How much importance do we give to the uniforms we wear?
Are they just a colourful necessity or do they represent something more meaningful, more soulful?
In the space of a week, this idea of uniforms and what they represent have seen a wild variance.
On Monday, I was honoured to partake in the Big Freeze 5 slide at the MCG, on the Queen’s Birthday to help raise money for the FightMND charity, which is led by the inspirational Neale Daniher.
MND, or ‘the Beast’, as Neale refers to it, is a hideous disease that has no treatment and no cure.
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Truthfully, those of us who have been asked to slide into the icy waters once a year would be prepared to do a whole lot more than this, but we are asked to slide and so we do.
The uniforms of course, are left up to the participants, but the mood is clearly one of surrealism or frivolity.
The disease is serious, the fundraising crucial, but the slide is some light relief for everyone.
I chose to be a warm can of Melbourne Bitter, because its spiritual home is the esky. So yes, that costume, was more or less meaningless, even if the cause was anything but.
From one end of the spectrum to the other, in terms of uniforms, has revealed itself this week for the Bulldog pack.
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Our jumper for the Round 17 clash with the Demons will see the players run out in a commemorative Fightback guernsey. I’m jealous. The jumper is a glorious nod to the past.
The Fightback of ’89 is a source of immense pride to every single one of us. What’s the old saying? To know where we are going, we have to see where we’ve been.
Well, we’ve been close to the edge of extinction a couple of times, but in 1989, our club was read the last rights. Heroes emerged. A community railed against mood of the times and our club was saved.
Uniforms hey, sometimes they are little more than a brief respite from reality and at other times they are a symbol for all of the things we think and feel but cannot say.
Whatever your threads, it’s the cause that pulses in your heart underneath that really counts.
