It’s a Melbourne Heartache: A Song for Losing

The weather closed in during the second half.

There was a football match to watch, between Melbourne Heart and Western Sydney Wanderers, but I had the awful feeling that everything happening on the pitch was somehow predestined.

I averted my eyes from the brightly floodlit pitch and watched the swirls of rain above AAMI Park.

Momentarily, I found the combination play between industrial light, blustery wind and the teeming rain more captivating.

I focused on the game again, the mutterings of discontent in the company around me and the incessant, but ultimately fruitless, choreographed chants of encouragement from the active fans below.

Try as they might, and they did try valiantly, Heart could not break down the redoubtable Wanderers. They could not score the solitary goal to salvage a point, let alone score two to claim an unlikely victory.

The referee blew his whistle to condemn Heart to another home defeat. It was their third in their last four home outings. The last time Heart delivered a win for their success starved fans was almost nine months ago against Sydney FC.

During the long off-season Melbourne Heart surveyed their fans on their choice of songs or chants to add to the match day “atmosphere”.

Manufacturing stadium atmosphere is par for the course in professional sport these days.

There is the warm up song, the pre-match singalong, the team walk on tune, the goal celebration tune and finally, if all things go according to plan, the let us all celebrate a win song.

This season, the Heart fans decided not to have a post-match celebration song. In the dodgy online survey that the club provided, they opted, in the event of a win, to just chant “When the Heart Go Marching In”.

It was a safe, unadventurous choice but when the club puts up suggestions like the execrable and entirely inappropriate Heart Attack by Demi Lovato, you can’t really blame them.

But there was no song after the game’s completion last Friday night.

In this sonic vacuum, all I could do was contemplate. When will the club turn it around? How much longer will the club give John Aloisi? In fact, why did they bloody appoint him manager in the first place?

They were bad thoughts. Negative thoughts were overwhelming me.

I needed some instant pop therapy at 120 decibels to subsume these thoughts, to make it more bearable.

A song entered my troubled head. It was sung by an angel who must have gargled acid as a child.

It was Bonnie Tyler. She was sharing the pain with me.

It’s a heartache
Nothing but a heartache
Hits you when it’s too late
Hits you when you’re down

It’s a fool’s game
Nothing but a fools game
Standing in the cold rain
Feeling like a clown

A song for losing.

A song to help us cope.

If your club, like Melbourne Heart is going through a tough time, then the least they can do is blast out some post-match sonic therapy.