Yet another lost year
Monday 14 September 1998
Yet another lost year
By MARTIN FLANAGAN
The Footy Art Show is on again at the Artists' Garden in Fitzroy and, yet again, a high proportion of its exhibits are to do with the St Kilda Football Club.
Why? Because the Saints have those mysterious ingredients that no amount of hype or PR can provide - character and folklore. To begin with, so many of the great Saints have, in fact, been sinners or, at least, people with obvious and well-known flaws. This year's show features a near life-size portrait of Nicky Winmar by Martin Tighe. Winmar's figure, painted on wood, stands out from the flat surface of the canvas so that one approaches it like the trunk of a tree.
From front on, it is the man himself - Neale Elvis "Nicky" Winmar - looking flatly at the viewer. Seen from side on, splits and cracks appear in the image. Tighe, who is an excellent football artist, talks about the "enigma" of Winmar and says he was the one AFL player whose portrait he wanted to paint.
Nearby are two works by Eamonn Scott. Scott's father, Eddie, arrived in Australia in 1949 with an introduction to Kieran Breen of Melbourne. Breen's son, Barry, later happened to play football with St Kilda. That's another of the Saints' paradoxes. The song they belt out with such enthusiasm declares the enthusiasm of all concerned to be in that number when the Saints go marching in. Only once has it ever happened, thanks to a point kicked by Barry Breen.
Eamonn Scott's painting Brunton Ave 5.26 pm, Saturday September 27 1997 is a parody of John Brack's famous painting Collins Street 5 pm but in Scott's painting the faces are even more fraught, more angular, more yellow. Some are wearing St Kilda beanies and scarves. Behind them, the wall of the MCG, the parklands, the trees, are painted in deep, dark, faintly menacing tones. This is a painting of last year's grand final loss.
After Saturday's game, there were mutterings in the St Kilda rooms that last year's grand final was the one they should have won. I disagree. Adelaide was the more composed side. Briefly in the second quarter, however, Barry Hall nearly split the game apart, kicking successive goals as the Saints brought the ball from one end of the field to the other in the flick of an eyelid.
On Saturday, at a similar point, he made a rather different contribution, landing indecorously on the neck of one opponent and then pursuing another, Adam Yze, arms flailing. Coming home on the train, one old-time Saints supporter couldn't believe that Stan Alves had responded by taking Hall from the field. The boy had done precisely what was required. He'd done what Cowboy Neal did in the '71 final, what Big Carl did on occasions too numerous to record. He had acted in a St Kilda tradition. That's Scott's other entry in the 1998 Footy Art Show. A portrait of Barry Hall.
Of course, the Saints were luckless last year. Nicky's father died in grand final week and "Spider" Everitt was out injured. Funny how fortune seems to favor not only the brave but the powerful. But that doesn't explain what has happened to the Saints this year. Why have they ended up having a Bermuda triangle of a season? Last Thursday I went to training, asked the question of various supporters and got the standard answer. Complacency.
I saw the Saints twice this year before Saturday's match. They won both games (against Collingwood and Geelong) but their performances were mechanical. Without excitement. Without passion or flair. On Saturday, I met two women with Saints scarves having a smoke and a beer during three-quarter-time. I asked them what had happened to the Saints. "They don't love one another any more," said one. "Watch them - they don't run and hug one another". "They want to be film stars," said her companion.
The Saints tried on Saturday. After the match, Nathan Burke sat half-naked on a bench, his body bent like a banana skin. Sadly, sometimes trying is not enough. If I were an artist, the image I'd paint would be of Robert Harvey being tackled and rudely slung to the ground during the last quarter of Saturday's game. Suddenly, the gifted one, the elusive one, had no more magic. The look on his face was that of an exhausted man, of a champion who knows the end is nigh.
