There’s an Aussie Rules footballer called Josh Kennedy who plays for the West Coast Eagles, a Werstern Australian-based outfit who’ve enjoyed some recent success in a sport which until recently was only ever played here in Victoria.

Josh, who’s the living epitome of one of those big, slightly glaiket-looking fellas who suddenly find themselves quite good at something, is a full forward. 

Forwards, in Aussie Rules, as in most sports, are the people who make the difference. Not usually very mobile, it’s their job to catch a high ball under pressure from defenders intent on decapitating them and then, if the ‘mark’ is taken cleanly, to line up for a set shot for goal. 

Forwards like Josh can be heroes or villains; remember it's six points for a goal in this game and you’d be amazed how many games are settled by the odd point or two; a score like 101 - 100 being far from uncommon.

Big Josh has developed a stutter. Not when he speaks. But when he begins his run up prior to taking a set shot. 

It’s a thing to see: couple of baby steps forward, a foot shuffle, another couple of steps, more shuffling, some twitching, before finally he hoofs it, all this while the crowd are baying –in some cases, laughing - at what looks like the footie equivalent of a St Vitus Dance performed by 70s British comedy chancer Alf Hippytittymus.

The commentators, all ex-players who naturally now they’re retired, know everything, hate it.

And you can see why. It’s an act of no beauty whatsoever, horribly un-co and reeking of no confidence, the complete opposite of that smooth, seemingly effortless fluidity anyone who watches any ball sport recognises as the perfect, classic ‘action’.

But the thing is, it’s working. Josh is currently the leading goal kicker in the country. The Big Fella has found a way of making it work for him. 

Despite the derision and denigration, Josh is getting the job done, doing it ugly, which sometimes, everyone simply has to do, whether your name is Pele or Smelly.

No one can be brilliant at everything. Not all the time. In fact, most of the time, if you’re doing it all, you’ll be doing it ugly.

Doing it ugly is about having a goal - making it through another week by planning that  break in Santa Ponsa or night in the pub, getting through the bad stuff by looking forward to simply being where you want to be, as opposed to where you have to.

The thing is, you won’t be doing it ugly when you’re actually in Santa Ponsa, or in the pub or beside the fireside with your nearest and dearest. But sometimes you have to put up with the other stuff - the job you don’t like, the rotten weather you hate, horrible, freezing early mornings when you just want the world to go away, the traffic jams that drive you off your crust - just to get by.

See, it’s all in the mind. The key is survival. Coping. Hacking it. Making it through.

As someone who’s hung around pubs, prisons, pop music and Paisley for a large part of my life, I reckon I know a thing or two about coping.  About dealing with the various feelings and moods which comprise and complicate life.

Good times when it couldn’t be going better, bad times when the self-thrown shit inexorably hits the fan. In between times when it all seems just a bit too much.

You, one - I- have to find a way to cope. And by cope, I don’t mean handle it with aplomb, effortlessly and in style, I mean get through it, find a way, find your way - the method, the stutter if you’re Josh Kennedy - the coping strategy, whatever it is that works.

It could be drink or drugs. In fact, if you’re anything like me, it probably is. If you’re lucky, not too much or too many, otherwise you’ll fall into that cess pit of dependence and compulsion we’ve all witnessed, some of us at closer quarters than others.

If it’s stuff the Doctor give you and it works – and for some people it does - then that might be it.  If it’s a holiday or trip away you’ve been planning for a while, a match you can’t wait to go to, a gig, a night out with the boys, a slap-up meal or family party or even a bit of howsyerfather with the missus on Saturday night, so much the better.

Doing it ugly only means it looks ugly to onlookers. It might look and feel beautiful to you. And if it works, who cares what anybody else thinks - it’s your life, after all, no one else’s.

A 20k cycle ride with the wind at your back and sun on your shoulders.  A good laugh with people you get and who get you. A peal of laughter, a smile when you least expect it, a right good greet, a perfectly ripe mango, a comfortable bed, a place to call your own, a great memory, that feeling of love and being loved, whatever it is that works for you.

Do it with style, if you can.  But do it ugly when you can’t.

Incidentally, Big Josh Kennedy is now the 3/1 bookies favourite to end the season as winner of the Coleman Medal, the award for the AFL’s top goal scorer of the season.

How good would it be if he could win it by doing it ugly?