As Toby McLean’s shot sailed through for a behind just after 5.00pm on Saturday afternoon, the final siren sounded at the MCG.
What followed was an enormous outpouring of emotion from every Western Bulldogs fan in the stadium, creating a deafening noise that represented the sudden relief of 62 years without a premiership.The experience of my first grand final will remain with me forever. I will cherish the day even more as I reflect upon it because I sat next to my Dad, an emotionally passionate Dogs man.
There was such romance surrounding the Footscray story that it had captured the hearts of most neutrals.
Dad and I met some friends who were also off to the grand final at North Melbourne’s Central Club Hotel to quash some of those butterflies with an ale. Flustered equally by excitement and nerves, I spent the morning walking aimlessly around the house, chewing my nails as though it was my only meal for the day. Although it was good for my mental health to leave the house, I soon came to the frightening realisation that we were on our way to watch the Dogs play in a grand final. Really!
The walk from Flinders Street to the ‘G was magnificent, seeing the wide-eyed expressions on every fan’s face and the hint of breathlessness among Dogs fans after our epic finals journey. Once the pre-game activity had concluded, the red, white and blue ran out on grand final day for the first time since 1961.
The opening quarter is never not important, but I had been in the MCC a week prior, and saw the ruthless manner with which Sydney put Geelong away in the first 20 minutes. We could not afford a slow start. The first score, a behind to Sydney, didn’t come until almost 10 minutes had elapsed. The game was being played with such ferocity that the ball was almost always in dispute, and if anybody gathered it they would soon have several opposition players closing in.
Even though I’ve spent most of my time since the game watching the replay, or highlights of the game, I still remember the game in distinct bursts of moments, rather than a continuous reel of play.
The first was from an early passage of play, when Tom Boyd dropped a sitter of a chest mark on the 50-metre line. The least that Dogs fans could ask for was for the players to do the bare basics well, and the fear held deep down by many Dogs fans threatened to surface with Boyd’s spill.
In terms of noteworthy moments, the first term was poor. As a spectacle, however, it was breathtaking. The noise, described on the TV coverage by Tim Watson as the loudest he’d ever heard, contributed to the game’s messy but ferocious style, helping to spur players on from contest to contest.
After we had taken our lead to double figures early in the second quarter, Sydney started to get rolling. Josh Kennedy kicked two of four consecutive Swans goals to cap off a dominant individual first half performance. Another of that run of goals was kicked by Gary Rohan, who kicked truly after ‘marking’ the ball inside 50. The kick to him had been touched off the boot, clearly to my eye, but the crowd was so loud not one of the players could hear the umpire screaming, “Play-on, Gary, play-on!
It felt like I was the only other person at the ground who knew.
I stood up, screaming, “TACKLE HIM, IT’S TOUCHED!”, infuriated by the players’ lack of compliance with the facts of the situation.
Rohan was almost the first player to realise, and he quickly turned around and booted it into the Swans cheer squad.
Then McLean snapped a late goal to reduce the Swans’ lead to two points at the main break, lifting the spirits of Dogs fans.
Kennedy got his third of the game to restore his side’s lead after Tory Dickson had put us ahead with our first attack of the third quarter, before Clay Smith ensured we’d led at the final change with his first goal of the game.
The stat touted as important by experts before the game as being most important was ‘time in forward half’, because of our ability to lock the ball inside forward 50 and stifle the opposition’s movement out of defence. We appeared to be winning that comfortably, helped hugely by Tom Boyd taking several contested marks, hitting contests with courage and power, and actually clunking the ball overhead. Jason Johannisen provided much of our drive from half-back, accumulating hundreds of ‘metres gained’, however many of his kicks had missed the target.
Luke Beveridge kept the huddle together for longer than usual at three-quarter time, emphasising the effort needed from every player to get over the line and the reward at the end if they could win. Buddy Franklin stepped up for Sydney, pushing further up the ground and demanding the ball, despite being hindered by a foot injury from a first quarter incident. He nailed the first of the last term with a trademark roost from the flank, but our headline forward replied.
Jake Stringer hadn’t been sighted since the Grand Final Parade, but he emerged with the footy as it fell out from a tackle and, typically, seeming to be in a great rush, threw it onto his right boot and sent it spinning through for a goal. Sydney regained a one-point lead soon after, before Liam Picken rose to the occasion, first taking a brilliant hanger and then putting the Dogs in front with a composed drop punt on the run. Picken’s effort throughout the entire finals series, like many of his teammates, had been incredible. His story is one of hard work paying off, characterised by the many sharp improvements to facets of his game, for which he must have trained tirelessly.
The moment of the match soon followed, when Franklin’s eagerness to get his hands on the footy and be ‘the man’ had drawn him all the way up to the Bulldogs’ half-forward line. He collected the footy and went to take off, but Dale Morris, a man for whom there are not enough superlatives, caught him, laying a perfect tackle to send the ball bouncing free. Tom Boyd swooped, 60 metres out, launching a kick goal-bound. Helped by a kind bounce, the ball went through, and Boyd and the thousands of Dogs fans inside the stadium erupted with joy.
Picken got a late goal as well, extending the margin to beyond 20 points and putting the result beyond the doubt of even the most pessimistic Dogs. My reaction was one of disbelief, and I must have been visibly overwhelmed by the situation as Dad, usually just as stressed as me, told me to relax.
He was right.
This hadn’t happened in 62 years. Sixty-two!
I looked around and saw the many different reactions. People were embracing, yelling, laughing, crying, fist-pumping, and sitting still, all totally euphoric knowing that their Western Bulldogs were on the verge of winning a flag.
McLean missed his shot, the siren went, the West wept with joy in each other’s arms, and the rest fell into place as a beautiful, emotional, happy ending to the fairytale.
Tom Riordan is an MCC Restricted member. He and his father, who is a Full member, watched the grand final from the AFL Reserve.
Match Summary
SYDNEY SWANS 1.2 7.3 8.5 10.7 (67)
WESTERN BULLDOGS 2.0 7.1 9.7 13.11 (89)
GOALS
Sydney Swans: Kennedy 3, Mitchell 2, Parker, N. Smith, Rohan, Franklin, Hewett
Western Bulldogs: T. Boyd 3, Dickson 3, Picken 3, Cordy, McLean, C. Smith, Stringer
BEST
Sydney Swans: Kennedy, Mitchell, Rampe, Heeney, Jones, Hannebery
Western Bulldogs: Johannisen, Picken, T. Boyd, Macrae, M. Boyd, Dahlhaus
INJURIES
Sydney Swans: Franklin (right ankle), Hannebery (left knee)
Western Bulldogs: Johannisen (calf)
Reports: Nil
Umpires: Stevic, Meredith, Jeffery
Official crowd: 99,981 at the MCG