Red, white and blue hue to grand final deja vu
CAST your mind back to 2007. Can you recall the feeling?
Geelong had made the grand final after beating the much-fancied Goliath called Collingwood in a preliminary final “for the ages”.
It had been a ding-dong battle. Bodies crunched and young players stood up and built reputations with heroic deeds on the field.
The result was a win for football. A great contest and the victor won the hearts of the football community.
The Geelong that took the field on grand final day was a group of fresh faces with some experienced leaders. They had nothing to lose and the history of grand final failure was not hanging around their necks.
The 2007 Geelong team had great depth and won the VFL and AFL premierships that year.
After 2006 they had reinvented themselves. The coaching staff had been reviewed and there was a joy on the park when they played their game.
Watching that team was like going to church.
Not the C of E or Roman Catholic, more a Hilllsong sort of thing.
Miracles seemed to be a weekly event. There was no weakness. Lots of happy clapping and astonishment in the crowd. learner shearing?’ I did for quite a while, enjoyable times.
“Teesdale was the furthest we went away, we used to stay up there for the night at the farmers’ place and look forward to coming home.
“I went up for the first time on the back of Clive’s motorbike. He had a Calthorpe. I sat on the luggage carrier, no cushion or anything.
“I shore with my cousin Ron Anderson. Clive taught a lot of young blokes to shear.”
Lex topped 100 in a day for the first time during his second year on the combs and cutters.
“I was never a fast shearer,” he said. “The highest I ever got was 146 I think, now they’re shearing around 300.”
He said shearing days were good days, and across the years he continued working the family farm alongside his brother.
Along the way the Perry family Honesty in the commitment. No disbelievers. On grand final day in 2007 the MCG was a sea of hope and faith. True believers packed the stands and witnessed the transformation of the team into a powerful club.
This is what it feels like to be a Doggie today. Footscray deserves to win today. It has been tested physically and mentally all season. It is not a wealthy club. It was supposed to merge or go under.
This year it is hard to recall a week when the Dogs had a full list from which to choose. The great Bob Murphy has been in the coaches’ box for most of the year.
The “sons of the ’scray” have done it the hard way.
After finishing seventh at the end of the home and away, they flew to Perth and demolished the Eagles. They lost Lin Jong with a suspected broken collarbone, came back to Melbourne and torched the reigning premiers.
Then they took a plane to Spotless Stadium, lost their No. 1 ruckman with half a dozen girls shifted to the area, and 63 years ago he and Lola Perry were wed.
His brother Daryl married her sister Margaret.
“They were a good thing coming to Barrabool those girls,” Lex said.
“It wasn‘t long after we got married I came home helping my brother milk the cows. Our wives used to milk at night and we’d milk in the mornings.”
Lex and Lola welcomed sons Geoffrey and Vivian, and thus generations more came to work the land, in part at Barrabool and on their own properties over near Stonehaven and Lethbridge. Geoffrey’s son Cameron makes a fourth generation.
Of late Lex has stepped forward into the public eye to pursue one of his great passions, seeking to save the North Geelong saleyards that have been part of the city for 147 years and part of his farming life, weeks in early in the second quarter, but continued to fight and eventually killed off the favourite child son of the AFL.
Greater Western Sydney had looked mighty against Sydney in the first week of the finals. The Giants matched the Swannies’ physicality. But in the preliminary the five-yearold golden club was no match for the junkyard Dogs.
Bontempelli, Liberatore, Stringer and Macrae took the opportunity to lead the team into the Big Dance. These Footscray players are well known to Super Coach travellers, but they are not million dollar babies.
This team has created its own culture of commitment and composure.
Last Sunday the Doggies won the VFL Grand Final. Lin Jong played and he was best on ground.
You can’t go past the Dogs today. They deserve to hold the cup.
This is the team on the brink of an era. I remember this feeling. They know how to win. Go Doggies. Ross Mueller is a freelance writer and director. weeks out, for so many decades.
The fate of the yards awaits the stroke of the bureaucratic pen at Geelong City Hall after granting of a stay of execution.
Lex knows how much they mean to so many, as a place of commerce and connection.
He has long agitated for their proper upkeep and identifies so strongly with the history.
“The stockmen used to gather up the stock out here, I could take you to the paddock,” he said.
“And then they would drive them on a Monday morning — up Shannon Ave, mind you — up to the saleyards.
Lex has been on a stick but is recovering after a fall that put him in hospital for his 85th. He reckons he might be on the land to stay.
“If I don’t drop dead here I’ll have to go somewhere I suppose,” he said.
“But I don’t like the idea.”