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I start kicking rolled up socks around the backyard at two. Why? Perhaps it’s genetic. Later my mother stuffs the socks and sews them up so they don’t come apart.  

My father tells me he supported South—Warrnambool, that is. Like South Melbourne they wear red and white. My father doesn’t attend games or talk about football, though one day we watch South play at Cobden.

My only vivid memory of football in Warrnambool is standing behind the southern goal at the Reid Oval. The Warrnambool full-forward looks like an old man to me. He doesn’t budge from the goal square until the footy is close, then he leaps forward, gathers it, and without turning kicks it over his left shoulder, over the goal umpire, over me, for a goal.  

The Warrnambool Football Club owns the house next door to ours, June and Leo Turner and their infant son Michael our neighbours. Leo coaches Warrnambool because for ex-VFL stars in the 50s that’s where the money is. Leo played on the wing in the Geelong 1951 and 1952 premiership team that still holds the record for the longest winning streak—23 games. To me Geelong is the biggest town we drive through to see grandparents in Melbourne, the VFL unknown.

At age six I get my first pair of footy boots, high above the ankles, black leather, pristine white laces that wrap around the top of the boot through a tab at the back. I hate getting those laces dirty, whiten them with the white sandshoe cleaner we put on canvas tennis shoes.

My first game is for Glenhuntly State School, the only grade 4 boy good enough to play in the school team with the grade 5 and 6 boys. We pile onto the local bus in our itchy woollen long-sleeved brown jumpers with a red and a green hoop with Mr Huron for the trip to a neighbouring state school. We eat pies for lunch at the bus stop, carry our boots in our hands.

Those games are free-for-alls, getting a kick our only object. Next year I play in the under 10s at Caulfield Grammar. From under 10s to under 14s I dominate games. Football is my passion, the one thing I do better than all my peers. I go to footy ovals on my own and kick goals from all angles. Most of all I like to gather it like the Warrnambool full-forward and snap it over my left shoulder.

My black boots are mirrors, the smell of leather intoxicates me. I am fast and big and strong. I burst through packs of weaker opponents, my will for the ball unstoppable, unquenchable. The game and its traditions beguile me: I know every VFL premier, every Brownlow medallist. I love the spirit of the game; fairest and best means something. I’m good enough not to need to play any other way.

My team-mates elect me captain of the best under 15 team in the state: we beat every opponent and the champion government school and the champion Catholic school. At Xavier I kick four goals in a quarter and an Essendon scout asks my father if I will sign with them. He refuses; I’m too young.

I think nothing can stop me, but I’m wrong. Genetics get me. My eyesight deteriorates rapidly. I can no longer see the ball in flight, judge the trajectory, get where it will land first, anticipate where it will bounce with the prescience that made me so good at this. I am undone.