Underneath Geelong’s GMHBA stadium, the Cats cheer squad are busy. With expectation in the air, a group of more than 30 are beavering away on banners for both the AFLW match against Hawthorn on Thursday night and the AFL grand final against Brisbane on Saturday.
Robyn Cecil sits off to the side, providing instruction and support. “I’ve seen a lot of people come and go,” she says, explaining her involvement with the club. “Coming down here, you have lunch, banner [making], going to the football. But I don’t go to Melbourne any more. I stopped doing that when David passed away, I just felt I couldn’t.”
The Cats are no strangers to playing on the final Saturday in September, but this week the 72-year-old is preparing for something new. The clash with the Lions will be her first grand final since her husband died. “He just went like that,” she says of a day three years ago this November, just weeks after Geelong beat Sydney in the 2022 decider. “He got his photo with the cup, he was here talking with [chief executive] Steve Hocking and then, not long after that, he just went.”
The couple were heavily involved in the cheer squad, as volunteers and in the Cats social club. “I’m very lucky that the footy club, especially Steve … sorry.” Cecil pauses, as her eyes well up. “Steve was the first one to ring me from the footy club, and every time I come down here he makes sure I’m OK.”
She is a regular at the monthly meetings of senior fans known as “coffee club”, a group dating back half a century. “We’d get about 60 people coming, then Covid changed things,” she says. “We are getting back to those numbers again, just [through] word of mouth. You’re looking at an age group of probably 70, 80, 90 … they just like Geelong, love the club, have been members and need something, a get-together.”
In February, at the first meeting of the year, in the room adjacent to the hall she sits in now, Cecil had a fall. “When I did my hip back in February, I had a really good group of friends that were there for me, so that’s what sport does for me,” she says. “They’re good people, I get that phone call: ‘Are you OK?’”
Cecil is on first name terms with most staff at the cafe, in the shop and within the club’s supporter group. Around the cheer squad, she likes to make sure those members with special needs are included. Interviewing her is difficult, so numerous are the greetings and well wishes.
“When David retired from the police force, he needed something to do, so he became a volunteer as well down here,” she says. “He was a member of the social club, and made friends. It just became part of my life – our lives – as well, and then more since David passed away.”
Growing up in western Victoria before moving to Belmont in greater Geelong, she watched her first game with her father at 14. Her favourite player is John Yeates, captain in the 1960s. However, Cecil is reluctant to pick just one. She is especially fond of Bailey Smith. “I like him, he’s different and what you see is what you get,” she says, praising him for being open about his mental health challenges. “It’s genuine, that’s a credit to him.”
After the frenzy of banner production, Cecil will sit down by herself on Saturday at home to watch the grand final. “I might message a friend in Werribee, we were doing that the other night,” she says. “She’d be in her 80s, we used to catch the bus [to Melbourne], we used to stop at Werribee, pick her up on the way through. We just became friends. So that’s what happens, you just become friends.”
And the Cats’ chances for another flag?
“Fingers crossed they win,” she says. “But it’ll be very hard.”
