Hey Sydney, it’s OK little bro, we haven’t forgotten you

When I was young, admittedly a long time ago, Melbourne was conscious of Sydney to the point of paranoia, and Sydney was scarcely aware that Melbourne even existed.

Sydney had more people, better weather, a bigger bridge, an opera house, a harbour with ferries on it, and beaches with waves, and didn’t both cities know it. It once had Don Bradman and still had two codes of football that were both international. The holiday traffic between the two cities was all one way.

Isaac Heeney, like the Swans, has made his mark on 2024.Credit: 7 Network

Melbourne had more drinkable beer, and the best code of football, and the MCG, and the Cup, and trams, and a bay to die for, and nicer people, and was just generally more elegant – and Sydney simply didn’t care. Melbourne was fixated on Sydney, Sydney was oblivious to Melbourne.

This was how it was for decades. It left Melburnians with a small-town mentality, which wasn’t fair because it wasn’t really a small town, and it left Sydney with a superiority complex, which certainly wasn’t fair because it was only a little bit bigger anyway, and when you actually went there, it wasn’t at all superior, apart from the harbour, and maybe the bridge, which was OK. But Sydney was born to rule, and deported itself accordingly.

“If you’re not living in Sydney, you’re camping out,” Paul Keating is supposed to have said, and it didn’t seem to count that we were actually glamping.

At an indistinct point in history, this all changed. It might have started when South Melbourne moved to Sydney in 1982 and slowly began to insinuate a Melbourne staple into the Sydney landscape. It might have been reinforced when Melbourne Storm came into being in 1998 and immediately began to beat the Sydney clubs at their own game.

Swans v Giants would be a worthy grand final in the AFL.Credit: Getty Images

It might even have been down to the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Those Games were brilliant, but as seen from here, they drained Sydney, morally and financially, and nothing much moved or happened there for the next decade. Melbourne took up the slack and, despite the best/worst efforts of Peter V’landys, still holds it.

V’landys is this story in apotheosis, a man whose all-consuming mission is to steal some (all?) of the Melbourne thunder that Sydneysiders used not to hear or bother about anyway.

Paul Keating.Credit: Louie Douvis

In any case, the balance of smugness changed. Melbourne now has more people, and yet more arriving every day, and even has houses for quite a few of them. Melbourne’s weather is better, or at least there isn’t mould growing in every other corner. Melbourne has better food, and music, and once had Warnie, and always tops Sydney in those most liveable city surveys, whatever they measure.

As for Sydney, if it wasn’t for Kate McClymont, it would be in receivership now.

Really, it doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t matter. As the world grew smaller and horizons came closer and poles other than Sydney and Melbourne came into view (hello Brisbane, hello Adelaide), it didn’t matter. In nationalised past-times, in a globalised world, I thought this intercity one-upmanship had died a quiet and unlamented death.

I was wrong. But now it’s Sydney that is Melbourne-conscious in the way that Melbourne used to be Sydney-conscious, but is no longer. It’s Sydney that gets its knickers in a knot about Melbourne, and Melbourne that is faintly amused about it.

Every time the Swans make the finals, which is most years, we here in Melbourne read about how we are both jealous of them and ignore them completely. Somehow, we repossess them and disown them at the same time, in a manoeuvre that would do Simone Biles proud.

Once, Melbourne craved any sort of attention from Sydney. Now, Sydney dwells on what Melbourne is making of the Swans. We’re reclaiming them, we’re disclaiming them, we’re doing both at once. The arrival of the Giants has redoubled the effect, though they at least are unambiguously a Sydney team.

It’s 42 years since South Melbourne moved to Sydney, and we reconciled ourselves to this fact a long time ago. It’s a national competition, played between clubs, not cities or states. There was a cohort that would barrack even for Collingwood before any non-Victorian team, but they are disappearing fast. The last of the scales fell from their eyes in last year’s grand final.

In this national competition, the most feted player in the Melbourne footy discourse in the first half of the year, and again last weekend, was Sydney’s Isaac Heeney.

The truth is that most in Melbourne admire the Swans for their class, durability and resilience. The same is becoming true of the Giants. Their cause looks hopeless, but their team is anything but.

Their team would be worthy premiers. Their cause is to take AFL to the rugby league heartland of western Sydney, and we know it’s hopeless because Sydney people keep telling us it is (not many Melbourne people ever go there to verify this). We’re prepared to accept that, though the AFL is not.

Melbourne Storm are challenging again.Credit: Getty Images

Honestly, there is more angst in Melbourne about the premature resurrection of Hawthorn, exciting as their team is, or the cockroach-like quality of Geelong than there is about any sort of threat from the Sydney clubs. ‘Threat’ isn’t even the applicable word. In the circles in which I move, most thoroughly enjoyed last week’s epic encounter between them and wouldn’t mind a rematch in the grand final.

As for Melbourne Storm, we’re proud of them in an abstract sort of way, and otherwise not fussed about a week in which they have the city’s stage to themselves, because it’s a week we’ve had before without any change to the natural order and everyone seems quite content with that arrangement. Storm, like the Swans, have only ever sought to be a good club, not some sort of battering ram for their code. And damned good they have been.

Storm and the Swans are kindred spirits, niche in their namesake towns, giants in their codes, both right in the thick of premiership races again. But I haven’t heard anyone in Melbourne complain that Sydney has some sort of set against Storm.

Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.