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So often it’s the worst, most painful moments that remind you just how lovely football is.
The best of sport sits on the bridge that links everything going right for one team, and everything going wrong for the other.
Melbourne and Sydney were different degrees of finished over the weekend. Both – Melbourne at the 17-minute mark of the fourth quarter and Sydney at the 23rd – would have surely seen their chances of winning drop below one per cent. But seasons are born in that less than one per cent, and Sydney now have life, and Melbourne have even more of it.
Their clash this Friday night seemed set to be one between teams with a combined 12 wins from 26 games. Now it looms as a tussle between two sides that can win the premiership.
That’s the Hollywood upshot. The film noir story about the two losers is more compelling to the tortured, indie fanatic. It’s somehow always more tantalising to dissect how something was given away instead of how it was taken.
The Eagles, at least, can take a little solace in knowing that their wounds were not gratuitously self-inflicted. All game they controlled forward territory, used the ball more efficiently, and generated more scoring shots. But all game you couldn’t help but feel they were up against a superior team.
West Coast bludgeoned their way to scores. They tackled, and then kicked long, and then took contested marks, and then kicked goals. It was fine, but a little uninteresting – a great home team playing great at home for stretches.
The Demons, on the other hand, played football as inspired as it was inspirational. They played with pace and dare, moving the ball in rapid, deft handball chains reminiscent of a certain team that got on a little bit of a run at the end of last year.
They also played with force, though, with Jack Viney embodying their hardness, a vicious, magnificent competitor who makes the unbearable stereotypes about a player ‘simply wanting it more’ suddenly more bearable. Viney had 26 contested possessions on Saturday night – no West Coast midfielder had more than 11.
(AAP Image/Tony McDonough)
As beautiful as the transition attacks were all night, the Demons ultimately won through that force. In the dying minutes, they seemed to win every stoppage, extracting the ball and using desperation’s strength to find an inch to pummel it forward. It was an arm wrestle all night, and Tom McDonald’s just-connecting kick to win the game was symbolic of the Demons having just enough to finally make the Eagles submit.
The Bombers did not submit as much as they chose football epilepsy over composure. Outside of Lewis Jetta (suddenly revitalised and kicking the ball as brilliantly as anyone in the competition until…) and his sad, directionless last quarter stab at goal, the Eagles did not do a whole lot to lose the game. Essendon did everything to lose the game.
They played like there were 30 seconds left when there were 330. Zach Merrett blazed a clearance down the middle when it had to go wide, his teammates were out-bodied in crucial marking contests, and Brendon Goddard made sure that there will be a second Saint who played in the grand final replay remembered for an unfortunate smother.
While the stakes were far less, Goddard’s smothered kick was much less defensible than his former captain’s. Tom Papley didn’t exactly sneak up on him like a librarian.
Joe Daniher’s famous mark will only be remembered for its infamous context, and Martin Gleeson will always be linked with the game’s final moment, which, for everything that he might be, painfully reinforced what he isn’t – a big, muscular person.
Tom McDonald’s goal was desperate, final, and breathless. Gary Rohan’s mark was emphatic. Destructive.
Where one team snatched victory with its final breath, the other won with a tsunami, a torrent of potency that gathered speed with each of its opponent’s errors. West Coast couldn’t hang on, and Essendon jumped freely into the abyss, panic-stricken and teary-eyed.
What a lovely weekend.