I T WAS a bleak night in Sydney. For a half, it looked as if it would be a bleak night for Sydney. But the Swans were what the Swans always are: durable. North was what it has become: brittle in finals.
But on another level it remained a dismal night for Sydney. The crowd was less than 20,000, a miserable gathering. When Collingwood makes the grand final, it attracts more to training. In the cavernous Olympic stadium at Homebush, a gathering of less than 20,000 looked what it was: three-quarters empty. Not even adroit camera angles or creative television direction could have disguised it.
There was mitigation, of a sort. It had rained torrentially and continuously in Sydney for 24 hours, and was still raining at the first siren. Nearby golf courses had become lakes. On the roads from downtown Sydney, there were long traffic jams. The match was live on television, if live was the right word for the first half. And it was cold. In Melbourne, these would be considerations. In Sydney, they were severe complications.
The paucity of congregation highlighted the Sydney conundrum. The Swans win because they cannot afford not to win. They have played in the finals six years in a row. They have finished the home-and-away season with a percentage of 100 or more 14 years in a row. It is a resilient record, defying a monkey-grip system by which every winning season should make another proportionately harder. But it cannot go on forever, though last night's turnaround effort appeared to give lie to that.
The more the Swans win, the harder it becomes to keep winning, the more they must win, etc. The prelude to this final underscored it. The Swans have had the sort of season that foreshadows the end of an era. Barry Hall and Adam Goodes had had distracted seasons, and Michael O'Loughlin was always injured. The Swans lost six of eight games before last week's crushing of a Brisbane Lions team already in holiday mode. Sydney was in the finals again, but with little euphoria.
Pre-sales for this match were poor. In the local press, president Richard Colless was pessimistic, warning that despite the Swans' sustained excellence, membership, sponsorship, corporate backing, hospitality, television ratings and casual ticket sales all were down. This is Colless' standard pitch, that Sydney had been claimed for AFL, not won. But it does not mean he is wrong. A small crowd last night, he said, would bode ill not just for the club, but the code in Sydney. It had the effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Also in the local press, former superstar (self-appointed) Warwick Capper piped up, saying that for all Hall's talents, he was not a drawcard, that what the Swans needed now was the return of the Swanettes, or even his own return, replete with tight shorts. It is one thing to know the past, another to live there. It is yet another thing to contemplate that he might be right!
At first, there was doom to go with the gloom. It began for Sydney as a night on which nothing would go right. North Melbourne kicked the first four goals. The first was from a doubtful free kick, the second was an erroneous goal-umpiring decision. Leo Barry was caught in possession, Hall gave away a foolish 50-metre penalty. When at last the Swans imposed themselves on the game, Hall and Goodes both missed set shots. The die seemed cast.
But Sydney was having none of it. They beavered away to create stoppages and win them, their speciality. Brett Kirk, Jarrad McVeigh and Jude Bolton all forced their way into the game. Hall and Goodes kicked six second-half goals between them.
But the catalyst was Ryan O'Keefe, who from his eyrie on the half-forward line re-shaped the game with a series of strong marks, invariably followed up by swift and deep kicks to either Hall or Goodes, one-out. Whatever the standing record is for goal assists, O'Keefe surely broke it last night. At the final siren, acoustics gave the acclaim of 20,000 the guise of throatiness.
So Sydney lived to fight another day. But it will not be here; all finals henceforth this season will be in Melbourne. The Swans have been grand crusaders for the AFL cause in Sydney, and were again last night. But sooner or later, the doomsday merchants will be right; sooner or later, fate will not be denied; sooner or later, the Swans' numbered days will run out.
That will put the code on a new threshold. The AFL insists that it is winning hearts and minds in western Sydney. It is planning to install a team there in 2012. Homebush is in western Sydney. Last night, western Sydney's AFL fans looked to be fair weather at best.
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