#MissYouFooty: Ross’s Love Letter To Footy – this week’s winners!

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.

HERE ARE THIS WEEK’S WINNERS!

Click PLAY below to hear Ross read the letters out on 3AW Breakfast

ADULT WINNER

Peter, Central Park (Vic). (Carlton supporter)

Dear Footy, I love you because you allowed two of my favourite worlds to collide in the most magnicent way.

I’ve been a passionate Carlton supporter since the early 1960s.

In the late 1990s I worked as a paramedic in Melbourne.

I was called to pick up an elderly lady, Mrs Deacon, to transport her from home to hospital due to a chest infection.

I undertook the usual introduction to an obviously unwell, but conscious and alert lady with all her faculties.

She was extremely grumpy with the usual complaints about leaving the house unoccupied and who was going to feed the cat. I commented that the spelling of her surname was unusual as it was normally D-e-a-k-i-n, and was she possibly related to the great Carlton footballer of the 1940s and Brownlow medallist Bert Deacon?

Well, the night became daytime as a massive ray of sunshine descended on the room as her face filled with pride and a smile spread across her face. “Am I related to him, he’s my husband”!

She became the most delightful and compliant patient you could ask for – I heard how they had met, the wonderful stories about the successful Carlton teams of that era, the famous 1945 ‘Bloodbath’ Grand Final and the proudest night of her life when Bert won the 1947 Brownlow Medal and his sad and premature death in 1974.

But the best was yet to come. After spending about two hours with her, we were at the farewell stage.

After a handover in a busy room of medical professionals, she beckoned me individually with a quiet, “Son, come over here”.

She said: close your eyes and put your hands out in front of you”.

I walked back towards her in a dimly lit room and did as she requested. I felt a small object. “Open your eyes” and when I looked down, there it was, the 1947 Brownlow Medal glistening in the palm of my hand.

“I carry it everywhere with me and I thought you’d like to see it”.

She was correct. Thanks footy.

Yours sincerely, Peter Jurkovsky.

KIDS WINNER

Noah, Seddon (Vic). (Geelong supporter)

Dear Footy, I love you.

I’m not sure what I miss more.

Watching Dangerfield take a hanger on Fyfe, or eating my perfectly salted hot chips at halftime.

All I want to do right now is watch Geelong become 2020 premiers.

Instead, I just have to watch games that I already know the result of on Footy Vault.

Although it’s great watching Geelong beat Collingwood in the 2011 Grand Final, it would be even better if I could actually watch Geelong take down the Pies in the 2020 Grand Final.

I can’t believe I have to wait three excruciatingly long months (or longer) without watching heart-stopping-hangers, godly goals and talented tackles.

It’s going to be like having Christmas with no PRESENTS!

Another thing that’s going to make three months of no footy feel like hell, is not being able to hear Bruce McAvaney say “YES!” over 100 times when Buddy Franklin kicks a goal from the centre square or him say “speeeeeeccial” when Dusty performs a don’t argue to three opponents and then snaps a freak goal from deep in the pocket.

I’m really sad that with no footy to watch, I’m not going to be able to hang my scarf out the window as we drive home celebrating Geelong’s 15th straight victory.

Walking to the train station is also another key thing that I’m going to miss.

When you get there and you go for the away team, there’s always more people from the home team around you and you start to feel quite intimidated.

However, when you get on your train, you see people that have come from “god knows” where who are also proud supporters of your team.

That’s when you know that ‘tonight’s game is going to be a cracker’.

I guess that’s about it old mate. I’ve got to go.

7mate is about to show the 2009 Grand Final again. I can’t wait to see the look on my dad’s face (a Saints supporter) when Matty Scarlett performs his famous toe poke to Gazza in the dying seconds – OUCH!

Love your biggest fan, Noah (11y.o)