This year marks the 20th anniversary of a classic game — and unfathomable upset — at the MCG.

Two decades on from that famous day, we reveal new details of two hours cemented in footy history.

SETTING THE SCENE

Dean Wallis has just moved into the middle of a raucous MCG when he takes the mark.

There is 38 seconds left in the 1999 preliminary final and more than 80,000 screaming fans are completely off their heads.

Rank outsider Carlton is clinging to a one-point lead — 104-103 — and Wallis is about to launch another Bomber raid.

The rugged defender has Dustin Fletcher free to his left and Fraser Brown in front.

What he does next is enshrined in footy folklore.

Before commentator Sandy Roberts finishes his question — “Can he cover himself in glory?” — Brown has buried Wallis into the MCG’s centre wicket area.

Hours earlier, Anthony Koutoufides is making the trip from his West Brunswick house to the MCG.

The Carlton champ is listening to the car radio when the news comes on.

“They were saying Essendon supporters were already lining up for Grand Final tickets,” Koutoufides says.

It has been happening all week. Essendon players arriving for training at Windy Hill had to get past their own fans, who were queuing up to secure seats at the big dance.

“We were walking into prelim final training week and there’s Essendon members sitting all the way down Napier St in their bloody deck chairs waiting for Grand Final tickets,” Wallis says.

“It’s just little things like that where we thought subconsciously, ‘F---, we’re into the Grand Final’ … and we hadn’t even got there.

“All of a sudden, the club as a whole, they fed up. They should have shut it all down and said, ‘OK. You’ve got to get there first’.”

TALE OF THE TAPE

Essendon had beaten Carlton by 39 points in Round 1 and by 76 points in Round 16, prompting Blues coach David Parkin to label his side a “B-grade team”.

The Bombers (18-4) had finished the 1999 home-and-away season on top of the ladder. The Blues (12-10) were a distant sixth.

Carlton was then thrashed by 73 points in week one of the finals by the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba.

But under the old finals system, not only did the Blues get a second chance against first qualifying final winner West Coast, they got to play the Eagles in a semi-final at the MCG under an MCC contract that mandated at least one match during the finals be played at the stadium.

Carlton never looked like losing and won by 54 points.

“We were very lucky the way finals system was back then,” Koutoufides says.

“But we played extremely well that day and it turned us into a different team.

“I played on Mitchell White and I’d spent pretty much all season at centre half-back. All I wanted to do was play midfield,” he says.

WAR OF WORDS

Carlton had locked in a preliminary final date with rampant rival Essendon.

The Blues had barely got back into their rooms beneath the Great Southern Stand when the bravado started.

Glenn Manton, who had been delisted by the Bombers in 1994 and had just played his 100th game for Carlton, stood up to say a few words.

“I hope we stick it up the f---ing Bombers next week,” Manton said.

The provocative comments were caught on camera, lighting the fuse for a week-long war of words that Manton remembers well.

“The emotional bomb doors opened,” he says.

“The next day I went to the local newsagent to pick up a car magazine and a little old Italian lady came up to me and asked if I was the young player who’d sworn on television the day before.

“I said: ‘Look, I am, and I apologise’, but before I could get another word out she whacked me over the head with the paper and said: ‘Don’t ever say that word on television again’ and I had to promise her I wouldn’t.

“For me, playing against Essendon was raw given the history we shared.”

GAME DAY

The West Coast final was Koutoufides’ second game back after missing five weeks and he knew he was underdone.

But by the time he walked into the Blues’ MCG changerooms just before lunchtime on Saturday, September 18, 1999, he was confident.

“Jack (John Elliott) was the most incredible president because, although he stirred the pot, he just loved the club that much and had so much belief in us players,” Koutoufides says.

“I can still remember him walking in that day saying, ‘I’ve got a funny feeling about today’ and so did some of the other board members. It made me wonder, ‘Does Jack know something I don’t?’.

“It made me think about the history of the Carlton Football Club and how many finals they had won that they probably should never have won.”

With the Jeff Kennett vs Steve Bracks state election taking place on the same day, former Liberal Party president Elliott has been out campaigning in enemy territory.

“I was out near Justin Madden’s house and he was a member in Essendon and I was handing out vote cards for the Liberal Party,” Elliott says.

“Obviously, it was strong Bombers country. Everyone was coming up to me saying, ‘You might win the election, but you won’t win the footy’.”

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

Manton started as a defensive forward on Dustin Fletcher.

When the strong spoiling stopper kicked the first goal of the game, having kicked one major all season, Dons supporters would have been forgiven for fearing it was going to be one of those days.

With captain James Hird watching from the coaches box with a season-ending stress fracture in his foot, the Blues lead by 16 points at quarter-time and 24 at halftime. The Bombers have kicked 3.10 at the main break.

But the near-unbackable favourites make their run in the third quarter, kicking 7.7 to 2.2 to take an 11-point lead and cast a cloud of inevitability over the Blues.

The Bombers have had 27 scoring shots to 16 and it’s as commanding an 11-point advantage as you get.

“I had my niece with me, along with my wife, and she said: ‘I’m going home’,” Elliott says.

Down on the ground, Carlton’s three-quarter time huddle is disturbingly silent. Even coach David Parkin is quiet when he gets to his players, which prompts Stephen Silvagni to bring the players together.

Silvagni delivers what Parkin later described as “the most emotional and appropriately-timed inspirational talk I've ever heard from a player”.

Koutoufides is agitated. He has been serviceable — but largely anonymous — at centre half-back.

“All I was thinking was, ‘Just please put me in the midfield’,” Koutoufides says.

“But I was never one of those players to walk straight up to the coach and say, ‘Listen, put me in the midfield because I feel good’. That would add pressure.

“When I didn’t get named in there I was like, ‘Oh sh-t, I’m back in defence’.”

ROAMING AND READING

Steve Alessio snaps the first goal of the last term and Essendon lead by 17 points with 17 minutes left.

Fraser Brown’s left-foot snap a minute later cuts the Bomber advantage to 11.

Enter Koutoufides.

“The runner came out and said: ‘Kouta, you’re in the midfield’ and I reckon I took off before he finished talking,” Koutoufides says.

“Shortly after, Justin Murphy had the ball on a forward flank and I was looking at him thinking, ‘Just wait, just wait’. I reckon he half saw me out of the corner of his eye and kicked it in and that was the start of it, really.”

Finally unleashed, Koutoufides goals from the set shot and proceeds to turn the game on its head.

His last quarter read: 10 disposals (four contested), six marks (three contested, three intercept), two clearances, two goals. If he was in SuperCoach he would have scored 127 points in the final term alone.

“It was just instinct,” Koutoufides says.

“They just let me play the way I loved to play. Just roaming around and reading the ball.”

DYING MOMENTS

Mark Mercuri’s brilliant gather and snap with 60 seconds left had somehow trickled wide.

It would have given Essendon the lead. Instead, the Blues led by a solitary point.

“When he had that ball in his hand I felt ill … I thought, ‘Game Over’,” Manton says.

“Seeing it miss was just like, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got another chance here’.”

Mercuri and Blake Caracella, normally deadly, have kicked 0.7 between them.

Like a Hollywood movie, it came down to one big last play.

Dean Wallis marked Dean Rice’s clearing kick with 38 seconds left and instead of kicking the ball back in or handballing to Dustin Fletcher, he ran straight into the wall that was Fraser Brown.

“He wasn’t getting around me,” Brown says.

“Out of all those (Carlton) midfielders, I was generally the hardest. I just picked the right way.”

Field umpire Andrew Coates was up the other end, as much a spectator as an official.

“It was like slow motion … I think I even said out loud, ‘Ball!’. It was a surreal moment,” Coates says.

Justin Murphy swooped on the loose ball, kicked to Brett Ratten, who chipped back to Murphy as the siren sounded on one of football’s most dramatic days.

“It was the most elation I’ve ever had in sport,” Brown says.

“I had been at Carlton for 10 years. The (1995) premiership we were expected to win and we almost knew we were going to win that.

“I was in euphoria.”

Coates was starting to walk off when Dean Rice approached him. “He yelled, ‘Coatesy, we’re in the f---ing Grand Final!’. He was so elated,” Coates says.

The Bombers were crushed.

“It’s the flag that got away because we would have beaten whoever we would have played the next week,” Wallis says.

“We should never have been in that situation. Our ability was more than their ability.

“As soon as we walked into the rooms after the game, I’m thinking, ‘Oh F---’’. We had a heap of opportunities.

“Sheeds got up and said, ‘I just want to put on record the courage that ‘Wally’ showed today to stand 40m off his opponent in the dying minutes. I’ve always asked players to take a risk. He took a risk and the risk didn’t come off.”

Down the corridor in the Carlton rooms it was a far different scene.

“I went into the rooms and ‘Parko’ said: ‘Cool it, we’ve got to play in a Grand Final next week’ and I said: ‘Forget about that’, this is the most joyous day; we love beating Essendon,” Elliott says.

“I was going back to the Liberal Party celebrations, but when I heard Jeff was no chance I said, ‘We won’t be going there’.”

Parkin would later say of his side: “We were the luckiest team in Australia to win that.”

WE WON’T WIN THIS FINAL

Seven days later, North Melbourne brushes Carlton aside in the Grand Final to claim its fourth premiership.

“It was the only time in my life — the only time — where I thought, ‘We are actually spent. We’re not going to win today’,” Manton says.

“We had put everything on the table.”

The Essendon players are forced to watch it all from the bottom deck of the Southern Stand at the Punt Rd end and then walk among the public through Yarra Park to a restaurant along from the then-Hilton Hotel.

Players and officials stayed there for three hours, with assistant coach Robert Shaw asked by Sheedy to make a presentation.

“The following pre-season we watched vision of that preliminary final that many times. That’s how switched on Sheeds was to making amends,” Shaw says.

WARNING SIGNS: WHY TODAY’S BOMBERS SHOULD BE AFRAID OF BOLTON

Wallis says Sheedy was “as wild as I’ve ever seen him”.

“We all got in our cars and drove home and started training the next day,” Wallis says.

“It was one of those things where we knew we’d fed up and we weren’t going to let it happen again.

“The by-product of 2000 was the hurt of ’99.”