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Last weekend I flew to Perth to see Hawthorn defeat Fremantle. Defeating Fremantle was to be the first domino to fall in our progress to the premiership from 7^th place.

It started optimistically enough and got better.

I effervesced my way through check in and airport security at Tullamarine and ambling up to the gate I bumped into our talented tall defender Stephen Gilham.

“Oh Lord,” I said to myself “I am on the same plane as the players.”

Stephen greeted me with a “Hi Ross”. I had met him at the 2008 Premiership dinner through his gorgeous mother who came over to my table that night for a chat. She is a 3AW fan. At this stage you might be thinking that I can’t remember her name. In fact I can. It’s Mrs. Gilham

Stephen, by the way, is everything a father could wish his son to be: intelligent, relaxed, assured and a Hawthorn player.

I ticked off the players as I boarded the plane. Campbell Brown appeared to be the only one planning on reading a book. “One more than his father,” observed a fellow passenger.

As I floated to my seat I discovered that the passenger I was to sit next to for the following three and a half hours was Buddy Franklin. He was to be my prisoner for the next 210 minutes. Could this trip get any better? He introduced himself as Lance. I had drawn the aisle seat but when I recovered the power of speech I asked Lance if he would prefer the aisle or the window.

“Aisle if that’s alright mate,” he said.

If that’s alright! There is no limit, Lance, to what’s alright.

This however was a mistake. It turned out his best mate Josh Gibson had a spare seat next to him. Since he was on the aisle “Lance” was now free to escape. Had I kept him on the defensive side in the window seat he would have found it harder to break my tag. As soon as the fasten seat belt sign dinged off he was gone. Never to return.

Still he was still only one seat away and there were plenty of other players close enough to observe. Brad Sewell, Sammy Mitchell, Michael Osborne, Cyril “Junior Boy” Rioli, and more.

The players seemed calm. I took this as a good sign. In fact I was taking everything as a good sign. They ate and they slept and they went to the toilet a lot. These were good signs. They drank a lot of water. Another good sign.

Their food was specially prepared for them by the club and distributed by the OIC food. They didn’t touch the airline stuff. All but one that is. Lance had already had the club issue food [2 sandwiches and 2 bundles of sushi] when he troubled the flight attendants as to whether there was any of the chicken curry left that he had seen the other passengers eating. There was. Good. He had two. He has a Noah’s Ark approach to sustenance.

[I wondered how much sushi Teddy Whitten might have seen in his long career and concluded the only raw fish Teddy would ever have seen was the glimpse he got of a piece of flake just before it was dragged through an aluminium bowl full of batter on its way to the deep fryer.]

When they weren’t eating, sleeping, drinking bottled water or abluting the Hawks acted like young men of their age. They horsed around in the cabin and provided each other with that very Australian indication of genuine friendship and camaraderie – they insulted each other. Velvet jibes in velvet gloves.

We arrived in Perth. It was the only airline flight I wished had gone longer. I mingled with the players at the baggage carousel and got a photograph of myself with Lance and Cyril to send to my children. I joked with them that I was at the baggage carousel even though I hadn’t brought any luggage. They laughed politely. What a wag. I actually didn’t have any luggage. I only took carry on. Sad wag.

I left them and floated to the taxi rank.

What a grand day. A day of childhood dreams in an adult body. I couldn’t have been happier.

On game day I took this lingering euphoria to the ground in Subiaco and went straight to my lonely Hawthorn section seat. The players were warming up before the first bounce practising tackling drills and goal kicking. I looked up. The sky was a non-Melbourne shade of blue and the temperature was non-Melbourne mild. I looked all around. The crowd were numerous and universally ferally purple. I looked straight ahead. The ground itself was eerily nuclear big and their ruckman was the approximate dimensions of a palm tree.

My heart skipped a beat. “We’re going to lose,” I said to myself.

And we did.

Ross goes to Perth with buddies

Ross Stevenson gets his 'kid in a candy store' on during flight to Perth to watch his beloved Hawks with Sly Of The Mad Footy Fan World. Watch his 'TV quality' mobile phone footage by clicking the image of Buddy and Ross on the right.