Lost Night/Year

To celebrate Grand Final week, here is a draft of a song that will be on the third LP, which will follow the second LP (which hasn't been released yet), which will follow the first LP (which is awaiting "re-release", and thus isn't available at the moment anyway).

It's recorded "live" (lol); it's me sitting at the real Sissy's piano.

Lost Night [draft] by Sissysocks

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Happy Grand Final Week.

End of a Century

A couple of months ago I posted the following piece on my other blog, Red, White and Black, which I run with a friend of mine.

Now, the time I feared would come nearly a decade ago - all the way through to when I wrote the piece as St Kilda's season neared its inevitable disappointing end - has arrived: that I would not see St Kilda win a premiership in my youth, and that in that time they would have thrown away several opportunities to do so.

I've been smothered by exhaustion today as I've watched teams and their supporters that recently achieved and knew what I wanted so much at St Kilda's expense will this week get another chance to experience it; for St Kilda, that opportunity might not come for another several years. It might not come for another several decades.

The prospect of St Kilda winning a premiership has genuinely filled me with a hope to run on for nearly ten years now, with success widely expected of the group. Barring a miracle in 2012, the time for this list seems to have come and gone, and those hopes I've harboured for so long will fade unceremoniously as St Kilda continue their identity as a pathetic laughing stock.

AFL Grand Final week has always been my favourite week of the year, and remains so; after St Kilda's failed appearances in 2009 and 2010, however, I'm feeling a general exhaustion. Whilst I always hit a "withdrawal" a few weeks after the footy season is over, I am looking forward to getting a chance to get on with my life.

A Wolf at the Door, written Tuesday, July 26th, 2011:

The business end of the season is when history is made.

For St Kilda fans, making history is a different prospect to that of supporters of other teams. It is fraught with a tension and the responsibility that is heightened when in, what is traditionally, rarely-inhabited territory.

Since early on in 2009, the club and its supporters have dealt with that with varying degrees of optimism, but a realistic chance at making that history was undeniable.

This season has been a return to normalcy; the return of the sinking feeling that a chance for that elusive second premiership has again come and gone, and there is only more waiting to be done.

Over the past two months, however, the team which promised so much has gathered a momentum that has many in the football world seeing the Saints as a darkhorse come finals.

Football clubs sell hope, and none more than St Kilda. The idea that “if St Kilda wins a premiership, then anything could happen” I’m sure resides in the psyche of a number of fans. It’s a unique position the club’s haunting history has put us in.

For all of the uplifting scripts that could be written for a St Kilda premiership story, winning one from the positions the club has found itself in over the past year would be one of the most incredible. It has seemed impossible in that period, and only in recent weeks has the scenario been upgraded to “extremely unlikely”.

Over the next two months, the 2011 season will most probably come to an end for St Kilda. There are more dangerous, better-drilled teams higher on the ladder that are looking good to be playing footy in October. They will have more time to plan and prepare for their finals assaults and the confidence of having achieved the ultimate in previous finals campaigns.

The Saints still have the fate of their season in their hands, but so much will have to go right between now and Grand Final Day 2011 for the script to played out. The time will most likely come relatively soon where we know that 2011 wasn’t the year the wait ended, and it will be a tough moment however and whenever it happens.

History’s burden on St Kilda fans won’t make an early exit from the premiership race in 2011 any easier due to familiarity. It will only be more heartbreak and disappointment upon that suffered through the past two years, but you can not lose if you do not play. Playing the game gives us hope. It’s why we’re here.