When Parade was young, he and his brother had a trampoline in the backyard that was not so much a piece of play equipment as a means of keeping people employed in the hospital emergency department.

It was just a big bit of plastic stretched taut across a steel frame, with huge, cruel springs placed at intervals around the perimeter in which bits of flesh would get caught if you fell the wrong way.

Parade and his brother would wrestle on it, wrestle under it, invite the dog up onto it and sometimes take turns trying to bounce each other off it as far across the backyard as possible.

Occasionally – just occasionally – Parade and his brother would actually use it in the way the manufacturers intended, but the rest of the time it was a mixture of torture device and wrestling ring.

All those memories came flooding back when Parade saw an advertisement this week for a much more modern trampoline.

Not only does it have protection around the side (that would have stopped the spring injuries, but would have ended the distance bouncing competition before it began), it has a range of features that Parade struggled to fully comprehend.

Compact leaf springs? Terylene netting? Matte black powder coating? 

It was all too much for Parade, who was forced to shake his head and admit that the world has well and truly moved on.

WITH the AFL and NRL deciders to be played this weekend, Parade is sure he’s not the only one who has been reflecting on classic grand finals of the past – such as the Newcastle and Manly grand final from 1997.

Parade remembers nothing of the game except the ending – and that’s because Parade didn’t watch the rest of the match.

Parade ambled out to the lounge room right at the finish, asked his dad the score, and was just in time to see the Knights score a try right at the death.

Talk about timing.