Best of times, worst of times – Gee, Dickens knew his footy

The Swans and Lions are flirting with utter jubilation and complete devastation in Saturday’s AFL decider at the MCG. This isn’t a clash either club wants to lose.

Brisbane’s Lachie Neale and Dane Rampe of the Swans with the AFL premiership cup. Picture: NewsWire / Nadir Kinani

AFL grand finals are the best and worst of times. There’s nothing better than winning one. You fly your premiership flag for the rest of your living days. Nothing more soul-destroying than defeat. What could have been? It never was.

The grandiose Victorian city of Melbourne put on her sparkling party dress and found some ephemeral blue skies for Friday’s parade of the Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions players flirting with triumph and disaster on Saturday at 2.30pm. It’s a tale of two sporting cities, neither of which is Melbourne, notwithstanding the generous hosting rights, and you could excuse both these clubs for tiptoeing towards the MCG as if approaching a haunted house.

The Swans’ last grand final was a horrorshow comparable to Wolf Creek. Two years ago, they were flogged by Geelong by 81 points in a result so bruising and bloody it was nearly unwatchable. Last year, the Lions’ loss was more heartbreaking than the closing episode of A Country Practice. They went down by four aching points to Collingwood before devastated players fell to their haunches, thumped the cruel, hallowed turf and bawled like big man-babies. Buddha once said, “It’s better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles,” but Buddha never played an AFL grand final.

Sydney’s Nick Blakey and James Rowbottom during the parade. Picture: Phil Hillyard

That’s the backdrop to Saturday’s clash in front of 100,000 spectators at the ’G. Utter jubilation, finally, for one club. Complete devastation, again, for the other. The Swans haven’t tasted premiership success since 2012. The Lions’ cup hasn’t runneth over since 2003. One premiership drought shall end, the other shall continue as if the franchise is ­cursed, reliving the worst of times too many times, two times in ­recent times, like a recurring dream where your deepest desire is right at your fingertips … but you cannot touch it.

It’s already been an emotional week for the Swans. Captain Callum Mills was ruled out with a hamstring injury. His mates cried a Yarra River. Acting skipper Dane Rampe was among those shedding tears before the “bittersweet” honour of leading the red-and-whites into the biggest game of the year.

“I’m shattered for a mate, one of my great mates and the leaders of our club,“ Rampe said. “We’ve been through a lot. We had to push that aside, but me and him had a cry after the news on Wednesday afternoon. As soon as that was done, the way Millsy would want it is moving on and business as usual. That’s what it has to be. I’ve been doing what I can in a leadership sense all year and nothing for me changes. I’ll be going out and doing what I need to do.”

Brisbane fans show their love for Charlie Cameron. Picture: Lachie Millard

Lions coach Chris Fagan gets likened to Ted Lasso, the sweet, ­inspirational, amiable fictional television character who turns a losing English football team into winners primarily by being a great bloke. Lasso makes up his own words and says stuff like, “I do love a locker room, it smells like potential.” Fagan reckons the Lions have a sniff of an underdog victory, dismissing the Swans’ favouritism by claiming the sides are “equal-dogs.” Which is something Lasso would say.

The Lions scribbled down a few home truths after last year’s galling defeat. They put their ideas into a time capsule to be opened when they next played a finals ­series. Didn’t have to wait long. Ted Lasso, sorry, Chris Fagan said the ink had barely dried when his players opened the capsule ahead of this season’s playoffs.

“Grand finals always come back to moments. You watch the game and you see the moments that you either won or you lost,” Fagan said. “We looked at that ­immediately after the grand final. We talked about, ‘What did we learn?’ So, if we happened to be lucky enough to get back there again, then we’d carry the lessons with us. We did a bit of an exercise where we wrote all those things down and put them in a time capsule. Not really knowing that we’d be pulling them out again this year. We both go into the game with high hopes … I think we’re the equal-dogs.”