I went to the footy at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground is one of the local "sacred spots"). What, dear readers, do I hear you say, are you doing watching football at a cricket ground?
My team, Collingwood, was pretending to play the team, Carlton, at the bottom of the 18-team ladder.
There were 78,000 experts at the ground. It always amazes me how many people, men and women, rich and poor, can stay together in one place, for hours, without bopping each other on the nose.
If it was all blokes, there'd be brawls, don't you agree? But women have always been strongly represented at Aussie Rules football matches. They're heavily involved, too, in admin, umpiring and the health and safety of players.
Social commentator, Eddie McGuire, wrote in last weekend's paper that Aussie Rules is blessed by the active presence of so many women at all levels of footy club activities.
Feminists may hate what l am about to say but women do humanise and socialise blokes, especially blokes involved in 'combat'. And it happens, at its best, in players' homes and local footy club level.
Home and the local footy club, suburban or bush, where blokes can be given fair, firm and friendly guidance by people they admire and respect.
Now Eddie McGuire has taken this homespun wisdom to another level. He believes along with late mate, Essendon, and the AFL's Ron Evans, that league football clubs should be places where players, training and admin staff, board and general members learn the fine art of caring for people who have almost lost hope of connecting with a decent, normal bunch of other people.
Eddie believes that footy clubs are just so well placed in Aussie society to exercise intelligent practical compassion that he intends, as announced just last week, to begin a meal programme based at Collingwood's new, shiny home, the Lexus Centre, a stones throw from the MCG.
There's an outside barbeque area furnished with tables, benches and heaters. About 100 people could be catered for, people who are sleeping rough along the banks of the Yarra and environs, people from East Melbourne, Richmond boarding houses and, even, people from a distance who'll travel for a good "feed". Maybe the Lexus Centre will give these people, just like you and me, a bit of a buzz of excitement, a bit of respect and hope.
Eddie's asked me to help publicise this venture because he knows I've been involved in feeding people for many years.
This Parish, South Melbourne (the place that lost its football team, physically at least, to Sydney) feeds people, in the yard of the parish house, up to 60 a sitting, four times a week.
It's not only the food they come for but also, a hope that they're still connected, through the parish house, to a neighbourhood that normally and maybe, understandably ignores them.
We ignore people we feel there's no advantage in acknowledging. We do this at our peril. People treated with disrespect will be tempted to return like for like. It's a miracle so few do.
Our Parish is drafting a strategic plan (don't leave home without yours!) which is subtitled "The Neighbourhood Parish". It includes a house of hospitality, otherwise known as the Parish house, previously known as the Presbytery (vicarage in Anglican, manse in Protestant). This embeds, hopefully forever, help for the helpless, deserving AND undeserving, poor within the fabric of South Melbourne Catholicism.
Eddie hopes to do the same for world renowned Collingwood Football Club by feeding the poor deserving and undeserving, at the prominent Lexus Centre.
Human rights are a hot topic with the Olympic Games in Beijing and the Pope at Randwick.
The right to be connected, deserving or not, has a torch bearer here at South Melbourne and there
at Lexus.