Fox Footy’s Garry Lyon and Sarah Olle talk Game of Thrones and who would captain their team
Tyrion Lannister as captain of Collingwood or maybe Daenerys Targaryen leading the Hawks? They may be well versed in fighting for the iron throne in the biggest TV event of the past decade, but could how would they go fighting for a place in the grand final?
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On the face of it, the biggest game in Australia and the biggest TV event of the past decade might not have that much in common.
But Fox Footy’s Garry Lyon actually thinks that Australian rules football and Game Of Thrones are a pretty tight fit.
Ahead of the eagerly anticipated final season of the record-breaking fantasy-drama, which kicks off at 11am on Monday, the sports channel is having a GoT themed round and the former Melbourne great, turned media stalwart says he can see the parallels.
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So which character would they choose to captain their football team?
“That’s a good question,” says Lyon, before settling on the debauched and diminutive, but honourable and strategically brilliant, Tyrion Lannister.
“He’d be a good little front-and-square crumber. I think he’d get the general work done — and I think he’d be a nice teammate. And he’d do a bit of work on the opposition too, he’d have them all sorted out.”
And for Olle, the answer is obvious: “Probably Daenarys — because she has dragons.”
Lyon became a fan of the show, which has won 47 Emmys and become a cultural phenomenon over seven seasons since it premiered in 2011, when his son gave him the first season while he was laid up after having his appendix removed.
The host of Fox Footy’s On the Couch, which dissects the intricacies of the previous weekend’s round on a Monday night, was instantly hooked — and fascinated.
“There’s a bit of blood and violence and gore, it’s fantastical and there’s a bit of scheming,” Lyon says with a chuckle.
“It’s a bit like a footy club really, there’s backstabbing and if you are not getting the job done then you get your head lopped off. It’s a combination of what I know from a playing career and a media career — it has all those elements, scheming and Machiavellian tricks, it’s got everything.”
Lyon’s Fox Footy colleague Sarah Olle, who appears on the Saturday Stretch with former players Dermott Brereton and Brad Johnson, is also a GoT megafan.
Having binged her way through the first season while travelling around Europe, she was immediately drawn to the strong female characters such as the Mother of Dragons, Daenarys Targaryen, and the Stark sisters, Sansa and Arya, and the way they had to fight to make their voices heard in a male-dominated world.
“For a young woman there are so many cool girls in the show and they go through huge transformations,” Olle says.
“Look at someone like Sansa who starts off so meek and mild and you almost want to vomit when she says she wants to marry Joffrey but you look at her now and all these persecutions she has had to overcome — she’s been sold off to be a wife essentially and lost a lot of her family but she is still standing strong as the Lady of Winterfell now.
“And also if you look at Daenarys and how she went from being sold off by her brother to Khal Drogo but then becomes this epic warrior, her transformation is fascinating as well.”
And without drawing too long a bow, it’s not entirely unlike the journey Olle and some of her female colleagues have endured blazing a trail through the traditionally blokey environment of footy clubs and footy media.
“It sounds strange comparing real life to such a fantasy world as Game Of Thrones but you can draw inspiration from those kind characters and I can also draw inspiration from women who have come before me in the industry and I am working alongside them now,” she says.
“People like Sarah Jones and Neroli Meadows and Kelli Underwood, they have all done such great work in making this space less male dominated and more accommodating for people like me coming through the ranks. So I guess there are comparisons, strange as that may sound.” As the many houses of Westeros have battled each other for the Iron Throne over seven seasons so far — and face the prospect of uniting or falling to the invading zombie hordes in the secrecy-shrouded eighth season — so many richly drawn characters and spectacularly shocking scenes have presented themselves that picking a favourite is nigh on impossible.
Nevertheless, Lyon has taken a shine to the hulking, disfigured, conflicted Sandor Clegane, aka The Hound, the former protector of Arya Stark played by Rory McCann.
Clegane has unfinished business against his even bigger brother who bullied and burned him as a child, Ser Gregor, better known as The Mountain.
For seasons, fans have been baying for a so-called “Clegane-bowl” which would see the two giants finally pitted against each other in a no doubt bloody and brutal fight to the death.
“I quite like The Hound,” agrees Lyon.
“I don’t know why. He as a bit of a soft side, he looked after Arya, but he’ll still lop a couple of heads off if need be. And he got beaten in a fight by big Brienne of Tarth, which was humbling for him, but he still got himself back into action so I am a bit of a Hound fan.”
For Olle, it’s the youngest Stark sister, Arya, who once left The Hound for dead and abandoned him so she could become a deadly assassin before finally reuniting with her siblings last season.
“I love Arya,” she says. “She’s this little punk who has known from day dot that she didn’t want to go and be a lady, she wanted to fight and she’s gone and made that happen. She has come back now and just complements Sansa so well. And I like their relationship as well, the two sisters.”
While plenty of the Fox Footy shows will be embracing the Westerosi spirit over the weekend — and as commanding as Lyon looks in his Jon Snow attire — he’s not sure his On the Couch colleagues Gerard Healy, Paul Roos and Jonathan Brown will be quite as committed.
“Gerard would have no idea,” Lyon says.
“Roosy seems too Zen and sensible to me. But it would be right up Jonathan Brown’s alley, so if he’s not watching it I will certainly fire him up.”
Olle has higher hopes for her Saturday Stretch colleagues and hopes to once again don her Khaleesi robes for the occasion.
“I think we are all dressing up,” she says.
“I have got pretty dark hair so I think I will be putting on a wig to be the Mother of Dragons. But we think that Derm should be Brienne — and he won’t need to wear a wig, he can just wear his own hair. I am not sure about Johnno. Maybe Tyrion?”
WATCH: On the Couch, Monday night, 8.30pm
WATCH: Saturday Stretch, Saturday nights.
Fox Footy’s Game Of Thrones round rolls out all week.
GoT, season 8 starts Monday, 11am.
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