What similar area of soil in any other industry could be so productive in the few hours to be given to the production?
– From a 1926 New York Times editorial about Soldier Field in Philadelphia which hosted the heavyweight title fights between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney
Though the MCG sits vacant, it is expectant in its vastness, ready to consume one hundred thousand people, poised to deliver heartache and gratification, comedy and horror on the last Saturday in September.
Those lucky enough to grow up in a famous city such as Melbourne, especially if their talent didn’t extend to playing AFL football, shouldn’t be forgiven for taking the MCG for granted as a place of unassailable glory. It is more than that. It is cultural, a sporting icon renowned worldwide, a stadium where first time visitors stand idle, gaping in awe. Without the MCG, Melbourne wouldn’t be so imminently visitable. It’d be another cold city in a world of thousands, where the sun becomes an afterthought in winter and keeping warm requires a positive mental outlook along with many layers of clothing.
Melbourne, though, is more than a cold city. It is a cultural masterpiece, an example of tolerance that should be heralded beyond the safe confines of Australia’s borders and those of developed countries. Those lucky enough to grow up in this famous city understand the borders of limitations, that to live in Melbourne doesn’t mean its cultural masterpiece need be embraced, but it must be accepted.
A primitive beacon to that culture, south of the city, is often overlooked in Melbourne’s jigsaw culture. The MCG is defined by its borders, boundary lines, fences and walls, yet all races play and watch. It is an example of tolerance envied by much of humanity. The stadium, more than a hundred years old, is a cultural masterpiece. Along with Australia’s indigenous game, the MCG has helped make Melbourne famous.
Those who grew up in Melbourne shouldn’t adopt a superiority complex – it is just a city – but they should understand the impact the MCG has on Australia’s psyche. Those who don’t should move overseas, interstate, or at least admit to their apathetic attitude in relation to the beauty of sport.
The MCG is massive. From the outside it seems like a mountain or sheer cliff face. From the air it resembles a crater smashed into the landscape by a meteorite. Walking to the MCG is a slow amble to excitement, something is about to happen. Inside the stadium, the noise is always loud, a blur, thousands of voices melded into a static combination. When the siren sounds to start the contest, those voices consolidate into a militant reverberation that assaults sensibility, eliciting unwilling grins and quickening the heart.
Footballers are desperate to make their reputations at the MCG. Those that do it on grand final day carry eminence that lasts forever. The rest of a lifetime can be confirmed or denied on the hallowed turf of the MCG, simple grass that bears no knowledge of the fate it provides.
Grand finals, though, aren’t always what they should be. Each year tight fistfuls of dreams are wrecked or embellished at the MCG. In the aftermath of every grand final, footballers either look down at the simple grass as their tears dot the turf, or gaze upwards, seeing their face in lights or their name on the scoreboard as the crowd screams in blissful delight or rants in shocking disappointment.
In reality, in terms of day to day life, death and otherwise, a grand final might not be what it seems, what people want it to be, given it remains a game of football, but fistfuls of dreams don’t need reality. The concrete stadium is where dreams are made or destroyed, for supporters and footballers.
If you’re from Melbourne, the dreams are simple. There’s nothing that can’t be done at the MCG. If you’re not born or raised in Melbourne, it hardly matters. If you’re at the MCG on grand final day, you’re in Melbourne, the sporting capital of Australia, if not the world. The illicit chill of spring energises people, dragging Victorians, willingly, from a cranky winter. Inside the MCG, looking above and beyond the canyon, the light towers burn brightly, shadowing fear and failure, illuminating pride and performance.
It is easy for football fans to praise September. There is nothing like being in Melbourne in spring, at the MCG, without a curfew, when footballers work diligently, crashing and tackling, selling their souls, praying to the football gods, taking inspiration from playing at the home of football. The MCG can’t cleanse a world of ills, nor can it cure disease, but it is a short tram ride or walk from Flinders Street Station, a ten minute trip to brand new and immediate history, glory or hatred, experienced live by a hundred thousand people.
Australia is home to more than 20 million people. This year, less than 0.5% of Australia’s population will attend the grand final. It is no wonder, given the scant percentage of our population fitting into the MCG, how some fans and players struggle to sleep the night before a grand final, their excited hunger based on fear of failure and expected delight.
It is no wonder that thousands of people willingly pay more than a thousand dollars for a ticket to the grand final.
If a footballer, complete with a pocketful of dreams, is going to make it anywhere, he needs to make it in the concrete cauldron – the MCG – where dreams are fulfilled. In victory, there is nothing the footballer can’t do except win. In those moments when the siren sounds finality, when his arms are outstretched in the air, hands into fists, the footballer will scream victory, baby I’m at the MCG, where my dedication has been affirmed, no place in the world can compare.
Melbourne is a pretty city, a concrete jungle of aged, wonderful architecture flanked by parks. The MCG is part of the city’s culture, where dreams are shattered and created. Get a ticket to the grand final and a person feels untouchable, inspired simply by being in Melbourne. A grand final ticket won’t make a person feel brand new, but it’ll reduce them to juvenile lusting, please, can my team win.
Having a grand final ticket means being involved in football. Those who don’t care for a ticket or football need not be criticised. Their passion lies in less vigorous pursuits, such as knitting and scrabble. Melbourne, though, provides an outlet, the culmination of six months battle, a lifetime for footballers scrambling to succeed, to eke an existence in the minds of supporters, to burn a hole in the heart of their club.
To be in Melbourne, with a grand final ticket, is a cultural experience far beyond the food, the shops and the cold weather. Each person who holds a ticket joins in a simple objective, living vicariously through 44 footballers, all on a rabid quest for the premiership.
Visitors to Melbourne often get carried away in the experiences the city provides, the apparent difference in culture, the freezing weather, traffic and diverse nationalities all in the same space. People visiting Melbourne can easily become immersed in illusion, pretending, however ridiculous it seems, that Victoria is actually another country and a passport is required to enter.
That’s how excited some people get when they visit Melbourne, which is mystifying to those who live in Victoria, and those who have lived there.
Why, it can be argued, is Victoria, and Melbourne perceived to be so much different, so much better than the rest of Australia. The answer is tempering. Melbourne is only an Australian city. To come here doesn’t mean the visitor need be lauded for their courage or luck. One need not move to Melbourne for better opportunities, artistic, business or otherwise. To claim such a move for greater opportunity is to show ignorance.
Yet Melbourne still draws the pretentious from interstate, those following natty dreams of their names in lights, on posters or on television. Most Victorians look smugly on haughty ideals like that and turn up their heaters when it gets cold.
Most Victorians really don’t care that a portion of the rest of the nation desire to live in Melbourne, on some idealistic crusade at achieving success. No one, with the exception of footballers in spring, need be in Melbourne to succeed. The rest of Australia hardly understands this. People still move to south to find themselves and their artistic pursuits, which is laughable. If the talent shines bright enough, it’ll be seen anywhere.
How difficult is that to understand? Why is Melbourne such a magnet for desperation? Why do people who can’t forge an artistic or business career interstate think it’ll be more meaningful if they can do it in Melbourne? It makes little sense, but, examined culturally, football is to blame for the ridiculous determination of Melbourne being likened to the centre of the earth.
For more than a hundred years, footballers crave Melbourne in September. For decades the best footballers from interstate were lured east, for more money, more prestige and a chance at succeeding in Australia’s best competition. That determination, throughout the decades, found tangents to artists and people in business who looked upon Melbourne as the new centre of their universe.
Amazing how the lure of sport invades culture, the arts and business.
The MCG is magnificent in spring. All footballers worry and fantasise about making their careers at the MCG. At the weekend, 22 footballers will have done that. For two hours on Saturday, 25 September, the MCG, like no other place, will become Australia’s most productive slab of soil, generating millions of dollars in revenue for the state and the AFL. It’ll also help kill and verify the dreams of millions of Australians, and spark interest of people living interstate, who think they need to move south or east to make it. If they’re not footballers, their justification for the move is misplaced, but it’s hard to blame the creative for following the deep-rutted path footballers have trodden to the MCG.
Dreams killed at the MCG
The Western Bulldogs continue to cement their unfortunate legacy as losers. Three consecutive preliminary final appearances is a fine effort, but the Bulldogs lost them all. Coach Rodney Eade, in a show of extreme optimism, still remains confident about the future despite the heartbreaking defeats.
The VFL introduced preliminary finals in 1909. In more than one hundred years of football, no club has ever lost three consecutive preliminary finals. The Bulldogs have created another stat to add to their abysmal history.
The table below shows clubs who have lost consecutive preliminary finals throughout VFL/AFL history. Many of the teams rebounded from those losses to claim a premiership.
| St Kilda | 1909-10 |
| Carlton | 1920-21 |
| Geelong | 1933-34 |
| Melbourne | 1936-37 |
| Collingwood | 1945-46 |
| Geelong | 1954-55 |
| Geelong | 1980-81 |
| North Melbourne | 1994-95 |
| Western Bulldogs | 1997-98 |
| Port Adelaide | 2002-03 |
| St Kilda | 2004-05 |
| Adelaide | 2005-06 |
| Western Bulldogs | 2008-09-10 |
Eade, at least publicly, believes the Bulldogs will continue to be a force next year. It matters little, according to his crystal ball, that Jarrad Harbrow is taking a chunk of money for a three year contract in sunshine and shifting to the Gold Coast. Jason Akermanis, as the world is aware, is already gone. Veteran Brad Johnson retired following the preliminary final loss to St Kilda, his dreams left unfulfilled on the slippery MCG.
Akermanis and Johnson won’t be missed. Harbrow will. Eade should be worried. The Bulldogs are light on for skill and aggression, despite Barry Hall’s menace all at full-forward.
The Dogs will drift down the ladder next year, their window of opportunity unfortunately locked shut. They were great against the Saints for a half, taking a six point lead into the long break. Midway through the third term, the match was lost with the Saints hitting seven goals to one.
Three consecutive preliminary finals is a gallant performance, but the lack of class, aggression and skill wrecked the future. Unfortunately, the Dogs must rebuild and the elusive premiership remains exactly that.
Geelong should not be ashamed by the belting administered by Collingwood. The Cats have been excellent over the past four years, with two premierships from three grand finals. It is enough to make them a great side, but it isn’t enough to elevate them beyond the Brisbane Lions, who ransacked the competition for three consecutive premierships from four grand finals.
There can be no argument as to who the team of the decade is, and it isn’t the Cats.
Coach Mark Thompson has ample worry. Gary Ablett won’t commit to anyone – he allegedly didn’t show up for a scheduled meeting on Thursday with his manager and club officials, and is most likely going to sprint north to the Gold Coast. Hopefully he won’t wear out his shoes on the way to the bank.
Cats ruckman Mark Blake wants out because he can’t be guaranteed a game. Blake is big and slow. He might be an effective tap ruckman, but the skill ends there. He won’t be missed. There are too many veterans on Geelong’s list, and all veterans end up the same way – slow and ineffective. Geelong won’t win another premiership in the immediate future though they could remain a contender for several years.
Regardless of the margins, the preliminary finals were excellent games of football, for vastly different reasons.
Collingwood kicked straight in a big game. The turning point was exactly that, the football bouncing sharply in a right angle following a long bomb by Leigh Brown. The first quarter was exceptional, seven goals to one. The Magpies monstered the Cats, continually forcing them backwards and into error, making them panic like amateurs.
The pressure the Magpies exude has been labelled a press. In reality, it’s a vice-like squeeze tightening on anyone with the ball and those in the vicinity. Once the Magpies force a turnover or get some space away from a pack, their ball movement is swift.
In the first half the Magpies continually moved the ball from full back to full forward with four possessions, all precise kicks to advantage along the boundary line. It was too easy. The Cats had no answers to the pace, not when the match was young.
The Magpies have played seven dominating quarters of football in their two finals. Giving up six goals in junk time against the Cats is no sin. No club in the history of the game has ever given up an 81-point lead. Collingwood played football without bruises when the game was over. Magpie fans need not fret about the end result, a 41-point margin that flattered Geelong.
By contrast, St Kilda has played four good quarters and four bad quarters in the finals, suffering huge lapses that almost cost them the game against the Geelong, and another shocking first half against the Bulldogs that saw them trailing by a goal at half time.
If the Saints suffer a lapse, even for a quarter against Collingwood, they’ll get hammered.
Plenty has been written and argued about the quality of this year’s preliminary finals, but finals need not be close. There is no requirement for edge-of-seat excitement, just an expectation. Collingwood and St Kilda won. The industry should accept that and move on to the weekend, when it all matters.
A short study of history
The match between Geelong and Collingwood was eerily similar to the 1996 preliminary final featuring North Melbourne and Brisbane.
Consider the scores:
| 1996 | ||||
| North Melbourne | 8.3.51 | 11.7.73 | 16.9.105 | 17.12.114 |
| Brisbane | 3.1.19 | 3.5.23 | 7.8.50 | 11.10.76 |
| 2010 | ||||
| Collingwood | 7.2.44 | 13.7.85 | 16.11.107 | 18.12.120 |
| Geelong | 1.1.7 | 3.5.23 | 6.10.46 | 11.13.79 |
During the third quarter of the 96 preliminary final, North led the Lions by 75-points before slowing up the pace and easing to a 38-point win. The Lions kicked eight of the last nine goals.
At the weekend, Collingwood led Geelong by 81-points midway through the third quarter then stopped running, allowing the Cats to kick eight of the last ten goals.
Conceding goals when the match is over isn’t a concern. Having monstered the Cats, Collingwood started to cruise, waiting for the siren to blow, as North did fourteen years earlier.
A few North Melbourne fans have denigrated the 2010 preliminary final. When reminded of the similarity between this year and 1996, the memory is biased and forgetful. The only people, most will say, who enjoyed Collingwood’s win over Geelong is Magpie fans.
Thousands of football fans will disagree. The king is dead. Long live the new king, whoever it may be.
History shows the Kangaroos went on to win the premiership in 1996 against Sydney. Collingwood is in similar form that North took into the grand final fourteen years ago.
The prediction
The suits and cleavage of the Brownlow Medal distractions are gone. Chris Judd is perhaps the luckiest winner in Brownlow history, given the let-off he received after elbowing Fremantle’s Matthew Pavlich and slicing open his cheek during the home and away season. Judd, who infamously declared his love of the martial arts pressure point, applied enough pressure points throughout the year, to the umpires and the match review panel.
While the umpires might have been blinded by Judd’s pace in breaking away from the packs, they allocate votes by memory, while slumped, exhausted in the change-rooms, hardly the best time for the mind to be working.
The match review panel, with the benefit of countless replays, decided Judd’s swinging elbow wasn’t deliberate, rather, an involuntary action. The panel got it wrong. Judd should’ve been suspended and ruled ineligible to win the Brownlow. No one can take the win away from him, though the merit of his victory will be debated as long as football lives on.
When the teams were announced named, St Kilda surprised many by recalling the limited but angry veteran Steven Baker, who missed 13 weeks through suspension and inactivity. Collingwood brought back Simon Presitgiacomo and Leon Davis, two veterans who are serviceable but hardly angry.
The 2010 grand final has me in a slight quandary. I want Collingwood to win. I will be supporting the Magpies on Saturday as though they’re my own club. If they win I’ll be elated, but I’ll also spare a sympathetic thought for St Kilda, a hapless club with just one premiership.
My ticket cost $725, the most expensive price I’ve paid to attend a grand final, my eleventh grand final in the last fifteen years. Through my love for football, I’ve channelled thousands of dollars to the AFL. In that I’m no different to thousands of mad fans around the country.
Yesterday I went to Arden Street, my spiritual home. For those who don’t know, Arden Street is North Melbourne’s home ground. While I was there I walked around the boundary, remembering my time there as a kid, picking out spots in the vacant expanse, space I sat with my brother and sisters, all united in cheering North on.
Times have changed but my allegiance remains the same. Arden Street is different now, and though the nostalgic recollection is altered forever by renovation, the spirituality lives on.
I believe Collingwood will win the 2010 grand final. Unlike most of Australia, I don’t hate the Magpies, as an earlier Ramble attests. There is a simple reason. On 5 April, 1980, clad in a North Melbourne jumper and scarf, I ran up to Tommy Hafey in Fogarty Street.
‘Are you Tommy Hafey,’ I asked.
Hafey laughed and said yes. Then I asked for his autograph. As coach of Collingwood, he signed my football record despite my attire. He wore a pale blue adidas t-shirt and chuckled as he scrawled his signature, perhaps wondering why a North fan wanted his autograph.
I wanted it because I admired him. I still have the football record with his signature.
Hafey, as coach of Collingwood, led them to four grand final defeats. In those grand finals, he never had the best side – they were always the underdogs – but he was gracious enough to sign his name on a football record belonging to a nine-year old North supporter, on the street before the game.
Hafey had class. There is virtually no chance a coach nowadays would sign an autograph for a supporter before a game. They’d be too focussed on structure and the process. A kid with a pen would be a distraction. No coach would be as affable as Hafey was thirty years ago.
Football was different then.
I want Collingwood to win. If anyone is aggrieved at my attitude, blame the recollections of a nine-year old kid running up to Tommy Hafey, who is a legend of the game.
