Grand Final – Geelong v Brisbane: Guttural

 

 

Guttural

 

Geelong v Brisbane 2025 AFL Grand Final

 

 

Ignore the final score-line. Let me tell you a story.

 

It starts with; where you watch the Grand Final, and who with. Only 100,000 of us can fit into the G. Only a handful more afford to. Yet it’s our game. We’re all a part of it. Humans make any god. That’s important.

 

  I played pub footy the night before at Victoria Park, was hungover, a man in his 50s couch surfing. Come morning, I was soaking it up at the Vic Market, awash with ticket holders to the Big Dance. I’ve reviewed the GF in Outback pubs and Tassie sheds, and with hard nut ex-ALF ruckmen in Altona, yet two hours to game time, I had no idea where, in a city of 8 million to hunker down.

 

  All I felt in my bones was I wanted passion!

 

  I already knew Geelong. Was there for ’89, everyone going goddamn loopy, as Ablett did Ablett, and two clubs made forever mythology. Coming from the Otway Ranges, everyone, more or less, for 200 kms, is third generation Geelong, fourth, Cats in the blood; the Sleepy Hollow, the bush club! Their supporters have no say in it; the Geelong FC is a part of the dirt and toil that cultivated them.

 

  I stood on a corner, asking MCG-bound maroon and blues; “Roys or Brisbane?” just to get a feel of things.

 

  A middle-aged lady whispered; “Roys!” Added, like happy secrets; “My grandfather, Dan Murray, played in their last ever premiership!” Her partner grunted; “Brisbane.” They were there with their son and his kids, who simply said; “The Lions”. Three generations, excited, happy.

 

  I decided to watch the game in Fitzroy, birth place of the Lions. Who left. That was interesting.

 

  All the pubs in Fitzroy looked the same, nice and fluffed up and polished. Nothing wrong with that, full of young, lovely people. I bounced through a few, gathering beer momentum, before finding a mate, the Bats’ coach, at the Railway. Not a block from where I grew up, training two hours a night, six nights a week, trying to make it in the Fitzroy Under 18s. A weird loop for a fourty year bushman.

 

  One of the blokes at the table was a 3rd gen Fitzroy supporter. A wonderful, rare breed. Them folding broke his heart, he was done with footy, but the 1999 finals pulled him in again, Brisbane pushing hard into the Semis. He couldn’t deny the passion. He had it, it needed spending. Even if on a song and colours.

 

  “The Fitzroy I came to find doesn’t seem to exist anymore,” I said.

 

  He shrugged.

 

   “Does it bother you it’s all up there, now? That there’s no centre to it?”

 

  “Nah,” he said, drinking. “It’s in your blood. We never had a home anyway.”

 

  Then talked about Fitzroy’s last decade or two, drifting ground-to-ground, and hanging on, and when they knew it was all over for his beloved Roys, going to games to try and live in their last few good moments. As if they might last forever.

 

  “No matter what oval we played at, it was always the same ratbags that congregated.”

 

  Then the game started.

 

  The opening bounce.

 

  The expectation, the violence of it. The chaos of nerves and adrenaline. Fiercely hard impacts, and players who have been training since they were five fumbling everything. The sweetest seconds of pain of the year for any true follower of football.

 

Kai Lohmann drove me nuts. Treated the ball like wet soap, yet still got it, made bad choices. Him and Charlie could just not keep their feet under pressure. The Lions talls were too young, not up to it. Not bringing it to ground, even. Oscar forward seemed ludicrous.

 

The Geelong ball carriers were getting hands on it first. But Brisbane, when it was hot, when it mattered, when sliding door moments come at you from everywhere before you know what’s happening, were ferocious! Scary. Smith got it, they tackled, Holmes, they tackled. Danger, tackled. There was no carry, were no neat disposals. Finals are often blown away in the first five minutes. A lead giving confidence, putting on pressure that leads to fumbles that leads to more pressure. Yet defensively, the Lions, all of them, top to bottom, were second to the ball, but hard, aggressive, relentless. The Cat midfield crispness that makes their forwards look so good was totally absent. The MCG shrunk. There was only pressure.

 

  Suddenly, the pre-game favourites weren’t. The milk had been spilt, anything was possible.

 

  Geelong could have had the world, but the Lions were just too intense, despite the fat they fumbled and dropped marks, and Bailey did all the hard work only to fluff shot after shot at goal. Tackling kept them in it. It set them up. To grind Geelong down. Their tackling was everything. The best player on the ground, the best coach.

 

  Tackles.

 

  An intensity impossible to keep up. They’d given themselves a chance but had to capitalise.

 

  Lohmann got his cheek split open, but came back onto the oval with fire. Ah Chee was having impact. With all that Lions desperation, Smith, a true receiver, needed, but as such, more a barometer player than a game-changer, was made ineffective. Holmes didn’t get to use it half as much as he might have wanted, and shot clangers when he did. Cameron didn’t have it coming in slick, his man Darcy Gardiner was brilliant on the punch. Brilliant! Leaving Jaspa Fletcher and Darcy Wilmot to scoop up and sweetly run out everything. Starcevich was golden on Dangerfield. That rare mix; both strong and quick enough to handle him. Dunkley was tough on everyone. Always smirking, enjoying himself, happy about being a physical bastard.

 

  Rayner was unsighted, but so what? So were many others. Grand Finals are chess on drugs for coaches. Some needed cogs rise, some fall, the men with the clipboards shuffle. The mass stumbles forward. Rayner drifted back to get touches, and work his way into it. Shannon Neale kicked a boomer from a free, but otherwise was dead-set pantsed by the best defender of current times.

 

  Some bashed through, others copped it.

 

  Roll on, forward, forward…

 

  Cameron, already soundly beaten, broke his forearm. Went down the race to get the juice, but anyone who’s played with broken limbs knows screwed is screwed. The juice is no good. Credit to him, a story for the ages. He came out and had a crack again. 100% rooted and beaten but conceding nothing!

 

Onward, forward…

 

  Geelong got a lot of their movement from frees. Most were there, a tax on Brisbane’s being so physical, the cost of pushing legal boundaries. But a free’s a free. The Cats got goals through them, even if it made them look jilted. Brisbane linked out of defence. Even if they had no power forwards to squeeze the bloody air out of it, to own it. The ball, the moment, a Grand Final.

 

  My mate and his friends were golden, the best! But there was no fire in the air. Something was missing, if only for me. I wanted something personal. Tribal…

 

Guttural.

 

  That’s what a Grand Final deserves; Guttural!

 

  I cruised past pub after pub, each much of the same, looking for something, while ringing everybody across the nation who has hoops around their heart, to get the other side of things. Nick, from SE Tassie said his Cats looked like they were just hanging on. Rory, from the bush, was at the G. He said the Cats kept letting the Lions run it through the middle, and that bombing it long was not the way to go against the Lions. Vinnie, from up in the second last row of the highest grandstand the G has, said he could see both team’s running patterns. And not much else, probably.

 

  He said it looked like Brisbane were simply sprinting from defence harder.

 

  Yet there the scores were. Level. Grit, waiting for something spectacular on which to build momentum. Day becomes night with momentum. Everything you thought about a game turned on its head within minutes.

 

  Geelong, no fuss. Frees. Brisbane, up, down and sideways. All it takes is something to break. Everything was up for everybody.

 

  I found no pockets of madness, so bought a six-pack and cruised down to the Brunswick Street Oval. Ground zero. Birthplace of the Mighty FFC! The Gorillas! The LIONS!   Back when mud was everything. A thing once surrounded by freight trains and coal yards, and wood mills and wheat silos and dirty worker’s cottages, with laneways full of outhouse poo buckets waiting for pick up. And chain-smoking supporters who lived and died each week on the back of their beloved Royboys.

 

  Empty, other than me. The old grandstand entrances all barred over.

 

  Yet everything about it, the sunny day, oval, the smell of history; glorious. Silent and vast and timeless.

 

  I looked for ghosts of Butch and Ruthven and waves of long-gone people filling the outer. Parked myself and beers and footy where the last ever place kick goal was scored in VFL/AFLhistory, had a brief kick with no-one and watched, bathed in sunlight and green grass and memories of my own youth, an awkward bastard of a thing, as the second half unfolded.

 

  Lachie was subbed in. Danger was put full forward for a whole quarter to try and break the shackles, when they needed him to win it in the middle. Starcevich smashed through packs like Pike before him, then went down to brutal friendly fire. But his job was done, Geelong’s match-winner subdued. Cameron chased down Fletcher, should not have gotten close, got his absolute fingertips to the most beautiful, drowning-man tackle, that led to a goal, and broke his arm even more. Off he went again, for more armour on the un-defendable. Soldiers were falling, stories being made. Early in the 3rd, this was the glory! Brisbane were running… Geelong hanging on. Something many a winner has had to do. Just hang on, until the tide turns.

 

  Nothing was certain.

 

  I found myself barracking. I couldn’t help it. “Go Roys!” “Bullshit ump!” Ashcroft charged the ball, got knocked to knees, but fell forward, doing an air-plank to give off a gun’s handball through Cat legs to make a Lions goal three touches later seem easy. I whooped and patted his back in the screen with a couple of fingers.

 

  Maybe old mate was right? I told him I don’t barrack for anyone anymore. But you do, indeed, need to spend you passion.

 

  The Lions got the next goal.

 

  Geelong raced the ball forward hoping for another quick reply, hanging on, hanging on, waiting for that click, fighting for it. One of any of six of their players with long blond hair and a headband flew for a speckie, 30 out. That spark, that game changer. Three opponents beaten in the air, forced out by presence. There the pill was, in his hands, crisp. Somehow, his teammate, Dangerfield… just… managed to spoil it.

 

  A man having a stinker.

 

  That was it. Things clicked. Lachie Neale made them click. He’s just crisper than others, and was fresher. Clean hands to him meant clean avalanches forward, meant a crisper Bailey, McCluggage breaking free, a crisper everyone. It meant Charlie Cameron was one-on-one, with great delivery.

 

  Fair dinkum, making Neale sub seemed so stupid! If his body was no good when he came on, they’d be one down. Madness. Yet he was fresh when others were battered blue. It was coaching, it was golden.

 

  Charlie absolutely cut loose! The floodgates opened.

 

  It’s so hard to pin an avalanche back in a Grand Final. One team gets a sniff, and fills with the energy of 20 million people screaming at them. They play above themselves. The other mob wilter. The desperation of the team chasing, the sub-human efforts of impossible magnitude, become impossible.

 

  Geelong had their chances to ride the momentum train early, and several times after, but just couldn’t break them tackles.

 

  All that was left was football plans, systems and talent. Half backs that run better, deliver better. Zorko, Fletcher, Wilmot. Rory was right, more often than not, through the middle.

 

  Carnage.

 

  The rest was finishing.

 

  It blew out. Yet Jack Henry stood the tides, all game long. He was Geelong’s best. Him and Holmes, who tried and tried, despite a butcher’s knife attached to his kicking boot. Humphries gave his all, despite having goals kicked on him. Beyond that, stats, like good and bad players, lie and don’t lie. Dempsey tried all the way into kill-time. A few were handy, a few terrible.

 

  A few Lions got cocky towards the end, a bit lairy, showing the crowd the ball, interacting with the fans as if it was already over. But that was fine. There should have been a kill switch, or, at least, a way to watch the game in reverse; Benjamin Button. Geelong bashing and crashing and unbreaking bones, reducing the margin goal by goal, back to a ripper, level first half to savour.

 

  Ashcroft won the Charlie. He was sensational! Got the most stats, is still a kid! For influence, though, I would have gone Fletcher or Andrews. But that was fine. blondes win everything. The Patrick Swayzes beat the Headbands.

 

  The team tackling was the best player anyway.

 

  I looked around the Brunswick Street Oval. A few kids were now playing soccer in the forward pocket. No goalposts, just slapping it around a little. Other than that, there was just me. A bushie, visiting a place that only exists in echoes. A Royboy again, if only for a day. Barracking, like the biggest old school idiot. Being the chaos he was after. I came looking for ghosts and found just one; a weird, stringy kid with no idea how to kick a ball, but falling passionately in love with footy anyway.

 

  It’s now 2am, the bar I’m writing this in will shut soon. I’ll sleep in the ute, easy. Tomorrow, the Brunswick Street footy oval will be awash with maroon and blue and gold and happy, crying supporters, taking their home in their hearts wherever they go, savouring every moment. I’m sure Dan Murray’s granddaughter will be one of them.

 

  By then, I’ll be back in the bush, being a Dad, looking forward to summer.

 

  Thank you Fitzroy, thank you Brisbane.

 

  Thank you Lions.

 

 

GEELONG       2.3     5.6     6.8     11.9 (75)
BRISBANE      1.6     5.6     9.9     18.14 (122)

 

GOALS
Geelong: Dempsey 4, Blicavs, Bowes, Close, Holmes, Mannagh, Mullin, Neale
Brisbane: Cameron 4, McCluggage 4, Bailey 3, Lohmann 2, L.Ashcroft, W.Ashcroft, Morris, Neale, Rayner

 

BEST
Geelong: Dempsey, Holmes, Humphries, Atkins, Smith
Brisbane: McCluggage, W. Ashcroft, Andrews, Bailey, Cameron, Gardiner

 

INJURIES
Geelong: Cameron (arm)
Brisbane: Starcevich (head)

 

SUBSTITUTES
Geelong: Jack Martin replaced Rhys Stanley in the fourth quarter
Brisbane: Lachie Neale replaced Sam Marshall in the third quarter

 

Crowd: 100,022 at the MCG

 

 

More from Matt Zurbo HERE.

 

 

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