Dogs can break 3,646 day drought to reach prelim final

When the Doggies run on to the MCG on Friday night for their semi-final against Sydney, it’ll be just under 19,711 days since they last won a premiership, on the afternoon of Saturday, September 25, 1954.

Sorry, the premiership – their last one was also their first, with the second still to come, 83 years after Footscray joined the VFL.

If you don’t believe me, have a look at the online home of Footscray Not Western Bulldogs, who want their team to revert to its old name, pointing out among other arguments that North Melbourne picked up an extra 12,000 members after switching back from being called the Kangaroos.

FNWB also remind visitors to the site that it will be almost 17,156 days (you’ll find it specifies down to the second) since the club last played in a grand final, and nearly 3,646 days since the red, white and blue last graced the MCG for a preliminary final.

They also call other clubs by the names they might have if all were subjected to the same treatment as themselves – Hawthorn are the “Eastern Hawks”, Essendon the “Northern Bombers”, North Melbourne the “Universal Kangaroos” – you get the drift.

They stop short – just – of demanding a return to the Western/Whitten Oval and having the Hyde Street school brass band murder the club song before the game and during the intervals.

Given the way the other Westies are performing from their base just down the road past Avalon, it seems unlikely that either of the first two droughts mentioned above will be broken this year.

But Rodney Eade and his boys will give the third one a red-hot shake as they take on the Swans in a finals match at the G for only the second time in the two clubs’ history.

The Scrag’ems, in their first year under their new name, won a qualifying final by 35 points against Sydney in 1997, then lost the preliminary final by a heartbreaking two points to Adelaide, who ironically went on to win their first flag. The Bulldogs fell, much more heavily, at the second-last hurdle again in 1998, when their Croweater conquerors again went on to win the premiership.

Apart from 1997, the only other time the Dogs and the Swans have met in a finals match was in 1942, when South Melbourne won by 27 points in a game played at Princes Park because the MCG was being used by the army during the Second World War.

It will be a pity to see either side lose on Friday night, in a way, in a clash in which the up-and-coming Bulldogs are facing a much more experienced outfit that belied its advanced age by finishing all over the top of North Melbourne last Saturday night.

I must confess I was one of those sitting in front of the fire sipping some of Paul Roos’s hot chicken soup, not so much through choice but because an emailed request several weeks ago to one of the AFL’s media chiefs for accreditation to cover any Sydney finals for The Roar went unanswered.

Incidentally, viewers north of the Murray were dudded last Friday night when the game between Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs wasn’t televised live on Fox Sports.

The AFL website clearly says its broadcast agreement “provides Fox Sports with the exclusive right to broadcast Friday night matches live into NSW and Queensland (Fox Sports Plus on the Main Event Channel)” because of the free-to-air rights holders’ other commitments (Channel Seven delayed the game for an hour).

And after treating prospective customers like that, the AFL is still insisting Sydney needs a second team, even though it managed to draw fewer than 20,000 people to a showcase game last Saturday night.

To make matters worse the Channel Ten half-hour-delayed telecast of that game attracted a paltry average of only 185,000 viewers, possibly due in part to some of the AFL’s promotional ads going to air several hours after the game had finished.

Swans chairman Richard Colless, who until now has been admirably restrained about the subject of a second Sydney team, is understandably starting to take the gloves off.

Among other things he pointed out at the weekend that the AFL’s 150 years of football advertising campaign, painting the game as the centre of the Australian universe, had gone down like a lead balloon north of the Murray, and made the not very startling observation that “there’s not an insatiable appetite for AFL in Sydney”.

The Main Event Channel gave me this reply in response to a query about the non-appearance of the Friday night game: “We have been advised by the AFL/Fox Sports that they don’t require our channel to show any of this weekend’s finals, we are on standby for the following weekend.”

It seems, though, that NSW and Queensland viewers will be denied their 518 fix again this week.

At the time of writing the AFL website listed Friday night game as live on Channel Seven from 7pm and the Saturday night match live on Ten from 7.30.

We’ll just have to put up with the commercials, won’t we?

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