Port, the Hero with a Thousand Faces (Port 61 - 64 Hawthorn)

“The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored. The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades." (Joseph Campbell, ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’)

 
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I woke up suddenly, and my first thought was that I had lost the game. It was dark in the room, but since daylight does not start before 7am, I couldn’t know how late it was. I stretched my arm for the phone, but it wasn’t on my bedside table. Then, I remembered. I wasn’t supposed to have fallen asleep. I had everything set for watching the game on bed – a compromise with my wife, who understandably likes her husband’s company at night. So, I had put the phone, the earphones, and the charging cable on my lap, while my wife went to sleep, and I began waiting for the game to start. Still, I couldn’t find anything.

Then, there was a siren. Lucky me, I hadn’t changed the settings. The phone, along with everything else, was on the floor. The question which immediately popped into my mind was: “what was the siren for?” I couldn’t believe I had awakened just as the game was ending. We don’t sleep with the heater on, so it was bloody cold when I got out of the bed to pick up the phone and check the score. The push message said: “Port Adelaide-Hawthorn is about to start.” Hein? What?! I looked at the clock, and it was only 1am. I had only had a POWER nap. Glory be! I turned the WatchAFL app on, and the players were getting set in the center square. I hadn’t missed a thing.

By the time the game ended, I wished I had missed it. I was crushed by our performance. I left some harsh comments on Big Footy and went back to sleep. Since then, I have been reading about the game and thinking on what to write here. Suddenly, it was clear. The game fits Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero of a Thousand Faces.” Not all of the narrative, of course, but only the first part of the “monomyth” – the “Departure.” The rest of our story begins from now on.

The game started as usually the “Prologue” goes – all was fine. Not surprisingly then, Q1 went on greatly for us. The Hawks made many mistakes, and we made them pay for them. Mostly of the mistakes were in their defensive half, and we were quick to go for the kill when we got the ball. It was basically our typical 2018 Q3, but in the first quarter. Seven scoring shots against 3, and the scoreboard at QT was Port 5.2:32 to Hawthorn 1.2:8.

Everything was right, just, good, and beautiful in the world. I felt I had been invited for a Port’s Foot Ball where the Hawks couldn’t do anything, but dancing our Jack Waltz. In Q2, however, there was the inevitable plot twist. Something unusual happens that changes the world in which the hero lives. This is the “Call to Adventure” that, for Port, came in the form of calls of “Fifty Meters!” As it is common, our hero went in denial, refusing the calling, while the bad guys were taking over. The cries of “fifty meters” kept on coming.

I should have been in horror witnessing all that, because my wife woke up to check what was going on. “What are you doing?,” she asked. “I am watching the game as I told you I would,” I replied. She said “Ok” and went back to her dreams. I stayed awake with my nightmares. As the hero merely acted as a spectator, the frees, the fifties, and the goals kept piling up. Right before halftime, the hero finally made something, which forced the Hawks to score a rushed behind, leveling the score at the midway break – 5.3:33 all.

Fitting that at this stage the hero usually meets his mentor. Ken Hinkley was ready to show our team what must be done to defeat the evil forces that are threatening the order of the cosmos. The team came back for Q3, and, Q3 being our quarter, I was excited. However, things weren’t like always anymore. It felt like players had crossed a threshold, when “the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the 'threshold guardian' at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in four directions — also up and down...”

The guardian’s name was Nicholls, who wasn’t in a good mood toward our hero (common folk seems to input this mood to a previous coffee or something related to that; there might be some truth on it). Our hero has ended up thrown into the “Belly of the Whale,” where, “instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died.”

Dead we looked, indeed, as the Hawks had complete control of the ball, with 48 more marks and 46 more disposals than us in Q3 alone. At the break, we were lucky being only 8 points down. It felt like a massacre. It is true that we fought back in the last quarter, but the happy ending wasn’t meant to happen then. It comes later in the myth. As I have said, we have just finished the “Departure.”

Now, we enter in the “Initiation” stage, whose first section is the “Road of Trials” – which usually comes in three (like Tigers, Bulldogs, and Demons). Often, the hero fails in those tests, but it is also when he realizes “that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him” – and nothing like three consecutive home games to help that! It is when our hero becomes confident that he may succeed. Still, there are setbacks, and the greatest challenge still would lie ahead of the hero at this point.

However, when the spot in the Finals is secured, leaving the Abyss of the offseason behind, there is the “Apotheosis” – the moment when the heroes "know, not only that the Everlasting lies in them, but that what they, and all things, really are is the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish fulfilling trees;” when they become ready for the “Ultimate Boon” when the final goal is achieved: fulfilling themselves with “the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus,” by drinking “the elixir of the Imperishable” from the Premiership Cup.

It was a bad day, but we are in the Top-8 with a game in hand. It is not time for despair. Our story is still unfolding accordingly. Bring on the Tigers!

CARN THE POWER!