Grand Final 2016 – Sydney v Western Bulldogs: “Advaance Australia Fair” … at last …a win for the Doggies and for the people…

“Advaance Australia Fair” … at last …a win for the Doggies and for the people…

 

Stephen Alomes

 

We sometimes forget the big picture.

 

No, not the stalker song from Sting – a great song despite… or the overloaded GF speakers to disenhance the MCG’s bad acoustics….

 

But the outbreak of ‘fair’.

 

We know the AFL stuffed up with its lack of competitive balance and the pleb contracts at Docklands…..in contrast to the Essendon‘s ‘whatever it takes’ deal….

 

However, finally, we had Vika and Linda Bull singing in the accent of ordinary Australians, with a floral Pacific enhancement…. the people’s national anthem…

 

(And we are littoralists, from Williamstown to Bondi, despite ‘girt…’ but that’s another story.)

 

At last, like a majority of Australians – even in the ‘fair go’ egalitarian country which loves inequality, with the biggest private school system in the developed world – they sang ‘Advaance Australia Fair’, not the private schools and singing teachers’ ‘Advarnce’……

 

It must have inspired the Bulldogs to take the game by the throat and then take the Cup.

 

It is a win for the West…a win for the people

 

And next, after Bevo’s symbolic gesture of presenting his medal to Robert Murphy, the club should mint its own premiership medals for every player who played for the team this year….

 

A win for fairness and the people’s game in our could-be egalitarian country… ?

 

* Stephen Alomes is the author of Australian Football The People’s Game 1958-2058 (Walla Walla, 2012). Yesterday, happily, he was on a unity ticket of the Cats and the Dogs…and he never liked geese or swans very much….

His paintings of populist, not quite people’s leaders, Pauline, Silvio and Donald J Trump are on Instagram at stephenalomes.