Last year, I swore off office footy tipping. Here’s why I’ve come crawling back

It is that time of year again, and I’m feeling like Michael Corleone trying to escape the inexorable in The Godfather Part III.

“Just when I thought I was out,” the doomed Don thunders at one point, “they pull me back in!”

Stephen Brook is returning to the office footy tipping competition, somewhat reluctantly.Credit: Matt Davidson

But this time it’s the Melbourne footy mafiosi who are tightening the screws – the office pressure is on for me to join the footy tipping competition.

I should say rejoin.

When I first arrived in Melbourne to work for The Age several years ago and was found to have no AFL team, the recruitment attempts of colleagues to join their tribe were next level. “Oh, your grandfather played for Collingwood? How thrilling for you!”

In a flush of new-city belonging, I joined the newsroom footy tipping comp – but after early successes, I fell straight to the North Melbourne end of the ladder. Resentment grew to unhealthy levels and last year I quit. I even wrote a piece about it.

Now the press-gang is out in force to get me back, and I am wavering.

At The Age we walk among footy tipping giants such as Peter Ryan. During my last ill-fated time in the contest, I found my fortunes improved when I shamelessly copied his suggestions. But it did feel a bit hollow.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one. I bumped into Ryan last week and he recounted how in Paris last year a woman – a complete stranger – had come up to him thanking him profusely. Due to his tips, she’d won $400 in her office tipping comp.

Part of my problem is a wider ambivalence to sport. When the sport editor asked for my tips just before the Melbourne Cup last year, I said I thought Kamala Harris was staging a late surge. Oh, you didn’t mean the US presidential election?

Last year, your columnist called time on tipping due to the stress.Credit: Matt Davidson

I am from the “can’t bowl, can’t throw” end of the sporting prowess field. Call me sport adjacent. Yes, yes, I recognise its importance and honour its high achievers and admire the passions of supporters. But sport for me is like chardonnay: if I never have another glass in my life, I’ll be okay.

Part of my reluctance to rejoin is that even people who live, breathe and eat AFL can shun such contests. At Channel Seven’s AFL launch, presenter Rebecca Maddern was emphatic. No way. “Too stressful,” she declared.

I feel the same. I don’t want to start my week, say, hating Port Adelaide for defying my predictions about their on-field prowess. In fact I don’t want to devote any intellectual or emotional bandwidth to Port Adelaide at all.

And I’m not sure I can rejoin until I sort out my relationship with Collingwood.

My family connections dictate that I support Hawthorn. But when I arrived at this newspaper during a break in COVID lockdowns in 2021, I was lobbied by a senior editor to join … Collingwood. I met a rabbi at his synagogue; his office dominated by an enormous team photograph of … Collingwood. At the theatre on opening night, one of my most unassuming friends insisted I go and organise a selfie with her and a man I had met once in my life, briefly, at a charity lunch, Darcy Moore, captain of … Collingwood.

Here’s the nub. Too often my attempts at entering the AFL orbit have led to alienation. I once asked a man at an MCG match what he did. He looked surprised, for a split second. Other guests were mortified.

“That’s Carlton legend Marc Murphy,” spluttered a shocked onlooker. The atmosphere transformed. I had scandalised the court. My ignorance was actually contempt. I had flipped the bird on Melbourne herself.

“I’m not from around here,” I muttered weakly.

Your columnist did not realise that this man, pictured with his wife Jessie, was former Carlton captain Marc Murphy, a household name in Melbourne.Credit: Tennis Australia

Clearly, I needed help. Enter Helen Garner.

The legendary writer’s new book, The Season, is her “nanna’s” book (as she calls it) about football, recounting a year in the life of her grandson’s junior team. I jumped in. What I found was next-level fanaticism for a local team, but also relief. Garner gave me permission to be ignorant. “I don’t really understand the game to any deep level,” she confessed on the Chat 10 Looks 3 podcast. “It’s a strange game; it’s got strange rules.”

Garner built her footy ignorance into the book. Was she showing me the way?

The multiple callouts – and direct messages – were having an effect.

Legendary Melbourne writer Helen Garner doesn’t understand footy – but she’s passionate about it.Credit: Darren James

Then the opinion editor wondered if I would write a column about life on the tipping outer. Would I come crawling back after a year of being left out of the water cooler chat?

An opinion column, eh? With an illustration? As Julia Gillard said: “It doesn’t explain everything; it doesn’t explain nothing. It explains some things.”

I logged in and looked up the rules of The Age newsroom tipping comp:

“$25 to enter for the season.

“Winner gets 80 per cent of the prize pool.

“2nd gets 20 per cent.”

There were 56 entries.

Maybe Garner was right, ignorance need not be a barrier.

Make that 57. I clicked and entered the first-round vortex.

Sydney versus Hawthorn. A childhood dislike still simmers. Swans, you are going down, I have willed it.

GWS versus Collingwood. Uh, where’s Pete Ryan when you need him?

At the end of the tipping competition rules there was also this: “The worst tipster gets their money back.”

Defeat can be honourable, readers. As the well-worn sporting cliche (my version) goes: you’ve got to be in it to lose it.

Stephen Brook is a special correspondent for The Age and CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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