Celtic (Glasgow) vs Central Coast Mariners
Sydney Olympic Complex Homebush 2/7/2011
ANZ stadium’s a sea of green and white. Young and old, mums, dads, kids, grandmums, grandads, aunties, uncles, grandkids. Young fellas, lads, swaggering in t-shirts in the 14 degrees - lovely summer’s evening in Glasgow. Cardboard trays of beers. Add your own shots. The old bloke next to us with the bulbous nose whips out a silver hip flask.
The Cetlic bhoys and our boys are warming up. A Celtic striker bang bang bang repeatedly hits volleys past the goalkeeper into the top corner of the net. There’s a buzz. This is more than home. The bhoys and the boys go into the dressing rooms. My son Nick and I are in the stands to support the local boys - The Mariners. “I think we’re fucked Dad.” Nick nods towards the Southern supporters stand - a sea of green and white stripes. I nod.
All around us too, swathes of the green and white. Families of them. Tiny little spots of Mariners yellow and black dot the stadium - cockroach droppings in a linen cupboard. More green and white drinking and loud joking. The easy relaxation of the confident. No green and white on that bloke with his son. They smile benignly at us. Generosity afforded by certainty. I think.
The players make their entrance. The sea of green and white stands in unison. Silence. Then the green and white holding their green and white scarves stretched proud across the space over their heads.
When you walk through a storm...
Hold your head up high...
We get to our feet reflexively. Take your hat off - respect. This is church.
And don't be afraid of the dark,
At the end of a storm, there's a golden sky,
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
It’s serious. The processional. Tears stream down faces. They believe. I’m starting to believe. Fuck the Mariners.
Nick brings me back to earth. “Dad!”. I stop singing. He sits down. I sit down. His look says it. Typical. Easily led. Susceptible - hypnotism experiments, Billy Graham, momentary exhilarations, Nuremberg 1938, you’d be there.
But it is fantastic. The community. The longing. The belonging. A giant together. I love it.
So what can the Mariners do? They’re never gonna match this with inspiration. They can only play defensive. Keep possession. Don’t try to attack. Just knock the ball around. Keep it away from them. Don’t worry about go forward. Let them make mistakes. Frustrated. Straight bat. Geoff Boycott vs Australia through the 1970’s. Drive them mad. Wait for the big mistake.
Mariners kick off. A new song from the green and white. Half the stand pumps out a corruption of Depeche Mode...
When I see you Celtic, I go out of my head
I just can't get enough, I just can't get enough
Then the other half...
All the things you do to me, and all the things you said
I just can't get enough, I just can't get enough
The responsorial psalm.
One of their midfielders grabs the ball with a lazy intercept. The bang bang bang! First touch x 3 and suddenly in under five seconds their wide right man’s boring down the wing. The Mariners are agape . WTF? How...? But they recover and jump on him. Not a bad tackle but enough for a free kick. Shit. Forty metres out. The green and white gather in a confident bunch just outside the box in line with the far post. A beautiful cross hit with a beautiful head that goes just wide.
But then that’s it. The green and white boys grind to a halt.
Despite the hymns, the green and white communion, the next eighty three minutes passes with only flashes of the green and white first three minutes of brilliance.
No brilliance from the Mariners. Just Geoff Boycott. Block, block, block, block. Take your time. Hold possession.
By half time the green and white army are looking a bit unsettled. There are murmurs. “C’mon Celtic. Play fuuutbolll! Wha’s thut? Roobbbish! Shite!”. The local boys are oblivious - don’t miss tackles, don’t take chances. Geoff Boycott, Geoff Boycott, Geoff Boycott. Keep chewing and don’t let the bastards rattle you.
Then at eighty minutes Mariners coach Graham Arnold substitutes his entire bench of young players for his most tired. Gives them a go. They’re playing against Celtic. Everything to gain. Nothing to lose and they go for it. Full out. First tackle from the left back takes the ball neatly from the dangerous wide right who was responsible for the threat in the first three minutes. Dangerous wide right’s embarrassed. So are the green and white congregation who have gone silent. Bhoys bhoys ...please.... give us something. But they don’t because they can’t. The passion’s getting sucked up by the ghost of Geoff Boycott.
Then suddenly one of Graham Arnold’s subs makes a break on the left. Instead of stuffing up the cross like the Mariners in the few times they’ve been up there in the last eighty minutes he cuts it back nicely and bang! Just outside the box. Hearfield, another of the young subs, bangs it first touch into the top corner. The congregation is silent. Disbelief. No muttering. Three minutes to go. The Bhoys lift. Actually start to play like they’re supposed to. The overrun the boys. It’s only through the grace of God and one desperation tackle in front of an open goal that they don’t manage to equalise. But their congregation are strangely subdued - just titterings of enthusiasm when Celtic looks like they’re going to score. The fire’s gone.
We win! Nick and I and the other scattered cockroach droppings punch the air. The green and white congregation smile benignly.
And then they start again, slow, but with a kind of melancholic contentment...
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high...
The mellow recessional continues as we walk slowly out of the ANZ: a slow flowing river trickling into a sea of parked cars.
We were lucky enough to get a park in the street outside the stadium. As we meander towards it I notice a small gathering of four or five people. What? Is that my car they’re gathered around? Shit! It is! We hurry up. Four of them adorned in the green and white? Middle aged. What the f...? We get there in a blink.
One of them’s holding a wallet.
It’s Nick’s wallet. He tells them his name and what’s in it. They give it back to him. It’s been there on the ground next to the car throughout the game. All smiles and blessings. Without waiting for acknowledgement they hurry off. We give thanks to their retreating figures. They wave without looking back and get into a Tarago.
