THE plight of the St Kilda Football Club is etched into my father Kent's face.
Ten years ago, during the final quarter of the 1997 grand final, Kent disappeared. I was left to watch Darren Jarman's onslaught alone. Eight hours later, Kent had not returned. The most worrying part was that he did not drink alcohol. My mother and I stayed awake, hoping he had not kicked the bucket.
At two in the morning, Kent returned home with a large green box. It contained one slice of cheesecake. Kent revealed that he had driven to South Australia after the match. He had purchased an entire cheesecake and had worked his way through it on the drive home to Melbourne. He felt obliged to leave one slice for the remaining three members of our family.
In 1999, there was another incident at an Adelaide-St Kilda game. It was the last time Kent and I went to Waverley Park. A Tim Watson-coached St Kilda had surrendered to the Crows once more.
After the game, Kent parked his car in one of the three lanes leading out of Waverley Park. Angry football fans surrounded the car. I locked my windows and spent the next 15 minutes in the brace position, listening to rocks pelting against our windows. At one point in the ordeal, Kent suggested that the plight of the St Kilda Football Club was proof that God did exist — in the form of a malevolent turd.
The next year St Kilda won two games and Tim Watson resigned. Apart from Riewoldt and Koschitzke, we've got nothing to thank him for.
To quote Raymond Carver, last month's two-point win over Adelaide was a small, good thing. Kent recently has had a knee replacement; at the airports, he sets off more metal detectors than Glenn Manton. Kent wasn't right for the game. I spent most of the night shielding him from patrons as he hobbled around Telstra Dome on crutches. When the siren sounded, I instinctively smothered him in a bear hug before detaching myself amid fears for his knee.
For all the crazy behaviour St Kilda-Adelaide games evoke in Kent, a person might be confused for thinking of him as crazy.
Murray Middleton is a 23-year-old writer who lives in Fitzroy.
