‘Weren’t you that young idiot who...’ Sometimes I fear my reputation seems destined to be centred around these words. So much so that I could almost complete the sentence. Often at parties, on trams, in bars when people are looking at me in their let’s-not-lie-too-quizzical way I almost feel like admitting that yes I am who I am and I did what I did that September afternoon in... I’m Damien Chubb, don’t laugh at the name please, nor at my present way of earning a living: I’m an ex-footballer private investigator specializing in the sporting world. I’ll go anywhere to try and solve anything, help anyone, any team. My brief stops short at sports espionage however, which given the nature of games in the late twentieth century is sure to become like crack, insider trading and ethnic cleansing, a growth industy. Yes it’ll grow like a tumour, I can see myself now giving evidence before a senate committee, how approaches were made, cash dangled under my nose...

If I fantasize a bit maybe it’s because I never quite scaled those sporting heights that had been charted for me. I’d had a few seasons rucking for Essendon in the late sixties/early seventies, but was famous for just one farcical event. I usually get around to telling it.

‘Weren’t you that young idiot who tried taking on John Nicholls in the first half of the Sixty-eight grand final?’ Guilty, guilty, guilty. Let me be known for that alone. Even though it was my tenth game, I had a number of servicable seasons to come (one including four Brownlow votes, another as state twentieth man in Hobart). Sure I was big, ungainly, mildly uncontrollable, but I was also full of a zestful desire to win. The local paper having trumpeted my exploits at Aberfeldie Y.C.W. I was encouraged by the Windy Hill powerbrokers to come down and give us a try. Those were the days when young men could still walk straight off the street into the Club of their choice.

I had started law/arts at University and the press forever hunting angles had decided tertiary education equalled Maoism: for a few weeks my profile read anti-war, anti-call-up, wants to recognize ‘Red’ China, thinks the Paris riots might have something going for them. I’d spoken my mind, once, and was told by the Club to shut up. The RSL had complained, and I’d been mentioned by Sir Wilfred Kent Hughes in an adjournment debate. My games, as a consequence, spiralled down to journeyman tap outs in the seconds and would have probably ended there but for a bout of cartilages, hamstrings and corked thighs which seemed to sweep Bomberland at the season’s most inappropriate time: the finals.

Rushed in to redeem myself I wanted to prove that yes, although I believed all those ‘traitorous’ things, I was still Aussie enough, man enough to mix it, and who better to mix it with than Big Nick? The first ten minutes saw me taunt the guy: I tried vigour, I tried spite, I tried language that would’ve had a painter and docker blanching; right through until quarter time I tried.

John Nicholls just played football. The second term started and I continued my task: not merely to tag the League’s greatest ruckman in a grand final, but to eliminate him! It’s said he wearied of me: the elbows, the knees, the references to his ancesty; some preposterous teenage blowfly, some leach, some limpet was spoiling his fun. This was a grand final, certainly hard work, that’s for sure, but even then he didn’t wish to be so irritated by such a bug, so much of an insect. Doubtless he thought me preposterous: this arena was for Men, couldn’t I get the message? I recall something about looking towards the Scoreboard... the ageing video footage shows me thumping the ground and the umpire holding up play as they carted the young idiot onto the bench, into the rooms, home to Aberfeldie.

Six years after I joined the Club the committee told me how great I was, how they appreciated my clubroom spirit on and off the field, Dames, but how new blood was a necessity now (this young kid called Madden), and that self-sacrificial service had its limits. I thanked them for their honesty, and told them that I would always, repeat always, barrack for The Dons; we shook hands. Would I like to be fixed with a coaching position in the bush, say? They had contacts: a pub went with the Fish Creek job, there was a hardware store at Edenhope. Sorry yeah, of course you’re a lawyer now... er Coburg seconds are after a runner? Nah I’m too slow. It’s all right fellas, footy was getting a bit dull. Dull? Dull? Did they seem to be shivering, was the word ‘heresy’ passing half an inch above them? Well Dames was always a bit of a commo, a touch eccentric.

Given what’s happened on the planet since the early seventies I find their judgement a bit touching. Me? Well part of me is just an ageing quasi-hippy. Although my voting preferences finally end with Labor, some of this one time rebel is pure mainstream.

I’m not huge-huge, but at 6’3’, like most loose limbed men into their forties I’m a touch ungainly. I may shamble but I’m hardly a shambles as I try working out thee times a week in a quiet city gym where aerobics is the world’s filthiest word and the music is mainstream baroque. I keep the flab at bay but muscles, really, belong to other men. When the going gets tough and the clichés turn unbearable you’ll usually find me in Percy’s Bar or, when I’m in need of a more reflective mood and mode, down the hill in Fitzroy at Lenny Bell’s Lord Tennyson Hotel. Often I’m accompanied by Michelle, an historian; though she wasn’t with me in Percy’s the September evening this particular adventure started.

I’d just spent two weeks in Sydney. Someone had been attempting to blackmail ‘Goose’ Madison the St George coach and my reputation having headed north I was asked to officiate. The case had everything harbourside imaginable: ranting evangelicals and cruising transexuals, schooners of Old and the very latest in designer drugs, jacarandas dropping their petals onto nude beaches, cockroaches, rogue cops. ‘Bubbles’ Fisher and the New South Wales Right; it had racing identities, yachting identities, jogging identitities and direct from their Japanese sister city a sumo identity; a grand schizophrenic cocktail shaken vigorously by a chase through Darling Harbour and a shoot out at the Opera House.

Knowing I’d had a workaday, manic depressive Melbourne to return to and recover in I loved my time and one day will write it down. All that was lacking was footy, glorious live footy. The game can never take off up there: the city’s sheer temperament precludes it. My appreciation of Rugby League though, the game and its personalities, increased twenty fold; I could almost feel my mind broadening. I watched a semi as a guest of The Dragons and was invited back at their expense for the grand final.

‘If not this time, mate, next year, mate, anytime mate.’

‘Next year? Sure. Unless The Bombers are playing.’

‘That’s... er... Footscray, right?’ ‘Goose’ looked so pleased with his guess I didn’t excessively spoil his delight.

‘Almost.’

Then I jetted home on Thursday, dumped my luggage in our North Carlton terrace and headed to Percy’s for two or three quiet ales. But we sure were living in the nineties for it was there that my phone beeped and the case commenced.

‘Issy here Dames, Issy Kaye. We need you down at Victoria Park. Collingwood going through a crisis you wouldn’t believe. Johnny Moomba’s disappeared. Don’t tell anyone please. Just come. Now. This is urgent!’

Moomba! Sometimes I think you’d have to be an amalgam of Helen Keller and a contemplative nun sent into exile on the shores of McMurdo Sound not to know of Johnny Moomba. His legend commences early: born a full blood Koori in the heart of Kakadu, he’s orphaned, brought up in Darwin by a kindly if distant couple. At ten the nuns discover just how mentally alert, how physically agile he is, indeed how much he loves all aspects of education. At fourteen his body races with his brain to make him a man: he’s six foot one and rising. Sport, naturally, beckons: he could cast his net and haul in cricket, tennis, hockey, long distance running and still have time and ease for more, but it’s the skilful, brutal ballet that’s Aussie Rules which entrances young Johnny. He’s wooed, falls in love, is set to devote his life to it, and is playing in a multiplicity of key positions, in first grade Territory games, by his fifteenth birthday.

The legend heads south, and determined to preserve the proudest reputation in their city Port Adelaide sign him: sign him as no other player has been signed: he’ll be trained, nurtured, groomed, loved and educated (Loyola College) at their expense. For this young man is so valuable an investment he could net them flag upon flag (which he will), with the added bonus of a three successive Magaries.

Then at university, it’s law/commerce double honours, which, at times to Johnny, seemed facile as browsing an airport paperback. He didn’t forget his heritage though, every summer he made a pilgrimage to Kakadu. He knew, quietly knew, that Australia, the national entity, has hardly been enamoured with his people: that Aboriginal Australia like so many other native populations is both repressed and dispossessed. He, Johnny Moomba, was lucky, but so many with whom he could identify, were not. Something will be done, he vows. His papers on land rights ignite debates well beyond the tweedy confines of a law school’s seminar rooms.

Broadshouldered - handsome, if in an exaggerated way, every feature just that mite excessive (with the slight brush of arrogance in his grin), he was photogenic beyond any convention known to straight white males, though plenty of white women did catch on. He chose for his partner, though, from within his own ranks, and was complemented by a brooding fiery Koori academic, Daisy.

Then, within a month twin summits of esteem presented themselves. Moomba was named as his state’s Rhodes Scholar and, given that he had at least eighteen months at Oxford, the VFL, the code’s most seductive siren, could be heard in its multiple voices wailing from over five hundred miles ‘John-eee, John-eeee...’

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