Through green eyes 2019
Posted: January 3, 2019, 7:27 pm
I thought I'd kick off 2019 with a few "classic" articles from Through Green Eyes in the past... here's the first of them.
Through green eyes: 1989
I was sitting in my lounge room in the depths of southern Canberra. It was a Friday night and I was watching the game. Which game I can’t remember. It was an ordinary Friday night but I always watched the game. It was cold, as you’d expect.
The previous week, my father had been visiting me and we had watched the Friday night game together. It was the days before Channel 10 went to the wall and left the rugby league rights as an orphan.
But before that, they were running a competition. It involved choosing the best try of the season and matching your choices to the choices of the Channel 10 commentators – Rex Mossop, Graeme Hughes and Peter Sterling. There were five to choose from. What you needed to do was to rank the tries, from first to fifth.
I drove my father crazy. I taped the tries under contention and I replayed them over and over on the VCR. I was going to enter this competition and I wanted to get it right. I asked my father what he thought, but he got sick of it quickly. I ended up choosing two entries. One with my favourite Raiders try running first, the other with the try I expected the commentators would choose. I duly posted them in. Honestly, I posted them in. These were the days before the internet and internet polls were even thought of.
That next week, I was sitting by myself watching the game. As half time finished, the commentators announced that they would be drawing the winner of the competition during the half time break. They announced the order of merit that the commentators had agreed upon. I had picked it!
I rang home. I wanted to tell my Dad that all the pain had been worth it, and that I had at least chosen the right order. He was out, but I was talking to my brother. I was happy just to have got it right.
Then while I’m on the phone, Peter Sterling says that of the 80,000 entries, there are only five correct entries. He rolls a barrel on the field and announces……. I am the winner! I am yelling down the phone and jumping up and down. I had won a car!
In those days I drove a Holden Sunbird. It was the definition of a “lemon”. The heating leaked water, jets of water. As you turned the corner, a jet of water sprayed either the driver's or passenger's feet. I got used to just pulling my feet back on the corners and filling up the radiator before every trip. Still it was metallic blue.
But now I had won a Nissan Pulsar Q. It was red. It went very fast, faster because it was red. I thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I decided that Peter Sterling was the best footballer ever. He drew out my name.
Everyone told me how lucky I was. Strangers rang me that night to wish me luck. Some even rang me and abused me for winning. I told them that it was not luck, but a matter of skill. I hadn’t watched years of football for nothing.
I had my Pulsar delivered two weeks before the Grand Final.
It was an exciting time, as my team, the Canberra Raiders were storming through the semifinals, after finishing in equal fifth. And so it was that I drove myself and my friends to the 1989 Grand Final in my new car. My parents were visiting, but there was nothing stopping me from heading up to Sydney for the match.
The game is well known. The course of it has gone down in the annals of rugby league history. At the end of the game, I had to keep telling my friends that we have just witnessed the best Grand Final ever, they could hardly comprehend it. Eventually we left the Sydney Football Stadium, and I could barely remember what the new car looked like, and we could hardly find it.
We drove home to Canberra, straight to the Mawson Leagues Club, where the Raiders would be returning. I was so glad I was a member, as there were thousands and thousands in the car park waiting for the team. You could not get in unless you were already a member. We got back well before the team, even though they flew. What a night. “We are the Champions” was blaring out in the club over and over. And then the team arrived. It was bedlam. After midnight we followed the team over to the Queanbeyan Leagues Club… it was the more of the same ecstasy. It was all the better because it was the first.
I got home at about 5.30am. My parents had decorated the whole apartment in green, blue, gold and white for me… I got the tape out and watched it with them as dawn broke. I could hardly believe how good 1989 could be.
Through green eyes: 1989
I was sitting in my lounge room in the depths of southern Canberra. It was a Friday night and I was watching the game. Which game I can’t remember. It was an ordinary Friday night but I always watched the game. It was cold, as you’d expect.
The previous week, my father had been visiting me and we had watched the Friday night game together. It was the days before Channel 10 went to the wall and left the rugby league rights as an orphan.
But before that, they were running a competition. It involved choosing the best try of the season and matching your choices to the choices of the Channel 10 commentators – Rex Mossop, Graeme Hughes and Peter Sterling. There were five to choose from. What you needed to do was to rank the tries, from first to fifth.
I drove my father crazy. I taped the tries under contention and I replayed them over and over on the VCR. I was going to enter this competition and I wanted to get it right. I asked my father what he thought, but he got sick of it quickly. I ended up choosing two entries. One with my favourite Raiders try running first, the other with the try I expected the commentators would choose. I duly posted them in. Honestly, I posted them in. These were the days before the internet and internet polls were even thought of.
That next week, I was sitting by myself watching the game. As half time finished, the commentators announced that they would be drawing the winner of the competition during the half time break. They announced the order of merit that the commentators had agreed upon. I had picked it!
I rang home. I wanted to tell my Dad that all the pain had been worth it, and that I had at least chosen the right order. He was out, but I was talking to my brother. I was happy just to have got it right.
Then while I’m on the phone, Peter Sterling says that of the 80,000 entries, there are only five correct entries. He rolls a barrel on the field and announces……. I am the winner! I am yelling down the phone and jumping up and down. I had won a car!
In those days I drove a Holden Sunbird. It was the definition of a “lemon”. The heating leaked water, jets of water. As you turned the corner, a jet of water sprayed either the driver's or passenger's feet. I got used to just pulling my feet back on the corners and filling up the radiator before every trip. Still it was metallic blue.
But now I had won a Nissan Pulsar Q. It was red. It went very fast, faster because it was red. I thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I decided that Peter Sterling was the best footballer ever. He drew out my name.
Everyone told me how lucky I was. Strangers rang me that night to wish me luck. Some even rang me and abused me for winning. I told them that it was not luck, but a matter of skill. I hadn’t watched years of football for nothing.
I had my Pulsar delivered two weeks before the Grand Final.
It was an exciting time, as my team, the Canberra Raiders were storming through the semifinals, after finishing in equal fifth. And so it was that I drove myself and my friends to the 1989 Grand Final in my new car. My parents were visiting, but there was nothing stopping me from heading up to Sydney for the match.
The game is well known. The course of it has gone down in the annals of rugby league history. At the end of the game, I had to keep telling my friends that we have just witnessed the best Grand Final ever, they could hardly comprehend it. Eventually we left the Sydney Football Stadium, and I could barely remember what the new car looked like, and we could hardly find it.
We drove home to Canberra, straight to the Mawson Leagues Club, where the Raiders would be returning. I was so glad I was a member, as there were thousands and thousands in the car park waiting for the team. You could not get in unless you were already a member. We got back well before the team, even though they flew. What a night. “We are the Champions” was blaring out in the club over and over. And then the team arrived. It was bedlam. After midnight we followed the team over to the Queanbeyan Leagues Club… it was the more of the same ecstasy. It was all the better because it was the first.
I got home at about 5.30am. My parents had decorated the whole apartment in green, blue, gold and white for me… I got the tape out and watched it with them as dawn broke. I could hardly believe how good 1989 could be.