...from the jaws of victory

...from the jaws of victory

It was there for the taking. A fixture against Blacktown, and in the closing minutes we watched, agonized, from the sidelines as a slender lead was whittled down and overtaken.

This was the year I went from player to spectator, the warning bells of a recurrent neck injury finally becoming audible even to me. It is difficult to let being part of something bigger than yourself go, and so I began to chronicle my team, the men I had shed blood and sweat with over too brief a time. Mostly, this is pretty straight forward, but when you enter the change rooms of a losing side in the minutes just after the game with a camera around your neck the feeling can be a little tense.

Shooting from where my camera hung in front of me, I tried to capture some of the sense of how this feels. This is not meant to be a voyeuristic photo, in any sense, but I felt like I was photographing the scene of a tragedy, like I was capturing something I wasn’t meant to.

There is a smell in a place like this that has nothing to do with sweat, dencorub, and unwashed kit. It is the smell of weeks, months, sometimes years of striving to achieve something that you feel is worthwhile, only to see it taken from you despite all your best efforts. It is hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t been here, but those who have will recognize the clenched jaw, the slump of the shoulders, and hear that shuffling, clattering silence that exists in a losing change room. And hopefully they will know why I love this photo.

Next year boys…

...from the jaws of victory belongs to the following groups:

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