Hang in there, Carol Ann.

I’ve previously written of my support for the Collingwood Football Club in the Australian Football League [1, 2]. Especially that I was 11 years old in 1958 when Collingwood won its 13th premiership, and it took 32 years (in which it lost eight Grand Finals) to win its 14th – in 1990 when I was 43 [3]. Last Saturday Collingwood won its 15th premiership [4]. Here are some of my thoughts on this superb effort:

1. Collingwood supporters tend to be pessimists. So after the draw the previous week, I didn’t think Collingwood would win last Saturday.

2. I feel sorry for St Kilda fans. Since it began competing in 1897 St Kilda’s won only one premiership. In 1966. Against Collingwood. So I wouldn’t have minded if it’d won last Saturday. But it was not to be.

3. At the end of last Saturday’s game – which I heard on the radio as we don’t have TV reception here in Mole Creek – I shed a tear. Partly out of happiness, partly due to relief, and partly because I don’t expect another Collingwood premiership in my lifetime.

4. Despite this, Collingwood is the betting favourite to win the 2011 Grand Final [5]. It’ll be played on the first Saturday in October [6], as the 1990 and 2010 ones were, despite traditional Grand Final day being the last Saturday in September. Also Collingwood has a young team – the second youngest average age of any Grand Final winning team – and a playing structure other teams have yet to fathom.

5. So maybe Collingwood will win its 16th flag in 2011. Here’s hoping!

6. In the meantime, I was wrong about it being unlikely the 15th flag would be won in Carol Ann Duffy’s tenure at UK Poet Laureate [7]. And she’s Poet Laureate until May 2019 – when, if I’m alive, I’ll be 71 years old.
Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 393

I was 11-years-old in 1958 when Collingwood won its 13th premiership. It took 32 years to win its 14th – in 1990 when I was 43. A long time between drinks. But nowhere near the 126 years the America’s Cup remained in the New York Yacht Club – from 1857 until 1983 when Australia II triumphed, so ending the longest winning streak in sports history. And though poetry’s not sport – at least not to me – that 126 years pales into insignificance compared with the hundreds of years the position of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom has been a male preserve. It’s unclear when that position (or its equivalent) began – perhaps 1189. It became a Royal Office in 1670. All its incumbents have been men. Until 1 May 2009, when Carol Ann Duffy, a 53-year-old Glaswegian, became only the 23rd UK Poet Laureate in the past 410 years. She’s also the first Scottish, and the first openly bisexual, appointee. The pay’s only A$11,800 a year, plus 650 free bottles of oloroso sherry. I don’t know how or why the sherry tradition began; but in 1389 Poet Laureate Geoffrey Chaucer was granted an annual wine allowance. As I previously wrote, Poet Laureate was a job for life until Ms Duffy’s predecessor, Andrew Motion, was appointed in 1999 for 10 years. Ms Duffy’s term’s for 10 years too. Will Collingwood win its 15th premiership during her tenure? Unlikely.