Brownlow

There is a very funny article in today's Age By Richard Hind on the wonderful absurdity that is Brownlow Night. I would link it, but for some reason my sad old home computer is never quite up to the task. So you'll have to go find it yourself.

Brownlow night is one of the few nights of the year when football fulfils my needs as a sports fan and a woman. And, like most, I have developed a ritual to prepare myself for the event (thankfully in my case it involves absolutely no waxing or tanning.)

First, over the course of Monday I start to get irrationally excited and feel the need to read all of the terrible half-baked journalism available on the who, what, where and wear of those in a attendance.

By 8pm when the red carpet special (gods gift to women to who don’t like blonds eg. me) begins, I can barely contain the anticipation. I love to hate the frocks. Being critical of other people’s fashion choices is one of my greatest joys in life and the Brownlow is a guilt free opportunity to indulge. They get free booze and all night parties, I get to sit at home in my grease stained trackies and criticise their fashion choices. Everyone wins!

Then they actually start to count votes. The Brownlow night is like the whole football season in fast forward, and those great little highlights packages let me relive all the exciting bits without having to watch teams flood or time-waste for half the game. For the rest of the Browlnlow these brief moments of interest will be interspersed with long tedious hours of name after name after name.

Still, once they settle into the counting its time to spot the boozehounds. Checking out each of the tables, place bets on who’s photo will be front and centre of the Herald-Sun the next day (and not because they won the thing). Safe money is usually on Billy Brownless.

By round 16 I will have fallen asleep on the couch. All that monotony is so soothing, it is some of the best sleep I get all year, well at least until the cricket starts! But by round 19 I’ll be awake again as the murmurings of the room instensify when the front-runners get a vote. The end is nigh and the winner is almost decided.

The evening will then come to an end (way past my bedtime) with platitudes about the winner’s coach, team, wife/girlfriend and mum. The winner then goes off to drink too much and then do breakfast radio interviews, while I trundle off to bed to dream of doing it all again next year.

I say, BRING IT!