Premiership pickle: Why all the winning club’s players – not just the 23 – should get a medal

The AFLM grand final is a bit like a cheeseburger. It’s delicious, it’s self-contained and it’s immediate. As the consumer, it’s all there for us to devour in uncomplicated bites. Chomp, chomp, chomp. The rich, fatty goodness of the burger is balanced by a tiny slither of an ugly looking, green, salty gherkin.

Every year there’s gotta be a gherkin. I was a gherkin once.

Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge placed his premiership medal around injured skipper Bob Murphy’s neck after the 2016 grand final. Easton Wood (centre) was the acting captain on the day.Credit: Fairfax Media

A quick recipe check for this year’s grand final burger might be the order of the day:

Bun. Encasing the moreish goodness, we have two teams outside of Melbourne that will only strengthen the calls for a rotation of venue. What would victory mean to the rusted-on faithful? What great adversity was overcome in the history of these clubs just to be here, let alone dream of claiming the ultimate?

Beef: The Lions, dead and buried throughout this finals series, will take on the glamorous Swans. Both teams are steeped in the history of the game and the expansion of the national competition, but both have a more immediate point to prove – that they can produce on the big day after recent grand final disappointments.

Sauce: The two head coaches are so perfectly opposed and much of it is in the aesthetic. One is big, one is small. The big one played, the other, not so much. “Horse” (John Longmire) is animated during the game (you’ll see this a lot on Saturday). The other fella, “Fages” (Chris Fagan), will be almost motionless (you’ll see too much of this).

John Longmire will be typically animated in the Sydney coach’s box on Saturday.Credit: AFL Photos

Cheese: The match winners will be spread out everywhere: Charlie Cameron, Tom Papley, Callum Ah Chee, Isaac Heeney, Joe Daniher, Cam Rayner, Errol Gulden, the list goes on…

The gherkin (or the pickle): This year it looks like being Oscar McInerney and Callum
Mills, but it’s still early in the week.

In the famed premiership run of the Western Bulldogs in 2016, it was in round 13 of that year, after a stirring win against the Power in Adelaide, that I first recognised my potential destiny to be that year’s gherkin. It was that game that made me think my team would win the whole thing.

I’ll never forget driving to the MCG on grand final day. A club clawing its way out of the heavy sadness that comes with a 62-year premiership drought. The entire club, playing players, support players, coaches, board members, staff, volunteers, members, barrackers, all one gang. One clan. We could not be broken.

Once victory was established, though, the premiership club is carved up and separated, like a quiche, by the rest of the “football world”. Those who played are given a gold medal and the others are left to grieve the absence of their own. Why do we do this? Those who played are premiership players, those who didn’t take the field are not.

There is no way around that fact, but all players should be given a medal as acknowledgement for what great teams are. A collective. A gang. One.

Dan McStay missed out on Collingwood’s premiership last year.Credit: AFL Photos

And here’s the bit that will challenge a few. Giving the full list of players a medal will enhance the euphoria of the 23 players who have their boots on. Currently, they are tuned in, ever so slightly, to the disappointment of their mates who missed out. Disappointment and hurt is not just a part of footy, it’s a crucial part of it, but every year we have players grieve. Are we comfortable with this? I don’t think it’s right.

A closer look at the evolution of team culture (within the AFL on grand final day) over the past eight years is to see how differently clubs feel about collective success. This is directly opposed to how the game (the AFL) acknowledges the day and ensuing ceremonies.

A coach gave away his medal to an injured player in 2016 and within a season of that, other victorious clubs saw that this binary view of inclusion, in the form of the medal, was in conflict to the way they treat their people and the cause.

From the victory song in the rooms, to the organic, private ritual of teams reemerging to the MCG after dark to enjoy the spoils of victory – it all points to the internal culture of good clubs being opposed to the game’s current view.

Like the gherkin in a cheeseburger, some of these medals would be tossed away (quite literally), but I believe that, in time, perhaps 20 years’ time, no player on the victorious team will have to grieve, and no premiership player will have to tip-toe around his mate whose heart is breaking behind the tight smile. We can have the gherkin, but hold the grief.

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