I thought I’d succeeded in grooming—ok, brainwashing—my now five-year-old son, Harry to follow the same football team as I do.  I’d bought him the Collingwood jumper, taken him to some games, and late last year, even bought him a membership for the upcoming season.

Everything was going to my ‘like-father-like-son’ plan until one day Harry came home from kinder and asked me, “Dad, who’s your second team?” “Second team! Hey?” I joked back that my first team is Collingwood and my second team is the Magpies (Same team). Harry got the joke, but it was me who wasn’t laughing when he told me that his second team is now the Sydney Swans!

“Sydney?” I asked. “Yeah, the Swans. They’re red and white”. At first I tried explaining to Harry that you can only barrack for one team and our team is Collingwood, but that just seemed to make his resolve to barrack for two teams even stronger. My heart sank further when his Collingwood membership pack arrived in the mail. When I got home from work, Harry raced to greet me at the door and proudly showed me that he had taken the Collingwood membership card out of its lanyard and replaced it with a Swans footy card.

It was at this point, after I wiped away my invisible tears, that I stopped being disappointed and started to be impressed—proud even. The kid was making his own decisions, just like I had done when I was his age. Now Sydney is his first team and Collingwood is his second, and I’m happy with that.  I’m happy that my son is growing up and he’s now in the driver’s seat of his life.

Collingwood play Sydney in a couple of months and I’m looking forward to going to the game with Harry—my kid, not my clone.