Tigers AFL Grand Final Gabba feat is one-of-a-kind
The unlikeliest Grand Final in AFL history has drama on and off the ground but rain couldn’t dampen the spirits of the Gabba crowd, writes Robert Craddock.
AFL
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The game’s big boss had his car towed, the heavens opened up and at one stage a football was kicked over a drunken spectator tackled by security.
Yes folks, it was a grand final day — sorry, night — like no other but in this of all seasons, would we have wanted anything else?
The “never before, never again’’ AFL Grand Final at the Gabba became a metaphor for the season — threatening clouds everywhere yet clear skies when it mattered in a year when craziness became kosher.
Richmond beat Geelong in a classic struggle. They had been sharing a resort for months, swapping coffees and fishing yarns, and they went at each other like two desperate brothers in the backyard before Richmond broke free, as champions do, with the freakish Dustin Martin having a walk with the gods.
The atmosphere was tremendous, the drama relentless and exhausting from the 34-minute first quarter, in which Richmond’s Nick Vlastuin was knocked senseless and Gary Ablett sentenced to play with “one wing’’ for the rest of the match after a shoulder injury restricted his rattlesnake reflexes.
It was Ablett’s last game before retirement and a Cats victory would have made his “one-armed warrior’’ story one for the ages. But it wasn’t to be. Queensland will hand back the grand final – forever – feeling it didn’t let the side down.
After more than 50 games in this state, the bottom line was that you can start and stop and start a competition, turn it upside down and inside out, take it around the Cape of Good Hope — but the system, madhouse though it was, somehow tossed up the best team as premiers.
The occasion felt big. Not MCG big but special in its own right. Normal at times. Delightfully different at others, as Ash Barty was chosen to present the trophy.
The challenges never stopped for the AFL right down to boss Gillon McLachlan having his car towed away on match morning after it was parked in a towaway zone outside his apartment. He will fetch it from “quarantine’’ on Sunday.
Brisbane had not had a decent shower for months yet it rained so heavily around 3pm that at one stage it appeared Noah may have to be temperature tested had his Ark floated up on the swirling floodwater on Ipswich Rd.
“Queensland – perfect one day, precipitation the next,’’ McLachlan said with a laugh at the pre-match function after Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said “we thought we would bring the Melbourne weather for you’’.
The Gabba had that One Time Only feel you get at a major Games opening ceremony when you know the Big Dance had never been this way before and she ain’t coming back.
You could feel the history washing over you even if you weren’t quite sure what it all meant.
Hundreds of Melbourne fans had quarantined in Darwin en route to Brisbane and their first sighting of the Gabba must have been like an Oasis to a desert explorer.
The word was out a couple of hours before kick-off that a Geelong supporter in Vulture Street would pay treble the face value for a ticket and was getting more desperate by the minute.
Strange though it may sound, stories like this one legitimised the occasion.
When the AFL Grand Final is held in Melbourne it’s the hottest ticket in Australian sport — the scramble for tickets can be as fierce as the match itself and remains a key part of the narrative of the week.
It’s true that 29,767 fans at the Gabba is not 90,000 at the “G’’. But with even State of Origin struggling to sell out in Brisbane the ticket crush was a welcome contrast to the pioneer years of the 1980s when Robert Walls was offered 10 free tickets to a Brisbane Bears game with his McDonald’s hamburger before he replied: “I’m sweet – I coach them.’’
The pre-match and halftime entertainment was classy and, most importantly, had no Meatloaf meltdowns.
Local band Sheppard thumped out a rousing version of Geronimo – the only national No 1 song to be Brisbane-made when it was recorded down the road at McDowall – and the catchy number about an apache warrior diving into a waterfall summed up the theme of a season that was essentially a leap into the great unknown.
The AFL’s first night grand final will probably be a ratings winner that will prompt the inevitable push for a permanent shift but the day timeslot still holds many aces, such as quaint little touches like players celebrating around the boundary as the natural light starts to fade and dusk looms — almost as if mother nature is gently drawing the curtain on the season.
At the Gabba it was almost as if the curtain had been ripped off its rail at full-time on Saturday night as the AFL’s bubble burst and the players were allowed to roam for the first time in months. Free at last …