Last Tuesday week, I met a Carlton supporter called Judy Mullen. I said the Blues looked like they'd lost their spirit as a club. She was forthright in saying she didn't agree. I asked where I could find the Carlton spirit and she said, "My mother". Thus it was that, a few days later, I visited Viv (or Vivienne) Kerr, wife of the late Laurie Kerr, Carlton player from the 1950s and club powerbroker in the decades that followed.
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Viv Kerr, 85, is an amazing woman. In addition to having nine children, she found time to breed a prize-winning herd of Angus cattle and cultivate an interest in Australian art. She once heard it said that the five most important words in the English language are, "Never, never, never give up", and these were the words she left me with. I departed believing I had indeed found the spirit of Carlton, or someone who could store that spirit for the rest.
This, then, is what I had in mind when I turned on to Carlton's match against Port Adelaide at the MCG last Saturday afternoon and found the Blues were ahead! Commentator Eddie McGuire sounded like he was trying to name all the passengers on a Tokyo bullet train as it shot past a platform he was standing on. McGuire was saying it was a fabulous game, two teams having a red hot go – Port Adelaide playing for a place in the finals, Carlton playing for their pride as a club. The 'G was buzzing.
Port Adelaide displayed terrific endeavour, but it's a mistake to over-estimate their resources. They don't have a power forward – every player has to be constantly burning up and down the ground like the Roadrunner. Last year they had a fitness edge. This year they look flat, which may actually mean they can't keep playing above themselves. Such is the pace of change in the game, Port's big chance may already be behind them.
On Saturday, however, their intention was pure, but somehow Carlton had got it into their heads that this match was winnable. One month ago, the Blues had looked as abject as Napoleon's army retreating from Moscow. Now they were playing with a mad inspiration that was hypnotic to watch.
Carlton's stand-in coach John Barker is a descendant of Australia's prime minister during World War II, John Curtin (in the opinion of some, Australia's best-ever prime minister). Does that matter? It does to me. Barker must know something about history and Carlton has plenty of it.
The suburb of Carlton, built for the middle class, was emptied by the severe depression of the 1890s and the introduction of electric trams that made living further out of the city an option. It became a suburb that housed migrants, thereby earning the Carlton Football Club support in the Italian and Jewish communities. The club's proximity to the University of Melbourne also netted it interesting characters like the historian Manning Clark and Liberal Party founder Sir Robert Menzies.
When I started following footy in the 1960s and '70s, Carlton was the game's exotic plant. The Blues had their own stylish way of playing, a tradition that I thought Brett Rattan was continuing when he was sacked as coach in 2012. Thereafter, Mick Malthouse coached like Mick Malthouse.
In the 1960s and '70s, Carlton had an abundance of great players. Born in Austria of a Ukrainian father and Russian mother, Alex Jesaulenko was a gymnast who combined tremendous strength with exquisite balance so that a bus couldn't knock him off the ball when he was paddling it along at his feet at full pace. He also took what was called the Mark of the Century, although he scoffed privately at the award, saying he took better ones at training.
The Blues had Syd Jackson, the only Aboriginal player in the AFL/VFL after Polly Farmer left Geelong at the end of 1967 and returned home to Perth. Jackson had sublime skills and the courage to stand up to whatever came his way, which was plenty. They had Brent Crosswell, one of the game's great eccentrics who inspired a character in David Williamson's play The Club. And they had John Nicholls, a physically powerful ruckman with a masterful football brain. When I visited Viv Kerr, she had a photo of herself and one of her many grandsons with present Carlton player Tom Bell. When I expressed doubts about Bell as a footballer, Viv quietly made it clear that she believed in him. Last Saturday, Bell was magnificent.
Before Saturday, I would have said Bell was too big for a small man and too small for a big man. In the last quarter on Saturday, as the stakes rose ever higher, Bell put the different parts of his talent together and became a player who combined mobility and strength to devastating effect – he dived into packs, fended off tackles, released handballs and made one uncompromising tackle after another. It was like seeing how John Nichols might have played if he were still doing so today.
Analysis of Carlton this season has previously fixed on the coach and the team, but Carlton is a great club with a real presence and character in this town and beyond. Last Saturday, Carlton played with a spirit that brought that presence roaring back.
