Opinion
Just less than a week after the end of the AFL season, I decided to write up my own wrap of the finals in the only way I know how – quotes from a movie franchise that I love.
I have picked Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick because I saw a fair few parallels between the 2022 finals series and the two Top Gun movies.
Firstly, almost every element of each was an absolute banger – six to eight games were decided by less than three goals with at least three all-time classic finals being played this season.
Secondly, there were some down spots and questionable moments in both. In the footy, obviously, the Grand Final and one of the prelims were played by an un-killable enemy.
This was not dissimilar to Top Gun (although at least in the footy the enemy had a face and name and trying to beat them would not have sparked World War III).
As an aside, while I’m talking about grievances, here are three gripes I had with Top Gun: Maverick.
1. The weird fact that Rooster has completely inhabited his dead father’s being, wearing the same shirt and the same moustache as Goose, even singing the same song (great song though). A bit much.
2. How has Maverick not bought at least one new jacket since Top Gun, at least to spread the patches out a bit??
3. And how is Jennifer Connelly single? To quote Bill Simmons as soon as the ink on her divorce was dry, there’s a line of Florida billionaires waiting outside her door to take her to Maui. She’s probably 40 or so in the movie, meaning she’s exactly 22 years too old for Dave Portnoy at this point but there are stacks of others looking for age but not looks appropriate relationships.
Anyway, not important. Let’s get to the quotes.
(As a quick note, I won’t discuss Brisbane in this article. Given everything that’s going on at Hawthorn, I don’t feel quite right making jokes about Chris Fagan.)
“The end is inevitable Maverick. Your kind is heading to extinction.” “Maybe so, sir, but not today.”
It feels like the footy media have said this to the 2022 premiers virtually every year since 2010, and yet every year they have contended.
The Cats, like Maverick, have moved with the times just enough to remain relevant while staying true to the core tenets that made them great. For Maverick in the second film, that’s human growth hormone and an incredibly aggressive flying style. For the Cats it’s building off a strong defence and a big and able-bodied midfield.
Tom Stewart of the Cats celebrates. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Geelong were able to move with the times, recognising that the way to win premierships today is to score heavily off turnover. They played this beautifully in two ways: firstly, they led the league in points off turnover differential. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, they turned the ball over less than any other team in the AFL. While they were able to score adequately off turnover, the key was nobody was able to get the ball off them.
They were able to meld the controlled game style they’ve been criticised for in recent years, with an infusion of the modern way to win.
“He loved flying with you, Maverick.”
The way Meg Ryan says this line to Maverick after Goose dies is just about how I imagine Brit Selwood (Joel Selwood’s wife) spoke to Patty Dangerfield after a few chardonnays on Saturday night.
Dangerwood (that’s a solid couple name that isn’t getting as much use these days, I think wrongly) was an extraordinary combination; it felt like Selwood truly unlocked Dangerfield as a genuine all-time great.
In his last year in Adelaide, Dangerfield went from around 27 touches and under a goal a game to 32 touches and exactly a goal a game in his first year at Geelong. He effectively kept up those absurd numbers for his first four years at the Cats – numbers he never reached as a lone ranger over in Adelaide.
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
It’s apt, in my view, that Dangerfield is the Maverick.
He is the improviser but Selwood was, of course, the alpha. A man that dominated every room he walked into through charisma but also warmth and who was able to physically impose himself on games in a way that is rare for a player who, at least for the start of his career, was relatively slightly built (okay to be fair, that also sounds like Maverick (Tom Cruise minus the warmth) but just accept the joke and we can move on).
Selwood is truly great player and one we are lucky to have watched.
“He wants Mach 10 let’s give him Mach 10”
Mach 10 is 12,348 km/h.
That’s roughly how fast Collingwood was playing in that last 10 minutes against Sydney.
I think at one point Jack Crisp broke the sound barrier.
The end of that game, but honestly most of Collingwood’s season, was truly one of the most electric spectacles that I have ever seen.
I don’t know how they were able to spring the ball free from congested spots so often, and I am even more confounded by how they always seemed to have just that little bit more juice to squeeze out of themselves.
There is another appropriate comparison with the Pies and Top Gun here – you have to suspend your morality watching both Tom Cruise and Jordan De Goey.
Jordan De Goey. (Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)
“I will fire when I’m god damn good and ready. You got that?”
In the final dogfight of Top Gun against [redacted] somewhere in the Indian Ocean, after his baby oil bath, just off the coast of Fightertown, USA, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell froze. Racked with guilt after feeling culpable for the death of his partner, he simply could not put himself in the fight. He was overawed by the moment and overpowered by nerves.
That sounds like Sydney to me too, right down the baby oil. Ask Brayden Maynard.
They were excellent the whole way through the season and the finals series. I loved watching them. But against Geelong, what stuck out to me was that they just looked small. Sometimes footy is a simple game and the bigger, stronger, tougher side just wins finals.
That was Geelong.
Of course, in Top Gun, America wins (thank god), freedom is protected (thank god) and [redacted] is thwarted once Maverick gets himself back in the fight. We’ll see if Sydney can do the same next year. I wouldn’t bet against them.
“It’s not your flying, it’s your attitude…You may not like who’s flying with you, but whose side are you on?”
The Demons tried desperately to do the kumbaya thing that Richmond have popularised. There was just one problem with that – they found out over a $47 steak fritte that they kind of hated each other.
The issue with the Dees, as far as I can tell, is that they are a team of exceptional individuals. A team of Mavericks, if you will. Their list of blue-chip gun players is probably rivalled only by Geelong, and yet for the second part of this season and the finals series, for whatever reason they struggled with connectedness.
They were constantly gesticulating at one another and getting annoyed, giving away dumb free kicks.
“Good culture” is so often just wins papering over the cracks – there’s no better example of that than Melbourne…Other than maybe the first Top Gun.
You just know that that after the first movie when Maverick stays down and Iceman keeps flying up the ranks of the Navy, Maverick would’ve been in his room trying to work out a way to “buzz the tower” in such a way as to kill Iceman.
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