Chapter 3 Big Dog
BIG DOG
HAMMER
Last year’s number-one draft pick is a freckly ranga cunt named Oisin ‘Oshy’ Byrne. He gave me some lip at training yesterday about how I was old news and he was the new gun forward, so me and Tank rubbed Deep Heat on his mouthguard today to get back at him.
I keep trying not to piss meself laughing when we get into the locker room. Tank keeps elbowing me and I whisper to him to shut up or he’ll blow it.
To avoid giving the game away, I shuffle over to the mirror and pretend to be focused on adjusting the wax in my hair, except I actually get distracted by my own reflection.
Fuck, I am in peak form at the moment. I look exactly the way I dreamed I’d look when I hit my prime as a footballer in my mid-twenties: I packed on some real mass last summer and I’m the most muscular I’ve ever been; my skin is so bronzed from the sun I look like a pro surfer; and my short blond hair and blue eyes complement the blue-and-gold West Coast Eagles guernsey stretched tight over my pecs, like it was always my destiny to join this footy club.
I flex in the mirror for a minute, showing off the vascularity in my guns and copping a jeer from one of the boys.
Just as I try to remember what I came over here for, Tank appears beside me and elbows me again, jerking his head urgently towards the other side of the locker room. Oh, that’s right. Oshy.
And then bam, it happens: Ranga Boy Oshy slides his white mouthguard into his gob. There’s excruciating silence for three seconds, then the most delicious whimper.
‘What the hell?’ Oshy moans, spitting onto the grey carpet. ‘Argh – aaaarrgh!’
One of the assistant coaches jogs after him to the basins as he rinses his mouth out, whining like a little bitch about how much it burns.
Me and Tank are in stitches.
I wait until Oshy walks back into the locker area, head bowed as he realises a lot of the boys are snickering.
‘Jeez, Oshy, you musta mixed up your toothpaste and your Deep Heat? Rookie mistake, champ!’ I say. I pause, cos I want him to understand how hard I’ve champed him, like the studs of a footy boot right in the nads. ‘Guess you’d better watch your mouth, huh?’
Oshy stares at me like he’s a TV detective who’s worked out the culprit of a homicide instead of some little prank. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I said you’d better wash your mouthguard,’ I reply smoothly. ‘Jeez, Oshy, open ya fucken ears.’
Tank loses it, roaring with laughter.
Oshy goes all pale.
‘It was you,’ he mutters, looking devo, like he’s never had anyone knock him down a peg or two. It feels good to see him having a sook, cos it means I’ve put him in his place, little shit. I hate upstarts.
Mosey calls to me in a vaguely warning tone, like Lay off him, Hammer, but honestly who gives a fuck what he thinks.
Me and Tank jog out onto the oval to join the boys for training. It’s a Thursday before our Sunday arvo home game against Gold Coast at Optus Stadium, so it’s a bit of position-specific skills work and match simulation.
It’s cool but sunny and it’s a cardio-heavy training so we build up a sweat fast. Our new forward assistant coach – Barry ‘Mosey’ Mosman – takes us for the first half of the sesh.
Mosey’s gone dark on me lately. He’s made clipped comments about my attitude being too hollow and how I should be maturing into more of a leader.
With all due respect to Mosey, his experience as a player was very different to mine.
For one thing, he was a small forward lurking in the pocket and picking up crumbs; for another, he was never a superstar – only played thirty AFL games.
He doesn’t know what it’s like to be the main target of both inside fifties from the midfielders and the oppo’s defensive pressure; to try to shake a tag and still perform for the sake of the team.
When you’re in that white-hot heat in a game, your only focus is to get the footy and fucken send it, which is what they pay me the big bucks for.
Basically, I’m not gonna take advice from someone who’s shitter at footy than me.
And I can’t focus on ‘becoming a leader’ when I’m preoccupied with how make-or-break this season is for me.
Last year was a massive changing of the guard for the club: Roo came in as head coach, and our veteran key forward Steve Polak retired.
Polak was a generational talent, a megastar: I was always second banana with him around.
Polak always beat me to the club’s leading goalkicker award, and he won the Coleman twice.
I know I’m meant to be a team player. And I swear I am, every day.
I do what Roo tells me. I focus on my skills and match-ups and each weekend’s game with an eye on how I can be a cog in the machine to help the team win.
I know the goal is the flag. I know the goal is the team winning, not Hammer being the best boy ever.
But when you’re this good, is it that bad to want some reco?
I’m allowed to have my own goals, even if Mosey makes me feel selfish for it.
I always wanted to be the star forward for an AFL team.
Not just the up-and-coming son of WAFL star John ‘The Jackhammer’ Hammersmith, the once semi-famous East Fremantle leading goalkicker.
Not the young gun nipping at Steve Polak’s heels.
I wanted to be the Big Dog in my own right.
And this season, I finally am. I’m the key target in our forward line.
I’m the leading goalkicker so far. This season is when I’ll go from being a good young player to a great player in his prime.
Where I win leading goalkicker, where I could even get the Coleman.
2025: the Year of Hammer.
Which is why it’s pissing me off how much Mosey is hyping up Oisin Byrne instead of me.
Just cos the sports editor of The West has a creepy hard-on for our draft pick doesn’t mean Mosey has to.
Everyone’s carrying on like Oshy is God’s gift; like he’s personally gonna save us from being wooden-spooners this season (unlikely).
People carry on like until Oshy rocked up we didn’t have a forward line.
It’s insulting to me and Tank and Kingy and the rest of the forwards.
And orright, Oshy is a weapon in front of goal.
He’s had less scoring shots than me but his accuracy is a bit better.
And cos I fucked my hammy in the pre-season, he’s hot on my tail for leading goalkicker.
I’m on forty-one goals for the season so far and he’s on thirty-four.
Close enough to make me edgy. Dunno what I’ll do if he overtakes me.
I didn’t come this far to be Polak’s underdog and Oshy’s over-the-hill veteran.
I want my trophy.
So, Mosey keeps making these cracks at me. Like if Oshy takes a good contested mark he’ll hype it up, but if I take the same sorta mark he’ll critique it. It’s getting my back up.
When it’s time for match sim to finish the sesh, our senior coach – Rudy ‘Roo’ McLean – takes charge.
Roo loves me and I love him. He was a bona fide AFL legend in his day and he understands when you’re great, you’re great, and haters are gonna hate.
When I did my hammy he was on the phone to me in the evenings checking in – he’s that sorta bloke. I have a lot of time for Roo.
Roo throws some of us into different positions: I’m key forward and Oshy is full-back playing on me, which is comical since he’s too young to have any real meat on his bones.
We get ready for the match sim – I head into the forward fifty, with Oshy lurking beside me like a mosquito but not having the guts to push into me.
‘You packin’ your dacks?’ I goad him. ‘Never taken a real contested mark in your life, have ya? Not gonna start today, either. You know I’ll out-body you.’
‘You’re slower than you think you are, though,’ Oshy says coolly.
Fuck, I hate upstarts.
By the end of the match sim, I come out on top with three goals and one behind. I ran rings around that skinny little Irishman except for one intercept mark.
‘Oshy, nice work given you were out of your depth,’ Roo says. ‘Hammer, looking dangerous, but don’t underestimate him – he shouldn’t’ve been able to take that intercept.’
We’re ushered back towards the locker rooms, but the club’s curly-haired social media manager, Tessa, bails me and Oshy up on the way. She wants some Insta and TikTok content of us trying a trick shot from the boundary line at an insanely tight angle. Kids love this shit.
I handball the Sherrin to Oshy. ‘You first.’
Oshy lines up from the pocket and boots the footy. Tessa’s camera is on both of us, so I try not to look like too much of a gloating dick when he misses and gets a behind.
‘Amateur hour’s over – lemme show ya how a pro does it, champ,’ I say.
I hope me calling him champ repeatedly hurts him as much as I want it to. It’s the ultimate ego bruise from one bloke to another: a way to tell him, You’re inferior to me and I want you to know it.
Oshy riles up. ‘Okay – show me, chief.’
He didn’t just call me chief, did he? The fucken nerve, thinking he’s a contender to challenge the Big Dog.
I take a step back, line up and boot the Sherrin as hard as I can, grunting with the effort.
I feel my lower back seize up as my fluoro yellow Nike boot makes contact with the footy, but I’m on camera so I can’t show it.
Instead, I make a show of watching the footy’s arc towards the posts: it’s dead straight, sails clean through the sticks with plenty of gas on it.
I keep my back to the camera so the pain on my face doesn’t give away how much my back has locked up, and show off my guns, flexing them in a double biceps pose.
Tessa does a bit of a ‘woo’ for me. ‘This will go off on social – thank you, fellas!’
Oshy turns his face away from me, which means I showed him up good. Cop that, chief.
‘Almost as good as my clutch goal from Round 13, 2021, don’t ya reckon?’ I ask Tessa, hoping Oshy will hear the brag.