Almanac Footy: Dreaming Of Diesel

My name is Alex and I’m an unabashed devotee of the former Geelong, Sydney and Carlton champion Greg Williams.

I’ve never seen a better handballer play the game.

I enjoyed watching David Rhys-Jones and Sam Mitchell but they don’t come close to the peripheral vision, velocity and accuracy of Diesel’s handballs.

Most AFL fans will remember specific moments from games such as high marks or goals. For me it’s the handball, putting team mates into winning positions.

One particular example was when Diesel was at Carlton playing on Princes Park. I don’t even remember the opposition because they were all as insignificant as each other when Diesel was on fire racking up possessions.

He was in the centre of the ground pouncing on a ground ball that was bobbling around awkwardly and ominously because three opponents could see an opportunity to smash the champ.

Diesel took the ball in one grab then lifted it to shoulder height before peeling off the greatest left handed handball I’ve ever seen. It raced 30m to the right wing where Barry Mitchell retrieved it at chest height without breaking stride.

Firstly the contempt to the three opponents was symbolic of how he played with no fear, but he could have been excused for just getting the ball somewhere in Mitchell’s vicinity. Not Diesel. It had to be perfect, one metre in front of the sprinting wingman who charged unabated into the forward line. The things you remember.

I feel like my life has mirrored Diesel in a sense. There are parallels aplenty when I look at my own modest footy career.

As a kid I tried my best to emulate the diminutive centreman from Golden Square in Bendigo.

We were poor, so improvisation was the key. An old green plastic garbage bin in the back yard became a target for my thousands of handballs. My thongs and terry towelling hat were used to mark the three distances I would shoot from.

I had four footballs that I scrounged from op shops. A Burley, a Faulkner, a no-name generic Chinese thing and a plastic brown ball from the local servo. Care was required to not punch or kick on the end that had the rock hard plastic nodule as agony was guaranteed. It was the football equivalent to stubbing your toe.

When I was bored I’d call for my younger brother Brett who despised me to the core. Every morning at breakfast there was only Rice Bubbles and Corn Flakes boxes separating us from a brawl. We couldn’t look at each other and inevitably a fight started and we would end up with our Mum throwing us under a cold shower.

It wasn’t always animosity though. We shared a love of footy and Brett was very talented. We would go down the local oval and I would pretend to be Diesel, while Brett would be Robert Harvey.

We would take turns playing our roles. One would start in the centre and the other in the goals whose role was to commentate Dennis Cometti-style.

If I started, Brett would observe and commentate as I swerved, air-dummied and bounced my way toward the left forward pocket in order to kick a miraculous left foot goal.

“ And Williams takes the ball from Madden, fends off Hocking and releases a 30m handball to Koutoufides. Kouta links up with Mackay sprinting off half back and now it’s Williams again whose followed up. Oh my, what a dummy as he steps around Bairstow and passes to Kernahan centimetre perfect, 45 metres out on a 45 degree angle. Oh he’s gone again! Sticks with a sly handball to Diesel and he slots a beautiful left foot goal on the run from the pocket! What a player!”

And so it would go on for two hours. No thought to hydration, just a mouthful of bore water from the copper reticulation pipes on the oval. The unforgettable taste of rust.

Brett took up an invitation to join a country football club as a teenager which came with a job. It worked out nicely for him.

I preferred the city and tried out with a second tier side. That club felt I wasn’t up to it and so I tried another with a similar outcome.

Diesel tried unsuccessfully twice at Carlton before being picked up by Geelong so I had a crack at a third. Just as Diesel had done, I was successful third time lucky.

It was a rigorous pre-season unlike anything I’d taken on before. There were only forty two spots on the list available and going into February there was approximately fifty still training.

It was going to come down to a practice match against South Bendigo at their home ground. South Bendigo were The Bloods, as in Sydney (OK they’re the Swans but close enough) where Diesel won his first Brownlow, and it was Bendigo his home town so the stars were aligning.

In the words of Diesel, I had a serviceable game but there was a dog eat dog nature amongst the team at that stage of pre-season. I’m a pretty shy person and I really struggled to find a friend with those guys.

We had dinner at a pub then a big crew decided to kick on as we were all staying in Bendigo the night.

I followed them to the nightclub but they made it clear I wasn’t to hang around them. We got to the front door and the bouncers wouldn’t let me in because I had inappropriate footwear. They were Nike runners and the so called team mates were onto me. “Jesus Alex, you’ve got runners on. Piss off back to the pub, you’re an embarrassment!”

Diesel always believed in himself. Too slow? Too short? Rejected twice by Carlton before returning and winning a flag and a second Brownlow. Incorrect footwear? I’ll find a way.

Initially forlorn, I returned to my car and opened the boot. There were my golf clubs and beside them my black and white golf shoes with spikes.

I put them on and returned to the club where the bouncers had no hesitation admitting me once they saw the black and white leather. They looked like something you would wear to The Cotton Club in 1930.

I ruefully entered the venue and immediately struck carpet. The spikes dug in and I found myself doing high knee lifts in order to move forward. Thankfully it was dark.

A couple of the crew spotted me and the shoes. “You’re f…g kidding aren’t ya Alex. You’re a dead set loser mate!”

A local woman and her friend Karen from Melbourne started chatting to me and asked if I would like to dance. I walked to the wooden dance floor as inconspicuously as I could, tearing out small clumps of carpet with each step.

Once I hit the dancefloor the spikes dug in firmly and I quickly realised my feet weren’t going anywhere in a hurry.

I bent my knees and started swaying my upper torso so violently that I looked like one of those inflatable advertising men you see outside tyre retaiers.

I was so fit around my core due to the pre-season, that I was able to lean back and touch my heels with my hands like Iggy Pop.

Suddenly other people on the dancefloor started copying my moves. For twenty minutes I WAS Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever.

Karen and I got on famously and left arm in arm. My colleagues chased me wanting to know where I was going. I told them, “as far away from you lot as possible.”

I see the final chapter of my footy life as happy and as fortunate as Diesel’s 1995. A premiership and a Norm Smith Medal. Maybe that experience in the nightclub was my version of Diesel moving unexpectedly to the forward pocket in that grand final and kicking five goals.

I didn’t end up playing for that team but that was by choice. I’m sure Diesel wouldn’t have either.

I ended up in a strong amateur competition, in a great club who set me up in property development, and Karen and I are happily married. We have a son, Iggy.

Almanac Footy: Dreaming Of Diesel

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