I dropped my phone on our tiled bathroom floor last Thursday when I read the team list for Saturday’s qualifying final. I got what my ten year old described as ‘a corner’. They’re the worst apparently; one knock and the screen splits into a butterfly wing. I called Apple. No, they don’t replace iPhone 4 screens. Yes, I’d have to replace the whole handset. Yes, it would be upwards of $200. They suggested an upgrade and a whole new plan.
But I found out on Monday that there are people who can fix these things for well short of two green bills. There are people who think a broken phone screen is not terminal, just one component part that needs replacing.
The Swans’ ability to go on Saturday afternoon was seriously gratifying. How on earth do they approach repeated contests of finals intensity … over two hours? Where do they find reserve and composure and will? How do they hold doubt at bay and reinvest again and again? With our four finals debutants mustered by old heads, they looked capable, likely even. The regret came only in the kicking, the should-haves could-haves of missed shots. And the shotgun that struck S.Reid. With Reid gone and the onion peeling further and further away to reveal what looked a lonely core in our forward line, the players stepped in and up to clinch an almost-win. Now they must go again.
These people who fix phones, they work out of a colonised ex-convenience store on the Glebe end of Broadway, a door with a Word doc sign taped to the inside. An easy push and a small corridor leads to a tall young guy booting up a laptop, a smile and a ‘what can we do?’
It’s a place where the patching has just dried on the walls but the paint’s yet to go on. There’s a box on the floor texta marked with ‘Bad S*#t Screens’, a single fluoro overhead. There’s a bike parked up against a large work table, the wall in front of it mounted in mismatched plastic storage totes, filled with screens and screws for every possible version of phone and pod. It’s part grandpa’s shed, part twenty-something boy’s share-house room. And it smacks of relaxed inventiveness. My six foot saviour grabs a name and email and tells me to come back in 40 minutes. As I leave, I notice how they’ve managed to keep the door to the street unlocked. They’ve rigged it with a thick elastic band, looped around the pull-down handle and attached to the older fixed handle below.
These kids know how to go about it, how to get results with minimum fuss. They have nous. They don’t need the fancy overheads of a slick veneer motherstore with its sheen and flash, they don’t need the well-rested, well-preserved display models and the inner architecture of a franchise mentality, where things always have to look the same. They know that some tasks don’t need a whole new plan; they just require a patch job done with lots of skill and attention.
There’s a freewheeling buzz around this weekend’s game. It’s reminding me a little of the unlikely Cortinas. Despite the pre-existing condition and the subsequent fallout from Saturday’s final in Perth, there are a fair few Swans faithful who have an inkling that, against all the odds, our missing component parts might just be replaceable this Saturday night and the machine might work just fine.
Cause there’s still some constancy on the park. There’s a guy called Kennedy who’s looking for his twelfth consecutive 30+ disposal game. There’s a guy named Rampe on the club games streak of 70 in a row, and one called Smith expected to jog alongside him. There are the muppets in Reg and Teddy. There are Rohan and McGlynn who owe the energy and standard of a big stage game. There’s a Champ named Goodes, playing his club record 28th final. And there’s a crèche of kids with plenty of nerve. B.Jack, Jones, Heeney, Towers and Mitchell might have only 108 games between the five of them—not even a third of the Champ’s 371 individual games—but they have speed and leaps, sure hands and cool heads. And they play with a proximity to childhood dreams that assumes they will come true, with the optimism of starting out, of tying the door open and getting on with the job at hand.
The last meeting between Sydney and North Melbourne was in Round 11 this year at Etihad, where the red and white prevailed by 16 points. Parker had 33 touches, Franklin kicked four goals. But a longer backwards glance shows that the Swans have won their last nine out of ten encounters with the Roos. And according to statistics, the disposal-inclined have been Hannebery, Kennedy, Mitchell and McVeigh. They’re all there this Saturday!
And if that’s not enough, last year on Friday the 19th of September, we beat North Melbourne by 71 points in a preliminary final at Homebush. It’s a semi-final this week, but it’s still the 19th of September. And the 19th of September is my birthday, Swannies. I can think of something I’d like.
Mathilde is a regular contributor to www.footyalmanac.com.au – read more of her writing here.
