Posted by Terry Chapman on 21st February 2010
I’d missed the news yet caught a rumour
Barely through the summer slept.
Now autumn blows a heavy humour
Scandal has its promise kept.
Tags: media
Posted in Poetry | No Comments »
Posted by Terry Chapman on 22nd December 2009
This piece was written in 2000, and has not been published before.
By Terry Chapman
My life’s first footy moment comes courtesy of a black-and-white image of me in Grandma’s backyard in Coburg. I’m about four. Mum would have been behind the old Kodak 126, freezing forever the opening entry on my life’s stats sheet. Hate the game as she does, innocent to its artistry and dismissive of the notion of skill, she still managed to capture me at the apex of my follow through. At four, Mum put me in the time-frozen company of Ted Whitten, Michael Roach and Tony Locket, all captured in my mind’s polaroid with kicking leg long and straight, boot above head height. My first kick would have travelled just the length of Plugger’s right leg, and at the end of it, I have no doubt, would have stood my dad.
Only twenty years my senior, Dad was too young to be tied down to family life, but already too old to be tying up the laces of his footy boots. Teenage bone disease had rendered his knees dysfunctional, and thus did I never witness him pull in a screamer or boot that game-winning goal. I had to contend myself with his accounts of junior stardom down at Northcote seconds and settle with the assurance that, were it not for his dodgy pins, his slotting into the Collingwood seniors would have been a formality. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Collingwood, Geelong
Posted in General Footy Writing, memoir | 8 Comments »
