Review: The Short Long Book: a portrait of Michael Long, the man who changed the Australian game
If you want to learn about a great Australia, read The Short Long Book
by Martin Flanagan Viking $17.95
Australia’s foremost sports writer Martin Flanagan believes that there should be a statue of Michael Long at the MCG. I agree. I am not a footy chick by any stretch of the imagination but I recognize a great Australian when I see one.
Michael Long is a great Australian, an AFL legend and a hero to many who may not have followed his footy career with Essendon (1989-2001) but did follow his Long Walk to Canberra in 2004. I am one of those people who consider him a hero on that act alone, inspired by the physical effort of walking 650km from his Melbourne home to the Capital to confront Prime Minister John Howard face-to-face about the state of Aboriginal affairs and the statistics attached to his people.
The Long Walk continues a tradition each year at the MCG to maintain awareness of what still needs to be done. But it’s Michael Long’s ‘Mandela moment’ in 1995 that people really should know about. Flanagan believes that Long’s anti-racism stand during that Anzac Day game and his demand for changes in on-field racism changed the shape of AFL as an institution, and their processes for dealing with racism. This moment in AFL history is not as well known as Nicky Winmar’s anti-racist-photo-moment in 1993, but it is just as much, if not more important, because the messages and lessons Michael Long unknowingly continues to teach people go beyond anti-racism.
Through Flanagan’s biography of ‘Longie’ – which is written as if the author is just sitting there with a cuppa and telling a yarn – readers will come understand the complex and community-minded person Long is. You will also learn that his people from his father Jack Long’s side are the Anmatyerre, and that his mother Agnes Long, was a stolen child shipped from Darwin to a Catholic Mission on Melville Island. The scars of removal within the Long family remain generations down, as they do with the thousands of Aboriginal children and families who were victims of racist legislation and Acts of Protection enforced nationally until the end of the 1960s. It is said that Michael has his mother’s kindness and sensitivity and his father’s toughness and pride.
Flanagan spent a lot of time on road trips trying to understand the ‘jigsaw of Michael’s identity’ and time in community and family homes provided rare and privileged insights into Long’s private life. But is it via his coach and mentor Kevin Sheedy (who Long gave the skin name ‘Tjapangka my father’ to), the mother-like guide Beverly Knight (AFL’s longest-serving female director) and others including Long’s wife Lesley, that we learn that the footy legend is quick witted, quiet, a good writer and a brilliant reader (who just doesn’t read). Michael Long is also intense, a strategic thinker and a painter.
Michael Long comes from a football playing family. His father Jack Long was ‘the toughest man in Darwin footy in his day’. Jack and the seven sons all played for Darwin’s St Mary’s Football Club, helping it to its record of 30 senior premierships. And so this story will speak to those who love the game. But The Short Long Book: a portrait of Michael Long, the man who changed the Australian game is an all-Australian read; for sports-lovers, for those interested in history, identity and race-relations.
Get your copy of The Short Long Book from Viking, Readings, Booktopia, and other independent booksellers. Be sure and ask your local library to order it in as well.
