Fevola’s Ass

This could be Brendon Fevola’s ass. It’s not – but it could be. Then again it could be his head. (Apologies to whoever’s ass it actually is)

I’ve never looked closely enough at Fev’s ass to know what it might look like when it’s not in a pair of shorts. In fact, surprisingly, I’ve never looked much at any footballer’s ass. My husband is an ass man (he does prefer women’s asses, though – who wouldn’t). I prefer shoulders. Preferably shoulders that have a modicum of intelligence attached to them.

Footballers do tend to have nice shoulders. But curiously I’m only interested in them when they’re attached to arms that are gathering the football on the half forward flank and dropping it onto their boot to spear it to a leading Richmond forward 25 metres out, directly in front. Or when they’re attached to a body that’s laying a fierce bump on an opponent to knock them off course and force a turnover. Or when they’re part of the majestic silhouette that forms when a player takes off and pulls down a contested mark.

About 50% of people who support football are women – that’s not a guess, that’s a fact. And yet the myth that women watch football because they like to watch hot guys run around in shorts persists. Now the first point to make is that not all footballers are hot – Fevola is a case in point. Unlike Fev a lot of footballers are nice guys – despite reports that reduce all of them to the caricatures that non-football fans like to believe accurately describe footballers in ways that would be decried and despised if they were applied to any other section of the population. But nice is not really motivation enough to turn up week in and week out to support a team. And if female spectatorship was really driven by desire, then the sounds of the game might be noticeably different.

I can’t speak on behalf of hundreds of thousands of women, but I can say that the same things that attract other supporters to football are the very things that attract me. The spectacle, the camaraderie, the drama and admiration for and derision of sport played at its best and its worst. Plus the little things that characterise my personal experience – meeting friends at the pub beforehand and the walk through the back streets of Richmond to the G, standing with my son sharing something that doesn’t really require conversation, the anticipation before a game and the occasional joy from a win which is then watched and relived again on returning home.

It’s curious that men are never asked to justify their passion for football and yet women are constantly answering the question. But for the record, it’s got nothing to do with Fevola’s, or anyone else’s, ass.