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Dropping the Ball

I went to kick the footy the other night with my daughter. She really wanted to do kick-to-kick with her brother, but he’s injured, and has been now for five years.

 He’s never looked at the photo of the moment his shoulder popped from its joint, the picture snapped by the team photographer just before the siren sounded. An opposition player had slammed into him, running in the opposite direction. My kid swore–’fuck’–and went white. Time stopped as I ran towards him. In shock we walked from the field, his shoulder dislocated, and made our way to the club rooms.

 In the cramped toilet block he said he thought he might vomit. He was so very, very white.

 He has never played club football again. 

 So as we walk to the school oval, my girl says ‘I wish my brother could kick the footy with me. When he’s going to be able to kick the footy? By summer?’ Yes, maybe by summer we say.

 We avoid the crowd at the school park and find some empty asphalt. I line up, drop the ball to my foot, and kick. Cue, from my partner, a phrase which stops me in my tracks: ‘that was the WORST ball drop I have ever seen!’

 I’ve always thought I was not a bad kick. I can boot it long, and vaguely on target. Sure, sometimes it’s a fluke, and often it’s a miskick. But in that moment of being told how terrible my ball drop was, I felt a bit of what it was and is to play footy as a girl. Or to try to play footy as a girl.

 I do not know a thing about ball drops. I had never been told how to drop the ball onto the boot. I had never had the chance to learn about footy, and I had not had the chance to practise and learn in a team of any kind. I was just a girl, kicking a footy in the local park. Just a girl, trying to mark against the big boys. 

 Now I was being called into line for not knowing about the physics, the geometry and the maths of playing football. 

 Want some figures, stats and angles? Thousands of girls now play club football. The AFLW Grand Final had 53,000 spectators. The Collingwood VFLW team won the premiership. And Tayla Harris’s kick–well there’s an angle–is now a statue set in bronze. Girls have Interleague pathways, Junior Football Academies, and opportunities to train with coaches in development squads now.

 But back to my ball drop, and that line from my partner: ‘that was the WORST ball drop I have ever seen!’

 I have a shit ball drop because I worked it out for myself, as best as I could, because I loved to kick the footy.  We couldn’t demand a place on the field, or on the team: there was no field or team for us then. That means when I kick, the ball still spins the wrong way; the flight of the ball in the air is all wrong.

 But I can still play kick-to-kick with my daughter, who is kind enough once in a while to say ‘good job, mum’ or cheer me when I hold a mark. For her, when she kicks, the ball spins the right way. 

 Despite being told I’m rubbish at technique, I still vaguely wonder if there is a place for me in a seniors women’s team somewhere. Even if I only ever play one game! And that’s all I want for my boy too, now that he’s had his shoulder reconstruction. Just a game on the footy field, carving along redrawn boundaries. Maybe next season. At least over summer he can have some little sessions of kick-to-kick with his sister. And I’ll keep practising my ball drop.


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