Individual excellence in footy is great to watch but it is more often team efforts that produce success.
In this footage the two are combined.
One North Footscray player (red and white) smothers the kick of his Albanvale opponent allowing a teammate to take possession of the ball and goal.
Geoff Fox, 11th March, 2025, Australia
For people like me, the Australia I was born into, was a meritocracy where one wage could get a family a home.
Times have changed.
The forty hour week is gone for far too many people.
But endeavour still inspires me.
Youth brings me hope.
As in my above poeticised image from a Maribyrnong Park Football Club match last Saturday.
Today we need young men to be lions.
But we don’t make it easy.
Reminds me of Shakespeare:
“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: ………”
I love to see young guys having a go.
But my heart bleeds for them, and young women, when I see what they are up against in modern Australia.
Geoff Fox May 2, 2025, Melbourne Australia.
Cody Brand is a key forward with Keilor Football Club.
He topped the club’s goal kicking last year in a premiership team.
He did a great job to connect the bottom of his boot with the football for a goal under pressure in the goalsquare in a match last Friday against Strathmore.
Geoff Fox, 20th April, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
I have been watching Aussie Rules Footy seriously since 1967.
It astonishes me now just how much fun it can be to watch local football. Now that there is no free to air football from the AFL professionals on Saturdays, I urge other people in Australia to consider shifting their allegiances to local clubs. Its cheaper, its friendlier and it can be just as good to watch.
For instance, I cannot remember seeing more scintillating evasion of tackles in any code of football at any level than the play of number 68 for North Footscray in yesterday’s game against Wyndham Vale.
First of all a “Don’t Argue.” when not in possession of the ball. Then four blind turns in four seconds. 180 degrees clockwise. 90 degrees clockwise. 90 degrees clockwise again.. Then 90 degrees anticlockwise.
Geoff Fox, Melbourne, Sunday, April 13th, 2025
I went to Mansfield to get a good picture of Christian Petracca. (Thanks to Emily for her help in the transformation of this picture.)
A bit after that he talked to me a bit about what he has suffered over the past 10 months or so.
I am not sure if he has had enough good listeners.
I could be wrong, but not being heard is a common problem in this nation.
It goes back to the doctrine of Terra Nullius.
Geoff Fox, 10th April, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
Last Saturday the senior North Footscray Australian Rules Football team played fast attacking footy and celebrated victory with gusto.
Geoff Fox, 9th April, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
Women’s football is not as ferocious as men’s football.
It’s not as fast.
It’s not as skillfull.
But it’s much more beautiful.
Geoff Fox, 9th April, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
In Alice Springs in 1989, an Englishwoman seeing Australian Rules Football for the first time on television said to me, “There are no rules.”
I said to her “You cannot understand Australia without understanding this game.”
But I couldn’t explain why.
I still can’t.
It’s something to do with freedom.
Geoff Fox, 7th April, 2025, Footscray, Australia
On the field today at the MCG, we saw Australian footy at its hard fought, free flowing best.
The magnificent Orange Tsunami almost beaten by a team with 5 debutantes.
But on the other side of the fence, only 23,278 people attended. In the three previous days at the same stadium, crowds of 80,000 twice and then 60,000 showed far more support for other clubs.
Meanwhile today, on Sunday, 131,000 went to see a car race.
The magnificent idea of Jim’s Game, honouring an Irishman who was not born into the game but came to be a true legend, had no traction.
As someone who was a health professional for thirty years, what I see in Melbourne Football Club is a lot of very decent, very good people bullied and ignored in a very cruel society.
Delighted by the footy, but deeply worried about the beautiful Dees.
Bullying. By the media.
So sad.
Geoff Fox, March 16, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
l started barracking for Collingwood in 1967.
In December 2023, I met Angus Brayshaw and his profound human decency was overwhelmingly obvious. Also I got a sad sense that he wasn’t quite functioning at full capacity.
After much soul searching and agonising over the following 6 months, on King’s Birthday 2024, I found myself barracking against Collingwood for the first time in my life and for Melbourne. So recently I have seen a few Melbourne games.
I love the theme song and it’s American origins. The caring people I have met at Melbourne leave entrenched systemic Collingwood bullying for dead.
Gus was the start of that but Trac and Gawny are also profoundly decent people.
My other favourite Melbourne players are in AFLw: Tay, Banno and Fitzy. To my photographer’s eyes there is no better sight in footy now than Fitzy on the fly.
The club of John Wren, Duncan Wright, Stan Magro, Brayden Maynard and Darcy Moore got what was coming to it today in 2025’s Opening Round against Greater Western Sydney. Score doubled. Too slow. Too old. And far too much recent blatant physical and psychological violence on and off the field for me to support them.
Go Dees.
Goodbye Pies.
Football free of systemic bullying and violence is the only footy I want to support.
Geoff Fox, March 9, 2025, Melbourne, Australia.
FOOTY FOR FREEDOM 