Crossing the Barassi line: How I learnt to love the footy

After a year of living in Melbourne and making many cultural boo-boos – including, but not limited to, telling the founder of Mountain Goat that it was my favourite Sydney beer, catching the 48 at 6pm on a game day, and trying to go east to west on public transport – I decided to suck it up and watch a game of AFL.

The Sydney to Melbourne refugee path is well-worn and a boring story. Sensitive, artsy kids who aren’t interested in surfing or investment banking straggle down the Hume every year, seeking art! Restaurants open past 10pm! Culture! Nightlife that … well, exists!

The Age Essay Prize winner in the 19-24 age group, Grace Biber, at Citizens Park in Richmond. Credit: Joe Armao

But there’s a line we cross, an invisible one that stretches from the mouth of Port Phillip Bay all the way up to the Gulf of Carpentaria; the Barassi line, dividing the parts of the country that play Aussie rules and rugby league.

If you ask anybody what makes Victoria (a unanimous answer is that because the weather is bad), there is a deeper level of engagement in activities beyond a beach day. The stats don’t lie on this either – Victoria has the highest attendances across the board for live music and sports attendance. Things to do make a city more interesting; overall, an obvious concept, but nothing short of revolutionary if you lived under Gladys Berejiklian’s rule.

I certainly didn’t come down to Melbourne for the sporting culture and had no plans in getting involved, but I’ve found myself unable to stand apart from it.

I didn’t grow up in a sporting household. My mother grew up in country Victoria and closed her mind off to football when she entered a co-ed school for year 11 and 12. In the span of a summer, the girls’ netball division didn’t matter, and it was all about the boys and the footy. A blossoming feminist, she decided that if nobody cared about her sport, she wasn’t going to care about theirs.

As much as footy is bitter rivalry, it is also the great equaliser.Credit: Paul Rovere

When I came down to Melbourne in the holidays to visit family, I rolled my eyes at my relatives who huddled around to discuss the game and determinedly shut down any attempts of inclusion. It wasn’t my world, nor did I consider it a valuable part of anybody else’s. I couldn’t understand why people would choose to go through such heightened emotions for something that wasn’t real, even as I developed a habit of crying over fictional characters.

On the small scale, my association with sport was tinged with rejection and social oscillation. The American media I consumed positioned jocks and nerds against each other in a timeless battle of brain versus brawn – and I knew whose side I was going to be on from a very young age. I was chubby, asthmatic and bookish. I got picked last for every team. Hell, I had curly hair and glasses; my path seemed pre-determined.

As I went into high school and the boys who bullied me excelled at PE and largely controlled the games, the idea of footy morphed from a simple game into a sanctuary where their violent inclinations were supported and encouraged. I distantly heard arguments that it served as an outlet for the aggression of teenage boys, yet I did not see or feel these benefits.

On a larger scale, when you don’t follow sport, your perception of the spectacle is mostly based on what trickles through to the front page. As a rule, these are drug scandals, racism against Indigenous players and acts of abuse and battery. Something we progressives can be brash about is our condemnation of these off-field antics while ignoring the pressures of our own fields. We’re all tired of hearing about it, but the MeToo movement revealed the cracks in the artsy industries; where there is celebrity, there will be abuses of power.

Nonetheless, these front-page stories were things I couldn’t condone, so my friends and I would huddle in sneering circles at the pub, feeling worthy and superior in our interests. We criticised the patriarchy for developing men into creatures who couldn’t show emotion – and when men showed intense displays of emotions for sport, we said no, not like that, and denounced the gambling industry that is running a psychological rampage through advertising instead.

We bemoaned a lack of community felt in the cities by those not belonging to an established cultural group, all the while ignoring (yet somehow managing to simultaneously complain about) the hordes of people packing public transport to go to a game.

We were discussing Irvine Welsh, who treats substance abuse and women no better than anyone else. All that talk about esoteric Buddhism, as if the scriptures do not bar women from becoming monks. People still behaved badly in their personal relationships and inappropriately on nights out; abusers went unchecked; sides were picked with more prioritisation towards social clout than social justice; and bad men succeeded into international fame.

But in our minds, this was history, this was culture. If the footy was nothing more than the worst guys we knew butting heads, then the off-pitch antics proved our point even more. From an outsider’s perspective, that culture is condoned for the sake of good footy. And although we venerated people who had no alms in morals or virtue, we were absolutely not going to accept the culture of footy in Australia.

On the other side of the Barassi, however, these niches are harder to find. Love for the footy is woven into the culture of Victoria; even if you don’t follow it, you have a team. It’s not as simple as saying you’re not into it, or critiquing the culture, or having a sob story about always being picked last.

Earlier this year, while working a dead-end sales job, I was graciously informed that I was never going to sell anything in Victoria if I couldn’t talk about the footy.

Victoria has shown me a side of sport that relishes community. As much as it is a bitter rivalry, it is a great equaliser. As much as it tears us apart, it brings us together.

And there’s drama – oh God, the drama. It’s nearly better than Gossip Girl. A team doctor injecting banned substances into unknowing players? No way. The golden one-liners of the commentary? “He came up behind him like a librarian.” These spur-of-the moment lines represent a scope of human ingenuity – I know many writers who would kill to come up with something so simple and clever.

I watched the prelims at home, discovering that I am inclined to nervously pace, when my mum and I watched that bloke jumping in the air and the dude with the headgear went down.

Not knowing the rules, I lunged for the remote to better hear what the commentators were saying. My partner, who was in the stands, texted to ask if I’d seen what happened. Confusion, shock – the players mingled on the field, shouting, arcing up while the clock was stopped. Fear bubbled in my stomach. I wasn’t in the living room any more. Mud squished under my feet as I craned to see the umpire’s judgments, the roar of the crowd enveloping the field, fluorescents glared off the rain clinging to the grass.

“What’s going on?” mum asked as I frantically Googled contact rules. Was our guy in the wrong? We wanted to be on the winning side, and I was lucky to start dating a Collingwood supporter this year. Everything had been fairly breezy so far and we didn’t want to be on the wrong side of a scandal. We ceased being individuals and joined approximately 90,000 people merging into one single, anxious thought: Is he going to be suspended?

“I don’t know, he was in the air – wait, oh, they’re biffing.”

“Oh, they’re really – wait!”

Love for the footy is woven into the culture of Victoria; even if you don’t follow it, you have a team.Credit: Paul Rovere

We both began to feel nauseous as the players milled around the field, shoving each other . We weren’t used to this. Our normal way of watching television involved divulging plots from the tropes we had seen play out time and time again, and nodding in satisfaction when we were proved right.

There is no knowing with sport. There is only how good your team is. It provides an entertainment value that goes beyond the history of oral stories, because storytelling is embedded in the game. The millions of people who watch reality TV are searching for the excitement and drama that is inherent to a game of AFL, and the emotional weight comes from how many people around you care deeply for the result.

The pre-COVID lockout laws in Sydney psychologically and economically decimated the city. You felt guilty for daring to go out; no matter how early you started your night, you were always apologising and shuffling from one area to another, until the whole venue is shut, and you are back on the concrete, scuffing your boots and thinking maybe you should have stayed home and saved your money.

If anybody ever figures out how to harness the passion and zeal of a grand final weekend in Victoria, it could take humanity to the stars.Credit: Jesse Marlow

Here in Melbourne, there is so much to do. It’s overwhelming. I could never understand why anybody would open a hospitality business in Sydney; in Melbourne, I get it. Everybody is happy for you to come in; you never feel like just another punter they have to make comply with the rules.

Perhaps this sentiment around nightlife extends to my old attitude about sport, where I viewed crowds being tightly controlled and restricted, drinking quickly to get just one more in before everything shut. There always seemed to be a sense of panic and anxiety that had nothing to do with the outcome of the game. Sport feels like a means of revenue in NSW, and the state acts accordingly. In Victoria, it is celebrated as part of everybody’s life. A public holiday before the grand final shows a prioritisation of connection and celebration that is imbued in the apparatus of the state.

If sport is an avenue of emotion for those who struggle to express it normally, or don’t know that they can express their emotions, Victoria normalises and makes it culturally accessible to care deeply. There is a great sense of community within this state; it’s the sport of everyone, not a corporation’s brainchild. And hey, if you don’t care, you still get a public holiday.

I watched my first game of AFL at the start of the season. Richmond versus Collingwood. An old family friend was painstakingly trying to explain the difference between all the codes, but I was only half listening.

Even knowing as little as I did, it was impossible not to admire the athleticism and skill of the players. By half-time, Bobby Hill was my favourite – I maintain that this proves I have a good eye for sport and nothing to do with his cheeky grin as he kicked yet another goal.

Fast-forward to the end of the season, and I’m dating a Collingwood tragic and scrambling to find the SPF 50+ on grand final morning. The day dawned clear and sunny, but a nervous energy thrummed through the city, like a distant tornado preparing to descend.

After I saw him off and got ready to go to a watch party with my cousins, I realised that I had never felt so truly involved and immersed in the outcome of a single afternoon. It was an invisible string, a unifier that broke down barriers and roused solidarity in the most unlikely of places – one of those being the men’s bathroom in the MCG, as my partner reported.

As I had yet another pleasant, laughing exchange with somebody who I would have never talked to if it weren’t for the AFL, I thought of the scientific truth that energy cannot be created or destroyed. If anybody ever figures out how to harness the passion and zeal of a grand final weekend in Victoria, it could take humanity to the stars.

Grace Biber won The Age/Dymocks 2023 Essay Prize for young writers, 19-24 age category, with this essay.

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