And so it came to pass that one of the greatest grand finals in recent memory was the coda for a season apparently consumed in a crisis over its state of play.
Football was cited as being boring, with references to scores being the lowest they’d been for 40 years.
In June, as AFL Football operations boss Steve Hocking and his think tank convened on how best to “fix” the game, the West Coast Eagles were quietly going about putting together a defensive streak that would become a record for the AFL era. In between having their doors blown off by Lance Franklin in Round 1 and dropping their Round 22 game to Melbourne, the Eagles did not concede a score of 90 or more.
While Adam Simpson and West Coast’s defensive co-ordinator Daniel Pratt drew up something counterintuitive to the prevailing conventions of the peanut-gallery pundits who cry “entertain us!”, there was something authentic going on in the West that most football purists love.
In Jeremy McGovern and Tom Barrass, West Coast has two of the league’s best contested marks. They are the starting point for the Eagles’ defence to control the tempo of the game, maintain possession and patiently work their way out of defence. On Saturday, they had to patiently work their way out of a 29-point deficit entering time-on in the first quarter.
McGovern is agile, honest and built as if to last. He is the embedment of the club’s theme of “head, heart and gut” the Eagles ran throughout the year.
“He’s an old-school footballer, not the way he plays. But he loves his mates, he loves a beer when the time’s right. He has passion for the club and that’s why he’s in our leadership group … those type of things make you feel like you can back those guys in on the big occasion, because they will do whatever it takes,” said Simpson of the man whose after-the-siren goal against Port Adelaide in Round 21 sealed second spot and a home final.
And it took some sort of effort just for McGovern to take his place on grand final day. As recently as the day before, McGovern didn’t think he would play after internal bleeding had him spending two nights in hospital after colliding with Melbourne’s midfield bull Christian Petracca in the preliminary final. To play, the West Coast doctors had to first be convinced he would not risk kidney and bladder damage before passing an eleventh-hour fitness test.
McGovern, who in July turned down reported offers from Victorian clubs of more than a million a year to sign a long-term contract with the Eagles said he didn’t want to become a burden on the day and that if he was off for the last three quarters then it wouldn’t be great for the team.
“It was more down to the team decision and not worrying about myself.”
In an age where people seem more interested in their thoughts on the world than the world itself, you feel the 26-year-old key defender is a footballer with a hunger to be more than — or something bigger than — his actual self. And that’s something anyone who loves team sport can get behind.
McGovern received outstanding support from Barrass, who despite giving away nearly three-inches on Mason Cox, held the American to one kick and no marks in the first half. Will Schofield, who it could be argued is only in this West Coast line-up due to Brad Sheppard’s hamstring, was matched against Jordan De Goey and looked to be in for a harrowing afternoon when the preternatural Pie fended off two tackles halfway through the first quarter to put his team 23-points up.
Schofield acknowledged that as De Goey was the better athlete, he had to go about his job a different way and get the dangerous forward off his game. And the veteran defender did just that, nullifying De Goey in their on-on-one contests and holding the line as the deepest player in the Eagles’ defence.
But it was McGovern who was responsible for the grand final’s defining moment. After leaving the dangerous De Goey deep in Collingwood’s forward line, he leapt over Brody Mihocek for intercept 206 of the season. It was characteristic of how McGovern treats forwards the way cats treat mice, condescendingly and pouncing on any hesitation. After marking, he played on in one movement to set up a play that ended in a Dom Sheed mark and a moment that will rival Wayne Harms’ boundary tap to set up a Ken Sheldon goal in the 1979 Grand Final for Collingwood conjecture and lament.
Sheed, who was dropped three times during the year, had a difficult shot at goal, deep in the forward pocket, to put his team up in the dying light of a grand final in front of more than 100,000 people.
“With less than two minutes to go in a grand final to put your team in front ... you’re shitting yourself a bit, that’s the reality,” said Sheed.
But the left-footer thread a copybook drop punt through the middle of the posts to end the Pies lingering courtship with a sixteenth premiership.
And there it is, underneath all the pessimistic punditry, and the perceived need for ten minutes of The Black Eyed Peas and pyrotechnics, there is something real about pressure, urgency and consequence that had millions glued to their seat at the same time.
Next year, as we debate congestion, centre bounce starting positions and longer goalsquares, let us remember that this year’s grand final was a reminder the game has never lost its ability to captivate us.
