How the final round of the 1987 season still sits as the most dramatic of all-time
IF you think it’s tight going into the final round of 2017, spare a thought for the fans who were trying to keep tabs on what happened on a remarkable Saturday afternoon 30 years ago.
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IT became known as the day football held its collective breath.
In a time when transistor radios, not Twitter, relayed scores from football grounds, Round 22, 1987, was one of most emotionally charged finales to a home-and-away season ever.
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Those who remember it will never forget the tension. For those who don’t, it’s a good reminder that, no matter how tight this weekend’s final round is, it’s going to take some sort of finish to top what happened 30 years ago this week.
Four matches played simultaneously on the Saturday afternoon determined the finishing order of the first seven spots on the ladder. Three teams were vying for the fifth — and final — place.
Each of those games had its own narrative, the joy and sorrow happening within the space of a few minutes.
One was decided with a kick after the siren to secure top spot. Another went down to the last minute, crushing one dream and leaving another alive. The most noteworthy brought an end to a long finals drought, at long last giving one of the game’s heroes a chance to play in September, but only after confirmation of what happened elsewhere.
THE EQUATIONS
Lou Richards joked in his “Kiss of Death” column that morning that the coaches might have to ban players from taking transistors on to the field. Fans wouldn’t have dared to leave home without them.
On the Friday night, first-year side Brisbane Bears overcame Richmond to relegate the Tigers to the wooden spoon. The two Sunday games — Essendon-Collingwood and West Coast-St Kilda — had no bearing on the finals race.
It all came down to the Saturday action.
Carlton had to defeat North Melbourne at Waverley to finish top and earn a week off. If it didn’t, a Hawthorn win against Geelong at Kardinia Park would give the Hawks first place.
A Cats win would qualify them for the finals. But if Geelong lost, fifth place would go to the winner of the Footscray-Melbourne game at Western Oval.
Sydney had to defeat Fitzroy at Princes Park to lock in the double chance. A loss potentially would leave third spot vulnerable to North Melbourne.
Sound confusing? Just imagine trying to follow it without live television broadcasts or the immediacy of today’s multimedia platforms.
EVERY HEART BEATS TRUE
Melbourne hadn’t played a final since 1964, when club champion Robert Flower was still at primary school. The Demons desperately wanted to give Flower his first final series.
First-year Demon Todd Viney recalled the emotion: “The club had a marketing campaign around Robbie leading into the (1987) season, trying to raise funds to give us one last chance to play finals for him. We wanted to do it for ourselves, but the club also wanted to do it for Robbie.”
Those hopes looked grim after a loss to St Kilda in Round 17, leaving Melbourne in trouble.
“I remember telling the players we had six games to go and, if we won them all, we would play finals,” coach John Northey said.
“We won the next week and I kept saying the same thing, and the boys got on a bit of a roll.”
They won five games straight leading into the last round against the Bulldogs, but still needed another one — and a Cats’ loss — to extend Flower’s career into the finals.
No one tipped Melbourne, which suited Northey.
“He was an us-against-them coach, and would have pointed that out,” 1982 Brownlow medallist Brian Wilson said.
GAME TIME
Carlton captain Stephen Kernahan knew his team had to win. Under the final five system, finishing on top guaranteed a rest in the first week of the finals and the Blues needed it.
“We trained bloody hard under Wallsy (coach Robert Walls) that year,” Kernahan said. “Even Serge Silvagni (club great and powerbroker), who didn’t mind training hard, told Wallsy he would have to freshen us up in September, saying, ‘They will bloody tire if you don’t’.”
Across town, at the Western Oval, Northey was buoyed as he soon as he emerged from the dingy visitors’ rooms.
“I remember looking across as the players ran out onto the ground and seeing a sea of red and blue,” he recalled.
“Some of those people had probably never left the MCG (before).”
Flower had a message written on a bandage on the inside of his wrist — “Go Ball, Run, Run, Win!” A loss meant his career was over. A win — and a Geelong loss — meant finals.
Those hopes nosedived within 10 minutes when young forward Garry Lyon broke his leg and was carried from the field — vision played on high rotation a generation later on The Footy Show.
Wilson said: “I was next to Garry when he did it and it was like someone snapped a broom ... it was the worst sound ever.”
He hoped it wasn’t a bad omen.
THE TENSION
Fans could hardly keep up with the twists and turns in all four games.
At one stage in the third quarter, North Melbourne led Carlton by 38 points before the Blues launched a comeback. Kernahan said talk during the three-quarter time huddle was about the permutations — how winning would give the Blues the best pathway to avenging their Grand Final loss to Hawthorn the previous year.
Sydney was struggling with lowly Fitzroy in its quest for the double chance. The Lions led by 40 points at one stage, only for John Ironmonger to help lift the Swans back into it.
Flower’s finals dream wilted early in the third term. Not only had Geelong shot out to a big lead against the Hawks, but the Demons were almost four goals down after the Bulldogs kicked the first three goals of the quarter.
Sensing the moment, the Demons great kickstarted his team with two inspired goals.
By three-quarter-time, Carlton led narrowly, but the Swans trailed Fitzroy. The Cats held a three-goal margin over Hawthorn, and Footscray led Melbourne by a goal.
Back then, scoreboards at the grounds updated other matches only at the end of each quarter, and you had to have a Football Record to decode which team was which, according to a lettering system.
Sensing the moment, burly Demons football manager John Sell breathlessly told the players at the last change that Hawks were well in front of the Cats, leaving the finals door open.
It wasn’t true. The scene was set for a massive last half-hour.
THE FRANTIC LAST MINUTES
Sydney got over the top of Fitzroy, winning by eight points, which locked in a double chance.
The Kangaroos led within only seconds remaining at Waverley after a Jason Love goal, but the Blues went forward and Kernahan took his fifth mark of the quarter.
“Justin Madden wobbled it in and I ended up taking a pack mark,” Kernahan said.
“It was one of those little ones from 45 degrees that are never easy, but, thank God, it went through.”
Kernahan’s after-the-siren matchwinner locked in top spot. The Blues went on to win the 1987 flag, and he still wonders whether they would still have been fresh enough without the week’s break.
Melbourne finally managed to get on top of Footscray, but for those listening on radio, it seemed to be in vain because Geelong held a narrow lead over Hawthorn.
Flower kicked a crucial goal in the last term after gliding over a pack in the goalsquare.
As Melbourne fans in the Western Oval outer listened nervously on radio to the Hawks’ late fightback, the only way the Demons coaches could find out what was happening was to bang on the adjacent radio box next door, manned by around-the-groundsman Bob Davis.
Davis indicated that the Cats were clinging on.
They were, until Hawk Jason Dunstall dragged down a mark as the clock counted down to the last minute. He slotted it to stunned silence at Geelong. Cats coach John Devine had his head in his hands.
When the news was relayed via radio to Western Oval, there was a roar from Demons fans.
Viney and Wilson both thought the siren had sounded on their game. It hadn’t. Northey remembers the crowd went “berserk”.
There were still a few seconds to run down, as the Demons held onto to win by 15 points.
The players were still unaware of what had happened in Geelong, but assumed that Sell’s earlier information had been right.
Viney came off arm-in-arm with Flower, the young and the old who seemed finals bound.
“We thought we had made finals, but we didn’t know for certain,” Wilson said. “We didn’t know officially until we got into the rooms. Then, there was pandemonium.”
Northey went straight to the media boxes for clarification after the siren. He got what he needed — the Hawks had held on by three points — and he then joined the players in the rooms to belt out the most stirring version of It’s a Grand Old Flag heard in years.
POSTSCRIPT
Somewhere amid the beer and backslapping that night, the Melbourne players made a pact to look after the man who had helped to get them into the finals for the first time in 23 years — Jason Dunstall.
Brian Wilson said: “Someone said, we should send him a few slabs. But I can’t remember if we did or not.”
If they did, it still hasn’t been delivered.
“Never got them ... but if they want to send them my way now, that’s OK,” Dunstall said this week.
With inflation, that might stretch to about 20 slabs in 2017.
The Demons didn’t flinch in their first finals series in a generation. They won their elimination final against North Melbourne by 118 points and semi-final against Sydney by 76 points.
Before that first final, and after an inspiring pre-game speech, with John Williamson’s True Blue as background music, Northey noticed tears in Flower’s eyes.
Northey’s team almost knocked off Hawthorn in the preliminary final, but Gary Buckenara famously booted his team home after the siren, helped by a penalty when Jim Stynes accidentally ran over the mark.
The poignancy isn’t lost on Northey 30 years on. Three members of his 1987 side — Flower, Stynes and Sean Wight — aren’t here to see Melbourne try to lock in its first final in 11 years against Collingwood on Saturday.
Originally published as How the final round of the 1987 season still sits as the most dramatic of all-time
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