Shaun Sanderson

Sitting down to pen something I found this difficult. Not sure why. I have been somewhere near Guy ever since high school. However, he was often like quicksilver, slipping through your hands until it returned to the fold whenever the balance was there. My memories of Guy are not so much punctuated by individual episodes they were communal moments during which Guy was invariably there.

​I am not even sure when I met him for the first time. Presumably at school, but I am confident Wil was to blame. He seemed to come and go. I know there was Melbourne Grammar, Melbourne High and Sydney involved. He was an itinerant student but also a hungry one. My first specific memory of spending time with him was cooking him and Wil chops, mashed potatoes, and peas in a South Yarra apartment at some point during year 11/12 that his lean frame was extremely thankful of.

​Sharing a love of not only footy but the same team came a bit further down the track. Some of the memories are blurred but include consistently smuggling him into the ‘Pig’s arse’ stand at Princes Park or MCC members pavilion (immaculately attired provided you didn’t look below the waist), the hilarity of post-footy weed induced back seat of Larry’s car conversations about overseas adventures or genetic proof that Jim Plunkett did indeed come from a long line of banjo strummers whilst on the way to Naughtons or in latter times the Kent.

​The London Tavern, a location where I visited at least 3 of his abodes all within a drop punt or two, heaving chaos of the post-99 Prelim Final where Guy was tossed around the front bar just like ‘a cork in the ocean’, the failed attempts to entice Nathan Buckley into signing the Brodie-Ledderman trophy, the trivia.

More latterly, the telepathic moment having a dart at ½ time outside the G in the biting cold when we both knew we were watching Brendan Bolton’s last game.

Player nicknames – Dean Rice ‘the bubble’, Brad Pearce – arrow, the apple turnovers – in no particular order Francina, Petrevski-Seton, Carrazzo. 

The love for Andrew McKay (complete with pronunciation instructions) and Peter Dean. His ‘I hate Collingwood’ badge. Not sure if he had an involvement in nicknaming Fevola but he sure enjoyed sneering ‘the Virus’.

Sneering quietly at first, it was a slow burn, culminating in something like the spray he launched into after a last quarter Kouta goal in the ‘95 qualifying final before an audience of aghast looking MCC members, momentarily captured on the Ballistic Blues DVD and now on YouTube encapsulates Guy at the footy.

​The London Tavern was also the first dreamteam venue. However, his deliberate, some might say painful, process of selecting players was refined as the years went on. Even if you were not in the same division, there was a certain joy as you were annually invited to experience this running joke, overhearing the comments change from a quiet ‘c’mon Guy to ‘fer chrissakes Guy’.

I am completely sure he got enormous joy out of those moments, in part a victory of psychological warfare - like one of his favourite movies we had discussed, ‘Barry Lyndon’, it was part performance and partly a giant piss-take.

​His various jobs and employers seemed endless and often left him paint splattered, but I do remember him telling me of his work with a mate who was an arborist. Arriving at the job to find one lone majestic tree to be removed. It reduced to woodchips promptly and professionally. However, their departure was even quicker when they realised they were at the wrong address.

Seeing him semi-regularly over the last couple of years at his South Melbourne flat reinforced what I already knew about him. Like his previous years in Richmond, in the small world around him he either knew everyone or had a contact who did. He knew them largely by nickname, with an accompanying short story about their relative wealth, professional expertise, marital status, or the footy team they followed.

​During these years, you could see his frustration of his desire to be doing something different but trapped by his own physical fragility. Guy battled hard for those couple of years describing to me in minute detail his healthy cooking ventures, specificity of ingredients, and getting the biscotti just right.

He was also frustrated by not seeing his kids as often as he would like. We had a lot of conversations about this but above all his love for them was obvious and enduring. He was always keen to interact with my own kids when they came with me to visit.

He endured through a lot the last couple of years, broken hips, hospital visits that he absolutely detested, a small mountain of daily medications, lockdowns, loneliness but persevered.

In some ways those last couple of years might have been his toughest and greatest achievement until his resistance finally broke.

For me, he's still here. I still see and hear the sneers, the theories, the ‘did you knows’, the barracking, the giraffes, the giggling, the brushing back of his unruly Barnet and always will.

Love you mate.