St Kilda Football club have announced that there will be no “mad Monday’ celebrations for their club this year, come the end of season over the weekend. Whereas, traditionally, players of clubs not taking part in the football finals, have treated the Monday following the last round of games as a season ending bender, in time honoured Australian tradition; St Kilda player Sam Gilbert t
old the media that things would be a little tamer than usual at his club. Said Gilbert – “we’ll just get together with the coaching staff and the football department and we’ll just have a nice little sit-down lunch.”
XYZ has learned that the lunch will end with the players joining hands in the ‘circle of love’, a routine whereby eye contact is made and held with each other for a sustained period of time as “Kumbaya” is sung by all. The experience is reportedly a life changing one for some, and is attested to as being overwhelmingly formative by the life coach brought in by the club to assist with implementing AFL policy. In place of the traditional pub crawl, the club has arranged for its players to end the day rotating between classes on ‘finding purpose and mindfulness in your silent centre’, ‘reading and knowing your spiritual aura’, and ‘interpretive dance as a means of stress relief and anger management’.
For the saints though, it does not all end on Monday. Instead of an end of season trip to Bangkok, players will take turns roaming the Bourke Street mall in koala suits, seeking donations for the World Wildlife Fund. An AFL spokesperson of ill defined gender expressed the competition’s strong support for the initiative, and told XYZ that it is hoped further initiatives, such as the use of jazz hands instead of applause, might also be rolled out over the course of the next season, to enable players with anxiety conditions to perform at their peak.
Continued the spokesperson – ‘I hope we ultimately reach the day when the captains of the two opposing teams on Grand Final can, not only shake hands at the end of the game, but gay marry in the centre of the MCG, as a sign of just how far we have come as a society, and of the important role the AFL has played in shaping both football, and the wider community.’
Source: No Mad Monday celebrations for Saints this year – AFL.com.au
