Mudheaps. Windy days. Freezing nights. Cold showers. Occasional known frostbite.
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All in a day’s football slogging it out at Burnie.
Fearless David Rhys-Jones even reportedly threatened to jump on the first plane back to Melbourne after leading North Launceston out in the harsh conditions.
All that – and the delicious steak sandwiches and fat saveloys that was worth the drive up alone, conditions aside – is the West Park most would vividly remember.
Burnie’s sad demise – or recess depending on your faith for divine intervention – could only be made even sadder by what happened in Devonport weeks earlier.
Gone. A whole, proud North-West coast unrepresented on the state stage.
The key word here in State League is the sorry state the elite football competition in Tasmania now must endure.
Dying in 2000 after a short 15-year-life, it was somehow resuscitated nine years later.
But slowly things have been deteriorating since reigning premier South Launceston was stripped of its full licence in 2013.
Western Storm flees in 2015 to later cark it under a ghouly Prospect Hawks identity within 12 months.
Five sides. Four clubs. Just in four years. How did that happen, we all wonder?
Seemingly 10 clubs one day, seven the next. Five are keeping their head above water around Hobart alone.
North Hobart returns in more than name, at least.
Its long-living spirit has escaped its Hobart City body, finally exorcised back to a form of footy secularism.
All this is bigger than the TSL. Believe it or not, even bigger than AFL Tasmania.
North Eastern Football Union that flourished off the tin mining boom dwindles rapidly from seven to just two teams in the last decade.
Tamar Cats are the latest. Find 30 players in a couple of days or they’re out. That’s Beaconsfield and Beauty Point never seen again.
Is money the sole answer to the state’s depression woes? Regardless a few more dollars thrown this way would stem the bleeding and provide better bandages.
The state’s $2.5 million a year hardly seems enough.
But the further millions spent on AFLX rankles livid Tasmanian’s aching sores.
Less about the money, more about the waste.
Beanbag seating and circus acts behind the goals alone was enough for most fans to decry the sideshow.
Then there was the game.
Let’s face it: it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But beyond the social media hyperbole, the game was actually never designed for Australian eyes.
Think China, USA, Russia even – or anywhere else that has only soccer or rugby fields than ovals. That’s its pull to the uninitiated.
It’s the same sort of hope that created Twenty20 cricket: to ultimately bring our game to the world.
Just like the T20 game, it has inauspicious beginnings.
Then again has anything been so great the first time? The inaugural Australian T20 international wasn’t taken seriously, as Kiwi opponents dressed up in 1970s garb with outrageous facial hair.
Nor did the rugby purists ever adore the seven-a-side game, but the fast-paced sport has gripped world fans.
So get rid of marks to speed AFLX up from its early uncontested kick-to-kick game and increase players from seven to nine-a-side to ensure more contested play – and we might have a game.
There was also no sign of flooding, no zones, no chipping the ball around, side to side or even backwards – just direct, long-kicking a football that we all plead for.
It was the one time fans were happy to see defensive presses. For players, try telling them it was a joke.
Geelong sucked in the historic moment to declare they wanted to win it all.
Scott Pendlebury’s surely innocent tweet of looking forward to the return of footy – apologies to the AFLW – indicated a similar mindset.
The last word should be left to a young Hawk popular among fans in Launceston.
“In this game, you’re never really out of it – we kicked two zoopers and we’re back in the game,” James Sicily said while, for the occasion, gleaming with the golden boots that would make Dermott Brereton blush.
“It was actually pretty exciting. At first, I was a bit sceptical about this game, but it’s actually pretty fun.”