Then there were those boys, the ones unlike yourself who knew the game as a sort of dance and had a warrior spirit. They jumped and hung in the air. Through their outrageous athleticism, they caught the ball in flight. They left me with feelings like awe and wonder otherwise wholly absent from my 11-year-old life in a Catholic boarding school in Burnie on the north-west coast of Tasmania. Schoolboy footy in Burnie back then was exceptionally good. One of the local kids, Johnny Greening, became a Collingwood legend. I saw him play as a kid. I saw him up-close. I loved the magnitude of his gift, the extent to which it went beyond anything I'd seen, and his confidence and courage to express it. I saw Brent Crosswell as a schoolkid. Both Greening and Crosswell could have gone No.1 in the national draft as we know it today, but only one of them, Crosswell, could have leapt out of a rorty, rumbustious, language-laden 18th century novel like Tom Jones. My first footy hero was Graeme "Gypsy" Lee, captain-coach of the 1968 East Devonport premiership team. They won like the Western Bulldogs won last year, coming from nowhere, summoning a spirit that took off before my eyes and elevated them beyond the reach of their opponents. I liked the way Gypsy spoke to his players, his idea of how men could bring out the best in each other. Twenty-odd years later, I learnt that Gypsy was the first player with Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage to play in the VFL/AFL (with St Kilda). We speak regularly on the phone. Getting to know Gypsy completed a circle in my life. People ask me, "What sort of a footballer were you?" The answer is timid, but fascinated. I liked to run laps in bare feet and had hair down to my arse. On my first night at training with the Tas Uni footy club, the senior coach Brian Eade (father of the Suns' Rodney "Rocket" Eade) spotted me and cried out in horror, "What the f--k have I got here??!!!" I actually ended up captain-coaching the Uni third XVIII to a grand final in which we were given no chance and nearly won. I still see flashes of that match in my mind.

I also wrote for the Uni footy club in various publications. People seemed to like my stuff. I developed my own style while also getting a big buzz from the connection it gave me with all sorts of people. A writer once rebuked me strongly for writing so much about football. When I thought about it, I realised I keep going back to it because footy people are my people. I don't just mean the players and coaches. When I was "embedded" with the Melbourne Football Club, the person I gravitated to was the doorman, Arthur Wilkinson. When it comes to writing the great games, like last year's preliminary final between the Western Bulldogs and Greater Western Sydney, it's a matter of waiting for words to appear that fit the game like the beat of a bodhran drum fits an Irish dance. I play along, as it were. But that's what I follow footy for: the great games, the great players, the camaraderie. Occasionally, it gets more serious than that as it did in the early 1990s when the dominant view, that racial insults to Aboriginal players were to be accepted as "part of the game" like any other insult, first had to be fought in earnest. I've met some great characters through footy. Kevin Sheedy springs immediately to mind. If they make another movie about Burke and Wills and Sheedy plays Burke, I will volunteer to play Wills. I love Sheedy's vision of Australia. I love Michael Long's vision also. I want to thank the people who furthered my football education, principally Peter Schwab. I want to thank Luke Beveridge for persuading me to write a book on the Bulldogs in 2016. Why? Because it's a happy story. The world needs happy stories. I want to thank the Indigenous brothers I've met through footy and congratulate them on the steadfast way they have expressed the character and creativity of their culture. You've educated millions.

I want to thank the women friends I've made through the game. Women have always been part of footy and now young amazons are lining up to play professionally, exploding preconceptions on all fronts while providing the game with its one sure sign of growth. I want to thank Tom Wills for making a constellation in the night sky that points to a new and better Australia. I want to thank the volunteers who are the lifeblood of the game, peeling spuds for the players' dinner and mopping up the clubrooms after matches. And, as this is my last column, I want to thank The Age and all the people it represents. I loved playing for you.