Grand Final Fever

Penrith Mall, 1990

Anyone who knows me would know full well that my interest in rugby league is beyond minimal. The same could be said for most sport, actually. I enjoyed playing sport in primary school but it became too competitive after that and my lack of talent meant that I was no one's asset on any team. 

It was okay. I had other interests. Really.

Having lived in Penrith my entire life, however, and even with a distinct lack of time spent watching the Penrith Panthers play, I still cannot escape having some sort of personal connection to footy. 

I'll just say it - I love watching Penrith transform itself in response to Grand Final fever. 

I don't watch the game. I never watch the game. Not even the six Grand Finals featuring the Panthers that have taken place during my lifetime. 

But boy, when that fever descends on Penrith, it's hard to resist. 

I might not enjoy the sport itself but the passion it instills in my home town is something to behold.

1990 and 1991 saw back-to-back Grand Finals featuring both the Panthers and the Canberra Raiders. In that first year, I was in Year 5 and everyone at school was permitted to wear a jersey to school the day before the big game. This was the last year of the brown-and-white uniform, when the team were locally dubbed the Chocolate Soldiers, and the school became awash in these colours. Being ten years old I desperately needed to fit in so I got a jersey to wear to school. 

A few brave souls showed up that day in the green-and-white of the Raiders. They were mercilessly (and justifiably) harassed. How could anyone dare to wear those colours in the sun-soaked paradise of Penrith? This was Penrith's first time in the Grand Final after playing in first grade League for nearly 30 years. It was our combined love as town citizens that would help power the team to a victory. Anyone who didn't join us in cheering them on was clearly someone who didn't love their hometown!  

Alas, it wasn't to be. Come Monday, those few Raiders fans, those emerald outliers, those Territorian traitors, they came into school swelling with youthful pride and the rosy-cheeked arrogance of the triumphant contrarian. There is little fury like the anger of the defeated Penrith resident. We knew, we absolutely positively knew, that the Panthers had lost because of these few turncoats who had refused to support their local team.

I never watched the game. But at least I wasn't a filthy Canberra supporter. 

The following year saw the embattled and hardened Panthers win that rightful victory over the Raiders in the rematch of all rematches. I was once again swept up in a sea of jerseys as Penrith swapped their traditional brown-and-white for the new colours of black, red, yellow, and green. It was Year 6 and this was our year - we came of age alongside the Panthers as they transitioned from being runner-up Chocolate Soldiers to first-place Liquorice Allsorts. 

I collected Panthers football cards that year. Had the whole set. Even went and watched a game at Panthers stadium and was bored out of my brain. Didn't watch the Grand Final. 

Took great pleasure in hearing that Canberra lost though.

It was a long time before I had to think about footy that intently again. My brother was and remains a diehard Panthers fan, so I heard about victories and losses through him, but watch a game? I did not. 

Once, in 1999, I was training to be a sound recordist for the Sydney Olympics. I was given a 'shotgun' microphone, the sort that can record sound from far away, and I was sent to record the sound for a televised game between the Balmain Tigers and the North Sydney Bears. I had to run alongside the field, headphones on, holding this long mic above my head to get every body-connecting tackle, swear, grunt, and referee call. The only thing I really remember from this game is the instructions the gruff audio director gave me, how relatively easy it was to keep pace with the players from the sidelines as they were often stopped by their opposites, and the dressing-down I got at the end for coiling the mic lead around my arm. I guess you could say I sort of watched that game. 

In the era of the early '00s I was living in an old house in Penrith CBD and such was my vicinity to Panthers Stadium that, any time there was a game on, I could hear the ref whistle echoing across the night and the roar of the fans whenever the Panthers got a try. In 2003, when the Panthers once more clawed their way into a Grand Final, I found that my house was in the epicentre of the metaphorical earthquake that would follow.

In the eye of the victory-tornado that descended on Penrith after the 2003 Grand Final win, I watched as a pyramid of empty shopping trolleys were deposited on my lawn. I watched as the streets locked up bumper-to-bumper, hundreds of vehicles flying Panthers flags, horns blaring and mullets proudly swaying outside car windows in the winds of conquest. I saw the immaculately coiffeured flowerbed on the roundabout of Castlereagh Road, which had previously spelt out 'Penrith' in honour of the 2000 Olympics Rowing Event, now changed to 'Penruff' in honour of our Rugby League victory.

Again, I never watched this game, but I revelled in that atmosphere. I bristled at the craziness of it, marvelled at how a whole town could feel so united, so invigorated.

I saw it all again two years ago when people started dressing their bins up in the colours of the team. Saw the massive Nathan Cleary heads on lawns like some sort of cargo-cult impression of the Easter Island stone figures. Saw more cars streaming Panthers flags around our streets like a cavalcade for some president or king. Saw it in the 48 hour party that trashed one fan's house over the road. 

Saw it today in the black, red, yellow, and green duct tape that someone had decorated their ute with. And in the re-emergence of the giant cardboard heads of players displayed outside a local cafe. 

Will the Panthers win a third successive Grand Final victory this year? Their fifth premiership in total? 

I won't watch the game but I'll be happy to hear the roar.

Sentence Variety

I find it can be a little tricky to look at media consumption and journalism in the classroom these days. This isn't a comment on a lack of material - there's plenty that can be discussed - it's more a case of not necessarily wanting to politicise the room or (more precisely) not wanting to get waylaid by the partisan nature of today's media. 

In the lesson below I want to focus on writing skills and manipulation of language without students getting too fixated on the 'hot topics' these elements are invariably tied to. There are no doubt some great lessons that could focus on political metanarratives but in this case, when teaching Stage 5 (Year 9 in particular), I want to force a more laser-like focus onto the way things are said rather than what is being said.

It's a little cheesy and hokey, but the best way to do this is to invent a news story.

For a lesson on teaching sentence structure, we can start with this invented feature article extract:

Not really caring how people would react, controversial scientist Krayon Lewis published his research on a free website that could be accessed by anyone. He laughs in a mischievous way and I feel deeply uncomfortable. I want to go home. Who is this guy? Krayon is a botanical scientist yet he thinks about cars a lot. He recently drove from Melbourne to Brisbane.

"My research will revolutionise the world," he says confidently.

He picks up his research paper, looking around for an audience, and then reads aloud.

"Fuel made from orange peels are the future," he reads aloud.

No one is listening. I cringe when he laughs again. If this is his vision then I'm not sure how much attention he will get. Krayon keeps on laughing. The scientist will keep on cackling until I eventually leave the room. 

A printout of this extract can be found here.

Engaging with the piece

Read through the above extract with the students and then discuss sentence length with them. Where is the longest sentence? Where is the shortest? Ask students to use a highlighter to identify as many verbs as possible. 

After this has been done, introduce this PowerPoint. It takes students through the three different sentence types, models their construction, and prompts students to think about sentence diversity when writing. 

The PowerPoint presentation includes the following information:

Sentences: Using Variety

Slide 1. Sentence Types. 

There are three main kinds of sentences:

1. Simple sentences
2. Compound sentences
3. Complex sentences

In the next three slides you will see examples and explanations of each. Use these to come up with your own definitions and examples for each of the sentence types.

Slide 2. Simple Sentences.

A simple sentence is a single-clause sentence. 

A clause consists of just one verb.

The sentences here are all simple. 

Here are examples from the feature article:

• He recently drove from Melbourne to Brisbane.
• I want to go home.
• No one is listening.
• He laughs in a sinister way.
• Who is this guy?

These are simple sentences. This means they only have one verb. Where is the verb in each of the examples?

Slide 3. Compound Sentences.

Compound sentences are longer and have two independent clauses.

And, if, but, so yet, or, as - these are the connectives used to join clauses in compound sentences.

Here are some examples:

• Krayon is a botanical scientist yet he thinks about cars a lot.
• I cringe while he laughs again.
• He laughs in a mischievous way and I feel deeply uncomfortable.

These are compound sentences, which means they have two verbs and a connective. Where is the verb in each clause? And which part of the sentence is the connective?

Slide 4. Complex Sentences.

A complex sentence has multiple clauses that rely on each other.

The clauses are dependent on each other. This means that if you broke the sentence into simple sentences then only one of them would make sense as a sentence on its own, like this:

COMPLEX SENTENCE: "The scientist will keep on cackling until I eventually leave the room".

BROKEN INTO TWO SINGLE SENTENCES:

                The scientist will keep on cackling.

                Until I eventually leave the room.

If you read these two sentences completely on their own, which one would make more sense? Why?

Slide 5. Examples of Complex Sentences

There are lots of different kinds of complex sentences. Use the following to model your own complex sentence examples:

• Not really caring at all how people would react, controversial scientist Krayon Lewis published his research on a free website that could be accessed by anyone. 
• He picks up his research paper, looking around for an audience, and then reads aloud. 
• If this is his vision then I'm not sure how much attention he will get.

If we broke these up into separate clauses (and potentially removed any connectives), which clauses would work on their own as simple sentences?

Resources

Feature article extract - worksheet

Sentence Variety - powerpoint

After walking through the PowerPoint, students will be primed to use a variety of sentences in their own attempt to craft a feature article extract of a similar length. A second lesson could then prompt the class with a follow-up to the above extract in which Krayon Lewis is revisited one year later, or you can allow students to invent a story of their own devising.

Students can then swap stories with a peer and identify examples of each of the three sentence types. 

This resource was developed and adapted specifically for this blog.