Every AFL player has a story, and it always involves resilience

Eddie Betts of the Crows.

Even for supporters grand final day is like your wedding day, a churning mix of joy, culmination and trepidation. The excitement is so visceral it can make you sick with nerves, and you are not even pulling on the boots. We longed all year to be here for the last Saturday in September — we wanted it so much, we didn’t dare to speak the dream.

Yet here we are, tens of thousands of hearts, young and old, strong and feeble, beating with our comrades and against our foes, hoping for a taste of triumph and validation. We will roar. Some will exalt. And some will fall.

The Victorians are hung up on their Cinderella story about Richmond finally winning another flag but the truth is the Tigers are a powerhouse with a vast and influential membership that can claim the MCG as their home ground and have managed to squander opportunities in recent decades.

This year they have made the most of their talent and imposed themselves on the competition. Good for them. Today they get a shot at history.

The Tigers’ Daniel Rioli.

My team is Adelaide, the out-of-town opponents who cannot lay claim to pauper status either, with our huge membership, the backing of most South Australians and conspiring too, over 19 years, to fritter away finals chances.

The Crows also get a chance to make history. I will be there, riding every bump. We will fly as one, or cry as one.

Sport brings out the best in us. The contest exemplifies skill, determination, athleticism and courage, but behind the game are an organisation, membership and broader fan base characterised by passion and loyalty. We want victory more than anything, for the joy and the beauty. But in the end, we know it is the game that wins and lives on.

Our victories are cherished but defeat fortifies hopes for the future. Sport is not destructive. It is constant renewal, endless striving.

We are united with our opponents across a shared passion — without the vanquished there can be no victor, without risk of defeat there can be no triumph. We love the game.

Audacious and aggressive, derivative yet unique, Australian football reflects this nation like a salt lake reflects the setting sun. All sports inspire passion but in keeping with this country, perhaps none does it with the inclusiveness and egalitarian instincts of our great indigenous game.

In Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, Aussie rules is the common thread and shared loyalty that lubricates all conversations and levels the field between the poorest labourers and the richest titans.

The sharpest cultural difference between the northern states of NSW and Queensland, and the rest of the country is the absence of Aussie rules as the universal sporting religion — it is just one of an assortment of codes that have their different followings.

Marngrook is an Aboriginal word for a form of ball game that was noted by early settlers in Victoria before Aussie rules was invented. Some suggest it may have influenced the game’s founders. Whether or not that is true, we can say this game was happily derived from all the versions of football known at the time — much like our federal Constitution, our football is based on the best from other codes — and it has always been embraced wholeheartedly by indigenous players who have provided a unique flair that is impossible to define but obvious to behold.

The Tigers’ newly crowned Brownlow medallist Dustin Martin.

No game is more attacking or athletic. No game better combines individual brilliance and team reliance. And no game is more Australian. Sport gives us a generous and harmless avenue to release our passions. Instead of tribal battles or ethnic enmities, we enjoy a benign rivalry.

On the sporting field white skin embraces black, and the devout fights for the unbeliever.

In today’s grand final there will be committed Christians, a Muslim, a Jehovah’s Witness and a host of atheists and agnostics struggling for and against each other. Some have come from disadvantaged backgrounds, some have had the best of opportunities all their lives. Some are indigenous and some are immigrants.

All are identified, loved or feared only for their club colours and their deeds on the field. This is pure. This is what we wish for the non-sporting world.

For the first time since the inaugural VFL grand final in 1898, every player who takes the field will be competing in their first grand final, and each is a story of personal ambition, sacrifice and fulfilment.

For 30-year-old Eddie Betts, who grew up in Port Lincoln South Australia, it is the ultimate stage for prodigious talents that have thrilled fans at Carlton and Adelaide for more than a decade but were once wasted when he went off the rails.

Now, at his adopted club, he is the crowd favourite, the unassailable goalkicking wizard who wins scoring chances on the back of exceptional defensive pressure.

At the other end of the ground will be 20-year-old Daniel Rioli who was raised on the Tiwi Islands. His surname echoes with prestige because his uncle and cousin have won Norm Smith medals for the best player on grand final day — Maurice for Richmond in 1982 and Cyril for Hawthorn 2015 — so Rioli, at the start of his ­career, has an invitation to greatness.

The Tigers’ newly crowned Brownlow medallist, Dustin Martin, is a study in non-studious excellence — a tattooed roughneck who has perfected his craft and brushed aside all challengers while publicly professing his love for his Kiwi father, who is barred from the country because of links to bikie gangs.

Sport provides another route to success, another outlet for discipline and innovation, and a shot at redemption.

Crows ruckman Sam Jacobs lost his brother to illness during the finals. Jacobs played the final, won it, then attended to the heartbreak of his family funeral. This giant of a man carries most of the ruck load every week and, like his teammates, carries the pain and scars of losing their coach, Phil Walsh, in a horrific stabbing just 26 months ago.

In sport there are no options but to keep pushing towards your goal.

There are 40 other tales, one for each player, and another 100 for their parents and a thousand for their friends and tens of thousands for every supporter who invests their emotion in the team, embracing the weekly rumbles of the winter game as the rhythm of their life.

Apart from living the supporters’ life, I have been lucky enough to see some of this up close.

As a player I was never sufficiently talented to aspire to this level but was fortunate enough to train with and play against those who could and did.

Crows of a feather: Eddie Betts hugs Sam Jacobs. Picture: Sarah Reed

When you experience their superior skills at training it is just what you expected; and when you struggle against their stronger, more resilient bodies it is just what you feared. But the lesson I took away was the superior discipline, focus and work ethic. Sporting success is no accident.

The gift of exemplary DNA does not a champion make — the most talented player on the team is first on the ground for skills sessions, the fittest player is the one who runs the extra hills and the player who surpasses expectations is the one who eats, sleeps and works to a plan.

Much culminates on a day like this. This is why winners don’t gloat and losers don’t whinge. They are there for the glory and love of the game. They can share the pursuit but not the prize.

When I first made this MCG pilgrimage 20 years ago there was only one moment when the premiership elation was tempered. Leaving the ground I bumped into a young boy, wheelchair-bound, resplendent in his St Kilda gear, and inconsolable in tears. He would be a grown man now and yet to see his Saints win a flag. Players must seize the moment, supporters must savour it.

Go Crows. We fly as one.

Chris Kenny is an ambassador for the Adelaide Football Club.