Then one day at school last year, this petite Year 11 student laughed at my ‘Demons’ pencil case. “They’re useless!” she cried. “Go Eagles!”

Amanda is most definitely generation Y. How do I know this? Let’s forget academic definitions and sociological surveys that discuss different character traits distinguishing one generation from another, and cut to the chase. Born and bred in Victoria, she is a passionate West Coast Eagles’ supporter. How did this happen? Having been born and bred in Victoria myself, I had (up until meeting Amanda, that is) presumed Victorians disliked the interstate clubs in the Australian Football League as much as, if not more than, their traditional local rivals.

A Melbourne supporter myself, I have in recent years even found myself joining Eddie Maguire in his “Rocca, Rocca, ROCCA!” mantra whenever they happen to be playing against one of the philistine tribes to our north and west.Then one day at school last year, this petite Year 11 student laughed at my ‘Demons’ pencil case. “They’re useless!” she cried. “Go Eagles!” And didn’t they go, even winning the premiership. It made for some good, old fashioned, school-yard, football banter between a teacher and a student, with one obvious difference. She could never answer to my satisfaction why she barracked for a team not connected to her family and that was based on the other side of the continent. How inconvenient for a start. But at a deeper level, I couldn’t understand the loss of tribalism that depends on the immediacy of physical contact and local identity.

And that’s when I realised that Amanda was definitely generation Y. Her local community – her tribe – existed within a technological realm that played electronic ‘kick-to-kick’ using modern communication techniques. She no longer needed to make a weekly pilgrimage to the sacred territories of Victoria Park, Lakeside Oval, or Punt Road. Her team was beamed into her house each week where she established an intimacy with them in the same way as I did when my dad took me to the ‘footy’ at Melbourne’s home ground – the M.C.G..

In this new world, it made logical sense that a person born in the early ’90s would choose the most successful team of her childhood in the same way so many of my contemporaries grew up supporting the Tigers on the back of premiership success in the late ’60s and early ’70s.Once I had become comfortable with this, I could even sympathise with her earlier in the year when the news broke that one of her champions from the West Coast was in trouble. Sensationalised media reports portrayed a player coming to terms with an old fashioned addiction to very Generation Y drugs. This player most certainly highlighted a new style of social life and a sub-culture that is distinct to a generation which has grown up in a more materialistic and prosperous society, prone to immediate gratification without the requisite ‘hangover’ the following morning.

If I needed confirmation of this new generation’s distinct party culture, it came from my nephew (of similar age to Amanda). When he saw a bottle of boutique water in his parent’s refrigerator, his immediate question, asked without humour, was “Who’s been taking drugs?”'

The sorrow I felt for Amanda was because she had lost a hero. There was no argument or defensive criticism when I first saw her after the news broke. Just a sad resignation in her eyes, and a pre-emptive, “Don’t start.”'

The sorrow I felt for Amanda was because she had lost a hero. There was no argument or defensive criticism when I first saw her after the news broke. Just a sad resignation in her eyes, and a pre-emptive, “Don’t start.” I was reminded of the wonderful dialogue in Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo. “Unhappy the land that has no heroes” was the plaintiff cry, to which Galileo, the fallen hero, replies, “Unhappy the land in need of heroes.” Amanda, and her generation, are not alone in placing someone they admire on a pedestal.

And her hero is not the first to betray the mantle, revealing a reality that even the best of us struggle with a flawed humanity that will inevitably betray.

Heroes however have a timeless quality to them. They transcend the generations. They continue to inspire with every retelling of their story. Having just seen the movie John Lennon v. the U.S.A., I was reminded yet again how John Lennon was a hero to my generation, and that his story has lost none of its magic with the passing of the years. I must show it in class some time. Teachers, especially those of us entrusted with the task of building faith and inspiring a response within the Christian framework, consistently use heroes.

The myths and the stories have a particular poignancy beyond the academic. And while it is often safer to use the story of someone who is dead, these stories often descend into hagiography. Far more dramatic to have a living hero, a role model, a peer from the student’s own generation who speaks a common language and reveals how it is possible to be above, while remaining within, this generation. Sporting champions are more often than not a good choice.

How ironic then that as we discussed in Amanda’s Year 12 Religious Education class the implications of ‘fallen heroes’, I was able to draw on a football eulogy given by A.F.L. commissioner Bill Kelty for his mate, the former A.F.L. commission chairman, Ron Evans. Here was someone who had endured the test of time and, at the end, been found worthy to take the mantle of ‘hero’. In a beautiful tribute that captured universal qualities we try to instill in our students, Kelty wrote, “Evans was quiet but determined, he was strong and caring. He was a person of integrity, dignity, and humanity….He impregnated his own values on the culture of this game, hopefully forever.” (The Age, 18/3/07)

But it was Kelty’s final comment that captured a sense of the timeless nature of the hero to inspire beyond their own generation. “Ron, I loved you as a kid, I admired you as a man, and was inspired by you as a leader. And the inspiration of good people doing good things is, in my judgment, without peer.” (My emphasis, but not my words.)

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