I wonder how my fan mail compares to Tony Modra or Josh Rachele’s | Graham Cornes

I wonder how my old letters compared to Tony Modra’s fan mail or Josh Rachele’s DMs, writes Graham Cornes.

I found an old letter last week. It was sent to me in August of 1972. I was four years into a football career and Glenelg was in the midst of a revival under Neil Kerley.

In those days, with no internet, email or message services, people wrote letters to communicate.

It wasn’t unusual to receive fan mail. Normally it came addressed to you through the club, where it ran the risk being swallowed up by the system, or fading at the bottom of a footy bag. But this one was sent to me at my then home address: 123a Cross Road, Hawthorn, 5062.

Fan mail was usually quite banal: cute, but banal, written by little kids. Perhaps they had some help from a parent. But this one was different.

In tight, tiny, meticulously neat handwriting, with impeccable punctuation, she (I assumed it was a lady) poured out her heart.

“Dear Graham, ridiculous though it may seem, I’ve got a crush on you and I haven’t a clue as to how I’m going to get over it. I thought perhaps if maybe I wrote to you I’d feel so ashamed of it afterwards that I might shock myself out of it.”

The adoring letter of love sent to Graham in 1972.

Athletes today wouldn’t know the feeling of fan mail, they’re bombarded everyday by social media. (Photo by Josh Chadwick/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)

There was a plaintive note to the letter as she describes building the courage to post it: “You’d get a great laugh if I had guts enough to post this letter, wouldn’t you? Thank goodness I’m gutless.”

But she did post it.

However, there was no return address so there was no opportunity to reply, even if it was out of courtesy. The young lady was no teeny-bopper.

“I feel a bit of a drip having a crush at my age (I’m old enough to vote) when all my friends have real, live boyfriends.

“But I had a boyfriend once; and I know crushes hurt, but not half as much as the real thing.” So on it went: a young lady confiding her inner feelings, baring her soul to someone she didn’t really know. Even if there had been a return address, I’m not sure I would have replied. What was there to say?

Inflated with the hubris of a burgeoning footy career, would I have had the empathy, the tenderness to have let her down gently.

After all, I was married. So the letter went unanswered but not ignored. That was that.

But two weeks later another letter arrived with the same distinctive, neat handwriting; “Dear Graham, Me again! And I’m sorry. I read ‘Love Story’ too, and ‘love means never having to say sorry.’ But this could never be love.”

Swamped ... Fans flock to Crows' spearhead Tony Modra during training at Noarlunga. 04 Apr 1995. (Pic by staff photographer Mark Brake)

But the letter also included two works of poetry: one called A Kind of Loving, by Rod McKuen, an American poet and singer. The second was a poem written by the tragic Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas: Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines. They were carefully chosen, indicating a depth of intellect, not normally seen in fan letters to bogan footballers.

“I make words for people I’ve not met

Those who will not turn to follow after me.

It is for me a kind of loving.

A kind of loving for me.

It is for love that I live all alone.

Because the lovers I imagine

Are safer than the ones I’ve known.”

McKuen’s words, channelling her emotions.

Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines is not Dylan Thomas’s most famous poem, but it is one of his most evocative. Open to different interpretations, some of which are risqué, it is also seen as an ode to “hope springing from a place of total hopelessness.”

It is hardly a work to send to a culturally barren footballer but the title, if not the lyrics has stayed with me over the five decades since.

“I promise not to write to you anymore, because it’s just not fair.

Good luck, and see you on Saturday. And who knows, maybe you’ll even see me. Love and Peace”, she signed.

She never did write again. Did I see her? How could I know?

I’ve seen fan adulation at its most intense with the Tony Modra phenomenon.

Tony Modra is welcomed by adoring fans at Adelaide Airport Aug 1993. (Pic by staff photographer Ray Titus)

The club received dozens, if not hundreds of letters from adoring fans. It helped him to respond to them. That was still in the letter-writing days.

Television amplified his popularity and made him hesitant to go out in public. On occasions when he was at the club, he wouldn’t go across the road to the Shopping Centre to get lunch. I’m sure he had countless, frivolous offers of marriage. But it was all done by mail, unless someone happened to leak his phone number.

Today it is so much different. The single footballers all have social media accounts.

Slide into a DM on Instagram or message on Facebook or What’s App. Perhaps tag them on a tweet (X), and they may reply.

But not in 1972.

I often wonder what happened to that young lady. Did she find a life’s partner and live a happy life? Did she pursue an academic career that her eloquence indicated? She’d be close to 70 now.

Does she have a family? Would she encourage a daughter to write to Tony Modra or a granddaughter to DM Josh Rachelle?

I never did throw those letters away. It seemed disrespectful to do so. Maybe now I can.