For an Australian, it’s a word enough to make one recoil.

There’s almost no escaping the harsh realities of drought on this continent unless, of course, you reside in the tropics.

But even then, there mightn’t be a way out — just ask a fan of the Nightcliff Tigers.

It’s been 54 years since the Nightcliff Football Club won its last Northern Territory Football League (NTFL) premiership all the way back in the 1964/65 season.

That drought — the longest in NTFL history, and one of the longest club droughts in Australia — could come to an end tonight when the Tigers take on Southern Districts at Marrara.

In a kind of grim tribute to the Tigers’ 54 years in the wilderness, the NT News looked back on the differing rates of success of the Territory’s footy clubs, and compared just how dastardly the Tigers drought is in an Australian, and global, context.

SINCE 1965, the year Nightcliff last took home the premiership cup, there have been few surer things than randomised chaos in the Top End.

But beyond the consistent disorder that has befallen the Territory — tumultuous weather events, a yo-yoing population and discombobulated governments included — about the only sure things that have emerged are the fluctuating fortunes of two sporting clubs.

On the one hand, there’s Nightcliff — a sure-fire inability to win it all.

On the other, there’s the St Mary’s Football Club — one of the most told stories in all the land — who have, like clockwork, won premierships with a frequency and consistency to rival the best sporting teams over the world.

In the 54 years since Nightcliff’s 1965 premiership, St Mary’s have won 27 flags — that’s one premiership every two years.

As it turns out, randomised chaos would have helped the Tigers in their bid to break their premiership drought.

If the NTFL premiership was given out randomly, the odds would suggest Nightcliff, with eight teams in the competition over the past 54 years, would win a premiership once every eight years.

But the big problem with that thought experiment is the presence of St Mary’s, whose lust for success has ensured NTFL clubs have shared mostly in misery since joining the competition in the early 1950s.

Since 1965, St Mary’s have won five premierships in a row once, four in a row once, and three-peated three different times. (Sorry, Tigers fans.)

St Mary’s longest premiership drought in club history has been a miserly six years (twice), while almost all other clubs, except Tiwi who joined the league 12 years ago, have faced decade long premierships droughts.

Aside from Nightcliff’s interminable 54-year spell, Wanderers hold the longest premiership drought in NTFL history at 34 years between 1924 and 1958.

The next longest goes to the 22-year stretch between 1977 and 1999 when Waratah failed to lift the cup, followed by Palmerston’s 20 year hiatus between 1981 and 2001 and Darwin Buffalos (1989-2006) waited 17 years for their premiership. Tonight’s other grand final team, Southern Districts, took ten years to win their first flag (1988-1998).

IF misery loves company, then the Nightcliff Tigers need look no further than the Melbourne Demons.

Melbourne, the oldest club in the Australian Football League and with the longest premiership drought, won their last premiership in 1964.

When considering the AFL’s longest droughts, Melbourne’s 55 years come in ahead of St Kilda (53), Carlton (24), Adelaide (21) and North Melbourne (20).

The most notable Aussie Rules premiership drought to come to an end in recent times is that of the Nightcliff Tiger’s namesake, the Richmond Tigers, whose historic 2017 flag broke a 37 year dry spell going back to 1980.

The Tigers’ victory on the MCG was one of the most famous grand final wins of all time.

Spontaneous parties broke out on Punt Road in Richmond, and the whole city resembled a sea of yellow and black for weeks to come.

Meanwhile, grand final fever, and the yellow and black army, have already taken over the streets of Nightcliff.

Stores and business across the suburb are adorned in their Tiger stripes, building a momentum of support designed to end the Tigers’ 54 year stint in the premiership wilderness.

If the reaction of long suffering Richmond Tigers supports after 37 years deprived of success is anything to go by, the scenes in Nightcliff tonight could be the stuff of legend.

THE Curse of the Bambino was, and perhaps still is, the greatest example of sports team superstition in history.

The curse plagued the Boston Red Sox, an American professional baseball team, who failed to win the World Series for 86 years after selling Babe Ruth — considered baseball’s greatest ever player — to arch rivals the New York Yankees.

There is said to be something of a curse that bedevils the Nightcliff Tigers, too.

The story is not quite clear, but before losing one of the many grand finals to be played since ‘64, it is rumoured the club fetched down that old premiers pennant for good luck.

Instead, the pennant was lost, and so too that grand final.

Ever since, insiders close to the club fear there might be something more than just bad luck holding the Tigers back from the ultimate success tonight against the Crocs.

But what must fans of the Chicago Cubs, another American baseball team, have thought of curses and the crippling weight of historic disappointment after going without a championship for 108 years?

Thankfully, in 2016, they were finally able to celebrate when the Cubs defeated the Cleveland Indians in a dramatic game seven decider in some of the most emotional scenes ever witnessed in sports.

The Cubs’ drought was the longest such streak in North American pro sports, and had been for several decades. Later that year, the Cleveland Cavaliers won the team’s first NBA title, ending a championship dry spell for the whole of the city — basketball, baseball and football teams all included — lasting 52 years.

In American pro sports currently, there are only seven championship droughts longer than the Nightcliff Tigers’.

They are the Arizona Cardinals (71 years), Cleveland Indians (70 years), Sacramento Kings (68 years), Detroit Lions (62 years), Atlanta Hawks (61 years), Texas Rangers (58 years) and Tennessee Titans (57 years).

The sands of time for every supporter of these success starved teams move slowly.

But for those whose drought has just ended, every one of them will tell you it was worth the wait.

For the Nightcliff Tigers, who go to war with the Crocs at 7.15pm tonight at Marrara, that wait since 1964 has been about 28 million, 824 thousand, 400 minutes.

All it’s going to take is some 120 minutes of near perfect football to end it.