Football through the eyes of Coodabeens
Image: Daniel Anthony on Unsplash
For me, one of the primary joys of sport is not just playing or watching it, but also talking about it. As a fan, it seems that getting paid to commentate or write about your favourite sporting code would be a pretty sweet gig.
Some sports seem to particularly lend themselves to analysis. Test cricket, perhaps due to a combination of factors – chief among them the seemingly infinite offering of statistics, coupled with the fact that the contest can take up to 5 days to complete and still end in a draw. For my colleague Dom, road cycling is another, possibly for similar reasons.
Living as I do in Victoria, Australian Rules Football is my primary sporting concern at this time of year, particularly if my AFL team is doing well (which they are). I will skip over the daily news headlines and head straight to sport, revelling in the description of the most recent win, sizing up our prospects for the next game, or just checking that no one has injured themselves in a midweek training session.
I also like to catch up with the weekly edition of the long-running Coodabeens footy show. The Coodabeen Champions comedy team are undeniably a Melbourne institution, with their radio show now in its 40th year. For those unfamiliar with their work, the show is a combination of serious football discussion, including interviews with former players, coaches and volunteers from top-level and local league clubs, interspliced with banter and a series of regular segments.
These include live performances of comedy songs set to well-known (if not particularly contemporary) melodies: think ‘Gold Coast Suns in Noosa’ for Dragon’s ‘April sun in Cuba’ and ‘My son likes the Tigers’ set to the tune of Tom Jones’ ‘Delilah’.
The show concludes each week with a talkback segment where the callers are characters created and voiced by the hosts, drawing on various AFL clichés. Take for example Danny from Droop Street, who is perpetually despondent about the fortunes of his beloved Western Bulldogs, known for responding, ‘Don’t patronise me, Torch!’ if the host dares to suggest things aren’t as bad as he might think. Then there’s Peter from Peterborough, a caricature of a wealthy Western Districts grazier, who believes the solution to every issue at the Geelong Cats is ‘more discipline!’. Or Christos from Claremont who declaims the lack of media coverage for the West Coast Eagles as (not unreasonably) more evidence of ‘typical eastern-state bias’.
So why am I writing about the Coodabeen Champions in a newsletter about communication? Partly because it’s a chance to talk about something a little different, but also because I love how this show manages to find a balance between not taking sport too seriously, but without ever suggesting that it can’t be a topic worthy of serious discussion. The hosts can laugh at the idiosyncrasies and absurdities inherent in footy, while acknowledging that it’s okay to enjoy it too. And that’s the thing about football.
