A night for wagging tails

THE car sweeps silently into Crown casino a tick after 5pm. A Bentley or Rolls-Royce...doesn't much matter which.

THE car sweeps silently into Crown casino a tick after 5pm. A Bentley or Rolls-Royce...doesn't much matter which.

Probably worth two houses, someone suggests, when bystander talk turns to price.

Out pours a short gentleman and his tall wife, who announces her arrival by plonking a hand on her hip.

Geoffrey Edelsten will spend the next 10 minutes standing off to the side, mostly off camera, hands clasped behind his back or in his pockets.

His wife Brynne will bend her knee and flash her teeth and keep explaining that she had been getting ready since 3.30am.

The Edelstens were the first arrivals on the Brownlow blue carpet. Stretch limos and Hummers would follow, punctuated by the odd sports car or convertible.

And the subservient role played by Dr Edelsten - that of handbag or fashion accessory to a lady aglow in bright lights - would be replayed again and again.

For the Brownlow arrivals ceremony was more an anthropological study into the rise of the ultimate uber-WAG, as one reporter introduced Gary Ablett's partner, Lauren Phillips, than an insight into the glamorous tendrils of football.

Collingwood's Alan Didak wasn't asked many, if any, questions about the grand final. But he did agree to hold a handbag for his partner, Jacinta Jellett, and stand to the side for a moment as she was asked a set list of questions about dressmaker and jewellery designers.

Brownlow Medal favourite Dane Swan appeared to be channelling Graham Teasdale, who wore a brown velvet suit when he won in 1977.

Yet even Swan, on the blue carpet, was secondary to his partner, Taylor Wilson.

He kept saying he was there to have fun, but he couldn't have beer and would be on the water.

Swan was asked about full body tattoos should he win. And this was the tenor of the questions and answers...a lot of small talk about nothing much at all.

No star would be silly enough to say something provocative. Certainly not Gary Ablett. He kept walking whenever the talk turned to a Gold Coast move.

Yet he was happy to tug on his bow tie for the cameras and admit that he got ready in 20 minutes.

The blue carpet wasn't about footballers at all.

Some of the dresses - the results of weeks, if not months, of planning, fittings, changes of heart and last-minute flurries - cost upwards of a small car.

Nerve-racking was the standard response to the standard question, "how does it feel?"

Fair enough, too. This was an unusual business. The starlets were women who, mostly, you'd never seen before and would never see again. Well, not unless their partner looks set to poll Brownlow votes next time.

And never again will Premier John Brumby be accosted by Brynne Edelsten in her radio interviewing role.

By now, she had whisked off the frilly train she had arrived in to reveal a sparkly number and very high white heels.

What remained - known as a micro mini - only just covered her derriere.

Only at the Brownlows.