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As a sports fan, it’s funny how your priorities change over time – all I wanted was a Friday night football game.
Of course everybody wants their team to win a title, but sometimes it’s just not within reason. So you keep it in the back of your mind, focusing on the small steps which will, hopefully, result in premiership glory.
Sometimes, however, it is often a case of two steps forward and three steps back.
Firstly, you acquire that prized marquee player, and see the results gradually improve. Things are looking good, and for the first time in a while, you feel optimistic about your team’s chances. Then one of your key players gets in trouble, or gets injured and – scene missing – you’re languishing at the bottom of the ladder having not made the finals in three years, with the lowest attendances in the competition.
As a Manly fan, I consider myself fortunate to have experienced these steps in a rather linear fashion. In 2004, at the age of 12, all I wanted was for the maroon and whites to get the prized Friday night football slot on Channel Nine, which showcased the premier game of the round.
Due to the multi-year lease they had on the bottom of the ladder, or thereabouts, the Sea Eagles hadn’t played a Friday night game in two years.
One day in 2005, while idly perusing the television listing for the date of Friday, April 29th, I noticed something odd; the Brisbane Broncos were playing that night. This in itself is not such an extraordinary occurrence – Brisbane was, and arguably still are, one of the powerhouse teams of the National Rugby League – it’s just that they were supposed to play Manly that night.
Slowly, I began putting two and two together.
Tumbleweeds.
“Manly are on Friday Night Football!”
In my innocent mind, this was Manly’s Ed Sullivan moment; a chance to display their talents on a nation-wide platform. To a naïve 12 year-old, a team’s history only began once I started watching them, so I had no idea they had dominated the nineties and were one of the most hated teams in the competition.
In the end, Manly were hanged, drawn and quartered by the dominant Broncos, to the tune of 38-12. While it was a deflating result, I knew in the back of my mind that we (yes, me and my chosen team operate as a collective unit) had no right winning that game. After all, the fun is in the chase. If Batman caught the Joker within the first half an hour of The Dark Knight, there wouldn’t be a whole lot to look forward to, would there?
Yes, I did just compare a sports team to Batman.
Two years later, I found myself sitting in the stands of ANZ Stadium on grand final day, unable to comprehend the fact that my beloved Manly Sea Eagles were in the grand final.
Were they ready? After all, it had only been three years since they were languishing at the bottom of the ladder, considered the joke of the competition. As a fan, I’m not sure that even I was ready for this level of success. I was just getting used to the finals appearances, the Friday night games… It was all too much.
In scenes similar to the game against the Broncos in 2005, a methodical Melbourne Storm prevailed 34-8. In the midst of flooding ANZ Stadium in a sea of my own tears, one over-whelming thought began to take precedence in my mind: I’m glad we lost today.
Call it masochism, or chalk it up to a desperate attempt to find solace in a bleak moment. However, I knew that I wasn’t able to properly comprehend the magnitude of a premiership victory; a grand final loss was all a part of the process.
In hindsight, I’d probably still be crying if the events of the following year didn’t take place, but they did, so I was able to put the Kleenex away momentarily.
By 2008, I began noticing a lot of change surrounding Manly. They were a fixture on Channel Nine’s weekly NRL line-up, and had emerged into one of the powerhouses of the competition. Crowd attendances at Brookvale Oval were sky-high as a new wave of fans began supporting the club, and old fans came out of hiding.
Like the previous year, Manly emerged as the competition frontrunners, alongside their familiar rivals the Melbourne Storm. The difference between Manly in 2008 and in 2004 was like night and day.
On October 5, 2008, the finale to the real-life movie played out. In the grand final, the Sea Eagles displayed an aura of confidence and prowess that steered them to the biggest grand final win of all time.
I cheered, yelled, and carried on like an idiot. Life was great. As I filtered out of the stadium with thousands of other fans, I stopped in my tracks as a terrible, unshakeable thought overcame my mind (it was kind of a grand final tradition); things will only be downhill from here.
It was but a brief, passing reflection that I have exaggerated for storytelling purposes, but rings true all the same.
Luckily, I managed to ignore this premonition for the next month or so. That week of celebrations remains my most cherished memory of Manly, and it wasn’t even the last premiership they won.
In 2011, three years after their last triumph, I returned to the scene of the crime, in a decidedly less exuberant mood. It was like the Phantom Menace of grand finals; after the superior circumstances and build-up to the previous encounter, I left feeling somewhat disappointed that I had made any effort at all.
For the next week, I didn’t look at any newspapers or partake in the celebrations. In fact, after the full-time siren had sounded, I seldom thought about it.
What I did think about was that day in 2005, when I discovered Manly were playing Friday night football, and how excited I was.
The contrast between that feeling of exultation, and my feeling of emptiness following the 2011 grand final, reminded me that perhaps the joy of being a fan is by taking delight in the little things, and that once your team wins a grand final, the movie is over; at least for the time being.
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