Guilt has not hung from my heart like 20 kilogram ice blocks since I made my decision, some may think it see saws in my conscience going back and forth – a hand saw cutting a groove through the comfort of my daily existence but, No, is the answer. There’s a lot of vacillation, sifting through grains of truth and facts to make the decision, some may say it’s all based on emotion, perhaps, but all I was doing was questioning a child hood choice that I apparently got wrong in the first place. For some reason when I queried my sister I had heard St.Kilroy instead of Fitzroy, and when I looked it up in the league table I saw St. Kilda, so there my allegiance was pledged.

How many years of chipping away in the salt mine of defeat I can’t say exactly, but the taste of defeat after defeat, Waterloo after Waterloo culminated in a momentous leap of my heart during  a grand final one year to Melbourne, and sure as my luck is like a lemming it just  hopped on board that team. That was THE only grand final they’ve been in or near since. Still, I wouldn’t go back despite St.kilda gracing the hallowed green of the MCG last year and being taken by those steely Gee-long cats.

Yes now my coat instead of being a series of red and white verticals is a plunging V of Red on a blue background. The funny thing is – I don’t give a hoot about the game anyway, but in this town if someone asks- “who do you barrack for’ [I always found barrack to be a strange expression] I say ‘Melbourne’- in the 20+ years since they’ve been near the top and I’ve even been to games. Why people choose to sit outdoors in the middle of winter wrapped in blankets to cheer small sticks of men in the distance and get emotionally involved is once again outside my sphere, the only good thing about the footy is the hot pies at half time and that juicy gravy and mince and crackling pastry- ah Four and twenty pies. I used to be a bit of a turncoat with the pies my folks made in the shop, preferring the old four and twenty – I used to sneak across the …………