roboscot 1,176 Posted October 1, 2016 Share Posted October 1, 2016 When I arrived in Melbourne in 2001 I decided to pick a team to follow in the AFL. I picked perpetual underdogs and wearers of red, white and blue, the Western Bulldogs aka Footscray Football Club. I was living a 10 minute stroll from their home ground so it was an easy decision! The Doggies had only won the Premiership once in their history in 1954 and gotten to the Grand Final (the league breaks into a top 8 finals series) on only 2 occasions, the last being 1961. Today, the wait was over as the Sons of the West beat the Sydney Swans 89-67 in what was a very tough and close match until almost the last 10 minutes as the Dogs ended strongly. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
roboscot 1,176 Posted October 2, 2016 Author Share Posted October 2, 2016 http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-grand-final-2016-western-bulldogs-deliver-the-impossible-dream-20161001-grt09y.html Bulldogs deliver the impossible dream Greg Baum If you were going to take 60 years to win a premiership, and you wanted to make it a premiership worth 60 years of waiting, how would you script it? Here's one way. You could start two years beforehand with a crisis that led to the captain and coach leaving the club. You could replace the coach with a rookie called Luke Beveridge whose chief claim to fame was a couple of premierships in the amateurs and a stint in security in the public service. You could replace the captain with a heart-and-soul veteran called Bob Murphy who in the season in question would do his knee and not play again after round three. You could put him out on the ground on grand final day anyway, because as sure as eggs, he was. I don't mean after the game, but during it. Surely you could see it. You could have it that he had his matchday guernsey on under his jacket all day. You could survive a rash of injuries to other players besides, and finish seventh on the ladder, from where no-one has won a premiership before, and put yourself in a position where you had to win four finals in a row, starting with one in Perth. You could win one, and two, and three, gathering momentum as you go, and sweeping your hometown up along with you, and a lot of incidentals and casuals besides. You could turn the grand final, which it might easily be forgotten is just a game of football, into a kind of morality play. You could write it so that at the end of the day, everyone felt a little bit better about footy. Even your opponents might come around to that point of view eventually, for this was a rare grand final day on which it was possible to barrack for one team and not against the other. You could, without giving offence to the Swans, make it that good guys win. When it was done, and you'd stopped pinching yourself and slapping your own face, and the time came to divide the spoils, you could have that coach call up to the podium that maimed skipper and as 100,000 are your witness, hand over his premiership medallion, saying something like: "This is yours, mate. You deserve it more than anyone." Then he would also hand over joint responsibility with the stand-in captain for receiving and raising that mythical cup. You'd have to write in a pause here, for tears and tissues, and — why not? — a beer. Impossible, yes? A fable, yes? Well, why not give it a few more twists? Why not pair yourself in the grand final with the Sydney Swans, the minor premier, the team that is always there, the gold standard when it comes to finals style footy, the team whose captain, Kieren Jack, no-one could doubt at the end when he said: "We didn't get the job done, but we're coming back. We're going nowhere." Why not make it that you engage them on titanic terms for three-and-a-half quarters, and every now and then have them look as if they might be about to shrug you off, and send shivers up all spines at the crucial moment early in the last quarter when Lance Franklin shapes a goal from 50 metres that reduces the margin to a point, and seems to presage a winning Swans surge? Why not massage the script so that you match the Swans in what they do well, ferocity at the fall of the ball, and add something they don't, fleetness of foot and a preparedness to use it? Why not make it the sort of game in which every good turn deserved another, and every tackle, too, and in the third quarter have it that both teams find extra reserves of strength, as men in mortal danger do? Why not now cast some improbable heroes? One could be, say, Tom Boyd, a lump of a lad who you poached from Greater Western Sydney in that crisis moment, really the president insisted and because you didn't want to be seen as a club that would accept to be pushed around, but who for two years you have found to be a bit of puzzle. Maybe he could grow through this final series, figuratively, but you would almost swear literally and on this day play his best match. One could be Jason Johannisen, although you probably wouldn't have given him that haircut. One could be Liam Picken, son of a Collingwood great, but now with one over his dad, a premiership. Maybe it could be that he took four years to get onto a list, and spent most of his career since tagging, but was liberated by the new coach to play as a deadly forward? One could be Dale Morris, a 33-year-old who the coach surely had in mind when he said this team was all heart, because for a dozen years it has leapt out of his chest so that he could play on and beat outsized opponents, and did again this day. One could be enigmatic Jake Stringer, who had only one decent moment for the day, but what a moment? Why not, when the time came, link all these instant heroes in the final act? You could have it that in the centre of the MCG, Franklin is about to drive the Swans forward, but is tackled and dispossessed — no-one strips Buddy Franklin — by Morris, and ball tumbles free to Boyd, who tears up the playbook and thumps it forward and perhaps catches a gust of the crowd's urging tumbles and rolls through. You could make it that just before that, Johannisen had kicked a goal that was overruled by a TV umpire because of a supposed touch on the goal-line, though everyone on both sides had accepted it and were in the centre for the next bounce. You could moralise here, about how a great grand final might have been ruined by a fatuous protocol. But it would be edited out. You could have it that the Bulldogs beat the Swans at their own game. You could have it that exaltation on the boundary line and in the crowd looked exactly as it was, bursting with deliverance of 62 years. You'd have to leave a bit of space here, for more tears and cheers. You could have the joy washing from one side of the MCG to the other, and back and forth across the change rooms, too, and not one player removing his guernsey — because why would you ever take if off? — and dozens of old players not bothering to hold back their tears and mouthing the theme of the week and the moment: "I never thought I'd see the day." You could make it the best thing some old lags in the press box have ever seen in footy. You could even make it an AFL/VFL premiership double, like anyone has ever done that? But who on earth would ever believe that any footy team could do all that? The Bulldogs just did. They bloody well did. It's a fairytale, and even if the whole competition returns to normal programming next year, it will always be a fairytale. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Deacon 55,130 Posted October 2, 2016 Share Posted October 2, 2016 You'll not get many replies to this @roboscot but I'm here and I've been in footscray......enjoyed my walk through the various cultures. Spent a year almost in Oz and found aussie rules. . Since coming home I've played for 3 years and represented Scotland at the euros last year. Got up early today to watch the match....missed my club teams end of season bash today as it clashed with the gers. The game was good but the previous game versus the Giants for me was a better advert for the sport. Regardless I'll be playing again next year and watching the league without fail Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
EatDolphins 5,355 Posted October 2, 2016 Share Posted October 2, 2016 Footscray? Isn't that full of skin heads and gooks? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
roboscot 1,176 Posted October 2, 2016 Author Share Posted October 2, 2016 5 hours ago, EatDolphins said: Footscray? Isn't that full of skin heads and gooks? It used to be, the hipsters have moved in. It's all espresso bars and craft breweries now. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
roboscot 1,176 Posted October 2, 2016 Author Share Posted October 2, 2016 @Dan Deacon I was telling some guys at the pub that you're playing AFL over there, they were amazed that there are leagues in Europe! Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Deacon 55,130 Posted October 2, 2016 Share Posted October 2, 2016 1 hour ago, roboscot said: @Dan Deacon I was telling some guys at the pub that you're playing AFL over there, they were amazed that there are leagues in Europe! It's got a decent following and growing all the time. 5 teams competed in Scotland this year. A new team has just been formed in West Lothian. They hope to enter the league in 2018. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyabb bear 63 Posted October 4, 2016 Share Posted October 4, 2016 Don't like Footscray, team of thugs in the 80s and 90s, but I would rather them win the grand final than Collingwood. No chance of that in a while the way Buckley is coaching them.......mon the Roos! Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kplfishtank 4,656 Posted October 4, 2016 Share Posted October 4, 2016 My mate lives in Footscray , he was at final. was giving me dogs abuse as his lot beat Hawthorn ( my families team) in the play offs. Will be over next year to visit them before the ashes start. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Judderman 175 Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 My old man lives in Geelong and watches the cats regularly. They do ok for a small market team Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyabb bear 63 Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 On 04/10/2016 at 10:06 PM, tyabb bear said: Don't like Footscray, team of thugs in the 80s and 90s, but I would rather them win the grand final than Collingwood. No chance of that in a while the way Buckley is coaching them.......mon the Roos! Totally changed my mind about the Bull Dogs, my daughter has just been picked by them to play in the new professional women's AFL league cracking team great colours #monthedoggys Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
roboscot 1,176 Posted October 19, 2016 Author Share Posted October 19, 2016 That's magic @tyabb bear I wish her and the girls good luck for next season ?? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Deacon 55,130 Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 3 hours ago, tyabb bear said: Totally changed my mind about the Bull Dogs, my daughter has just been picked by them to play in the new professional women's AFL league cracking team great colours #monthedoggys A few girls have been plucked out of the ladies teams in the UK as well. Most of them Aussies but were living over here. Best of luck to your daughter Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kplfishtank 4,656 Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 On 14/10/2016 at 1:28 PM, The Judderman said: My old man lives in Geelong and watches the cats regularly. They do ok for a small market team My family are in Geelong , cracking wee town, been a few times visiting them. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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