Senator Andrew Bartlett
Saturday, October 01, 2005
 
The other Grand Final
The AFL Grand Final turned out to be one of the most exciting I can remember (my memory of VFL/AFL Grand Finals stretches back to the 1971 game for those that are seeking more precision from that statement.) Any footy game which is still in the balance in the final seconds has to be exciting.

However, as a Queenslander, I can’t ignore the Rugby League Grand Final coming up this weekend – (although having spent the last few days in New Zealand, it seems like that country is doing a good job of ignoring it, even though they have a team in the competition). I was brought up watching and following rugby league and playing rugby union. Even though my Victorian born grandfather worked hard, with some success, to give me an appreciation of Aussie Rules, it was always a second level passion until I got towards my late 20s.

As I wrote last year, I find it hard to think of the National Rugby League as little more than the old Sydney comp (something I was always hugely uninterested in) with a few different teams in it. My old Brisbane team, the Fortitude Valley Diehards, folded in the 1990s, even though they were the Brisbane equivalent of South Sydney – inner-city based and more successful than any other team. Frankly, once we shifted to a corporate driven mega-competition like the current NRL, then South Sydney should have been axed the same way virtually every old Brisbane based club was (as have most of the old Brisbane based Aussie Rules clubs I might say).

Seeing Parramatta get knocked out of the grand final qualifier was pleasing not just because they lost to the Queensland team, but because Parra beat the inner-city royal blue clad boys of Newtown in the 1981(?) grand final – their last shot before they went the way of the Valley Diehards.

The NRL does not have the history or romanticism of the AFL as far as I am concerned, but it is still nice to see the old battlers from Balmain and Wests in the final (albeit as a merged entity.) However, much as I can understand the pain of the old Tigers and Magpies fans (especially having really enjoyed the magnificent Raiders win over Balmain in extra time the Grand Final of 1989), I have to back the Cowboys. You can’t cheer against a Queenslander in support of a southerner.

Whoever wins, it will be seven different teams winning the flag in the last seven years, which certainly means it is not predictable. If only politics had a bit more diversity in the results.


POSTSCRIPT: Another Grand Final also happens this weekend, truly making it a Sunday of Destiny. The team I play for in the Brisbane band cricket competition has made the grand final this year for the first time in the team's history. I won’t actually be playing in the game, as I haven’t managed to play many games this year (two I think). I could say that the rareness of my appearances is due to the fact that I am often unavailable because I am usually nobly sacrificing my spare time on Sundays in the interests of social and political issues, although it would be somewhat more accurate to say that they have better players than me to call on, so I’ve really only been used as a backup a few times when there’s been a hole that needed filling. None the less, a grand final is a grand final, and I hope I can get along to some of the game to help cheer the chaps to an historic victory.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, October 01, 2005 Permalink
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