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BOOKS AND A UTHORS NE WS AND E VENT S

‘A little life-hymn’ Bigger is better? JCH decides...

The Season is an account of her grandson’s manhood’, and reveals their surprising should be perfectly okay handing one of their own larger
season playing under-16s football in vulnerability, their sensitivity, their rooms to him, producing an already-drafted legal agreement
Melbourne’s western suburbs. Garner kindness to one another, and the ways in they could sign and seal the deal. This followed another stunt
becomes a ‘silent witness’ to the U16s which the sport they love teaches them in which he instructed members of the audience to look under
Flemington Colts training sessions and about teamwork, accountability, and their chairs. One produced a large block of chocolate, while
games. The boys, fixated on their training, forgiveness. another only had a small piece, and the two then dramatically
pay her no mind as she shivers on the We’re grateful to Helen for the acted out their reactions at the clear superiority of the larger
sidelines, leaving her free to observe and piece over the smaller.
take notes. opportunity to share with you an excerpt
from The Season. The SCR negative team weren’t to be upstaged, however. First
On one level, The Season is a book about Dr Eleanor Spencer-Regan and second speakers, Amy Bongetti and Keeley Zentgraf
Helen Garner football and the distinctive Victorian Principal (L-R) Emily Hanlon, Anna Ryley, Lucas Dell rightly warned the audience of the dangers in always opting
reverence for the game. Garner makes The 2024 Mid-Winter Debate was, as ever, full of both for the bigger option, especially as such bloat and greed had
During Melbourne’s lengthy COVID much of the sport as a social ritual: where spelled doom in the past. They also pointed out the oversized
lockdowns, Janet Clarke Hall alumna other social institutions like religion have carefully thought-out arguments and entertaining rhetorical looming geopolitical threats of entities like Russia, big in every
and College Fellow, Helen Garner eroded, football persists, offering a sense perspectives. This year’s debate revolved around the statement way but certainly not better for it. Alice Pung, JCH Artist-
(1961) – a Western Bulldogs fan of 20 of community, connection and belonging. ‘bigger is better’. In-Residence and third speaker, then went thoroughly on
years’ standing – developed a renewed Our JCR team, the affirmative, put up a spirited offensive in the counterattack against some of the more bombastic and
appreciation of AFL. On another level, the book is a tender praise of bigness in all its forms. I, the first speaker, focused on egregious claims made by us, comparing Lucas’s rhetoric to
portrait of youthful masculinity. Teenage the necessity of big responses to the pressing societal problems a certain American president and decrying the tenor of our
In her new book, The Season, she recalls, boys are frequently vilified in public
‘[AFL] made me feel lucky to be alive … I discourse, portrayed as the perpetrators facing us. Our second speaker, Anna Ryley, linked the topic to arguments in a particularly witty and deftly worded speech.
saw that it’s a kind of poetry, an ancient and perpetuators of a toxic masculinity having a bigger, more ambitious mindset when approaching While we were proclaimed the victors, both sides put forward
common language between strangers, a that in fact harms them as much as it does our goals and values. plenty of well-crafted material, making for a debate that
set of shared hopes and rules and images, women and girls. Our third speaker, Lucas Dell, took things in a new direction, provided both entertainment and food for thought.
of arcane rites played out at regular throwing a curveball at the negative team. He suggested that
intervals before the citizenry. It revives us. Garner, however, really looks at these if bigger truly wasn’t better, any member of the opposing team Emily Hanlon
It sustains us.’ young men, ‘trembling on the cusp of

From The Season (Text Publishing Company 2024)
On the drive west to Sunshine for the game, Amby in the I hear a burst of cleats on the concrete behind me and turn Reflecting on a special Literature Dinner
back seat is silent and rather pale – tall and powerful, broad in time to see the Colts form a line and stride towards the
shoulders, long bare legs. Many of the houses we pass, with ground. Our boys, My God, they are men, in their vertical the popularity of women’s sport (for example, the ‘Matildas
their pastel asbestos walls, messy yards and gateless entries, stripes and white shorts, even the little skinny ones are men: Effect’ following their 2023 World Cup success) comes the
feel familiar to me. ‘I like it out here. It reminds me of Ocean it’s the groupness of them that makes them men, moving opportunity to reconsider the stories we tell ourselves about
Grove.’ It’s ‘the past’ that it’s reminding me of, my childhood, with purpose in a thick bloc. Why do I feel like crying? sport and culture. Personal Score explores the ways in which
the 1940s and 50s. At a railway crossing we pause beside a many athletes have challenged reductive binary views of
deserted house that’s partly obscured by a sign advertising The siren, the bounce, boys explode in all directions and gender and sexuality, using sport and their role within it
I’m lost. Amby’s dad is standing near me, following with
the large, grey apartments that will be built on its site. The to challenge perceptions and create possibilities for those
side of the doomed house is painfully appealing to me. his experienced gaze, making comments, letting out the young people who will follow them.
odd cheer or groan, but I’m in a panic. The ground is too
Shrubbery presses close to its window, old bricks lie about, a
rusty barrel; its driveway is tyre-flattened mud with traces of enormous, I’m too small, my eyes are no good, I can’t Moreover, van Neerven sensitively examines the implications
of playing sport on unceded land and how this complicates
recognise anyone or understand what’s happening. I need
green. What am I doing out here? What will I say if someone
asks me? ‘I’m with the Colts. I’m their witness.’ TV, give me TV – the cameras and close-ups and aerial shots, and colours the experiences of both Indigenous and non-
and commentators pouring out names and manoeuvres Indigenous players alike. As such, Personal Score is also a
And here they are, the Colts U16s, playing a constricted and opinions, the voices that know everything – I am totally thoughtful reflection on deep Indigenous connections to
kick to kick in a small concrete yard beside the Sunshine dependent on them. (L-R) Cat Ekins, Emily Harris, Ellen van Neerven, Anouk Heidenreich the land, examining the earliest sports played on Country,
clubhouse, all in their team jumpers, clean and ready, their and paying tribute to influential First Nations sportspeople.
hair shampooed, their faces shining but purposefully blank. I Oh it’s hopeless, and I can’t pretend that my eye is not always On 6 September 2024, we were joined by award-winning
seeking out Amby. I try to force myself to survey the game in
am not used to seeing them in full daylight. How young they author Ellen van Neerven at our annual Literature Dinner. We were joined by senior staff and students from Ballarat
look, how smooth, unlined! They have men’s voices but boys’ a detached spirit, but I know the shape of his shoulders, the Ellen is a Mununjali Yugambeh writer, editor and literary Grammar; Brunswick Secondary College; Haileybury;
angle of his run, and there he goes, breaking out of a pack,
faces. Xavier has cut off his low ponytail. Aiden’s long mullet activist, and her most recent volume Personal Score: Sport, Melbourne Girls’ Grammar; Melbourne Grammar; South
flows down the back of his neck in a glistening curve, as if holding the ball forward and low, running in long strides, Culture, Identity is a ground-breaking examination of sport’s Oakley College; Surf Coast Secondary College; Western
getting his boot to it and sending it sailing down the wing.
blow-dried. Archie strides up to them with a folder against troubled relationship with race, gender and sexuality and its Chances; Skyline Education Foundation; and Victoria
his chest, his cap on backwards, white-cheeked but smiling. At quarter time I slink out on to the ground behind Archie. potential to bring together and affirm young people. This University Secondary College. I am delighted to report that
I want to hear his commanding voice, someone to pull it was a stimulating choice for this year’s event as evidenced three of the pupils who attended the Literature Dinner
I find a space on the boundary fence, near a woman with a by the thoughtful and incisive questions from our student subsequently applied for and were offered a place at Janet
tiny black poodle on an extendable lead. Small boys pass together for me, the spectacle of what the hell I’ve been panel and audience. Clarke Hall, confirming that these stimulating events have
straining to see. The boys, panting, press shoulder to
in pairs, always one holding a ball, their heads together in become an important part of our recruitment activities.
solemn conference. The oval is in good nick; it’s got the shoulder before him. Amby is right at the back. His face Sport is a significant part of Australian national identity
shocks me, darkly flushed, open-mouthed, glistening with
slightly domed shape that makes you feel you can see the but one that for many years eluded, or perhaps actively Dr Eleanor Spencer-Regan
curve of the planet. sweat: what I see is a man. resisted, deeper examination. With the recent upsurge in Principal

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