subscription

I don’t remember the exact day that I gulp down my scruples and pay a subscription for television. Until then I watch the ABC, occasionally SBS. Channels Seven, Nine and Ten offer no show I have the slightest interest in. And they pepper every show with ads. My father engendered in me a hysterical hatred of advertising.

For years I am a denier; people aren’t going to pay to watch TV. But as more and more sport is trashed by the commercial free-to-airs, I can’t help but regard subscription television in a new light. I commit when SBS loses the rights to the English Premier League highlights show.

Since then the AFL rights move to Fox. In the beginning they telecast the three least appealing games of each round, then four as new teams come into the competition, and this year all nine games live. With no ad breaks. And in HD. This year I step up to high definition; it’s like having a new pair of glasses.

The EPL begins with one game a week. As Arsenal is a major player they often feature late on Saturday night. With the advent of the ‘red button’ five games are screened simultaneously, plus Sunday night games and the ‘late’ game at five on a Tuesday morning. ESPN brings me the European Champions League.

The A-league kicks off a new adventure in Australian football. For the first two seasons I’m a Melbourne Victory member before I move to Bendigo. I relinquish my membership and extend my viewing schedule as Fox covers every game live.

Each weekend in season, were I inclined, or able, I can now watch nine games of AFL football, five games of A-league football, and as many as seven games in the EPL. Throw in AFL 360 four nights a week with Gerald and Robbo, On the Couch, Fox FC with Simon, Bozza and Robbie, the EPL and Championship highlights shows, and sundry previews and reviews and the JRT is getting fat.

The grand irony is that none of it matters. They’re all just games. The sun will come up tomorrow after Carlton get a shellacking. The Gunners will frustrate and disappoint through another fruitless season. I alternate between the Heart and the Victory. All the postulations and post-match dissection don’t amount to that hill of beans. Yet I remain transfixed.

The unscripted drama of association football has me by the goolies. The Blue blood in my veins prevents me looking away as Carlton’s blood stains the floor. Some obscure Heart left-back will capture my imagination. I must know what Gerald thinks about the issues of the AFL day.

It’s crazy, I know. But I subscribe. Oh, how I subscribe!

Rock on. 

gunners

It’s 1970. The big match comes to Melbourne television. Jimmy Hill’s wagging goatee accompanies Brian Moore’s commentary. At 19 I put aside my schoolboy prejudice against soccer and watch stuttering black and white images of England’s first division football. I’m Aussie Rules through and through, but I watch any game with balls.

To increase my interest I slide into following a team. I choose The Arsenal. I like names with the definite article in front of them. My first dog is The Pod and later in life I have a post office box at The Patch.

The Arsenal is a good choice. Red shirts with white sleeves. Nice. Captain and defender Frank McLintock is the man. The rest of the 70-71 Arsenal FA Cup team is Wilson, Rice, McNab, Storey, Simpson, Armstrong, Graham, Radford, Kennedy, and George. Every man Jack a Brit. Arsenal wins the double and my fate is sealed.

Our home is Highbury until it can no longer accommodate our supporters or our budget. Now we play at Ashburton Grove: they call it Emirates Stadium, but I can’t think of a greensward that couldn’t land a Tiger Moth as having anything to do with an airline.

The game and the team go global. Last week’s Gunners are three black Poms, a Belgian, a Spaniard, a Pole, a Czech, an Cameroonian, a couple of Frogs and a mercurial Dutch striker. A Swiss, Brazilian, Ivorian and Israeli grace the pine.

Like my AFL team, The Arsenal give great head over more than 40 years. The Blues win eight premierships, the Gunners bag seven FA Cups and top the table six times. Despite their achievements they are damnably frustrating to support, always flattering to deceive.

Manager Arsène Wenger, The Professor, believes in the beautiful game and Arsenal play elegant breath-taking passing football that should yield seven goals a game but rarely does. Is it better than the old ‘boring, boring’ one-nil-to-the-Arsenal?

The current Arsenal has a habit of dashing our hopes. They start this season a train wreck, The Professor’s tenure tenuous. The team claws back, bursts into sudden flower with seven wins on the trot. We dream of Europe the easy way, then crash and burn at lowly Loftus Road. The Prof talks up his team’s ‘mental strength’, but none is apparent this day.

We hang in there, we supporters. It’s in the blood. How it gets there is a mystery. Why it keeps circulating defies explanation. Will we crawl out of bed at two o’clock on Sunday or Monday morning to watch RVP and Tomàŝ and Alex and Wojciech and Laurent go round at Ashburton Grove? You bet.

   

Rock on.