Breaking Down the Smugness of Hawthorn, Carlton, Melbourne, and Essendon Fans

A while back we introduced the reader to a neurotic ailment known as Chasteneditis, a disorder particular to Collingwood, Richmond, Footscray, St Kilda and Fremantle supporters and which manifests itself in chronic ennui, mortal despair and a dysfunctional reality principle and occasional frequent bed-wetting.

This week we're talking about Triumphalaxis—also known as Trumposis or Fuckface Von Clownstickiness—a condition which has spread like a bacillus through Carlton, Hawthorn, Essendon and Melbourne players and supporters at various stages and which—we are now learning—can lie dormant for decades before being reactivated under the slightest change in habitat, leaving those around them extremely fucked off. But what is Triumphalaxis?

Triumphalaxis, or Trumpish braggadocio, is best exemplified in the myth of Narcissus where a youthful hunter falls in love with his own image then dies and comes back as a flower. Sadly those afflicted with the condition don't die and turn into pleasant flowers but get on everyone's tits.

There are unconscious and conscious sufferers and very much like other anti-social disorders, of which Triumphalaxis is a medical cousin, it is really those around the patient who suffer the most under an unbearable avalanche of expectancy that would make Veruca Salt blush.

The modern exemplar of Triumphalaxis is the Hawthorn supporter. One can easily dismiss them as harmless braggarts but if an umpiring decision goes awry or a game is unexpectedly lost, the Hawthorn supporter will seek restorative justice of a southern American gothic style. Almost every living supporter sees a Grand Final victory every 8 minutes and haven't grown accustomed to coping with loss.

'George' is not your typical puffed up inner east WASP, nevertheless a lifetime of Hawthorn supporting has left him intolerant of anything but immediate gratification. After the dizzying highs of the game George seeks to replicate that experience everywhere, all the time. 'I want to have a hot breakfast AND an orgasm at the same time! Is that too much to ask? Ughh, never mind, just bring me the bill.' In his better moods, family and friends allow George to ramble on at length as their eyes glaze over, because they know anything that impedes a Hawthorn sermon invites a boring and doubly long wrath session.

But what of those supporters whose team used to win flags all the fucking time but have been football lavatories for decades? I'm talking here of course about Carlton and Melbourne. Clinicians expected supporters, after decades of disappointment, to overcome their condition or perhaps develop Chasteneditis but the research suggests they are still massive knobs but researchers want to know why.

For Melbourne supporters the explanation goes like this. If they don't win games, they go back to their estates, drink $20+ bottles of wine and shag the butler. Researchers believe this makes them happy and full of excruciating smugness. The game is not an extension of hope, a heart in a heartless world, it's where you break in your R.M. Williams and moleskins.

We think we understand why Essendon supporters remain upbeat and defiant in light of the recent doping disaster and their current position, and it's not because they're mad, that only explains 99% of things. Like Hawthorn and Carlton, they tend also to have won a shitload of Grand Finals in the modern era.

Unlike the Melbourne supporter whose mental state remains unaffected by the fluctuations of football life, it is believed that Triumphalaxis may start as a mental-social condition before leaving biological traces in offspring. Literally, their shit behaviour becomes hereditary. We know this because 20 year old Carlton supporters have never availed their senses of any meaningful contribution by the Carlton Football Club in their entire lifetimes, and yet on the rare occasion that Carlton wins, you will hear their hideous call in the bleachers 'da dada dada'. You can literally hear them grabbing their crotches.

'Ben', a young man from Melbourne's north, will often start projecting his voice at Lear jet volume at a game when addressing his friends standing 9cm away. After an obnoxious verbal performance and rendition of the club song, Ben and his friends will walk at double speed and volume to Jolimont station, bragging all the way, oblivious to the fact I am contemplating using the services of a hired thug to smite him from this bedraggled earth.

What happens to Ben and his gaggle of voluminous cohorts when Carlton lose? Like a Hawthorn supporter, losing is not acceptable so a scorched earth attitude is adopted. Everyone in the club, including relatives, must be expelled—parcelled off to the land of Cain. And if they should lose a second week, well.

The wild fluctuations of mood are never interrogated. The mood is right—and why wouldn't it be because it certainly feels good—therefore every single thing that is not my mood must justify itself before the judgment seat of my ego or give up existence, most particularly coaches. These are the inner workings of the mind of a Triumphalaxis sufferer.

Finally, how has the Hird drug saga affected the average Essendon supporter? 'Anita' from the middle-west of Melbourne has recently experienced a feeling akin, she says, to 'not certainness'. She insists 'not certainness' is different to doubt and that anyone who suggests she has doubts is a lying shit wrangler and may feel free to 'come at her'. Anita has been described by co-workers as not uninsane and feels that in very short order the world will be righted and at the Day of Judgment she will be seated at the right hand of James Hird and will apply to him a tanning lotion and many vanity drugs.

While most psychological conditions can be managed with talk therapy, acceptance of the limitations imposed by the condition, or by heavy drugging, there exist no cures for Triumphalaxis anymore than there are resolutions for breathing other than death.

Diagnosis: untreatable social blight