HYPE surrounding the AFL and Rugby League grand finals next weekend makes a Chelsea man proud of his personal contribution to this city’s enviable sporting scene.
He wasn’t a star player, or even an official, but Phil Wall, a member of Chelsea SES, can lay claim to writing the theme song for the Melbourne Storm Rugby League club way back in 1998.
The song was used for the first time at the start of the 1999 season – the year the team won its first flag.
“It was one of those crazy things,” Wall said yesterday (Tuesday). “I was watching [Storm captain] Glenn Lazarus on the old Bert Newton TV show at the time and he was saying the club was looking for a theme song.
“The next morning my wife came up to me in the kitchen and asked me what I was doing: I said I was writing the Storm’s song – it had just come to me.”
A keen lyricist for more than 40 years – but who admittedly knows nothing of rugby league – Wall said he teamed with musician mate John Mohl to add a tune to the words of his song: We are the Storm.
“The idea behind the title was that if the song were chosen, it would be the crowd singing it,” Wall said. “This meant that when you play Melbourne Storm in Melbourne, you are not just playing the 13 guys on the park, but also the thousands of fans in the stands, hence, we are the Storm.”
That led to a funny experience at one game not long afterwards, Wall said.
“After a win, I was singing along with the crowd and the lady next to me whacked me and said: “If you don’t know the words don’t sing the song.”
First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News – 28 September 2016
