Maintaining rage: serious business of a premier side
The Sunday Age
Sunday January 10, 2010
EMERALD, the Dandenongs: One of the local cab drivers, parked under the trees near the footy oval, is lying sideways in his seat, with the door open. If this was the inner city you'd think "mob hit" €” but here it's all about the heat. A 40-degree day.The birds aren't so much chirping but croaking. Across the footy ground you can see people emerging from the library, wilting under the sun blast like microwaved daisies. What sounds like a blowfly is a grunting dog, reluctant and legless with exhaustion at the end of a leash.And as if it were a balmy day in the islands, 20 lanky teenage boys start plonking themselves against the broiling wire fence and chattering with ease €” like a gathering of carefree superheroes relaxing in a pool of lava.This is only half-true. With four pennants in a row, the under-15 Emerald footy team are certainly local heroes, drawing up to 2000 folk to a game. As for relaxing, there's little to be had.While their mates are down at the pool, or watching DVDs in air-conditioned lounge-rooms €” it is, after all, the school holidays €” they're at training."We're starting a bit early," says coach and local concreter Paul Preston. "With the four flags, you gotta keep them keen and hungry. This way they'll keep the edge on everyone else."And the routine? "Run . . . and run some more. And they'll do a bit of ball handling, but we're not doing full-on skills."Preston has coached the boys since they played in the under 10s, where there is no pennant or finals to be played because it's about "making them fall in love with the game . . . but they finished the year undefeated. They're a special bunch."Country boys often wear the faces of the men they'll become €” and you see it here in their seriousness of purpose. When one of the team faints in the heat while standing for too long for our photographer, they rally around as if under fire. This same boy, Dylan Arnold, last year took a hit to the head in the middle of the season and was flown out by air ambulance."But he came back for the finals," says Matthew Haesler, rover and original team member. "We won the grand final by one point."Two years in a row, they've beaten neighbouring town Gembrook €” and the word is, Gembrook has started training through the summer too."You're not really nervous on the day, you just do what you can. Give it your all, go as hard as you can for as long as you can," says Matthew. "The grand finals are in front of pretty big crowds, so it's a pretty big day . . . like, for the town. Everybody knows who we are."Is it fear of breaking the winning streak that puts Matthew Haesler and his mates out in this heat? "I spent the whole day in the pool before coming to training, but if you can turn up on a day like today . . . well, you're going to turn up in winter, winter training is going to be easier after this. And it's important you keep your fitness . . . win or lose."This is about staying one step ahead of the other teams . . . but if we ever lost the finals or didn't even make it that far, well, I reckon we'd be motivated to train even harder. People think we're here to have fun, and we are, that's a big part of it . . . but doing your best is the important thing."
© 2010 The Sunday Age
