You could say this was a 50-50 face-off. Each had kicked 50 goals for the season,each was his team’s leading goalkicker. But their fates would diverge momentously.
Fritsch’s night started with a classic finals mini-drama. While Melbourne warmed up,he was hustled back into the rooms for medical appraisal,evidently for knee soreness. He missed the national anthem that is performed before every final for no apparent reason and was cleared to play minutes before the first bounce. A Max Gawn hug marked the moment.
Once the game began,it was as if he was out to prove himself doubly. He laid one big tackle,kicked Melbourne’s first goal,handballed to Charlie Spargo for another and led intelligently for Spargo to kick his second after the quarter-time siren. Here in miniature was the Fritsch of last year’s grand final,a clear and ever present danger. All was well in Demonland then.
Franklin,meantime,was in the wars. Whereas Fritsch benefited from working around three big forwards – ruckmen Gawn and Luke Jackson ranged upfield menacingly – Franklinwas Sydney’s big forward. Once he would have relished this,but that was then. The only statistical category he would lead this night was his age,35.
Three times in the first quarter alone,May cleanly outmarked him. It would become a motif on the night. Of the Franklin of old,only a tributary was apparent. Only after a mistimed Melbourne interchange did he slip May by enough to get his first mark and kick.
Before that,though,he had made a mark of a sort. Playing on from a free kick,he ran slap-bang into Petracca,who in the act of smothering the Swans forward copped a boot to his leg and would hobble through the rest of the evening. Evidently,the Demons’ assessment was that he could run it out.