It seems outrageous now, but when Australian basketball legend Chris Anstey would come to the Western Oval as a young Footscray fan he would have to stand on an Esky to see the action.
Anstey would eventually grow to be 213cm tall, or 7'0" in the old language, but he still gets a buzz out of going to the same pocket when he visits the ground that was such a major part of his childhood.
Arriving early for his guest appearance on this week’s Freedom in a Cage podcast with Bob Murphy and Adi Brown, Anstey again went and stood in the same spot and allowed all of the memories come flooding back
“I don't get over this side of town as much as I'd like to, I'm in the process of probably moving back, but we grew up in Coral Avenue, just behind the hospital until I was six years old,” he explained. “I used to wander through the back streets and stand in the forward pocket at the Whitten end, and watch all of those guys run around.
“I used to get a few cents to go and get a pie at halftime and I was young enough back then that I had to stand on an esky, which sounds ridiculous now, but even when we moved across to Keilor we'd park near where we used to live and do the same walk with my three younger brothers.”
After a career that took him from the Melbourne Tigers to the Dallas Mavericks, Chicago Bulls and back to Melbourne again via Russia, Anstey still yearns for the days of watching his beloved Bulldogs in the suburbs.
“I still remember the days, it's the little things,” he said.
“Looking at the scores of all the other games ticking over on the scoreboard, figuring out who they were and doing the ladder in the car on the way home.
“I listened to Chris Scott speak a while back and he spoke about the history of the AFL and what it meant to be a part of that fabric, and it's not the games. It's what we've just described; the sounds, the people, the getting there, the going home the events around it.”
He said while it was difficult to pin down what memory as a highlight, one moment that stands out in his mind is Simon Beasley’s famous intercept mark against Collingwood in Round 10, 1984. Beasley would calmly go back and slot the game winning goal and young Anstey was impacted for forever.
“That was a big one, the atmosphere that day… One's like that stand out, but just the overall feel of being here, and coming back here for a pre-season came a couple of seasons back was really, really cool.”
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