When the National Film Archive bought 80 cans of film via a deceased estate, AFL football turned out to be a major winner.
Tigerland – in the eyes of the long-suffering tribe – is a calm and optimistic place in this age. There will be no microwaved memberships or burned scarves or coaches sacked.
The hardest times have come when he has been sitting at home alone or trying to get to sleep at night, with nothing to do but think. Travis Boak has scrolled through his phone a few times in the past few days, looking back over the text message conversations he and his old coach had.
There is no road map for tragedy on this scale. As one AFL club staffer said, all manner of scarcely imaginable scenarios are contemplated and planned for in AFL backrooms, but a coach dying from stab wounds in the middle of the night has never been one of them.