Looking back on Melbourne Football Club’s stunning run to the 2000 AFL grand final
David Schwarz thought it was just another WhatsApp group. But this chat had a special name leading the charge and the messages have been flying thick and fast.
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“He’s played his 100m sprint. It’s a marathon mate, you will get him.”
Jim Stynes’ words of wisdom immediately settled Melbourne ruckman Jeff White who was kicking himself after an ordinary opening quarter of the qualifying final.
Carlton’s Mark Porter had “smashed” him up taking several big contested marks and was instrumental in giving the Blues an early advantage.
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Stynes, who had retired at the end of 1998, was a part of Neale Daniher’s coaching panel and had spent a lot of time with White, the former No.1 draft pick who’d started his career at Fremantle.
“Porter was smashing me up, he had absolutely belted me and Jim Stynes had come up and said those words, it just grounded me straight away,” White recalls.
While the Demons ruckman fought his way back into the contest, the Blues had taken complete control and two late Melbourne goals in the third quarter brought the lead back to 21 points at the final break.
Daniher’s message was simple: “The shackles are off boys. We’ve got nothing to lose here.”
The youngest player in his team followed the coach’s direction, with 19-year-old Brad Green kicking the opening two goals of the final quarter.
When fellow young gun Cameron Bruce kicked the next at the seven-minute mark, the margin was under a goal. The momentum swung back and forth for the next 20 minutes before goals to Andrew Leoncelli and Bruce sealed an unlikely victory.
The most exciting part of the performance was the fact several of the Demons stars had been down with their two guns leading the way. Green was best-on-ground with four goals with Bruce next.
Another exciting development for the Melbourne faithful was the win meant they had avoided a match-up with Essendon who 24 hours earlier had beaten North Melbourne in the first qualifying final by 125 points.
Two weeks later the Demons got a chance to inflict some revenge on the Kangaroos who’d denied them in the preliminary final two years earlier.
After beating Adelaide convincingly in the qualifying final by eight goals, Melbourne then blew a chance to make the Grand Final against the Roos only to watch them a week later get pumped by the Crows.
“We owed them one,” Guy Rigoni said. “That was the one that got away.”
This one certainly didn’t.
Jeff Farmer bounced back from a scoreless qualifying final to kick eight goals against North in what was an old-fashioned shootout, with Melbourne winning 23.18 (156) to 17.4 (106).
The Demons were through to their first Grand Final since 1988, with Daniher keen to keep things as normal as possible which got a laugh from his players after the preliminary final.
“Don’t change your routine,” the Demons coach said.
“If you have been going out and I haven’t known about it, then just keep doing it.”
The Melbourne players quickly got an insight into how things were going to be different when they walked to their cars after the game.
A mass of red and blue met them with a line of Demons supporters stretching all the way up towards the Hilton Hotel.
It was the Grand Final ticket line and some of the fans had started lining up halfway through the third quarter.
DEE’S BIG BROWNLOW UPSET
Driving into Crown Casino at 10pm on a Monday night wasn’t part of the normal routine.
But several Melbourne players found themselves hoping in their cars given a shock turn of events at the Brownlow Medal ceremony.
The Demons midfielder Shane Woewodin had taken out the game’s highest honour in the very last round of voting, upsetting hot favourite Western Bulldogs star Scott West.
Despite only having 17 possessions and kicking one goal, Woewodin received two votes against the West Coast Eagles – Adem Yze got the three – to claim victory.
Luckily Woewodin’s manager had suggested he should prepare a small speech beforehand because “you never know.”
That threw his normal routine out the window for the next couple of days as he dealt with Brownlow Medallist commitments.
For his teammates they were quickly getting a sense of the enormity of the situation. Training at the Junction Oval went from in front of a handful of fans to thousands.
Going to the supermarket or out for lunch was a whole different ball game while the phone never stopped with friends, family and long lost mates looking for grand final tickets.
“I remember my mobile phone battery was just dead halfway through the day,” Russell Robertson said.
“It was hard to keep everything normal, we went out for as many coffees and lunches as we could to get away from the club.
“I was living with Stephen Tingay I remember going out for lunch with Whitey, myself and Neita and this news crew rolled up.
“I remember after about half an hour Stinga got up and said: “Righto boys, bugger off, let us enjoy our lunch’.”
White, Farmer and David Neitz all lived together and they did their best to keep a low profile when they went to dinner at their local in Brighton.
“We were sitting there and the waitress came up with a bottle of wine and three glasses,” White said.
“We said, ‘Sorry, we didn’t order that’. She said the gentleman over there sent it over.
“It was Sam Newman so we had a bit of fun and a bit of banter with him.
“Wherever we went that week, the whole town of Melbourne was either red and blue or red and black. It was full on.”
The Grand Final parade took it to another level and by the time defender Alistair Nicholson got home on Friday afternoon he was looking for some down time.
“I got home after the parade and it was like ‘Oh wow, that has been a really big few days’,” he said.
He lived with star forward David Schwarz in Collingwood and after a quiet night they found their game day preparation wasn’t going as normal as their coach had urged.
“Ox (Schwarz) and I used to have a quiet breakfast and it was the first time in my life I couldn’t eat it,” Nicholson said.
“I was trying to put eggs into my mouth and I just said, ‘I can’t eat this Ox’. He said ‘don’t worry’ as he couldn’t either.”
Schwarz was sharing the biggest day of his football life with a special friend.
“My build-up was a little bit different as I had a young fella from Challenge come to the game with me,” he said.
“His name was Jesse, he had cancer and was pretty crook, and he carried my bags to the game. I remember that more than anything as he was a young kid, only eight or nine, who was trying to survive and live.
“It kind of put everything into perspective, it was only a game of footy whereas this kid was fighting for his life.”
White had arrived at the MCG early and as he strode through the crowd to the changerooms he had a surprise meeting which pulled at the heart strings.
“I got there early and ended up running into mum and dad,” he said.
“I knew they were going to be somewhere but I didn’t know where.
“Both mum and dad were crying and I was like, ‘Hang on a minute, I haven’t even played yet and you’re bawling your eyes out’.
“My brothers were there also, they were all obviously proud and it was a very special moment.
“They were heading to the Long Room as they’d got a special invite so it was going to be a big day for them too.”
‘TINGLES AND SHIVERS’
The sea of colour and the fact the seats in the far top corners of the stand were filled for the first time, rammed it home for Nicholson.
For Rigoni it was when the siren sounded after the national anthem that reality hit.
“I had the tingles and shivers, it was like, ‘Oh my God I am really here’,” he said.
Daniher had kept up the theme about nothing to lose, telling his players to enjoy the experience because all the pressure was on Essendon.
There had been one forced change to the team with Bruce ruled out after tearing his quad against North. He was replaced by Ben Beams.
Things got worse on the injury front quickly with Green forced off the ground after a nasty blow to the throat from Essendon defender Dean Wallis.
He never returned while Woewodin strained his hamstring early in the game which hampered him for the remainder of the day.
At quarter-time the Bombers lead was 11 points but they had 12 scoring shots to six which told the story.
“I remember going down to the half-forward line in the first couple of minutes of the game and there were guys just flying everywhere,” White said.
“Can you imagine the halfback line? Damien Hardwick, Dean Solomon and Wallis just flying right before your eyes. It was crazy.”
The game opened up in the second quarter as Essendon gained control with the Demons down for the count, literally, after ruckman Troy Simmonds was knocked out in a vicious hit from Bombers wingman Michael Long.
“We threw everything at the Grand Final but we really got bashed up,” Robertson said.
For Nicholson it was Essendon’s quality across-the-board which was too much on the biggest day.
“I don’t think we ever got into it,” he said.
“That momentum we’d been talking about, we just couldn’t get that going. They just didn’t let us do that.”
The final margin was 50 points and Melbourne’s premiership drought ticked off another year.
NEALE’S WHATSAPP GROUP
The messages have been flying thick and fast in the past players WhatsApp group.
More than 400 former Melbourne players are listed in the group which was set up by former hard man Rodney Grinter.
For Schwarz seeing the excitement the 2021 team is giving the past players and current fans is a joy.
But it’s another WhatsApp group which was recently formed which is even closer to his heart as it was created by Neale Daniher.
“I didn’t have his number in my phone and initially there wasn’t a name associated with it when the first message was sent saying this group for the 1998 to 2002 players was being set up,” Schwarz says.
“I was like, whatever, but then realised it was the coach and I was like, ‘Neale, great to be here’.
“There has been a lot of great banter on there as I think everyone realises this is as good an opportunity as we’ve ever had to lift a Cup again after 57 years.”
Schwarz likes two omens. When Melbourne won the flag in 1964 the Olympics were held in Tokyo which is what happened this year.
And the other surrounds his old coach.
“He was there in 2000 and he’s been able to hang on and beat the odds with motor neurone disease. I mean he’s almost double the life expectancy so clearly he was bound to see this year, bound to be a part of it.”
PART I: HOW ‘TEAM OF MISFITS’ SHOCKED FOOTY WORLD
Neale Daniher was pacing out the front.
The Melbourne players were all seated in the meeting room underneath the stands at the MCG.
In four days’ time they would be running out onto the hallowed turf seeking to win the Demons’ first premiership since 1964.
The class of 2000 was a clear underdog against an Essendon side that had lost just one game for the season.
But Daniher wasn’t worried about that as he asked for a show of hands among the group of who had won a premiership at any level of football.
Surprisingly, there weren’t that many, but those who had won junior flags were asked to recall their experiences to the group.
Ruckman Jeff White was taken aback with the stories from some of his teammates.
“Their experiences were really chilling,” he said.
“They could vividly remember winning that premiership when they were kids and what Neale was trying to do was get that emotion and feeling out of us.
“He wanted to relay that to the other players, that visualisation of actually winning it.”
Daniher’s theme for grand final week was: “It’s ours to win.”
All the pressure was on Essendon.
They’d royally stuffed up the previous year in the preliminary final and had proven near invincible throughout the season, which meant no one was giving Melbourne a chance.
It was a scenario the Demons were familiar with given the challenges they’d faced three months earlier.
BEHOLD, THE WIZARD
“We are a young side that has just lost its way.”
Neale Daniher was outwardly philosophical, but inwardly fuming.
He’d banned his players from talking to the media after watching them concede a 10-goal last quarter to Carlton.
The Blues had won the Round 13 encounter by 98 points, inflicting the Demons’ third loss in four games which had left them hanging onto eighth place on the ladder by percentage.
“We are probably not that strong a club just yet to be able to win games week after week after week,” he added.
In his first season as coach in 1998 the Demons had spiked, rising from last to a preliminary final.
The problem was the following year it all went pear-shaped again during a changing of the guard.
Legends of the club including captain Todd Viney, Garry Lyon, Jim Stynes and Brett Lovett had all pulled up stumps with full forward David Neitz handed the keys to the team.
But, after a promising start to 2000, the wheels were falling off and, a week after the Carlton disaster, Daniher could sense it happening again, this time against arch rival Collingwood.
Just before halftime he benched his mercurial forward Jeff Farmer, who had only touched the ball twice.
Daniher gave “The Wizard” a decent spray, throwing the magnet with his name across the room saying to his coaching staff: “I won’t be needing this.”
Youngster Ben Beams had replaced him but, three minutes into the third quarter, he injured his wrist, which meant the Demons’ coach had no alternative but to reactivate Farmer.
What happened next changed the entire trajectory of the football club.
Farmer produced the most amazing half of football, kicking nine goals from 15 disposals and five contested marks.
The Demons went on to win the match by 65 points and suddenly they were a completely different team.
It was like the Wizard’s magical touch had flicked a switch.
“I was sort of finding my way in my career then,” fellow forward Russell Robertson says. “There were times where I’d just sit back and watch Jeff Farmer do his thing, it was just phenomenal.”
The wins started piling up as a perfect storm of confidence, an injury-free run by their champions and an infectious youthful exuberance meshed under Daniher’s genius.
“We were a bunch of misfits,” midfielder Guy Rigoni recalls. “There were a fair few of us from other clubs who had all done it pretty tough.
“I think that helped, I think you appreciate it more and then we obviously had some real champions there as well.”
Rigoni had spent time at Carlton, Anthony McDonald had played reserves with the Blues and Hawthorn before getting his shot at the age of 24 at Melbourne.
Andrew Leoncelli had come via Carlton and the VAFA while Stephen Powell had been surprisingly traded to the Demons off the back of two preliminary final appearances with the Western Bulldogs.
Key defenders Matthew Collins and Anthony Ingerson had also both started their careers at Adelaide.
“We started to get some synergy with some of the young players, Brad Green was in his first year as was Cam Bruce,” Jeff White explains.
“I think we started to piece some things together and played with a bit of synergy. I also think coming off ’99 where we didn’t make the finals, we weren’t being hunted. We had become the hunter.”
NEALE’S UNDERDOGS
Daniher’s method was to break the season down into four-week blocks and fullback Alistair Nicholson remembers the coach sticking with it when the team was sitting at 6-7 on the ladder after the Carlton debacle.
“Neale would be like we’ve just got to win two of these four games,” Nicholson said.
“He was obviously a good coach generally but he was a really good coach of an underdog team.
“That was when he thrived and there were two things he really liked, he was always encouraging us to play attractive footy but then he also liked his blue-collar worker thing.
“He had some quality in there with Neita, Whitey, The Wizard and then around it he had a workmanlike backline. I was playing hockey only four years before, while Peter Walsh came from the army.
“The midfield was really solid with the likes of Rigoni and Powell. What he was able to do was build that spirit in the group and then it took off. Then we were like, ‘We’re a chance here’, and we certainly started flying along.”
From that thrashing by Carlton in June, Melbourne won eight of the next nine games — the only blemish was a one-point loss to the Kangaroos in Round 17 — to finish the home and away season in third place.
For White the Round 22 dismantling of the West Coast Eagles by 70 points in Subiaco solidified for him that this team was on the cusp of something special.
“We played the Eagles over there and we belted them,’’ he says. “We hadn’t beaten them over there for a while and we really belted them.
“There was this belief that we were destined to do something. We just had so much momentum going … but so did Essendon.”
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