- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
“Jay, look. This is the best thing in football,” my colleague said, not looking at me, eyes fixed on the screen above my head, Lance Franklin with ball in hand, dashing down the near wing, space and possibility in front of him.
You know what happened next, and I knew too from the moment I looked up. It was the best moment of the best game of the season, authored by perhaps the best player in the game.
What preceded and followed Franklin’s goal was also breathtaking, in a more literal sense. The game was so intense, so magnificently contested, that it could only be watched between gasps, a tight chest ever-present, the viewer’s burgeoning smile also irrepressible.
The brief aftermath of Franklin’s run and goal was the only moment in the match where you could really relax – greatness like that exists in its own universe, independent of the game, and afterwards all you could do was laugh at the absurdity of Franklin’s genius and its equally ludicrous regularity.
These Swans feast on moments such as Franklin’s. They are dour, in the most impressive way imaginable, and then they are exquisite. They withstand relentless pressure to within an inch of their lives, bending but not breaking, then breaking but not really breaking.
But then they find little gaps, little crevices in the game, a marking contest here, a strange bounce there, and all of a sudden, they have life. And no team devours life like Sydney.
The Crows dominated Friday night and should have won. They blitzed the Swans in contested possessions, used the ball more efficiently, went inside 50 21 more times, and generated six more scoring shots. But they lost the ledger of ‘moments’.
(AAP Image/David Moir)
Sometimes it wasn’t their fault – which Callum Mills would probably tell you too. But notwithstanding that one particular dubious umpiring decision, the Crows had more than enough opportunities to win.
They were wasteful, and in the dying stages, Sam Reid and Tom Papley were not. They were clinical with their chances and Sydney, despite only creating 18 scoring shots, was able to compose a score just large enough to beat the most explosive offensive team in the league.
So many times it seemed like it was over. The Crows were imposing from midway through the second quarter onwards, ruthless with their forward entries, the volume so powerful that you felt like Sydney had to eventually break.
And when Taylor Walker kicked that odd, but I suppose brilliant, dribbling goal that was kicked much earlier than seemed necessary, it seemed like the conclusion was foregone, and the match was set to finally cohere with its inexorable rhythm.
But the Swans have a habit of spitting on rhythm and natural conclusions. They eschew notions of ‘what should happen’ and simply ‘win’ instead. And so they did on Friday night.
The Crows have been the best team all season. Friday night did nothing to diminish that reality, and if anything, only gave it further credence. But in a competition that awards the final trophy to the last team standing, Sydney might be the best team at standing the longest.