Grand finals shouldn’t end like this, with a party masquerading as a football match for half an hour or more. This was supposed to be a tight contest with the AFL’s two best teams, slugging it out in an arm wrestle for the title of the modern era’s best club, a fitting struggle for the final Saturday in September.
But as the Lions kept coming in a staggering second half, there was not just one defining grand final moment. Rather, they came thick and fast, too quickly to fully appreciate. A hallucination of glory, an incomprehensible haze.
There was Will Aschroft with a minute left, holding the ball up with a hand on the right wing, like a conductor with a baton triggering the maroon mass to roar. There was Logan Morris, who ambled with the ball over the boundary line in the forward pocket, before he became absorbed by the Brisbane fans on the fence. They hugged him, patted his head, and didn’t let him go for several seconds. With the lead more than 50, he could have lingered longer.
Geelong’s Ollie Dempsey bagged a couple of consolation goals, but even those moments belonged to the Lions. Cats tormentor-in-chief Dayne Zorko turned around after one with his arms out facing the cheer squad, and the crowd came alive again. Thirty metres away Harris Andrews – normally a diplomat – was in a shoving match with Bailey Smith without a headband, Samson in defeat.
After Hugh McCluggage eased another fourth-quarter goal through the sticks, Lachie Neale, Darcy Wilmot and half a dozen teammates piled on top. Zorko was last there, misjudging his entry – possibly for the only time all afternoon – and finishing upside down. This was a cake layered thick with icing, Zorko its cherry on top.
The scenes were harder to fathom given what had preceded them. Never has a first half been closer, the score of 36 apiece a fitting summary of the tussle the fans had been promised. Just as one team seemed to get away, the other one would come surging back. The two contenders that had been circling each other for much of the post-pandemic era appeared joined by an elastic band.
The second quarter opened with the Cats in the ascendancy, bombarding their opponents’ inside 50. Their lead of 10 was the largest in the first half. But first Morris and then Charlie Cameron, with a bender from the pocket, evened the ledger.
At that stage, every score seemed significant. Shannon Neale bombed one in from 60 then leant back and screamed. His back arched, his brow furrowed and his fangs were exposed. In the mid-afternoon sun he looked like a vampire at midnight.
Undead? No, that was the Lions, whose teenage sensation Levi Ashcroft left Jhye Clark spellbound to send one home from 50 metres. Or was it the Cats’ Lawson Humphries, who silently materialised to feed Brad Close for another goal that brought scores level. At half-time, so too were the disposals, at 165. Kicks and handballs were identical. The Cats might have had the inside 50 count by one, but the Lions led in clearances by the same.
These two titans made this contest a stalemate for the first hour, yet the board tipped with two seismic events on either side of half-time. Geelong spearhead Jeremy Cameron suffered his forearm injury in a collision with Patrick Dangerfield just before the break, and the introduction of Lachie Neale gave the Brisbane midfield the ascendancy.
Watching the Cat wince and grimace for the rest of the contest was a shame, as the game’s grandest stage was robbed of its finest goalkicker. Despite painkillers, padding, and increasing strapping tape from wrist to elbow, Cameron was clearly inhibited. Yet his diving grab on Jaspa Fletcher with his one good arm might have been the image of the match had the Cats somehow manufactured a victory.
It was reduced to a footnote, however, by Neale and co. The co-captain’s decisive third-quarter goal broke Geelong’s resistance, a gap through which celebrations flowed. He had announced three weeks ago his season was done. But on the podium holding the cup aloft the 32-year-old now stood, the catalyst in a barely imaginable footballing fantasy.
An hour after the siren, the Lions returned to the MCG turf to sing a song and sip beer under premiership caps. The crowd had gone, but the confetti remained, a reminder the Lions’ glorious afternoon was not a dream.
