Humor: Following in my religiously

Following in my religiously
experienced footy boots

I forgot to ask whether there will be any fully qualified nuns taking my son Jack's modified rules Australian football training sessions.

My wife Katherine and I have enrolled Jack, 6, in an Auskick program at Manuka Oval in Canberra, which is something of a coup for us.

Jack goes to a school where the main game played in winter seems to be rugby union. When he was in pre-kindergarten two years ago we got the horrifying impression that the rugby-mad headmaster made regular trips to the class just so he could keep an eye on the four-year-old boys he had identified as props of the future.

Rugby, and its cousin rugby league, are quite alien to Katherine and me because we both grew up in Australian football country.

Further, neither of us have huge, muscular necks that seem to be standard equipment for players in the rugby codes. so it unlikely that Jack will develop one either. He is quite thin but he is tall which makes him a good candidate to be put into in the bruising front row.
And I have seen the statistics about spinal injuries.

We were actually keen to steer Jack towards the neutral code of soccer but we knew it would be a battle to persuade him to play something his schoolmates probably did not.

But we were delighted when he agreed to give Auskick a go.

I would like to say that it was my influence that swayed his decision but the truth is he was won over by the amount of goodies he will get from Auskick. These include an official AFL Auskick backpack, water bottle, synthetic Sherrin Football, Russell athletic cap, poster book, tattoos and, the thing that really swung it, a CD-ROM presented from space by former Hawthorn champion Robert "The Big Dipper" Dipierdomenico.

This is a big difference from the football grounding I had in Launceston, Tasmania, in the mid-1960s.

I got nothing for signing up.

Football was just something a boy did. It was part of the learning curve to manhood. Full-size footballs. Tackling. Survival of the biggest.

Our first football coach was a nun, Sister Bernadette, who got out into the school playground, hitched up her dress, and showed us how to kick and mark.

I never went on to great heights as a footballer. I was the runt of the class and played three games, mainly out of the way in the long grass on the wing, before retiring in grade four without being in a winning team.

But I have always followed the game keenly. I still barrack for Collingwood, which plays in black and white. Do you think this is a psychological thing? Sister Bernadette played in mainly black and white too.

I first learnt about modified football some years ago when I was working as a sports reporter and had to write an article on it.
It made real sense to me then that smaller people - including girls - should play on smaller grounds, with smaller balls and with less contact.

Now that I am a parent, the no-physical tackling rule makes even more sense.

Katherine and I took Jack to his first footy match, the Sydney Swans versus Melbourne practice match, at Manuka Oval on Saturday so he could see the real grown-up stuff at close quarters.

Jack and his little playmates spent much of the game running around in the little moat that formed around the perimeter fence after a downpour, so I am not sure how much of the game they actually saw. Or heard.

I have always wondered about the mindsets of people who shout out abuse to players and umpires at football matches. Do they really think they can be heard out there on the oval? Or that anyone cares what they think?

There was a spectator at Manuka whose pile of increasing empty beer cans under his seat seemed to correlate with his increasingly loud abuse as the game progressed.

And near to us, in tiered seating near the pocket, was an otherwise quiet woman with three young children who obviously forgot who she was with when the umpire failed to penalise a player under the holding the ball rule: "C'mon, he's fucking around with it," she shouted.

Gee, I hope they are not allowed to use that kind of language at Auskick.

The good thing is that Jack now has an idea what it will all be about.

In fact, the night after the game I saw him practising his kicking style in his room.

He has not yet got the Auskick football so he had to improverise.

"What colour team do you go for, dad?" he asked.

"Collingwood. Black and white," I said.

He picked up a black and white panda soft toy and started kicking it around the room.

I was not sure what to think, and might need to consult a psychologist to help me on this one.

Was he
a) supporting my team;
b) kicking it in the guts; or
c) trying to tell me that he does not need any nuns in black and white to teach him how to play football?

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it