WHAT COMES TO MIND … ROSS WILSON FLIES LIKE AN EAGLE
- 5 hours ago
- 6 min read
Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, an alternative series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence, whose not-so-secret goal was to dig into my brain or soul or what might pass for both.
Each time, he pulls out a photo from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenges me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical, but it will be inspired by a photo I’ve not seen before, and maybe even unseen by anyone beyond Stuart himself.
This week, Ross Wilson, captured here still young and pointed – look at the sharpness of the nose and jaw; catch some of the energy of his jabbing hand; feel that Spence life awareness of the even the quickest of his photographs – and a sporting life-by-proxy.
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GROW UP! Who, me?
Understand this, it’s not enough to say it is in the blood – or bones – but it doesn’t make it any less true. Some antipathies, like loyalties, are felt more than understood: historic, baked in, irreversible.
My daughter doesn’t really understand why my instinctive reaction in any sport not involving a team/player I support is to automatically barrack for whomever is playing against England. (Though England playing Argentina made for uncomfortable decisions for various reasons, not least among them another rule: I can’t ever support either Germany or Argentina, who beat the second greatest football team of all time, and my first heroes, the 1970s Dutch side of Johan Cruyff et al, in successive World Cup finals.) She thinks it weird that it matters so much that logic goes out the window.
And I get that. Born near the very end of the century, she hadn’t grown up in a country which for much of its modern history was carrying a massive chip on the shoulder about the patronising colonisers who were still, inexplicably, in constitutional rule over us, and she wasn’t necessarily enamoured of sports like cricket, rugby league and union (where beating England mattered more than just about anything else) and football (where playing, let alone beating, England was so rare as to be insulting). And Paul Keating was, like Gough Whitlam and John Curtin, merely a historical figure of veneration for her parents, not her fighter for true independence.
Similarly, while she has grown up with two parents who supported Manly-Warringah, attended her first game at Brookvale aged around 8 (with notebook in hand, noting significant moments, because isn’t that what I did at shows?) and has sat at the stadium through deflating and exhilarating grand finals, she can’t get her head around why even if Manly lose, the weekend is not wholly wasted if Parramatta has also lost. That’s borderline childish, she reckons.
To which I say, yes, and?
I was at school in the Parramatta area when Manly v Parramatta was peak competition, incorporating three grand finals – one for the good guys; two for “them”, that were felt in the playground for weeks and months after – and nothing can erase those scars. Just like nothing can lighten the mood like remembering Parramatta have only won the competition once since (and that was 40 years ago!) while Manly have picked up four more. Yah boo sucks! And yes I am mature, thank you.
Even my choice of team(s) has become something of a life choice, even if inadvertently.
Relatively new to Australia, living pretty far across Sydney from Manly and Warringah, and knowing next to nothing yet about the game, I latched onto Bob Fulton as “my” player, and with that came his team, Manly. And when they won their first title the next year, I was hooked. Something similar happened with Liverpool FC with whom I’ve soared and crashed and climbed back ever since.
(Have I ever thought of changing teams during particularly dark years? Or, dear god, after this weekend? How dare you. In my mind, you and your team are like wolves, gibbons, beavers … you mate for life. You can change your country, change your name even, but I can never fully trust someone who changes their team.))
Everyone who knows us subsequently has assumed that since both my teams were something like sworn enemies of those my father, and pretty much every member of our family, supported – Canterbury and Manchester United – I chose them to at least rile him, if not deliberately/instinctively oppose him. Not true, at least not when I was five or 10, but I can’t deny it became a totemic choice eventually. As with everything else in my life – from how you treat women, friends and children, to boorish racism - a basic rule was if he did something one way I would go the other.
Is this a good way to run your life? In theory, probably not; in practice, hell yeah, no complaints from anyone around me.
Now my wife, while on the same train with the Parramatta loss gleefulness, on every other topic is generally more mature and less judgmental than me. (Which is a low bar to clear, I know, but let’s press on.) There aren’t many things she actively dislikes in any format – except maybe Tony Abbott, who can induce spitting rage merely by appearing on her screen, and who can argue with that? – but one of the few that get through her calmness is Mondo Rock. Ooh boy.
You would remember them, firstly Ross Wilson’s band (The Fugitive Kind still feels like late ’70s Melbourne in the best way, as Sports, Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons and Australian Crawl fans would attest) then, after he was joined as principal songwriter by Eric McCusker, a broader and even more successful band. For everyone except for her. Put it this way, don’t come at her with Come Said The Boy if you value your life.
Me? I could take or leave them without strong feelings, though I thought Wilson was owed respect for steering Skyhooks to us back in the day, even if I was more a Sherbet man myself. But for reasons I can’t really explain except maybe I had not been either a hippie or a sharpie, and grew up in Sydney not Melbourne, I never really got into Wilson’s Daddy Cool and had a proper thing about their signature song, Eagle Rock. A teeth-grinding, leave the room immediately, dear god not again, you think hearing Sweet Caroline is bad that’s nothing like this, kind of thing.
Now listen …
Which made it even more delicious an irony, or even more acute a punishment, when Manly, aka the Sea Eagles, began using Eagle Rock as the post-match celebratory song and not the rather pedestrian but less aggravating old team song (“Manly Warringah, Manly Warringah, we’ll all be marching behind you this year/That’s the song you will hear as they run onto the Cricket Ground etc” – I know, I know. They were different times).
Then they kept winning. And kept using it. Louder. I didn’t even need to be at the ground to hear it, having it seep through the background of telecasts. And everyone would join in. Louder still. Bless me father, I know I have sinned and penance is due, but this much?
Sure, in recent seasons there’s been some respite as Manly’s wins were, shall we say, more sporadic – the closest you’ll get to a good thing to be said about the Seibold years – but the truth is I have acclimatised, moderated, maybe even accepted. My teeth don’t grind when that spindly guitar intro plays and I don’t smack my head in time with the handclaps. I even have been heard to absentmindedly sing along, especially if we’ve – yes, “we’ve” – beaten Parramatta.
Have I grown up? Nah. But they got me. He got me. Bloody Ross Wilson!!
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