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It was somewhere around Frankston where the hangover began to take hold... I remember saying something like "Im feeling a little light-headed; maybe you should drive."
In all seriousness though... Myself and a mate departed yesterday morning for Sorrento. Originally, we wanted to do a bit of busking and song writing along the Great Ocean Road, and try to milk the schoolies of a bit of cash, but after finding out that the boys would be in Sorrento, we changed our destination. I booked a last minute apartment through Wotif on Wednesday night... and by 1:23pm on Thursday we had cruised onto the main street. Check-in was 2pm, so we parked the car and tried to find a place to eat. We settled on a nice cafe, and within 15mins saw the inevitable first signs of the boys. Initial thoughts... Jeremy Laidler is taller than I though. Walked right past us, ahead of a pack that featured Carlos and Bower... and my perception was that he was similar height to Bower, and pretty damn solidly built.
It soon became obvious that they had the arvo off, as nearly all of the squad were easy to spot, frequenting shops in casual clothes.. We got up to pay as Justin Cordy and (I think) one of the senior media guys (the one who helped run Jamo's Junk?) came and sat down for lunch at the cafe we were at.
We went across to Coles, loaded up on the things we didn't yet have in the car, and headed over to check in. As i kept peeking down at the Google map printout, i noticed the Navy Blue growing much thicker around us. My mate indicated to me that, according to the map, our accommodation was coming up on the right, yet the big sign was indicating that the reception was in a big heritage looking building on the left. So we pulled over and made our way up the grand lawns to check in to our room, which was on the opposite side of the road. As we made it to the door, Lachie Henderson came jogging out with a mobile phone to the ear, and a quick glance around the entrance area displayed many a navy blue bag and/or clothing. I peered through to the common lounge and could see a couple of Coaches chilling out on laptops.
The reception desk had been left somewhat deserted, and I guessed that was probably because the entire hotel was seemingly booked for the whole week by the same party - the Carlton Football Club.
We got our key and walked back down the lawn in time to witnessed Simon White in his training gear, start jogging back up the road towards the main street of Sorrento. I pulled the car in across the road and just took the closest empty spot to the room I could find. The car parks were numbered according to what room you're in.. but some bastard in a Hyundai had taken mine...
The apartments were nice - each had a courtyard formed by slat wood fencing, with over-grown trees shading you from above. We settled in, cracked a drink, and pulled a chair each out to the front courtyard, and started noodling on guitar. I kept mentioning how I couldn't believe that we were staying just across the road from the entire Carlton Football Club. Fancy our luck? Sure, we were bound to see them around... but I didn't expect that at all.
As we sat in the courtyard, the sun began to re-emerge from out of nowhere, and withing 20 odd minutes, it was getting a bit too warm.
At first, we were keen to head down to the beach... but upon reading that guests were permitted to go across to the otherside of the road to use the pool in the main hotel, we got pretty excited. We got changed and pumped up to go and have a dip - possibly with the Carlton squad - only to be told the pool was "Out of order." I didn't believe it was out of order for one second.. but fair enough, the club obviously wouldn't want civilians messing around while they're having a swim or a recovery session... That was enough of a slap to the face to deter us from bothering to do much else... we just went back to our courtyard, grabbed the guitars and kept drinking. We were still quite perplexed by the whole situation... we couldn't have planned it to turn out that way if we'd tried. By 3:30/4:00pm, most of the boys had started to make their way back from the streets, and we could hear a lot of action from their hotel. A quick peep confirmed that a few of them were having a jovial chat outside on their balcony.
Things started weirding me out when I saw a few Hyundai training tops jog into the car park of my hotel, grab something out of a car, and then jog back to the other side of the road. It was confirmed how ridiculously lucky we had been to get the room we did when a car pulled up outside our room and let out a few guys... one of which was Brett Ratten, who pulled out a key and entered the room 2 doors down from us, and Mark Riley, who happened to be our neighbour. Not only were we in a room across the road from the boys, but some of them were around us too... we couldn't stop laughing about it.. you could not plan something like that.
Because of how over grown the trees were, and the size of the gaps between fence slats, you couldn't see a great deal of what was happening in the car park, but enough to know what was going on. The sound of our guitars was an obvious lure to any players or coaches who walked past too - most of them having a peek at us to see who was playing...probably assuming it was a Footballer who hadn't yet admitted he could play a bit of music.
Sticks arrived just before dinner, and by the looks of it he had a room not far down from Ratten.
We hiked into town, a bit drunk, and the storm cleared while we ate. We arrived back to a beautiful bright blue sunset at around 8pm, and decided to have a drink at the wooden table and chairs at the entrance to the car park of our hotel. Not long after we sat down, the entire club exited the main hotel across the road and started walking towards the main street. A few comments we overheard indicated they were heading out for a short drink at the pub, with a 'curfew of 11pm.' All of the coaches + Sticks, Greg Swann and Greg Williams came into our little carpark to go and get changed/whatever they needed to do in their rooms, and piled into one car to go join the players at the pub. Diesel was nice enough to give us a wave and ask us how we were going. Turned out he was the mystery man who was staying in the room on the otherside of us to Riley... though we hadnt seen him around until that point.
The rest is pretty blurry to me. Got pretty drunk and passed out. Heard all the hoots and whistles outside when they returned...
Saw a fair few of them again this morning having a coffee whilst we were getting breakfast. Mclean is looking very thin.. Gibbsy bulked up a bit I reckon, Walker looking quite happy to be with the boys. Juddy was glowing like jesus... Theres not much more to say really... It was pretty damn weird to be honest. Might take a while to sink in...!
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R A D I C A L B R O T H E R S
Inspired by the One-Minute Sculptures of Erwin Wurm
"All in all is all we are..."
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