Scott Cummings recounts the lights going out at Waverley Park and how his silver lining was ripped away
It’s one of football’s most famous nights — when the lights went out at Waverley Park. Hear from an Essendon player who was on the field on the night the point post was ripped down and fires were started.
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When the game was cast into darkness, all Scott Cummings could think of was Chucky.
The Waverley Park blackout of Round 10, 1996, was the eventual Coleman medallist’s 35th game, then at Essendon where he began his career in 1994.
And he said there were shades of “Child’s Play” and the creepy child doll to the freakish moments of black.
“Jamie Shanahan was playing on me and always played an aggressive game and I didn’t mind a chat during it,” Cummings said.
“We were into each other and at every opportunity that he could get, he was going to kill me.
“And then as soon as the lights went out, I was like ‘where is he? Where’s he gone?’. It was like I could hear little Chucky footsteps from Child’s Play, I could just hear footsteps everywhere around me.”
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Players “just stood there for a little while, completely amazed”, he recalled.
Before near anarchy ensued.
“The crowd was going off, obviously,” he laughed.
“We got brought into a huddle and they kept the crowd at bay for only a short period of time.
“They were on the park soon enough and we moved into the players’ race, and stood there for a little while, just waiting for them thinking that the lights would come straight back on and we’d be back out there and amongst it.
“Then we heard that the point post was broken and being carried out, and parts of the oval were on fire. It was then that we thought, ‘OK, I think we’re done here for the night, boys’.”
Confusion reigned.
“I think we were all expecting to head back out there but there were a couple of telltale signs when the infrastructure was being pulled apart that we realized we might be going home,” he said.
News soon filtered through that a nearby car accident had caused the blackout, and that a driver had “taken out a junction box … and that they wouldn’t be coming on in a hurry”.
There was to be a silver lining – or so he’d hoped.
But that was ripped away in the days that ensued, as the players’ association, league and club officials debated whether the game would be replayed, resumed or simply the points split.
It was agreed that to play on the Tuesday night that followed would be the best option.
Cummings was rapt.
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Until it was deemed that the Bombers and Saints could change their team line-up, with a young blonde-haired Bomber waiting in the wings.
“I was a regular in and out of the team at that stage, and when they said we’d play on Tuesday, I thought ‘you beauty, I’m going to get two games in a row here, and match payments’,” he laughed.
“I thought, happy days, this is a great result for me. But then the announcement came afterwards that both clubs could change their teams and so that put paid to that and I was subsequently dropped because Hirdy (James Hird) had needed three more days to get fit and he was fine.”
Cummings can’t recall whether he went to the replay – where Hird starred as the Bombers won by 22-points – nor does he believe players ever found out whether the driver of the car that caused the famous blackout was OK.
“We were all spewing that this had happened, but then we found out that someone had had a serious car accident, and it was a bit of perspective,” he said.
He’s had a few left-of-centre football moments, he concedes, including Guy McKenna calling for a head count at West Coast in 1999, but the weird night at Waverley “would be up there”.
“If it wasn’t the weirdest, it’d be in the Grand Final,” he said.