A footy text tested the limits of our friendship. She should know there are rules

It’s a weekend, I’ve time on my hands and it strikes me that I haven’t checked in with a few friends for a while. But before I text, I need to look up the footy fixture.

I’ll work through a mental checklist. Has their team played yet? Did they win? Did they get thrashed? Where are they on the ladder? Are they out of finals’ contention? Does it fit with pre-season predictions?

Credit: Matt Davdison

Whether they’re Carlton supporters with the blues, Saints mates having a hellish season or Bomber besties nosediving, footy fandom comes with great highs and the lowest of lows.

If they’re hardcore card carrying, scarf waving, form-following fans their moods are delicately connected to the win/loss ratio of their teams.

If there’s a game coming up, I’ll usually put off my text for another day. If their team has been thrashed, I will give it a miss. Don’t poke the bear. If they’ve had a win I might text a congratulatory message.

My sporting fix is AFL, but it could apply to any other code. The season starts with great promise, and before long teams and the hopes and dreams of their supporters are cruelled by injuries, long-awaited premiership windows vanish and suddenly September is looking free. Anyone for a weekend away?

Friendly rivalry: fans of Collingwood and Fremantle show their colours.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images

Others are on tenterhooks, madly calculating if their team can make the cut, and praying for unlikely upsets in hope that other teams will make way for them.

A friend and I bristled after a Collingwood-barracking friend texted us to gloat as we stood, stunned and disappointed in the MCG stands after the siren, as Richmond’s 2018 campaign for back-to-back premierships came to a sudden end.

“USA, USA, USA” the Magpie rabble chanted in honour of Mason Cox, who’d played out of his skin to carry the Pies to victory. I’ve only recently stopped hating him.

Of course, my lovely Collingwood friend would not have knowingly upset us with the ill-timed “Go Pies” text.

I go to home games in a reserved seat, take in training a few times a year and on Tuesday headed to a live taping of the Richmond Talking Tigers’ podcast, but I have friends who go the extra mile. The merch, the dog memberships, helping with the banner and much more.

One friend sits down when the fixture is released and plots the flights, loyalty points, accommodation and leave she needs to follow her beloved Demons around the country. She was devastated when lockdowns robbed her of the chance to see the Demons win the 2021 grand final.

Or my other friend, whose family has long supported South Melbourne and the Sydney Swans and was shell shocked after their performance in last year’s grand final. I had wished her luck at the start of the game but gave her space for a few weeks after.

Supporting your footy team is supposed to be fun. I sat at Marvel in round three as St Kilda beat us by 82 points and thought of the million other things I could have been doing. Sorting the sock drawer would have been more entertaining. And yet we come back for more.

We’re driven by hope, faith, resilience and something bigger than ourselves. When I’m in my bay at the ’G I sit near a couple of long-term friends and new friends. I’ve loved watching the little babies in front morph into toddlers. When things are bad, we chat. When they are really bad, I head out for a vegetable pastie.

I used to be a great hater of rival footy clubs and by extension some fans. I didn’t like Collingwood, didn’t think much of Carlton, laughed heartily at the skiing and cheese-platter Melbourne jibes and found Hawthorn fans in your face during successful times and not seen for dust when they were struggling.

But after Richmond won three flags in four years, I changed my tune.

In 2017 the run-up, the day, the game and the aftermath are among the most exhilarating times of my life. To have that again in 2019 and 2020, albeit we were locked out of the game due to the pandemic, was bliss.

I want all football fans, especially my die-hard St Kilda friends, who show up every week, to have that experience. (Not Gold Coast Suns. It’s complicated for some Richmond fans to see a coach instrumental in our three flags quit mid-season, say he was “stale” and sign with the Suns, leaving us a basket case.)

It’s business for the footy industry and not everyone can be a one-club player, but supporters stick fat. It’s a lifelong if not generational commitment. For many, devotion to a footy team outlasts their wedding vows.

While there is rightly concern about the mental health of the players, there is less about the suffering of fans. Lifelong Philadelphia Eagles supporter Dr Patrick McElwaine wrote in Psychology Today about how his mental health has been “deeply intertwined with my team’s performance”.

“When the Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2018, and again this year, I was on cloud nine, feeling an almost surreal sense of euphoria that lasted for weeks. But when they lose, especially in a heartbreaking fashion, it feels heavy, as if I’ve personally suffered a loss,” he wrote earlier this year.

He says sports fandom is more than just entertainment. It’s a deep emotional connection. Rooting, as the Yanks say, for a team provides social identity, a sense of belonging and reduces feelings of loneliness. While wins release feel good dopamine, losses can activate areas of the brain associated with pain and disappointment, he says.

Tune into Welcome to Wrexham and see how the improving fortunes of the Red Dragons soccer team has buoyed the working-class Welsh town.

If your team isn’t going well, there are better strategies for coping than microwaving your membership cards, dumping chook poo at the club as one disgruntled Tiger supporter did in 2001, or scrawling “Sack the Board” on the walls, as one Carlton fan did at Princes Park last month after their team’s 50-point loss to Port Adelaide. Experts suggest fans try to take a step back and put a loss into perspective.

And, if like me, your team isn’t figuring in the September action, it’s time to book a holiday far, far away. At least you will have something to look forward to.

Claire Heaney is a Melbourne writer.

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