1994 qualifying final: North Melbourne vs Hawthorn
As the final siren rang out across Waverley Park at the conclusion of the first qualifying final of 1994, signalling a dramatic draw, Hawthorn had reason to believe they would still get the job done. Been there, done that, will do it again. But extra time? That was a new one.
A new one and for the Hawks not a pleasant one, as it turned out. The rule change that enabled those 10 added minutes had been instituted by the league following the mass bellyaching over West Coast and Collingwood’s tied final at the same ground in 1990. Having finished regular time 13.13 (91) to North’s 12.19 (91), the Hawks came out for the resumption of hostilities and promptly fell flat on their faces, going scoreless as they were eviscerated by underrated Craig Sholl, evergreen John Longmire and indescribable Wayne Carey, the latter of whom emphatically confirmed his greatness on the September stage.
Seven commentator Peter Landy had at least been right in his exhortation that viewers “go to the fridge and get another coldie out,” but for the first time in almost two decades it was North who’d played champagne finals football.
The memory that sticks out: thickly mulleted Carey, just 23 years old but already more physically imposing than two men combined, treating 31-year-old champion defender Chris Langford like a budget rental car. Carey soared over packs and ripped the ball out of the sky, looking like some kind of Antipodean Hasselhoff as he mowed down defenders. The stats tell us Carey took 10 marks. It felt like 30. Apparently he only kicked four goals. It seemed closer to 12.
The vision below not only confirms all those feelings, it also reminds us that Adrian McAdam did indeed exist after 1993. Hawthorn weren’t immediately knocked out of the race, as it turned out. After that game they had to sit around and wait for an entire agonising day and sweat on the results of the other finals. In the end it was David Schwarz’s Carey-like destruction of Carlton that put paid to their campaign.
The result was also confirmation that Hawthorn’s golden run was over. Tim Harvgreaves, Shayne Stevenson and Rayden Tallis were triers, but hardly names to strike fear into the hearts of the opposition like Ayres, DiPierdomenico and Brereton had been. Relatively speaking, the Hawks went into free-fall in the years following, finishing well out of contention for the best part of the next dozen seasons, though supporters who view that fallow period as the “dark years” should be biffed around the ears with one of those 13 premiership cups.
One final question from this game: what came first, Denis Pagan’s Wayne Carey hairdo or Wayne Carey’s Denis Pagan hairdo?
1979 elimination final: Fitzroy vs Essendon
Maybe if he’d actually won the Brownlow medal he deserved, or if he’d played for a bigger club like Collingwood or Carlton, Garry Wilson’s name would roll off the tongue of every football fan in the land. Fitzroy’s fearless champion was never better than in his first ever finals appearance in the 1979 elimination final against Essendon, which was also the Roy Boys’ first since 1960.
Fitzroy’s form had been a little patchy heading into this winner-takes-all contest; they’d missed the double chance with a late-season loss to Geelong so not even the most optimistic Lions fan would have foretold the opening quarter blitzkrieg that knocked Essendon flat. The Roys had 4.3 on the board before the Bombers even scored. By quarter time and with Wilson pumping the ball forward from every centre bounce, they’d drilled a record 9.4 to snuff out any hope of an Essendon win.
In the end the Roys finished with 17.22 to romp home by 81 points thanks in no small part to four goals from Quinlan and three to Robert Walls, but it was the stat line of Wilson, sans helmet, that stood out in a game in which he seemed hall-bent on single-handedly wresting control of the day; 17 kicks, 25 handballs, seven marks and two goals. Unfortunately his and Fitzroy’s jubilation was short-lived. The Lions lost by 22 points in the next weekend’s semi-final against Collingwood.
2013 elimination final: Richmond vs Carlton
Those who were sitting inside the MCG to see a resurgent Richmond take on lucky losers Carlton in the first elimination final of 2013 will tell you that it was one of the loudest football crowds they’ve ever been part of. Lunatic levels of passion. Unhinged. Supporters speaking in tongues. There were 94,690 in the house that day, screaming their way through one of the most enthralling finals contests of the last decade.
Having finished ninth in the regular season but benefitting from the chaos of Essendon’s exclusion, Carlton should not have been there, of course, but that only added to the existential agony of success-starved Richmond supporters. “After years of finishing ninth we’re going to lose a final to the team that finished ninth, aren’t we?” Well, yes, unfortunately, and it was only made worse by the fact that the Tigers had Mick Malthouse’s Blues on the rack in the first half, seemingly defying bad omens like Reece Conca’s hamstring blow-out and Dustin Martin’s infamous ‘jailbird’ goal celebration to lead by 26 points at half-time.
Then came the somewhat inevitable, almost delirious self-destruction. Blues livewire Jeff Garlett started kicking goals. Tiger nerves jangled. Jarrad Waite started plucking marks from nowhere and setting up goals. Richmond fists shook. In the final term, the Blues simply ran away with it. Ivan Maric, who’d been a rock for the Tigers all year, was shoved aside by Waite to set up a goal for Chris Judd. Late-blooming Nick Duigan, who doubted he’d be picked in Carlton’s final side and had managed only six goals across 42 previous league games, confidently slotted his fourth, then Garlett iced it with a Tiger-baiting stroll towards an open goal.
Having spent the half-time break making travel plans for a semi-final in Sydney, Richmond supporters were left to skulk back down Brunton Avenue with 15 years of angst pouring out of them and their tails between their legs.
1991 elimination final: Geelong vs St Kilda
Tony Lockett blamed himself for St Kilda’s seven-point loss to Geelong in the 1991 elimination final. The Saints spearhead had his share of knockers over the years but was always his own harshest critic. Furious with a couple of early misses in his nine-goal, five-behind virtuoso performance from the goal square, Plugger was inconsolable after his side squandered their first finals appearance since 1973. But what a game it was – Lockett and Geelong’s eight-goal hero Billy Brownless trading blows until the Cats prevailed in a nail-biter.
Lockett had been near invincible that year, missing the first six games of the season with injury but then laying waste to almost every backline in the competition. With nine against Geelong in that final he’d made it 43 goals for the month. In his delayed opening three games of the season he’d hammered through 34 majors, eventually finishing with 127 from 17 games at a Hurculean average of 7.47 goals per game.
But he couldn’t forgive himself for what he saw as a failure to drag the Saints over the line when it mattered. Never mind the barrage of injuries – Nathan Burke was knocked out early in the game by an errant Gary Ablett elbow, late selection Ricky Nixon’s hamstring was cooked – that had St Kilda hobbling home without a fit player on the bench.
That 1991 finals series was also notable for being the first season of the needlessly convoluted original McIntyre final six system, which in the end had the impact of duping the Saints; they and Geelong were among the most consistently brilliant teams that year but only one would survive the first week of September, and the McIntyre six made it possible for the 3rd place team to exit the finals in with a single loss.
Even Cats coach Malcolm Blight had sympathy for the vanquished. “It’s almost wrong, isn’t it, when you see a game like that?” he said after the game. “I really do feel for them because they’re worthy...anyone could have won the game.”
1986 elimination final: Fitzroy vs Essendon
What if I told you that a Fitzroy qualifying team that omitted champions Bernie Quinlan and Matt Rendell – and contained a man wearing 19th century knickerbockers to protect his injured thighs – beat an Essendon side who’d just won two premierships on the bounce? OK, maybe it’s not the sexiest “30 for 30” intro, but it did actually happen.
Nobody gave the Roys a chance in hell heading into this game. Whereas the Dons had just won back-to-back flags, the Lions were very much the red-headed stepchild of league football; under-resourced and almost insolvent, wandering from home to home and only still drawing a crowd on account of a truly special generation of players.
But then it all went haywire. Rain started bucketed down at Waverley Park and Fitzroy selected bravely by resisting the temptation to pick underdone Quinlan and Rendell. Taking on the might of Simon Madden and Paul Salmon instead was Michael Reeves, he of the aforementioned ye olde pantaloon arrangement – actually a cut-off pair of blue and red adidas three-stipe tracky dacks with padding stuffed inside. At Fitzroy, that counted as sports science.
And it worked. Along with Gary Keane, who relieved him the closing stages of the game, Reeves was slaughtered in the hit-out stats but his determined efforts in bringing the ball to ground for the likes of Bernie and Leon Harris, combined with the driving rain, meant that on a literally waterlogged and thus figuratively levelled playing field, the Roys were still a puncher’s chance.
Essendon led the game by three points at the final change after an attritional day of football, which led to six reports, but with stellar games from Paul Roos, Tim Pekin and Scott McIvor, Fitzroy hung tough, never allowing the Dons to run off with it as they probably should have. When Mick Conlan put Fitzroy one point ahead with only 45 seconds left on the clock, the Lions somehow managed to hang on for a spectacular upset win.
“They have the biggest hearts in football we’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Lou Richards after the game, and those words were just as apt the following week when the Roys upstaged Sydney in another rain-drenched game, kicking four goals in eight minutes to snatch the semi-final after trailing by 20 points deep into the third term. That majestic run ended in the preliminary final a week later. Sadly, Fitzroy’s senior side would never again feature in September action.
2000 elimination final: Hawthorn vs Geelong
Remember Glen Bowyer? OK, fair enough. The Hawk-turned-Blue didn’t set many hearts aflutter in his 55-game career but he did provide the highlight of a surprisingly gripping first elimination final in 2000 and one of the most underrated of all finals goals when he ripped the ball out of team-mate Nathan Thompson’s hands and curled a miraculous 40-metre post-high checkside through the middle in Hawthorn’s nine-point win.
The match itself was a belter, if a little obscured now, because with the passing of time we don’t tend to rate finals games so highly when they feature teams who didn’t make it to the final week of September. In typical Hawthorn-Geelong style, the lead changed six times as the Cats kept counter-punching and willing themselves back into the contest.
In addition to Bowyer’s gem, Shane Crawford took a screamer over Brad Sholl and it was a coming-of-age game for John Barker, who’d been much-maligned at Brisbane as one of the eight players who moved across from Fitzroy. Here his four goals were the difference as the Hawks got home by nine points in the first ever final at the Docklands stadium. To top it off, and like all great finals of the era, it featured a special guest appearance from Barry Young.
