The passing of the football magician Pele came as no surprise but is still a saddening event. Not only was Pele a masterful footballer, he was a gentleman of the game, both off and on the field. It is much harder to find such a combination these days, such is the ego-driven, overpaid environment that top-flight professionals play in in the modern game.

Most of what I have been of Pele has been on film or TV. I did watch the live broadcast in 1972 of Australia vs Santos at the Sydney Sports Ground, tickets being impossible to get. He was well marked by midfielder Ray Richards but still showed beautiful touches on the ball. At 32 he was probably just ending the period of his best, having retired from the national team the year before. Shortly he would join the New York Cosmos to ride out into a golden retirement.

He is credited with scoring about 1200 goals in 1300 appearances for Santos and 77 from 92 games for Brazil. He was in three World Cup winning sides. His statistics are just astonishing. For all of us young players back then, he was a legend, his name a byword for genius. Truly, he was the GOAT.

I love this postage stamp commemorating his 1000th goal in 1969.

 Another Christmas. The long trip to my elderly mother's flat in Dee Why. The customary nuts and sweets. The traditional English lunch, followed by plum pudding. Presents exchanged and photos taken. Much talk about family, the past. A realisation of the gradual dimming of the festival, the winnowing of its significance in modern Australia. But still, there is much to be grateful for.

Unlike many families, we don't have any horror stories about Christmas Day. At worst it is occasionally disappointing, but most of the time it hits the mark. Family. Apart from Christ, that is what it is about in the main.

I have made a big u-turn this year. Back to the realm of faith, to a reinstatement of real meaning, genuine hope. Surely the insertion of the Divine into human history is a big talking point? A showstopper? We should be rushing to buy tickets. Alas we live in sceptical times and I suspect, many people are not very happy.

Christina Rosetti, whom I have mentioned quite often recently, wrote a lot of devotional poetry. That is not everyone's cup of tea, I grant you. But she does write other stuff too. It was a hot day in Sydney today, but the title of the poem I am quoting from is In the bleak midwinter. Another hemishere entirely.

"The earth stood hard as iron/Water like a stone" sets the emotional tone in the opening stanza. How could there be joy or life in such a place, "snow on snow on snow." And yet God cannot be held by mere heaven and will break though on Earth, even in a humble stable. Angels are gathered to adore him but the infant will have a "Breastful of milk/and a mangerful of hay." He is worshipped, adored and yet, paradoxically, helpless.

Rosetti concludes,

"What can I give Him, poor as I am?

 If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

 If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

 Yet what I can give Him: give my heart."

Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth.

I am sometimes guilty of dropping or too rough handling my mobile phone and robust as they are, there is such a thing as once too often. So it was yesterday, my two and half year old Samsung A50 gave up the ghost and refused to be rebooted. Thanks to youtube techies, I tried some remarkable techniques, including tapping and slapping and massaging front and back. There was even a stint in the freezer for thirty minutes. Alas, despite repeated attempts over many hours, the black screen remained.

Its a shame really because its the best phone I have ever owned and I would gladly have ridden into the sunset with it. Now it is among the fallen in a drawer full of inferior predecessors. Not having enough money to buy its actual replacement (A53), I bought a discounted budget phone, the Google Pixel 6a. Only time will tell if it can live up to the last to go. But I must really begin treating the phone more kindly and with greater care.

Ann and JJ departed Sydney International this morning on a Thai Airways flight to London via Bangkok. I watched the takeoff in animation on Flightradar 24 and felt very teary as the tiny plane flew over Botany Bay before banking and heading north-west.

I know that they will have a wonderful time and I will pray daily that they are blessed as they go about their travels. It doesn't stop me from feeling sad though and I looked somewhat forlornly on the empty bed last night. The important thing is that the real fullness of love is only apparent in the absence. This experience only reinforces that idea.

So I have five weeks to myself, although Tom will be here for three of them. Best to make good use of them.

About a week ago a freight train going east on the Blue Mountains line partially derailed when one of the carriages came off the track. Unfortunately the train driver was unaware of the incident and so continued on for at least 10 kilometres, the dislodged wheel tearing up sleepers as it went. I am surprised that trains don't have sensors that can alert drivers when such a thing occurs, though maybe they do.

We have had a year of disruptions on the rail network, from strikes to landslides to flooding. The new Mariyung trains, which have been sitting idle for two years now, are due to come into service soon to replace the sturdy and reliable v-sets that have plied the inter-city lines for almost 40 years. I doubt that they'll last the same length of time.

The year is winding down, with Ann and JJ leaving for Europe on Wednesday, leaving Tom and I to our own devices. Maybe I will do a couple of extra shifts at 2RPH to fill in the time.

1. The damaged track looking west from Hazelbrook Station (repair crews in the distance)

2. Closeup of the offending carriage.

The current World Cup in Qatar has been jogging my memory about things Fifa-ish. I should add that a visit to my mum's unit in Dee Why on Thursday last also proved to be a powerful aid to recall. I was sitting on the lounge when she pointed out an old cloth badge that was lying on a sideboard. It was my Manly Warringah Soccer Association Referees badge, an item which I had obviously removed from my uniform some decades earlier in order to preserve the memory.

You see, my teen years were dominated by the sport. I played, coached, managed and officiated it. I also spectated the game from the sideline, the grandstand and on TV. I think I went to every Socceroos Sydney game from 1973 to 1977. It was an obsession that I shared with my best friend, Wayne. We had the full kit and flags to boot.

Our ref's uniform was the classic black and white, the same as for professional games at that time. We were payed a small sum to ref junior soccer matches and as we became better, we graduated to older players. At 16 I think were doing Under 18 games and acting as linesmen in all-age games. Of course, you get to know the rules very well. You get to realise also how flawed that knowledge is amongst players and coaches. And people on the sideline!

I find the current iteration of the hand-ball rules perplexing. Back in the 1970's, a penalty was awarded if the player deliberately handled the ball or brought it under control as a result of an unintentional handling. Thus the referee made the call based on what they saw and there were grounds for reasonable doubt. Today it appears that the ball only has to strike your arm or hand under any circumstances and a penalty results. Players are getting pinged for any old infringement, including one extraordinary decision when the ball was belted at a player as he fell backwards, using his hand to break his fall. The ball struck his hand as he fell. Now that's just dumb, in my estimation.

The rule book.                                                    

The badge.

The arrest of suspects recently who were allegedly planning a coup in Germany is somewhat of surprise, The group, calling themselves Reichburger (which does not come mit pommes frites) is a little hard to pin down ideologically. But one might have thought that many years of stability in politics and sound economic growth in Germany would have headed off any return to the disasterous failed projects of the past. Apparently, you can't please everyone, especially budding right-wingers.

At least one section of the Reichsburger deny that the German Federal Republic exists and harken back romantically to the borders of the Second Reich in 1914, claiming that the Weimar Constitution of 1919 was illegal. That, of course, claws back territory now in the possession of France, Poland, the Czech Republic and even Russia. What are the chances?

While details of the coup are sketchy at this stage, it strikes me that this is likely to be an amateurish plot by a small group of deluded individuals that would make the 1923 Beer-Hall Putsch in Munich look like a full-on revolution. Of course the Nazis started very small but their dreadful cause was aided by a calamitous end to the Great War, a collapsing economy and loads of disgruntled demobilized soldiers. Oh, and a big communist a party too.

Still, best to keep an eye on things even if the game is up.

First Impressions

'Forty years is a stretch,' he said

'A generation passing.' 

Such a length-

Without the milk, the honey,

Promises made,

Or someplace to lay your head

Out of wind and rain

Other than a tent.

So it all went, 

A bunch of spies -

But ten could confirm

Of the twelve sent:

Giants were afoot.

Oh, the land was ripe

Like the old man said,

But not for our picking,

We'd be bent like ploughs,

Wives and sons bled,

Sweat of the brow,

Never mind, promised land.

Egypt's looking better now.

Three square, a warm bed.

 Christina Rosetti might have had Hamlet in mind when she wrote The Bourne. The Danish Prince, in one famous soliloquay, speaks of "the undiscovered country from whose bourn/no traveller returns." As keen as he was at dispatching Claudius, Hamlet had much time, possibly too much, to reflect upon his condition. Rosetti would surely have known the play and most likely seen it though as for that, she may have come across the title quite by accident.

Underneath the growing grass,

Underneath the living flowers,

Deeper than the sound of showers:

There we shall not count the hours

By the shadows as they pass.

Youth and health will be but vain,

Beauty reckoned of no worth:

There a very little girth

Can hold round what once the earth

Seemed too narrow to contain.

Introspective, maudlin, think you? Rosetti appeals to me for the very reason she may repel others. Reflecting on the levelling effect of death, where wealth, beauty, fame or achievement are rendered meaningless, is a passtime for deeper thought, but one that finds little purchase today. Rosetti was a devout Christian and so would have known that bodily death was but a transitional phase. This didn't stop her dwelling upon it, which she often does in her verse. If you can think with fearless clarity about what is to come, then your present may also become clearer too. 

Just before we went to air on Saturday, (Newcastle Herald, 2RPH), I found out quite by chance that one of the readers for that shift was a alumni of the Theatre Studies Department of the UNSW. She had been through about a decade before me but many of the staff I encountered (my stint was 1977-1979) were the same, Dr Jean Wilhelm, Dr Philip Parsons, Dr Thierse (and a few others whom I cant remember) obviously had quite long careers at the campus.

I had never intended to study theatre when I enrolled with a teaching scholarship at UNSW. I was mentally locked into English, History and Political Science, but was short a couple of units. So on the recommendation of one of the advisors, I included some theatre-based units. It's fair to say that that one decision was both eventful and fateful, having a hand in both my rise as an effective teacher and my subsequent fall.

As it turned out I went on to major in Theatre Studies as an undergrad, then, ten years later completed a Masters degree in the same discipline at the same university. I am really grateful for the excellent teaching I received from these passionate and talented educators. Post-teaching, the skills and outlook that were the combined effort of study and practice have stayed with me and been a boon when both working overseas and in volunteering at home.

The same day the other reader on the program told me a powerful story in response to my question, 'Why do you walk with a limp?' But that is a tale for another day.

It is impossible to overstate the the performance of the Socceroos at the World Cup in Qatar. Including their fighting defeat this morning to Argentina, this team, which was written off before the first ball was kicked two weeks ago, went beyond even the efforts of the group of 2006. This, is spite of having a squad largely composed of journeyman footballers, a manager who was routinely pilloried and legions of armchair critics both at home and abroad. 

Here is another chance to build the game in Australia by learning from the mistakes made in the last two decades. We can produce high calibre players and run of the mill and everything in between should the right reforms be enacted and appropriate funding is found and used wisely. Perhaps in two or three world cups from now, the Socceroos will progress to the quarters and the then the semis. And beyond that.

Congratulations to Arnie and the boys for making this a proud moment for a grateful nation.

Australia arrived in Qatar two weeks ago to low expectations back home. After an underwhelming qualifying period and a last minute escape from the clutches of Peru in a playoff, there were few outside the squad who thought that the team would get out of their group. Moreover, there were doubts about the capacity of the manager to handle big assignments against quality opposition. The feeling was that we were really just making up the numbers and much commentary suggested the team would soon be on the first flight home.

Then there was the opening match against World Champions France, who seemed to rather too easily carve the Socceroos open in their 4-1 win. Pessimists saw that as the final piece of evidence that we would shortly be exiting the tournament. We were just not good enough.

Funny how things can change around in the space of 4 days. Defeating Tunisia first and then Denmark this morning, both by a solitary goal, has changed gloom to euphoria, with former critics falling over themselves to praise the team. Two wins in a row and three goals from open play have set a new benchmark for any future Socceroo side.

The Round of 16 begins shortly and Australia have the daunting task of taking on Messi's Argentina. Having started slowly with a shock defeat to Saudi Arabia (possibly the biggest upset in World Cup history) the South Americans have looked awfully good in their last two games. Messi is in top form. The team oozes talented players.

Yet who knows? Football is one of those games when upsets can occur anywhere at any time. The Socceroos can only get better and with an ounce of good luck, might take their fancied opponents down to the wire.

Who would have thought?