#MissYouFooty: Ross’s Love Letter To Footy goes online

For five years, Ross Stevenson’s Love Letter To Footy event has been raising money for the Australian Prostate Centre.

Each season, five well-known Melburnians pen a love letter to Australian rules footy and read it to a crowd, with all ticket sales and live auction proceeds going to the APC.

But with the event postponed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Ross and the APC are taking it online for the time being.

Why? Two key reasons:

1) To raise awareness about prostate cancer, and hopefully get some crucial donations along the way; and,

b) To articulate and share are collective longing for the game that normally brightens our wintry days.

So Ross is asking YOU to get involved, to write your own Love Letter to Football (350 words and under), and be in the running for some great prizes along the way.

To be in the running for prizes, write your Love Letter to Football and submit it online at www.lovelettertofootball.org.au.

To spread the word, jump onto social media and use the hashtag #missyoufooty or tag @loveletterfooty (Instagram and Twitter) and share what you miss or love about footy (it could be a photo, a short video, an extract from your own letter, anything footy related).

There are two prize categories: Adults 18 years+ and kids 18 years and under, and each Friday Ross Stevenson will read an excerpt from the weekly winner from each category and put the full letter online.

This week’s junior winner gets a $100 Officeworks voucher, and the adult winner gets a $100 Coles voucher!

But it’s not just about prizes. Here’s what two previous Love Letter writers have to say about the process.

“I wrote my ‘Love Letter to Football’ for the inaugural 2016 fundraising lunch and I found writing the letter not only a lot of fun but it also allowed me to attempt to articulate why I love football so much – both hilarious and serious. The Tigers weren’t going so well in 2016 and I still found much to love. If I were to write again these days, it would take a book for me to recite all the ways that I love football. I encourage all of you to have a go – to remember what the game and your club means to you and your family and friends and why. Sometimes, it’s only when what we love is absent that we realise its importance to us.”

– Peggy O’Neal AO

“When I need a ‘pick me up’ in isolation I think about a Cyril Rioli blind turn or a Luke Hodge bump or a Peter Knights hanger or a Jason Dunstall goal or Essendon losing with the last kick of the day. Or I think about 10-year-old me going to the footy with my Dad. All of these things put a big smile on my face. Why don’t you put a smile on your own face and pen a letter to football explaining why you love it so.”

– Lehmo