Beau McCreery holds the premiership cup while Bobby Hill kisses it.Credit:Joe Armao
We’ve heard the opposite for some time now,you see,told time and again by members of the commentariat how likeable these new Magpies have become. How their organisation is filled with great people,and inclusivity. How they play with verve and desire. How they’re exciting to watch. Becoming likeable was,they told us,the dirtiest trick the dirty rotten mudlarks ever pulled.
There’s their coach,Craig McRae,with his Ted Lasso puffer jacket and guileless charm,who revealed his wife Gabrielle gave birth to a baby girl - named Maggie - at 7.45 that morning. Their captain,Darcy Moore,who reads books and dyes his hair and speaks with eloquence and empathy. Their veteran champion,too,Scott Pendlebury,maybe headed humbly towards the AFL games record.
But is that enough to really turn the other cheek? I think not.
The late afternoon sky above the yawning maw of the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday,September 30,was deep blue,lit by bright spring sun,and yet by 5.27pm the place was already darkened in the mind’s eye of many by a big brewing black-and-white cloud of rumbling thunder. They’re back,with a 16th flag,and a hunger for more.
Collingwood captain Darcy Moore brandishes the cup to the Magpie army.Credit:Getty
We should have seen it coming,of course. Before the first stoppage was even contested,the centre square wasoccupied by a famous band,whose name is an acronym for Knights In Satan’s Service,and they wore black and white and played surrounded by the belch of flames,while acrid smoke from pyrotechnics filled the nostrils and fireworks launched skyward like missiles. This day was Armageddon from the get-go.
Football scribes tend to forget (or at least underestimate) how much spite and animosity there is in footy fandom,and how much delirious schadenfreude there would have been,for instance,if the Lions had rolled this Collingwood side.