ABSTRACT
Sports ‘tragics’ loom large in Australian folklore. Many nods of recognition met Beth Spencer's 2004 recollection of an ex-boyfriend
In the 1970s, when I lived with him, he wrote ‘Essendon Football Club’ in the space for religion on the Census form … I met my ex-boyfriend a few years ago and he told me how disastrous his year had been: he had failed his exams, his girlfriend had left him and Essendon had lost the Grand Final. The hardest thing to take, he said, the bitterest blow, was the Bombers. So close. 1
