Last night I watched the channel 7 interview on Brendan Fevola and it sparked another instalment between my husband and me on the AFL saga.
I have always had a love/hate relationship with the AFL. My husband is a mad Lion’s supporter and the success of the team can have an effect on our sex life and his overall demeanour. And during the AFL season he has around a dozen outings without me and I used to sit at home lonely and resentful.
The wifely duty here is to learn the rules and how to hoot and holler and avidly discuss the nuances of the game on his return home and over the weekend sports pages. However, I don’t really like sport . My activities have always been solo sports such as horse riding, skating , gym and aerobics. Out of love and devotion for my man, I really did try to show an interest in the beginning , but abysmally failed. It has just highlighted my ignorance and how we are polarised in many aspects of our existence (apart from the introvert/extrovert poles!). He recently pointed out that the reason most of our family are control freaks is positively correlated to that fact that none of us played team sports at school. We simply aren’t team players. Then he added that was what the problem is with most terrorists too.
So, given this rather convincing observation and in the spirit of good debate I’ve had to come up with some of my own arguments for why I don’t want to take an interest. For starters, I’m affectionately referred to as the AFL widow. My chef friend books in his diary every date for the whole season and brings me dinner while we watch Project Runway and Gok’s Fashion Fix. This is actually a positive thing, but the widow status can be interpreted a number of ways. Early on in my marriage after running into one of my Brother’s mates for the fifth time without my husband – desperate and dateless – he inquired in a concerned manner if my marriage was on the rocks. He had NEVER met Rob.
On the positive side it affords me a credit balance in terms on shopping days and girl’s nights out. I’ve also worked out that if savage PMT falls on an AFL weekend I always get away with it because he’s too sheepish to fire back given I’m already inflamed about staying at home alone while he gets away from the kids.
I guess another positive is that I get to catch up on the interesting TV I have taped but never have time to watch such as historical dramas, chick flicks and movies I want to watch and contemplate and cry in peace (e.g The boy in the striped Pyjamas holocaust movie – did you see that heart breaker?)
But now I really have fuel to add to my fiery angst. Due to media sensationalism and love of showcasing smut, my impressionable football mad 7 year old son has seen time and time again how in our culture if you can kick goals you are extended greater levels of forgiveness than if you were a teacher or pastor or public servant. The message to our children from celebrity is that you can behave badly providing you have talent! This theme really came out in the Fevola interview last night as a major contributing factor to his downfall.
And the evidence of how impressionable football role models are exists. It bought back a memory of an incident a year ago when my kids and I were in the front yard waiting for the home icecream bloke. My son with his penis in his hand was flashing his sister and passing cars and I told him to put it away and that flashing in the front yard is not appropriate. It is your private parts and you touch them in private, not public. His response was “Why not?! Fevola does!”
This had got to be the ultimate trump card in the AFL debate don’t you think?
