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  Issue No 113 Official Organ of LaborNet 28 September 2001  

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The Locker Room

The Worst Grand Finals Of My Life


When Peter Moss thinks of grand finals, he doesn't think of beer and barbeques. He thinks of pain.

 
 

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Millions tune in to grand finals for the sport, the parties, the banter. But tens of thousands at most have a deep personal investment in the outcome of each game.

Aside from those directly responsible for putting each team on the field, it's the hard core fans who have most to gain or lose on the day.

Euphoria or despair. There's no middle option for these fans when the siren closes the year's final encounter.

I've watched dozens of season deciders - in rugby league prior to 1994 and in AFL since then - but the September days that I remember, the days that hurt, were in 1989 and 1996.

Nailed to the wall of my shed is a plastic plate commemorating the Balmain Tigers rugby league side of 1989. Roach, Elias, McGuire, Sironen, Hemsley, Pearce, Freeman ... a fierce team well coached by Warren Ryan right through to a grand final versus Canberra.

That game is remembered now as one of the greatest grand finals ever played. And it probably was. But for hard core Tigers followers, it was one of the worst games of all time.

Balmain were strongly favoured to win. Stacked with hardened representative players, they had brains, brawn and enough class to stave off an exciting but relatively unproven Canberra lineup.

Or so it seemed.

History said that the Tigers' loss as underdogs to Canterbury in the 1988 grand final was the ideal preparation for victory in 1989.

If only history had been strapped and ready to come off the Balmain interchange as the game shifted into extra time. Because when coach Ryan replaced Balmain's best big men Roach and Sironen, Canberra took charge and took the flag.

The enduring image for me is not Raiders forward Steve Jackson barging over for the winning score. It is the stunned and heartbroken Tigers captain Junior Pearce weeping into the turf.

That scene, minus the tears, was mirrored in our Dulwich Hill lounge room, where half a dozen die hards sat slumped in silence for 20 minutes before we roused ourselves just enough to drink the house dry.

The beer hangover lasted a day. The football hangover never quite went away.

Fast forward seven years and I'm on the Sydney Swans bandwagon as they amaze and excite by winning through to their first grand final since 1945.

On the wagon and in the queue to snare precious tickets to the game.

Put four men who are old enough to know better in a hire car and point them down the Hume Highway towards the Melbourne Cricket Ground and what do you get?

In our case it was $575 in speeding fines and the beginning of a mad, sleepless weekend.

I'd laid $100 at 25-1 on the Swans earlier in the year and promised to spend the lot on partying if they won.

Jammed into our red plastic seats high in the MCG's Northern Stand with just a litre of Glenfiddich to keep us warm, we were four bobbing Swans in a sea of hard-faced North Melbourne supporters.

That hardly mattered when the red and white went four goals ahead in the first quarter. We had plenty to say, and loudly.

But when a Paul Kelly pass which should have set up Plugger for a five goal lead fell short and when Kangaroo legend Wayne Carey began to dominate, we went quiet. By halftime we knew in our guts it was over.

And the hard faces and the hard voices kicked in all around us.

Again, the enduring image is of pain. This time Craig O'Brien, the small tough Swans forward, his cheekbone shattered by a North Melbourne knee, trying to mask the agony and play on.

We retreated to a Fitzroy pub where the entertainment was the interaction between a frisky netball team and a bunch of drunken Carlton AFL stars.

Noel Hester, one of our sorry band, gave Fraser Brown, a Carlton midfielder famous for being angry, the gentle advice that he shouldn't be smoking. Brown meekly concurred, than drifted off to dance on a table.

A minor highlight, then the long drive home.

Peter Moss is a Director of Lodestar Communications


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*   View entire issue - print all of the articles!

*   Issue 113 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Interview: The Custodian
Labor's arts spokesman Bob McMullan on the role government can play in nurturing national culture.
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*  Media: Chucking a Wobbly
Veronica Apap meets Dan Buhagiar, the programmer of Labor Council's new online initiative, Wobbly Radio.
*
*  E-Change: 3.3 Unleashing a Networked Culture
Politics does not occur in a vacuum - it's is as much a product of its culture as it is an influence on it. In the post-Industrial Age how will this relationship change?
*
*  Unions: Are You a Terrorist?
Away from the talkback noise, Mark Hearn reports on how a Sydney workforce is taking up the cause of racial understanding and tolerance.
*
*  Organising: STAA Performers
Film industry workers are acting collectively to ensure they don't become Mexicans with Mobiles.
*
*  Workplace: Making Art Work
The Workers Cultural Action Committee is a community cultural development provider. What is this? And what does it mean for the union movement?
*
*  History: Creative Alliances
Neale Towart wanders through the archives to look at how unions' have worked with artists to promote progressive casuses.
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*  Performance: Tales from the Shop Floor
Peter Murphy profiles Sydney's New Theatre and the role it has played in fostering working culture.
*
*  Review: Homegroan
In an extract from her new book, The Money Shot, Jane Mills argues that the local film industry needs more than patriotism to get bums on seats.
*
*  Satire: PM Pleads To Nauru: Take Our Aborigines Too
In the wake of Nauru�s acceptance of the Tampa refugees, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has struck a new deal with the small island nation to take our Aborigines as well.
*

News
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»  Terror Shockwaves Hit Security Workers
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»  The Ansett Phoenix Rises
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»  'The General' Makes Ansett Stand
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»  Union Power Gets Tilers Paid In Full
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»  NSW Nurses (Pro)Claim Their Worth
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»  AOL Sheds Non-Union Staff
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»  Building Inquiry Faces First Test of Integrity
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»  Telstra Guilty Over Union Discrimination
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»  Paint Workers Finish the Job
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»  New Project Agreement A Template
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»  The Workers United, Need a New Slogan!
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»  Activists Notebook
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Columns
»  The Soapbox
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»  The Locker Room
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»  Trades Hall
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»  Tool Shed
*

Letters to the editor
»  Hamberger on Stellar
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»  CHOGM Agenda
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»  Ian West on Trades Hall
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