Tale of the Riverton Roos

The lamentable tale of the Riverton Roos Football Club. An urban legend designed to make young up-and-coming underage footballers laugh at night, but one that nevertheless, is true.

Okay, I admit it - we sucked. We just plain sucked. We were the worst team in the league. Perhaps the worst team in the history of football itself. (Yes, worse than Fitzroy.)

But we kept on trucking! Game after game, season after season. The same core group of about ten players just kept coming back and never giving up. That in itself may've been at the heart of our problems - you need 18 kids to make up a team. And that doesn't even include reserves.

That didn't matter to my friends and me though. Every year we managed to scrounge just enough people for a team. Whether it was by tricking new players into playing (who hadn't yet heard our terrible track record), coercing kids in the age-group below us to play up a grade, or just begging and pleading with our non-football playing friends to play "just a few games," we got by on the skin of our teeth. Of course, once said friends and new players experienced the lose-fest that is Riverton first-hand, they had often defected to a different team or given up football altogether by the time the next season rolled around. It was a real (but welcome) shock if they stuck around. And then the same core group of ten would have to go through the whole process again, to build up to the barest minimum a team could possibly have, so that we could lose every single game next season too! We were really that bad.

A day when we scored was a rapturous event for all, with our parents cheering wildly on the boundary. Really, our highest score for a game one season was seven. One goal and two points. Sure, the other team was probably on about a hundred, but no one could really be bothered counting...

When do I get to the inspirational part of this as-yet-uninspirational-and-perhaps-a-tad-depressing-story? Well, now as a matter of fact. Dagnabit, we had FUN! While other teams were all caught up in the pressure of winning and improving their football skills, we were enjoying ourselves. We didn't care about winning (obviously); we just wanted to play football. So that's what we did. As an added bonus, due to our player shortage, it meant that everyone got a prominent position on the field and was assured plenty of action with the ball. Plus the situation helped create a group of tightly knit close friends. Friends I still see to this day, many years later. Being hopelessly outclassed was part of our charm. We would joke about it and poke fun at ourselves at training too, but we would always come back next year. We were Riverton. We were terrible. But we were having fun! Yay team!

P.S. And although eventually we did have to disband and join another team because that year we only got seven players (yes, some people did drop out.) The good news is we passed the flame onto the younger generation. (It's like the magical land of Narnia). Our day is now long since past, but the latest batch of Rivo Roos seem to be doing pretty good for themselves - about third on the ladder. One can only assume our courage and determination inspired them...

For more stories and fact sheets on friends and friendship, check out these links...

• Friendships(Fact sheet)
• Friends (Fact sheet)
• The Importance Of Friends(Story)