Australian Rules Football is a game worshipped by its devotees. A robust representation of Aussie culture and identity, we fans celebrate our wins with vigour and passion, and our losses….well, let’s not dwell on those. There’s no state in Australia more zealous than Victoria, heartland of the great sport and home of the AFL Grand Final (GF), or The Big Dance as it’s affectionately called.
The Granny in Melbourne is a massive deal. There’s a public holiday on the Friday ahead of the game on Saturday, and both teams participate in a parade that starts at Melbourne Park and culminates at the AFL Footy Festival in Yarra Park, home of the behemoth Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). There’s stilt peeps in the colours, marching bands blasting out the team songs, and players arrive two apiece in the back of a Ute…so damn Aussie…so damn proud!
The festival at the MCG, also known as the G (an Aussie tradition we have of shortening everything because we can’t be stuffed with the long version), was a hive of activity, with food trucks, AFL play zones, giveaways, merch stores, and of course, a popup bar (are you even at an Australian sporting event if there isn’t a popup bar?)
This granny is the first one since 2006 that didn’t involve a Victorian team, and without the absolute legions of fans that accompany such teams as Geelong and Collingwood, it was way less partisan than last year’s parade (I was there last year, and as a Lions fan, felt completely swamped!)
Post motorcade, players and coaches jump onstage and are presented to the adoring masses, and the respective captains, Lachie Neale and Dane Rampe held up the premiership cup together. There’s a superstition that says, whichever captain lets go of the cup first, his team will lose, and Dane Rampe let go first…just saying…(the AFL should do stats on that.)
Now, I need to preface my story on the GF with another story about how I, a non-Lions member but staunch, die-hard fan, managed to get a ticket to the big dance. I had friends travel from Brisbane (my old stomping ground) with their family and friends, a group of ten. I joked with them that should any of their party come down with a bad case of food poisoning or suffer a non-life-threatening injury, I was available to sub in. I may or may not have had a quiet word with the footy gods, and freakishly, I got a call at 11.15 on game day, advising one of the parties had a fall at the Captains Run the day before and wasn’t going to the game, and would I like to buy their ticket? YAAAASSSSS….so I came off the bench, donned the guernsey, and an hour later, arrived at the designated pub for a pre-game beverage (with a mad hangover from the previous days post parade beverages!)
Sitting in the stands at the G at a Grand Final that my team was playing in was surreal, a bucket list item realised. It was and always is a sold-out event, and with 100,013 in attendance, it felt like a 50/50 fan base split because both teams were out-of-towners.
While the game is the main event, the AFL Grand Final entertainment is always highly anticipated, and this year, we had Katy Perry. She was ferried into the stadium on top of what looked like a giant motorised goon bag (a hilarious and I’m assuming, unintentional nod to our Aussie culture). Dancers frolicked around her, toting their own goon bags, and KPez looked like she was singing and dancing on a sea of cheap wine receptacles. The first song she belted out was Roar (yep, another sign peeps) and then some other bangers, and personally, I thought she was bussin’.
Being in the moment, roaring with fellow fans when we kicked a goal, screeching the lyrics of Country Road when Charlie kicked a goal. Lions! Lions! Lions! What a day, what a weekend, what a win! Highly recommend it.
