The Collingwood fan spent a lifetime creating a gameplan for ‘the unloved and the unlovely’ to share the field with ‘the elites’
Six months after he emerged from the seminary, he was posted to Heidelberg – firmly entrenched in the Magpies’ recruiting zone. After brief dalliances with Richmond and Essendon, Father Bob found his team.The Pies’ ethos of “side-by-side” can be traced back to the 1920s when most of its supporters were working-class Catholics and Irish – united by the exclusion and discrimination they faced.
“There was a woman who used to come running down the aisles until she reached the players’ race. She’d come running down, waving her bloody umbrella everywhere, until she got close enough to spit on the opposition. That was her gesture of tribalism.”In addition to becoming a favourite personal pastime, Father Bob quickly saw the value of football as a vehicle for inclusiveness and acceptance.
After returning from national service in 1973, Father Bob arrived as the parish priest at Sts Peter and Paul’s church, South Melbourne, which he described as a shambles. The parish he inherited became home to several housing commission projects and had undergone a significant cultural change.
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