Good one, Wilson!

In case I don’t feel like saying it on Sunday, or in case it has that mélange of melancholy that only a prelim loss can bring, let me say what a brilliant footy watching year it’s been. On the same weekend last year, the Hawks fell short against the Cats. We were sliced, diced and Dangerfielded by a superior team, and consensus seemed to be that the Hokball Hawks had stress points that better oppositions had worked out, and we were at least a midfielder short of contending.

Jack was keen to do a promo on his podcast Do Meet Your Heroes like he hears on other podcasts. He chose to do The Elephant in the Room, which goes to print next week. I’m collecting presales here (names now, payment when books arrive). It’s a beautiful book too. I worked it up at Hardie Grant for a while, but then its editor moved publishers, and it fell through the cracks.

You know the ones. The first time you received one four years ago, you puzzled it out, wondering why your child didn’t sound like your child, and whose phone she could be on? Then you got a handle on the fact that it probably wasn’t your child, since she was upstairs in her bedroom on her phone. Now whenever I see, ‘Dad I lost my phone and it’s kinda urgent’ texts, they read to me like this: I got another one last week from my daughter aka josemelgoza@icloud.com.

If there are two important hinges in Ange & The Boss, two jigsaw pieces that make the film work, two linchpins that connect Ferenc Puskas, the Hungarian footballer who is in the conversation to being the greatest of all time to an unlikely and heartwarming championship season as the manager of a Greek club in Australia’s National Soccer League, then one of those hinges is Val Kopasz.

Jack now has a podcast, because in the terrible lottery that is a CP diagnosis, he has lucked out with his communication skills. He enjoys talking, and listening, and people generally enjoy talking and listening to Jack. He’s a lover of people, and of life (I hope), and Do Meet Your Heroes is his attempt to create a show and practice his interviewing and media skills — although it’s possible he really does just want to meet his heroes, despite the warning the old saying imparts.

After missing a few episodes while at the World Cup, and then binging to catch up, I’m now hanging on weekly episodes as they play each Sunday night. I’ve enjoyed this third series so much. It isn’t just nostalgia for the hundred days that changed my life, a hundred day stretch that was so other worldly, so adrenaline packed, so stressful, so exhausting, so illuminating, so beautiful, so foreign, so lonely, that they’ve almost been blocked from my memory.

I’m forever blowing bubbles, Pretty bubbles in the air, They fly so high, Nearly reach the sky, Then like my dreams They fade and die. As a kid, I chose to barrack for West Ham for three reasons. The first was the colours — I love that maroon. The second was the name. How good calling it after preserved pork? And the third was the song, more lullaby than sporting anthem: I’m forever blowing bubbles, Pretty bubbles in the air. When shadows creep, When I’m asleep … Asleep?

Full episode above. The hilarious Lawrence Mooney is in the segments before and after us. Our bit starts at 12.00. With Cam Fink (holding golden walnut we won for Ange & The Boss), Santo Cilauro and Ed Kavalee I’m sitting at the Cup Fever desk, Cam to my left, Santo Cilauro and Ed Kavalee next to him, and there’s less than a minute to air when I receive a tap on the shoulder from the floor manager. ‘Your legs’ she says, motioning down.

Courtesy of Working Dog Productions and Cup Fever - now showing on SBS On Demand But for a disappointing finish in Dallas, today’s Round of 16 match might have been ours, and I found myself barracking for the Egyptians as our proxies (duly appointed by a process of shanked penalty kicks and an uncooperative upright).

None of us want to leave. The bus is a 25 minute walk away, at least I think it is, although you float on air during these marches to stadia, and maybe it’s more? Our bus captain Joe couldn’t have been more explicit as we disembarked. ‘We’ll leave at 10pm. If you arrive at 10.01 you’ll have to make your own way back to San Francisco. It’s a US$250 Uber’. I don’t even have Uber.