Grand Final 2024 – Sydney v Brisbane: Gameplans

 

Gameplans

 

It’s a hard game. And grand finals can be brutal.

When Max Rooke coached Otway a few years back, he showed us footage of the first few minutes of the 2011 Grand Final. He knows his stuff. It was pressure personified, in a can, in your face. The ball was slapped forward and back and back again, contest to contest to contest, everything scrambling desperation. Each time, whoever got numbers to the ball won that mini-battle. Two-on-one, three-on-one, one-on-one until someone arrived to help. Winner, winner, winner. Under the pump, slap it forward.

I told my wife the opening bounce is the best moment of the AFL year. All 100,000 people screaming inwards, as players charge towards each other and chaos.

So is where you watch it, the venue’s vital. Grand finals should be an experience. I drove from playing pub footy in Melbourne the day before to Port Campbell via Warrnambool. If only to feel like whatever happened on the telly, I would have earned it.

I ran through the door, not a minute before it started. Pre-game bullshit missed beautifully!

Let that opening bounce go down! Come on! This is the gravy, this next three hours of brutal physical contact, skill, of champion versus champion and heaven. A year, for some a lifetime, in the making!

It was weird. With no Victoria team involved, the crowd watched without any semblance of passion. No-one really announced who they wanted to win, no-one really barracked. But such is a national game.

“Go the Roys!” I called, just for the noise and double shitstir of it. Stuff it. I’d drink beer and be human for all of us!

The first thing to be noticed, after about ten minutes of the game, is that grand finals, at this level, seem to have evolved.

Players didn’t fumble. Leaders led well. Kicks were spot on. Two seasoned teams, there were no butterflies. Nobody panicked. Players simply too pro, too good at finding that free metre. The Granny settled, way too early for my liking, into the feel of another game of football.

I wanted what Max Rooke showed me. Collisions, chaos, blood on the altar! All we got, though, was a good, tight first quarter. No brilliance. Few highlights beyond some ripper Cameron tackles. Just simple football.

It started, as always, in the ruck. Stats lie. They lie and lie and lie. Grand finals are as much about presence, key moments, momentum, affecting contests. Fort, each time it counted, smacked Grundy. Negated Grundy. Made it a shitshow for Grundy. Brodie seems like a good bloke, and yes, he got a fair bit of ruck rover pill, stats, but ruck-wise, he was meant to lead the charge with the Big O out, and didn’t. This opened the door wide for the Lions rovers.

And in rampaged Lachie Neale! The hunger, the power. A man tough enough to win two Brownlows, out for revenge for cooking it last year in a close one.

You just don’t get to be as good as he is without intense pride. He brought the fire. Warner and Heeney, ball-getters, had to chase it.

Yet the Swans got the first two. Papley’s was magic. The best highlight of the day. Something freakish, on the run, over his shoulder. But the Lions countered. Kai Lohmann finished off two nicely. No hard ball gets, nothing explosive, no snapping and cutting back, just good football awareness from a man who looks least likely. It’s the light frame, the hair that screams mini Warwick Capper. You always felt like anything could happen when he was around it, even if he didn’t look like he belonged out there. A Pommie and Irishman, watching behind me on working visa said he looks very Australian. “Yeah, Home and Away,” I said. They chuckled.

Toby Green makes goals from less than nothing. Kai seems to get as many without as much effort. By simple instinct and the odd hanger. Good on him.

First quarters are so often crammed to the gills with sliding door moments. Two three misses that should have been gets, only to see the other mob get their feet, pull back the momentum. A brilliant spoil of a sure goal. A speckie. Something. Not today.

From the moment the scores levelled, one team pulled away, sure and steady.

The Swans often butchered it going forward. Just plain took the knife to their kicking. I really don’t blame their goalkickers that much. (Though I suspect a lot of the press will). Brisbane came back and built their lead around a killer gameplan.

Some teams, the successful Geelong ones come to mind, would run it through the guts, take it on, back their forwards! Damn that style was exciting! It didn’t matter that they lost more than they won out of the centre, the attack stemmed from Scarlett, and running back flankers.

Richmond won their three flags by playing down the boundary line better than any other team. Long bombs along the boundary to big, extremely hard-leading men, with several smalls front-and-centre. That then became the norm.

Football, like `80s shoulder pads, flat top haircuts, and the current policeman’s moustache and fat mohawk crazes, is about fashions. Game-plan fashions. Over the past two years it has evolved into the chip – again, mostly down the line. Then kick long to forwards leading at 45-degree angles from goal. When it’s spoiled, hem the defenders in along the boundary. Don’t let them break back through the middle. Knock the pill out of bounds and reload.

Good, good, good.

And each time other clubs have countered by adapting different styles of zone. Hawthorn built their dynasty around them.

But the Brisbane of today have adapted to all three styles of footy. The zones trying to block them become too stretched. Defending teams can’t cover down the line and up the middle and the far side. Brisbane simply chip, and chip again, and chip again, and again, sometimes wide, sometimes down the line, sometimes back into the middle, until the zones have cracks to slip through.

Then, rather than shepherd for the ball carrier, who them bombs it long, as was the norm, the Lion running with the ball carrier leaves him alone to draw opponents, and then handball forward as the second player runs on. That’s just huge. It leads, between the two to them, to 30-50 metre runs, and sweet, pressure-free, eyes-down delivery into the 50. It leads to smaller, short-sharp, quick leading forwards.

Brisbane have upped the ante.

But Sydney are a tough, extremely talented, very well-drilled unit. Normally.

The fact Sydney has so many games at the SCG, I thought, really worked against them. A smaller ground, easier to set up zones on. Zones, if not a game plan, not ready for the MCG’s vast wings on a big, give-your-all occasion.

Back away from tactics, in the game itself, come the second, the Lions had the better one of everything. Harris Andrews, the Wall, was 10/10. Winning a great shootout with Blakey down the other end, who was running so fast he was forgetting to hit targets.

The Lions had the best tall defender.

They had the best mid-small defender. Starcevich had the same fire as Neale. A man blazing a steely-eyed, burn-the-world-down path to Grand Final redemption. He has just been magnificent this September. The player of the series.

Pantsed last year. Pantsed! This year, determined! De-ter-mined! Full of character.

Meanwhile, Rampe was having a shocker.

Brisbane had the best mids. A team of them. The very few times Heeney and Warner got it, there was no authority involved. No presence. No penetration. The Lions tackling was majestic, brutal.

Most importantly, when the game was hot, Brisbane had the best tall forward. Joe was everywhere. Cool cat, classy-arsed, Joe. Just everywhere. Then he went into the ruck and was everywhere. Presence. Kia was flashy, Ah Chee was relentless. There’s not one flash thing about Callum. He’s just been this mudslide you can’t dam.

They had the best two small forwards.

And individual acts. Berry smacked into a contest, making a turnover on the half back line, gave it off, then, as the ball moved down the ground at speed, was somehow there inside the 50, receiving a nice kick to finish it.

Give good, get good. In a nutshell.

Hipwood went to baulk Rampe on the wrong side boundary, slipped, fooled Drew, wrong-footing him with said slip, and slotted a ridiculously good goal.

Five minutes from half time, or thereabouts. From that moment it was all over.

Momentum.

The whole room, the nation over, felt anti-climactic. We wanted three hours of explosions and got two more quarters to come of fizzle. What happened to our Christmas?

So it goes, such is sport, and whatever other clichés you want to throw at it.

The Irishman behind me, Peter, wearing his local Gaelic football club’s jumper (what a dead set legend!) and Sav, the Englishman who boxes for sport, asked me what the chances were of a comeback.

I apologised and told them next-to-nothing. Lesser teams can often get the jump, and good teams reel them back. Or, sweet momentum, lesser teams can come back with a run-on. The other team panics a bit, stiffens up, starts leaving their own door open. But grand finals are the best versus the best. And the best, when they’re this far in front, very, very rarely welter.

Brisbane had finished both the first and second quarters with goals. The Swans had no momentum to bring out after the main break. Nothing to work with.

In the last home-and-away match Sydney were way down and Warner and Heeney played one of the best halves I’ve seen two blokes play. They simply refused to lose. Pulled their whole team up from the mire, and to victory, through sheer grit and force of personality. Damn, it was inspiring!

But you can’t do that every week. And not against the best. It takes a team. Those two put a band-aid on things bigger.

And I remember thinking at the time: Where were they in the first half? Heeney’s been taking speckies, is a damn fine player, a leader. But I never once brought into that best-player-going around, bullshit. The in-the-moment hype and flashiness of the media.

Dunkley did the job of a lifetime on him, whether Heeney was injured or not, by simply repeating what he did last time when Heeney was fit and firing.

It takes a team. In the big one.

We had just witnessed a grand final in half a game of football. All that was left was 60 minutes in which to see who would win Normie. The fluff at the finish.

Peter and Sav kept asking me about the game, which was nice. Their mate came over, another ripper bloke, and also asked questions. They used Gaelic footy as a point of reference, which was brilliant.

I told them the Norm is so important because home-and-away is nice, and, financially, the Brownlow sets you up for life, but everybody out there plays for premierships. To be the best player, on the biggest day, against the best opposition, is what, as an individual within a team game, would be the most special.

Everything.

You’re Best-On in a premiership, and you make everybody in to legends.

The Norm is still the most influence, not the most stats. It’s not just a mid-fielder’s medal. Brian Lake will tell ya. Johannisen, Rioli. Bashar should have been able to tell ya. Absolutely! Yes, Dusty’s first, and Judd over Buchanan, proves it can be a popularity contest, a PR exercise, over football, but on the whole, it still gives the average punter hope; to show us we know out footy, and to show us the system still believes in footy. It’s much harder for the dickheads in the media to go the lazy way of stats on the day the whole nation is watching.

Norm should have been called at half time. From when the game was hot. When things mattered.

Lachie.
Joe.
Andrews.
Dunkley
Even Lohmann.

I thought Ashcroft was in the mix, but next level down when looked at it that way. More link and finish. But good luck to the kid. Won one at 20.

No Swans featured.

Normally, even in pastings, there’s at least one bloke who had a red-hot dip for the losing mob. Someone who flew the flag, defied tides, gave blood and glory. Someone for the neutral supporter to admire.

Sloane comes to mind. There have been many.

This year I struggled to find one. Maybe Fox. He had a crack. Blakey butchered but tried. The rest, sorry; tumbleweeds.

Not every grand final can be a bottler. It just makes the ones that are even more special.

With the game over, I went out to the beer garden to find Peter, Sav and their mates, who had given up half way through the third.

“Lads! This is my 700^th game day footy. Let’s see what you’ve got! Let’s go rough it up on bitumen!”

“You serious?”

“Bloody oath!”

“Em in! Em in!”

And about seven of us went out onto a sloping street, chockers with camper’s cars coming and going, as we laughed and sunk the boot in and went for hangers like dead set champions!

Eventually, the sun went down, but we kept going, spraying and butchering our kicks as badly as the Swans first half mids did.

But far more joyously.

They had seen AFL football. On. A backstreet of a small coastal town, between motorbikes and land rovers and fading light, I showed them footy. It was glorious!

Down at Port Campbell.

I hope they enjoy their stay in our country.

 

 

 

 

Read more from Matt Zurbo HERE

 

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