If you think watching grass grow is boring, know this: between the home-and-away AFL season and the finals, the MCG switches the mowing pattern of its turf from checkerboard to diamond.
The ground staff have been out there all week, snipping and trimming away under banks of glowing grow lights. Others, intent as Michelangelo, were hand painting the on-ground signage. Others still were stowing away 40,000 pies and sausage rolls, 60,000 bottles of water and 64,000 packets’ worth of hot chips.
The MCG, seat of Australian rules football.Credit:Getty Images
These things matter not because they are momentous, but because they are happening at all. Since 2019, the MCG has lain fallow and forlorn through successive COVID-blighted Septembers.
It feels like a long time. It has been a long time. Two years is an age in footy. It’s BM (before Melbourne, who finished 17th that year). It’s three North Melbourne coaches ago and almost three Essendon coaches, too. Essendon figured in the finals that year, briefly. So did West Coast, as reigning premiers. Then the city of Melbourne lost its birthright and the ’G was denied its vocation.
Now, at risk of – in fact, in the full certainty of – offending footy brethren in other states, this weekend the AFL finals are coming home. More than 170,000 are expected to pass through the turnstiles in 24 hours. Rightly or wrongly, the pandemic will never have felt more at bay.
“The MCG has a truly unique feel in September,” said MCG CEO Stuart Fox. “You could sense it even in the final round of the home-and-away season when we had our biggest crowd here since the 2019 grand final for the Carlton and Collingwood match.
Collingwood v Geelong in the 2019 qualifying final: now for the rematch.Credit:Joe Armao
“The ground is in impeccable condition, our staff are well-prepared, and now we cannot wait to welcome fans through the gates.”
Footy has a way of looping back on itself. The last qualifying final to be played on the sacred greensward was Collingwood-Geelong. More than 93,000 watched the Magpies win by – surprise, surprise – less than two kicks. On Saturday, these teams do it all again.
But first, to kick us off, another reprise. The other qualifying final that year was Brisbane versus Richmond at the Gabba. The Tigers won it by a handsome margin. On Thursday night, it’s the same teams at the same place, but sudden-death this time.
Victorian expat and president of the Richmond supporters group in Brisbane, Dylan Leach, says Brisbane does not have finals fever so much as a bit of a flush.
Richmond’s Dustin Martin with the 2020 AFL premiership cup at the Gabba.Credit:AFL Photos
His red-letter day was two years ago when the Gabba hosted the grand final in exile and the Tigers won it. Then, AFL was the only game in town. “It’s very different to 2020,” Leach said.
This time, the AFL final would have been competing on Saturday night with Riverfire, a vast fireworks party bringing in visitors from all over the state. Leach suspects that is why the AFL game was slotted into Thursday night.
Brisbanites also are more preoccupied with the Carlton-like collapse of their darling Broncos, who have lost four of the last five games and are likely to miss the NRL finals. “They’ve stuffed it up,” said Leach.
Leach further explains the downbeat attitude to the AFL final. “It’s because people think the Lions are going to lose,” he said. “The Queensland audience loves a winner. They say that about Sydney, but it’s just as bad if not worse here.”
This week, unlike in 2020, Brisbane-based Richmond fans are welcoming family and friends from Melbourne. One pub especially is glad of their custom.
You get the idea about the Brisbane final. At further risk – no, guarantee – of adding insult to superiority, it’s like the Tour de France. The Brisbane final, while vital to the combatants, is the time trial in Copenhagen. The MCG is the Champs-Élysées.
Crowds will be a factor again in this year’s finals. Crowds always figure in footy, but in the last two years, as clubs played out of hubs and remotely from their fan bases, their effect was muted.
This year, Collingwood players testify how they have drawn extra strength from the Magpie army as it has been moved to louder and throatier voice by them. As of Monday, they officially have 100,000 members. It’s the intangible factor – though scarcely silent or secret – in their almost mystical rise from 17th to the final four. But Geelong and Melbourne in their turns will supply plenty of roar power.
The waiting is a game in itself. Generally speaking, people dislike the fact of the interminable pre-finals bye, but like the effect in that teams enter the finals rested and fit.
The MCG lit up in the Demons’ colours on grand final day 2021. There was no one inside.Credit:Getty
In the interregnum, though, everything is amped up. Twangy hamstrings are watched as if they are on Netflix. Coaches’ utterances are studied like runes for hidden meanings. Geelong coach Chris Scott defends his players’ finals record and then has to defend himself for defending them.
While nothing happens, minds race. Fans’ nerves ratchet up. Dread competes with anticipation. Melbourne don’t really want to be playing Sydney. Geelong don’t really want to be playing Collingwood, not on the ’G. No one really wants to be playing Richmond anywhere. But everyone has to play someone. This much is certain: if you’re on the MCG in September, you know you’re alive.
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