Kalgoorlie Miner: (1) Classic-Romantic

I was going to write a universally appealing column of introductions and banal generalities first up, but rather than just meekly testing the water I have decided to go straight into the deep end and alienate more than half of the readership by explaining why I like the Dockers and dislike the Eagles. Football is nearly over, so I thought I should get this out of my system.

Thankfully for all, rather than use traditional anti-Eagles arguments involving their appalling hairdos or the comical amount of oil on their arms, I will be analysing the issue in terms of the "Classic/Romantic" split from Robert Pirsig's 1974 book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

Hippies amongst you may be familiar with the book, in which Pirsig begins by examining the different approaches he and a friend take to looking after their respective motorcycles, and ends up penning a brain-bending philosophical thesis on "everything". It's an amazing book, and I'm sure future columns may include references to it.

Anyway, one key aspect of the book is that Pirsig believed he could cleave a population in two based on whether people had a "Classic" or a "Romantic" mindset. To briefly summarise in my own terms, a Classic personality looks at a tree and sees wood and leaves, and thinks about using it for firewood. A Romantic personality looks at the same tree and sees God, or beauty, or life, or some other vaguely mystical concept, and feels more inclined to write a poem about it.

Now it is my belief that Eagles supporters belong to the Classic mindset, in that they see a football team simply as a machine comprised of 22 men that will inevitably prevail if it does everything more efficiently than the opposition. A series of undoubtedly Classic coaches in Mick Malthouse, Ken Judge, and now John Worsfold, have turned the team into one that Classic personalities can appreciate.

Conversely, Dockers supporters have Romantic minds, in that they see their team as a transcendental "concept" that fate will deliver to it's destiny. Fremantle has been led by a succession of eccentric coaches who recruited and created numerous unusual/flawed players, and in doing-so fashioned a team that appeals to Romantic personalities.

The divide can be most clearly illustrated by using the example of ex-Dockers forward Clive Waterhouse, truly one of the strangest enigmas to have ever pulled on a studded leather boot. For those not acquainted with him, the archetypal Clive exhibiton would involve him taking mark of the year and then torpedoing the Sherrin out-of-bounds on the full. While Eagles supporters ridiculed this man as the absolute anti-thesis of "percentage football", Dockers supporters loved him dearly, preferring to think of him as a God-given artwork commenting on the duality of man.

So I hope we all now understand that, owing to deep-seated psychological differences, Dockers people will never understand Eagles people, and vice-versa. People that claim to support both teams clearly have a multiple personality disorder.

Let me finish by conceding that unfortunately Classic football generally conquers Romantic football – but we Romantics have more fun.