geelong fans.

SCOTT Dewar will touch down in Melbourne this week, his first trip home from Boston in two years. The 25-year-old computer programmer has missed plenty since moving to the US: weddings, birthdays and a couple of Christmases.

But the idea of missing a Geelong premiership is unthinkable. "This is the only thing that would draw me back," he said.

For Geelong fans, though, nothing is ever easy.

Last year the Cats started as flag fancies and Mr Dewar's boss promised an unusual bonus for him and co-worker Patrick Ottery. If the two Australians had a good year at work, the company would fly them home for the finals. The pair worked feverishly but Geelong collapsed in a heap.

This year, with no offer of a finals bonus, the men watched their team race away with the minor premiership. They scratched around for the air fare but, at the last moment, their boss came through - thanks to Australian corporate links - with passage to Melbourne and two grand final seats.

Now the nerves begin. "Everyone has it already won for us, but as a Cats supporter you know there are still plenty of ways that it could go wrong," Mr Dewar said.

If they lose, he will slink back to Boston, maybe for good. "I'll be so much more relaxed watching football in the future if we could just win one," he said. "Every year you think: please, come on! If I see one I can die happy."

For Geelong fans, it will be a week to hope, wait and nervously fear the worst. Around Corio Bay but also around the globe, Cats fans are pondering an end to 44 years of premiership drought. Some are coming home. Some have made the journey before, and won't risk having their hearts broken again. Others are kept away by distance and duty. All share a fatalism born from repeated disappointments.

It is minus 16 degrees at Davis Station in Antarctica, but Barry Balkin is warm with finals fever. The station electrician was born and bred in Geelong the year after Bob Davis' side won the premiership cup in 1963. At 43, he has had a long wait for a repeat.

Working in Antarctica was one of his two great dreams in life: the other is to see a Cats premiership. When word came through last year that he was finally going to the South Pole, one thought nagged: Geelong might do it this year because he would be in the one place in the world where it would be almost impossible to get to a final.

On Saturday he will listen to the game, hurling insults at the radio in the station's makeshift bar and trading barbs with rival fans as if sitting at the MCG. "I've been disappointed so many times before," he said. "I'm trying hard not to look too far ahead."

In the sands of Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, Lance Corporal Dwaine Butcher is more excited than he has been for months. As a combat engineer, he spends his days sweeping roads for ambushes and bombs and protecting Australian engineers. At night he dreams Geelong might break the drought.

Originally from Perth, Lance Corporal Butcher inherited his love of the Cats from his father. He secured his grand final ticket in July, swept up in the excitement of a runaway season and thinking his tour of duty would end in September. When the news came through that he wasn't heading home yet, it wasn't the prospect of more time in the desert that rankled. It was handing over his grand final ticket to his brother-in-law - a Kangaroos fan.

"I'm a bit scared that they might choke but I'm trying to keep the faith," he said. "They've played really well this year, I've watched every game that I could if I wasn't on a mission."

Phillip Boland will take in the game with his wife and daughter at the Australian embassy in Washington. The senior vice-president of an American consulting firm, he remembers 1963 - when aged just nine and living near Sale he watched the Cats win their last flag in a neighbour's lounge room because his family didn't have television.

For much of the past two decades, Mr Boland has lived away from Australia. In 1989, he was in London when the Cats lost to Hawthorn and he resolved not to miss the next one. When the Cats made it again in 1992, he dashed home. Flying into Melbourne on Friday and out again on Sunday, he stopped just long enough to see his team belted by West Coast. He returned home again for the 1995 grand final and again tasted defeat.

"From then on I was renowned as a bad omen," he joked. "This year, I've been requested to stay well away and, quite frankly, I'm not game to be there."

He said there was deep fatalism at the heart of every Geelong supporter. "It's difficult for any of us to believe that it might come good. None of us really believes that. There's a lot of trepidation."

In Copenhagen, James Campion will rise before dawn for the two biggest games of his year. At 6am the Danish national Australian Football team he coaches will pack into a local bar to watch the grand final. They won't be drinking, regardless of the temptation: they have a game that afternoon - an international clash against great rival Sweden.

Mr Campion has lived in Denmark for 14 years but his love for Geelong has never waned. His club team, the Farum Cats, wears the famous hoops. Among their ranks are a few Australians but mostly native Danes - all crazy for Geelong. At the moment they are hosting 23 students from Geelong College, part of an arrangement between the team and school.

"To get the monkey off the back after so many years of disappointment would be amazing," Mr Campion said. "I've seen them lose two grand finals in the flesh, though, and we all know things can still go wrong."

For all of these people and many more, for a week at least, there is something to dream about. Australia will feel tantalisingly close. So, too, will glory.

© 2007 The Age

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