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This Saturday night, the AFL’s first ever Pride Game will take place when St Kilda and the Sydney Swans lock horns at Etihad Stadium in a match which will be crucial to both teams’ hopes of featuring – or doing well in – September respectively.
In a massive departure from what is traditionally seen on an AFL field, several sections of it will be seen differently, with the 50 metre arcs, goal flags, the socks to be worn by the Sydney Swans and the numbers on the back of the St Kilda guernseys, among others, to be given a rainbow touch to them.
The match will raise the issue of discrimination, sexual diversity and equality among the LGBTIQ community, while also “welcoming them to the football”, in the words of AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan.
“Hopefully, mothers and fathers will talk to their sons and their daughters and friends will talk to friends and brothers will talk to brothers and have conversations,” he said in relation to the issue.
“It’s happened in other issues that have confronted us, and in this pride round, people will talk about sexuality and hopefully have conversations and hopefully we can make a small indent in some young peoples’ lives that they feel comfortable coming out or having the conversations they need to have or feel that little bit more accepted, then we’ve done our role.”
While this is the first premiership-sanctioned Pride Game, it will actually be the second of its kind after the Sydney Swans and Fremantle played in a similar match during last year’s pre-season.
This match will have serious ramifications on both the finals chances of St Kilda, and the top four chances of the Sydney Swans, as we close in on September with only two rounds to go after this weekend.
The Saints are still in with a mathematical chance of reaching the finals after defeating Carlton by 71 points at the MCG last Sunday to close to within two games of eighth-placed North Melbourne on the ladder.
However, while their win-loss record for the season is in the black, the percentage is very poor, currently at 95.1 per cent as opposed to the Roos’ 111.5 per cent. It will eventually conspire against them come the end of Round 23.
For the Saints to displace the Roos in the eight, they would have to pull off a huge upset against the Swans, then defeat Richmond and the Brisbane Lions in the final fortnight (the Saints will start favourites in both those matches).
At the same time, they must hope that the Roos drop all their three remainders against Hawthorn, the Sydney Swans and GWS Giants, also by large margins.
It’s unlikely to happen, but it’s not impossible.
In fact, since the Saints’ 103-point thrashing by the West Coast Eagles in Perth in Round 8, the club has won eight of eleven matches to prove themselves as one of the most improved teams this season.
That included victories over the Geelong Cats and Western Bulldogs, two teams bound for the finals this season. The match against the Swans will be their last chance to prove themselves against a top-eight side.
By contrast, after starting the year with nine straight wins, the Roos have dropped seven of their last ten matches to drop to a record of 12-7, leaving them in eighth place on the ladder.
As a matter of fact, by the time the Saints start their match against Sydney at 7:25pm, they will know whether they will still be in the finals race, or playing for pride, pending the result of the Roos’ match against Hawthorn earlier in the day.
Regardless, expect the Saints to come out firing as they seek to claim their third top-eight scalp this season, proving indeed that they are one of the most improved teams in 2016 and one to watch next season and going forward.
As for the Swans, this match will be important as far as their top-four hopes are concerned.
Entering Round 21, John Longmire’s men are one of four clubs currently in equal second place on the ladder, but ranked second thanks to their percentage of 144.2 per cent, which is the best of any club in the AFL.
Their 67-point thrashing of Port Adelaide last week saw them displace the GWS Giants as the best-performed Sydney club on the ladder, and puts them in the box seat to possibly secure a second minor premiership in the last three years.
That’s provided the Swans win each of their three remainders and the Hawks drop at least one of their three remainders in the regular season.
The Swans will also carry a nine-match winning streak at Etihad Stadium into Saturday night’s showdown, having not been beaten under the roof since mid-2012 when, ironically, St Kilda beat them by 28 points in what was Saints legend Lenny Hayes’ 250th game.
It remains the only blot for Swans coach John Longmire against the club many thought he would take the reins of after then-Saints coach Grant Thomas was sacked at the end of the 2006 season.
The Saints also once had an imposing record in Saturday night matches played at the ground, going eight years without losing a match in that timeslot between Round 9, 2003 and the 2011 elimination final noninclusive.
The loss in the latter year just happened to be against the Swans, in what was, unknowingly to many at the time, Ross Lyon’s final match as Saints coach before he walked out on the club to join Fremantle ahead of the 2012 season.
It now remains to be seen how the next installment in the rivalry between St Kilda and the Sydney Swans unfolds, with both clubs to contest the AFL’s first premiership-sanctioned Pride Game this Saturday night.
This comes after both clubs traded players to each other sporadically since 1994 (think Tony Lockett, Barry Hall, Adam Schneider, Sean Dempster and, very recently, Tim Membrey), and, in 2011, were coached by two of Paul Roos’ former assistants (Ross Lyon and John Longmire, respectively).
The two clubs also contested several finals matches against each other, with St Kilda winning a semi-final in 2004 before the Swans won a preliminary final in 2005 en route to its first flag in 72 years, and then the aforementioned elimination final in 2011 which was the Saints’ most recent appearance in a finals series.
* The match will be televised on the Seven Network nationally (7mate in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth), except in Adelaide which will receive the Port Adelaide versus Melbourne match from the Adelaide Oval that same night.
* The pre-match show, which will be dedicated to celebrating the diversity of the LGBTIQ community, will not be shown in Sydney or Perth due to the GWS Giants versus West Coast Eagles twilight match overlapping into the early part of the evening.
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