From an early age, I discovered the delights and despair of supporting a hated sporting team.
When you follow detested football sides like Collingwood, Manly Sea Eagles...or when Port Adelaide were actually Port Adelaide dominating the South Australian Football League... you learn to keep your head down. You revel in success, but you also spend a lot of time hiding away from society.
All those swirling, conflicting emotions returned this week when reading Ray Chesterton's new book: "Manly Sea Eagles. The team they love to beat."
My fix of being an obsessive Port Adelaide Aussie Rules supporter continued until my early teens. It had its advantages. You grew accustomed to enjoying victory. That was intoxicating. It's simple. Winning makes you feel good.
It wasn't all sweetness and light though. Everyone else in Adelaide detested you, looked down upon you as a lower class bogan. You grew accustomed to the snarly jokes, such as the old chestnut of a Port supporter walking down the street wearing one thong.
A passer-by asks: "Hey, you've lost a thong."
To which the Ports fan replied: "Nah mate, I found one."
Or the other gag: "You know you're a Ports supporter when your baby's first words are: 'Attention K Mart shoppers."
And yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me for the umpteenth time that the Ports cheer squad is the only beast with 100 legs and four teeth.
This social slurring has a lot to do with Port Adelaide's home base. Alberton Oval is just down the road from the Port Adelaide shipping docks- for decades a tough, grim, working class part of town.
Most of the pubs were bloodhouses. The rest of Adelaide, for the sake of their own safety, stayed right away.
My father, who played for Ports between 1945-54, worked on those docks, and although a gentle person, relished being surrounded by the real workers. This was and is Labor Party heartland.
The disdain also had a lot to do with the club's overwhelming dominance. In the 1950s and early 60s, they were nearly unbeatable, winning the South Australian premiership in 1951, six times in a row between 1954-59, and then 1962, 63 and 65.
From then on, every other team would rate their season around how they performed against Ports- a team which mirrored its area by playing hard, aggressive, arms, knees and elbows going all ways football. A win against those mongrel dogs at Alberton remained the highlight for any opposing team, because they knew Port and their supporters were dreadful losers. It burnt them to the core of their soul.
The team's colours were also perfect for a team demanding excellence, domination. Black and White. There were never any subtleties down Port way.
I finally turned my back on them when they gave away the greatest lace-up footy jumper of all time, the magnificent prison bar design and went for a vomit-inducing variation when they joined the AFL and became a feeble hybrid called Port Power. So what if they won the AFL premiership in 2004 and their coach was Mark Williams, whose father Fos was my dad's coach at Ports. I refused to watch that grand final. I couldn't care less.
For me, Ports meant Alberton Oval on a Saturday afternoon, giving it to all those toffs from the more picturesque more upwardly mobile Adelaide suburbs, such as Norwood. That was tribal.
The Ports-Norwood rivalry was all about the Adelaide West-East divide. The blue singlet wharfies up against the bluebloods.
Port Power looked such an inferior brand, similar to the Adelaide Crows, who sadly butchered the colours of the once oh so impressive South Australian representative jumper.
It was also more fun when Adelaide teams played amongst themselves, and treated the VFL as that big horrible arrogant monster over the border. By joining the enemy, it felt as if Adelaide footy had sold out.
There's the rub of being a sports team addict. You lose your perspective at times, common sense suddenly doesn't make any sense, and you become irrational, common even. The thought process becomes a bit warped.
One advantage for those who abhor another club is that you can focus your negative thoughts and beliefs onto something that is not detrimental to society. You transfer your aggression towards a body that has grown accustomed to being abhorred, so it won't take offence. Healthy? Not always. But often it can be an important diversion, a way to ease stress levels. And you're not alone.
All over Australia, generally sane people detest sporting teams. When they explain why, they are often suddenly unintelligible, interspersing their venomous comments with spittle.
The reasons for their infuriation are varied- and often gets lost in translation.
Still it runs deep, as shown whenever the Collingwood AFL club is brought up and discussed as being probably the ultimate love/hate organisation.
They have many similarities to the traditional Port Adelaide Magpies, but on a far larger scale. Again there is a sense of class infuriation.
Collingwood, like Ports, has an intensely proud working class base, and during the 1920s and 30s took delight in showing up the establishment. The elite were infuriated that they could not overcome the supposed down-trodden.
Even if it now boasts the biggest supporter base of any team in Australia, it seems to have the most enemies, prompting enormous satisfaction during the long years of the Colliwobbles- when so many took delight that between 1959 and 1989 they could not win a premiership, even though appearing in eight grand finals.
It also helps that Collingwood's over-exposed and often annoying president Eddie McGuire, is such an easy target, and endlessly infuriates other clubs with his comments.
In the past, there were also sectarian strains, with the Collingwood club in its early days having a solid working class Irish Catholic supporter base, which not surprisingly saw some Protestants deliberately snubbing them.
Religious beliefs nowadays mean little in Australian sport, but for some decades it was an important dividing line in numerous pursuits, including rugby league and cricket. After all, the first Catholic to be employed by the NSW Cricket Association was not until 1979- 120 years after it was formed.
The Catholic-Protestant divide led to rifts in the Donald Bradman led Australian cricket team of the 1930s, while it has often been said that rugby league's greatest selection shock when Australian captain/coach Len Smith missed out on the 1948 Kangaroo tour was due to the Freemason-strong league administration being concerned about the player's Catholic allegiances.
The hatred can also revolve around clubs taking what is perceived as an unfair advantage over others.
In the Sydney rugby union club ranks, for many years, the Randwick Galloping Greens were detested, because they were so successful. Their 'running rugby' style of play became the Australian way, and resentment grew through the belief that if you wanted to be a Wallaby you had to play for Randwick.
They also didn't endear themselves to other clubs, due to their tough exterior, and often miserly manner. A tradition of Sydney club games is the after-match function, usually at the home team's clubhouse. But for years Randwick players were renowned if they were playing away for leaving straight after the game, and not making an appearance at the function. If they lost, they were even quicker in their exit plans.
The Randwick resentment has died somewhat in recent times, with Sydney University taking over that role of public enemy No 1.
This revolves around University's success in securing so much talent from other clubs, through scholarships and enticements. They are looked upon as Australian Rugby's sugar daddies, the ultimate rugby network with tentacles going all ways, especially in the top end of town.
This is not entirely their own fault. The reason why they have been so persistent in chasing the best was to shore up their own future. In 1997 the then struggling Uni was under serious threat of being ousted from the Sydney first-grade premiership.
To counter that, the University hierarchy, which included numerous rich and high profile alumni, went on a concerted campaign to revitalise the club and make it attractive to sporting talent, who understood the importance of life after football. A once musty club became a powerhouse, and others soon became jealous.
Then there's the case of the Manly Sea Eagles, where the dread is due to numerous factors, but partly inspired by one of the best coaching rev-ups of all time, and the most famous club feud of all.
As Chesterton begins his introduction to Manly Sea Eagles: "The most universally popular piece of rugby league memorabilia is a T-shirt boasting a simple, terse message on the front saying: "I support my team and any team that's playing Manly."
Former Wests and Australian player and coach Noel Kelly comments in the book: "Outside of the dedicated locals no one loves Manly. Many people believe Manly is a favoured club and (has) a powerful influence in running the game."
Their long-time chief executive Ken Arthurson was renowned for boasting the largest chequebook in the game, luring so many players to Brookvale, while his power eventually extended to the NSW Rugby League and Australian Rugby League.
The club, based on the picturesque Northern Beaches of Sydney could be so arrogant, typified when their star player turned coach Bob Fulton once declared that he'd like to run referee Bill Harrigan over with a cement truck. They have also never been forgiven for leading to the demise of the North Sydney Bears, one of the more popular Sydney clubs, after a flawed merger which lasted for just two years.
As Chesterton writes: 'Manly is pinpointed as rich, elitist and pampered." They became known as the Silvertails.
That was the invention of Roy Masters- when he was the coach of Western Suburbs, who succeeded in creating a Silvertails-Fibros rivalry in the late 1970s that exists to this day. Masters later became an illustrious sportswriter, and for many years I was lucky to share a desk with him in the Sydney Morning Herald office. That was an experience.
Apart from a first-rate contact book, a faultless work ethic and a passion to push the boundaries on his laptop, you soon learnt that this highly intelligent man had the common touch. He knew how to relate to all.
No surprises that Roy was able to get the best out of a group of footballing desperadoes, especially when he was able to channel their resources in seeking revenge on another club, whom he believed had badly maligned them.
Masters wrote in his book 'Bad Boys' that the infamous Fibro-Silvertail war began in March 1978 in a playoff between Wests and Manly in a Wills Cup pre-season competition held in Melbourne.
"A game, which was supposed to be an exhibition of skill, turned into a bloodbath," Masters wrote.
Masters derived the term 'Fibro' to describe his own team 'from the houses I saw as I drove to training with Tom Raudonikis from Blacktown', while Silvertail 'came from a term I saw in a Frank Hardy novel.' In the 'Outcasts of Foolgarah' Hardy refers to men in morning suits in the Member's Stand at the races as 'Silvertails.'
The two teams travelled to Melbourne on the same flight, and was diverted by fog to Essendon airport.
A bus turned up, and 'the Manly players filed aboard first, consistent with the born-to-rule syndrome that I ascribed to them. We assumed another bus was to carry us to our hotel, and we continued to stand on the concrete until I said to Les Boyd, the fort on feet I'd recruited from Cootamundra, that I sensed both teams were to travel on the same bus.
"Les and I entered, sat down, and Manly second rower Ray Higgs, who had clearly not seen us board, began making snide remarks about the West players standing outside, as if we were residents of what would now be called 'Boganville.' Perhaps it was John 'Dallas' Donnelly's ugh boots, or Bruce 'Sloth' Gibbs's Canadian jacket, or Graeme 'Snake' O'Grady polyester flares, but he derided us, possibly to curry favour with his new Manly teammates, having left Parramatta at the end of the previous year following a pre-grand final dispute with coach Terry Fearnley.
"Boyd began to puff up like an angry toad and, with eyes bulging and knuckles whitening, he hissed to me he was getting off the bus." An official arrived and told both teams they were sharing the same bus and would be staying at the same hotel.
However, Arthurson objected, insisting that Wests be dropped off at the designated hotel, and Manly would find alternate accommodation. Arko's decision to relocate the Sea Eagles to a superior Melbourne hotel, Masters said: "played right into my hands."
Masters worked his team into a frenzy, describing the dressing room as "a great psychiatrist's couch for my core belief that confrontation is central to rugby league; attack versus defence, ball carrier versus tackler, Wests wives in denim versus Manly wives in fur, corporate box versus standing on the hill, hot pies versus cucumber sandwiches." At halftime, Masters 'released the hounds.'
His halftime address is legendary, especially as an AFL club president had been invited into the rooms and taped the Masters rant. The tape eventually finished in the hands of the then NSW Rugby League president Kevin Humphreys.
"I didn't hear the tape of Roy addressing his player. I didn't have to. The entire stand heard it," Humphreys said. "Roy was out of control."
Then mayhem. As Manly hooker John Gray remembers in Chesterton's book: 'They hit me like a missile. It was a bloodbath."
Manly hooker Max Krilich added: "I saw Les Boyd coming at me and he went straight over my shoulder throwing a haymaker at me which missed. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be here now."
Chesterton writes: "Wests intelligence-gathering from the Melbourne match suggested that Manly's fluent game could be disrupted by physical aggression and there were players in the team who could be intimidated."
The next few years, Wests-Manly fixtures were similar to a Sydney Harbour New Year's Eve fireworks display. Several at Lidcombe Oval were legendary. And the ever increasing band of Manly loathers loved watching Wests trying to bash them to oblivion.
Sitting in the Lidcombe dressing rooms, Manly players could not avoid hearing the Wests players motivating themselves. Around that time, footage emerged of Wests players crazily face slapping each other in the dressing rooms.
"They were shouting, screaming, hitting lockers, kicking lockers," Gray said. "They were getting themselves wound up into a frenzy. We'd be rolling our eyes and thinking: "We know what's going to happen here."
Some years on, a truce was called, but the Silvertails-Fibros lives on. Those involved can even see the funny side these days.
Arthurson said: "I laughed at the Silvertails tag because one of our players Freddy Jones used to work on the wharf and Terry Randall drove a truck. They were as working class as you could get."
So who is Australia's most hated sporting team? There are occasional surges of anger when NRL clubs like the Melbourne Storm, Bulldogs and, last week, Parramatta, are caught out rorting the salary cap. But as they have been nabbed and punished heavily the anger gradually subsides.
It is more those who know how to aggravate year after year, leading to the pressure cooker tension building up over decades, and that's where Collingwood lead the pack.
Yet if you ask the anti-Collingwood brigade, why they abhor the Magpies, many cannot come up with a proper explanation. It's just because that's how it is, and that it is how it has been for decades.
That's what their parents, friends, family, relatives have said was the norm. It's a tradition. Collingwood You either love 'em or hate 'em. No middle ground.
Is it nasty? Not really... Collingwood actually revel in that hate. They take it in their stride. So win win all round.
As for me, life became a lot easier after I gave away the Port Adelaide Maggies. I could again show my face in public.