A Strange Feeling I Aint Felt For Years

A Strange Feeling I aint felt for years

By Becca Hayne

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

My name is Rebecca Hayne, and I love two AFLW teams

All my life I've grown up around sports, the fandom, the colors, the tribalism......

The idea of having two teams seems faintly ridiculous, going against all the things I was brought up to believe.

Brought up to believe that sports was WAR, that we would march as one in the same colors and declare war on random American cities.

Sports war that is......

"YOU WANT SOME OF THIS DENVER!" - it sounds faintly ridiculous typing it out, right? 

What did Denver ever do to us?

And yet sometimes we find ourselves cursing at the sky at the temerity of Denver to....to....be ANOTHER CITY!!!

HOW DARE YOU HAVE DIFFERENT VALUES!

Of course, this is male sports fandom.

The one that says you can't have two teams, that you can't love players on other teams....

That people in your colors are morally superior to people in the different colored laundry who but for quirks in the draft order would be wearing YOUR laundry and thus inherit that level of moral superiority.

And there's nothing wrong with that, in perspective - after all, give me 5 minutes on Atlanta and I'll chew your ear off......DEY DAM FOOLS......

And part of this - never be a sports bigamist, never have two teams, your colors MATTER....

Pick, choose, stay loyal...….

And yet, I love two teams for very different reasons, and how it's come to happen is how I choose to remember it.

St Kilda are my AFLM team, and my fandom of them is very traditional - to smack down jokes about one premiership, to believe in the superiority of my colors, to believe that I'm part of something bigger

Strength through loyalty

And the following theories get muddled in my memory, since the reason I support St Kilda involves the kind of community that I would come to appreciate in my second fandom.

Community, kindness, old ducks offering me soup from a flask, explaining how this weird game worked to a confused American...…..

Is this all sepia toned nostalgia?

Except St Kilda initially didn't get an AFLW team, and while I cried openly at my desk, it was only the impotent rage of the privileged, and it wouldn't change anything.

And then something strange happened....

A woman ate a burrito.

Now, steady on, because if you don't know, you don't know.....

That woman was Pepa Randall, and in a post match interview with the GWS Giants website, with her hair in a towel, she snacked on a burrito through the questions, ending with a triumphant wave of the burrito to the camera.

And it was AMAZING

I already had heightened senses in fighting the good fight for AFLW around issues of merchandising, marketing, promotion and the basic right to a lighting budget.

But this was something else, a kickass awesome women just chilling post game, feasting on a burrito......and then I went down a mini rabbit hole of GWS videos, and in the void of having St Kilda, was of the opinion these women, this "misfit army", they were awright…..

And then something else happened....

Those women wore a T-shirt

Again, if you don't know, you don't know.....

Through Twitter discussions with League Tees, we made a T-shirt that immortalised Pepa eating that burrito, with proceeds going to indigenous literacy

And then those girls, those women, were trying the T-shirt on in a short Twitter clip

And I was hooked......these were my people....my misfits....

My team?

The next night, maybe even that same day, they played the Brisbane Lions with a spot in the Grand Final on the line - surely this was a fairytale, my T-shirt, my team, going to the Grand Final?

No, because life is cruel and cold and within a quarter, Sabeena took the dream away by being (ugh) all good at football and stuff....

And I sat in front of the TV...…..crying?

My team?

My team....

And that lead to GWS being my team, with elongated theories about Christina Bernardi…...GET CLOSER TO GOAL....and how much Alan McConnell looked like the kind of car mechanic covered in grease who tapped on the side of the car, took a deep breath and says "Boy it's gonna cost ya...…."

And that's where it would have stayed

Except St Kilda are now in the competition......

Like a really attractive ex moving into the house next to you

They even brought in Becca Hays AFLW family member Kate McCarthy......

And you know what?

Those St Kilda colors still matter....

The people who choose to support our women matter.....

The community around the St Kilda womens team matters, those who, like me, felt deeply when we didn't get our team the first time around......

And that isn't something to walk away from....

And when St Kilda run out for their first game, and Kate is playing, and I think of my people watching and emoting, it'll just be as exciting, emotional, and engrossing as the first time I sat in my plastic bucket seat at Docklands to see the mens team in those colors.

But that doesn't mean I'll ditch my Giants, how could I?

They have a hold of my heart, and I've spent too long sitting around TVs and HIGHLY LEGAL streams of games to abandon all that.

St Kilda are yet to evolve, but the Giants are in my mind fully formed, with rivalries and moments like our annual thunder storm to cherish.....

And so, like everything I was brought up NOT To believe, I will support two teams at the same time....

But what happens when they play...…….