Robert Murphy:Appreciating your number's significance

Murph's article this week...

Appreciating your number's significance
The Age
Bob Murphy | July 9, 2009

LET ME take you back. It's a drizzly Wednesday night in Warragul. It's April, 1992, about 5pm. My very first night of football training.

This day has been circled on the calendar for weeks, maybe months, and I've been too excited at school to utter a word all day. Like all the other kids who walk from school to training, I am excited about kicking and marking and sliding around in the mud. But there is something else, something bigger.

Not that I'd utter a word, scared that if I mentioned it, panic would surely set in. Like a soldier in hiding, I didn't dare give away my position.

Looking back I don't know how we all knew (a few of us had older brothers, which could explain it), but we did. The first night of football training wouldn't just be balls, witch's hats and whistles, the coach would also unload a big suitcase from his car. A suitcase full of jumpers.

No doubt there would be a time for team and selflessness during the coming season, but on this night it was every nine-year-old for himself. As each drill finished, everyone had one eye on the coach and one eye on the big suitcase sitting at the base of an old oak tree. Miss the signal and your dreams of owning a No. 5 (Ablett) or a No. 3 (Lyon) could evaporate. When our coach finally relented and opened up the suitcase of tattered jumpers it was like a scene from the movie Platoon, bodies flying everywhere. Somehow, I managed to sneak my arm under the pack and retrieve my jumper. It was No. 7. Or, as I would have said at the time, "a Winmar". I've never been into numbers, but football jumper numbers are different it seems. They mean more.

Last week, my teammates and I got a nice little surprise from our adult football club. After finishing our track work, we returned to the sanctuary that is the change rooms. These rooms are pretty straight-forward, made up of 40 or so lockers. Until now they had just been a place to keep the tools of our trade, but they had suddenly become something much more.

On the front of each locker door now is history, a Bulldog lineage, if you like. Coming in from training, we were greeted by locker doors boasting freshly-painted names of the men who have worn that jumper in 100 or more games for our club.

And there was more. There were other names painted in a gold tint, reserved for the legends who played in our one and only premiership in 1954.

When you break it down, the number you wear on your back is little more than a way of identifying each player on the ground. But like many things in football, these small things carry a deeper meaning, a link to the history of an ancient tribe.

I sometimes get the feeling that the world sees young people these days as less sentimental beings. I don't think I've ever had this conversation with anyone — nor have I had this accusation levelled at me — it's just a gut instinct. And I don't think it's accurate.

Now, more than ever, we live in a world that is fast — too fast, perhaps — and this idea of "permanent" or "forever" is becoming less common. The world's advances in technology have set a pace that leaves many reeling.

It is, of course, the younger generations who use this technology more than any others, but it is a world and ethos we were thrust into. We don't know any different.

I've been thinking about my generation of footballers, a mere snippet of our male generation at large. And my mental wanderings led to pondering the increasing number of tattoos seen on players' arms.

I think the symbolism goes a lot deeper than trying to be "trendy". I believe it is the result of a generation being denied the security of "forever". Life is one fast food chain after another. We are smack-bang in the middle of the Twitter age, where communication is quick and often frivolous.

Often the body art of my generation has a significance not too dissimilar to our new football lockers. Tattoos are of a tribal nature, a family coat of arms, or a memorial for a loved one who has passed on. We have no real feel for something permanent, so we have inked our bodies to get something deeper, more lasting. I could be way off, and maybe the kids just want to look like Becks, but I really hope not.

My point is that I believe the youth of today are very sentimental. You only had to see the faces of the players as we studied our lockers last week, reading the names of those who have played for the club with such honour and distinction. It gave all of us the tingles.

I've heard Terry Wheeler speak to the playing group before, about us being custodians of the jumper at the moment. That responsibility will be passed on again and it is, quite simply, our job to do our best while we have it.

Our brand new change rooms are starting to get that lovely lived-in look and smell. The names on the lockers have lifted the room to another level, and other things will be added over the coming months and years to make it our own.

All of it will come together, with the sweat and liniment in the air, to give the rooms that wholesome, football club feel. And my teammates and I know how privileged we are to call it home.

Good article from Murph...he's a talented writer... reminded me of the first time I played basketball for my state...as an eleven year old kid, too small and quiet to say anything... left 'till last, I was given the number 6...from then on it became "my" number... helped my cause when Johnno became captain!

I know what he means by "missing the signal". One year I was slow on the uptake and had to cop #46. It's hard to draw inspiration from getting to 'act like your hero' when all you have to look up to is Trent Carroll.

A great ambassador for the Western Bulldogs.

We Love ya Murph!! Such a great guy :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Happy Days

I know what he means by "missing the signal". One year I was slow on the uptake and had to cop #46. It's hard to draw inspiration from getting to 'act like your hero' when all you have to look up to is Trent Carroll.

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I got a clearance from one club to another in Under 18's two games into the season back in the late 80's, and imagine my horror when I was handed my jumper on the morning of my first game only to turn it around a reveal #64. This, in a team that struggled to have aenough players to fill the bench each week!!!

I tell you what, i am impressed by my football club.

Is it just me or was anyone else hit by the significance of the fact that only premiership players were painted in a gold tint. No 300 gamers were mentioned in Murphs article as getting a special treatment.

A small thing but to me symbolic of the fact that we might be really starting to act like a club that only measures itself on premierships :)

This bloke just goes higher on the great bloke rankings each time he opens his mouth or pens his thoughts. We are truly in great shape whilst we have men of this character at our club and just for the record idon't know why or how but I always got the number 7 exept in high school when I wore Beasers number 18 !!!!