FOOTBALL
By LIAM DURKIN
MIRBOO North circa early 2010s would have been proud.
The Brisbane Lions defied just about every logical analysis to win a third successive AFL premiership at the weekend.
Trailing by three goals with four minutes remaining, the Lions rallied to edge past Fremantle 14.12 (96) to 12.17 (89) in what will surely go down as one of the all-time classic grand finals.
Equally, it will have to be remembered as one of the all-time chokes by the Dockers.
A Lions premiership was perhaps fitting, at least from a local context, after the Moe Lions won the Gippsland League flag a week earlier.
Much like 2016 was the year of the Dogs (Newborough and the Western Bulldogs won premierships), it really was the year of the Lions a decade later.
There was local connections on either side, while some who took the field have stepped foot around these traps in recent times.
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The players
GIPPSLAND had two of the leading players on the MCG.
Warragul’s Caleb Serong was exceptional for the vanquished, finishing with 13 clearances. His effort garnered four Norm Smith Medal votes.
His local contemporary, Yarram’s Josh Dunkley, had 14 contested possessions for Brisbane. A few eyebrows were raised when he didn’t poll a single vote in the ‘Norm’.
Dunkley, who played in a Gippsland League senior premiership for Sale as a bottom-age fourths player in 2012, won a fourth AFL flag at the weekend, and was on the dais to accept the cup as one of the Lions’ three co-captains.
The midfielder played in the Western Bulldogs’ drought-breaking premiership in his first season, and has won the last three with Brisbane.
Dunkley and Serong still have very strong family ties to Gippsland. Serong is a common surname in Longwarry, while Dunkley’s parents run a farm machinery business in Yarram.
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Connection piece
TRARALGON is the common link in the most pivotal moment in Brisbane Lions history.
Fitzroy great Bernie Quinlan and Lions champion Michael Voss are both from Traralgon.
Quinlan coached Fitzroy during its second-last season (1995). Voss was the inaugural captain of the merged team in 1997.
Voss was born in Traralgon and played footy in Orbost before moving to Queensland.
It was said the local East Gippy competition had to introduce a ‘no bouncing’ rule to stop him dominating so much to try and get other kids into the game.
His solution? Simply kick the ball to himself.
Leongatha’s Dyson Heppell supposedly had to play under a similar set of rules during his junior days. Heppell was the runaway best-on-ground in the recent Gippsland League decider between Leongatha and Moe.
Quinlan was recruited to Footscray under zoning laws, but arguably played his best football with Fitzroy, where he won a Brownlow Medal (1981) and consecutive Coleman medals (1983-84).
According to local legend, he once kicked a torpedo from the Traralgon Recreation Reserve oval that sailed over the railway line and bounced into Victory Park – quite fitting for the man known as ‘Superboot’. He also cut the ribbon to officially open Traralgon Bunnings in 2012.
There has only been four players to win a Brownlow and Coleman medal, and two come from Traralgon.
Kelvin Templeton is the other Traralgon export to do the double. He was back home last July to launch his debut novel.
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The supporters
I’M sure there’s a few old Fitzroy supporters still in the Valley.
During the cancelled local footy season in 2021, I penned a piece on the Valley’s connection to Fitzroy.
Names featured included Quinlan, Morwell’s Paul Abbott (who finished with Fitzroy after winning flags at Hawthorn) and the mercurial Doc Wheildon from Newborough.
The Doc was spotted in the Wonthaggi Football-Netball Club social rooms after the game between the Power and Moe this season.
My predecessor in the editor’s chair, Gregor Mactaggart, is a passionate Lions fan.
I once asked him if the Brisbane flags of the early 2000s felt like Fitzroy premierships.
He said they didn’t, but they were still great to celebrate nonetheless.
Some years ago, I tracked down former Fitzroy president Leon Wiegard, after seeing his surname on a TAC media release, and asked him the same question.
“My word,” was his response, before adding “twice as much” when he saw how much it meant to club icon Kevin Murray.
While Bulldog Murray embodied everything about Fitzroy’s fighting spirit, the scars of the merger are still painful for some 30 years after the fact.
It was enough for ex-Fitzroy recruit Peter Moody (who has been assisting his daughter Alex as coach of Moe’s A Grade netball side for a number of years) to switch teams.
“It cuts me and my family to the bone. Since they merged, there’s not one member of our family that still follows the Lions,” he said in a 2020 podcast with the author.
“My mum couldn’t even go and watch them play the last time in Melbourne, it was so hurtful for her. She was the whole reason our whole family barracked for Fitzroy, she was the one who instilled the love of footy in me and my brothers.”
Amid the multitude of storylines from last weekend’s grand final, it was sad that one poignant element hardly rated a mention: Fitzroy’s last-ever game was against Fremantle. Now here they were, the same two clubs, in a grand final, 30 years on.
Very eerie.
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Out on the ground
SAM Draper went from bottom to top, playing in Brisbane’s premiership a year after crossing from Essendon.
The cult hero was a fan favourite at the Bombers, and was swamped by fans on a trip to Traralgon Centre Plaza in 2022.
The centre changed its name from Stockland in 2021. The man in charge of the property group behind the takeover was none other than former Collingwood hard man Shane Wakelin.
Wakelin played in two grand finals against Brisbane (2002-03), as the Lions completed their now first dynasty.
As good as this current Brisbane team is, it would be hard to see them getting within even 10 goals of Leigh Matthews’ side.
Collingwood’s effort to run only nine points short of Brisbane in the 2002 grand final is one of the game’s most underappreciated achievements.
The Magpies did not have one All Australian that year.
Mick Malthouse has often said getting that Collingwood side as far as he did was his greatest coaching achievement.
Former Wonthaggi coach Rob Railton shared similar thoughts about the Power team he got into the 2014 Gippsland League grand final.
Wonthaggi certainly wasn’t the most star-studded team that year, but when it came to playing to a system, there was none better. They came back from eight goals down in the last quarter to win a truly spellbinding preliminary final against a Sale team featuring Dunkley.
Despite losing to Morwell a week later, Railton said he keeps a photo of that Wonthaggi team on the wall, because they “epitomised effort”.
In some respects, the memories of that season probably outweigh what took place on grand final day because of it.
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La la la
HAVE to mention Kylie.
She’s certainly come a long way since saving the Vicar of Dibley from the Elton John no-show.
Kylie’s biggest hit, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, is a staple track in local footy changerooms before many games.
Adding to the grand final connection, her breakout song Locomotion was first performed at a Fitzroy Football Club function in 1987.
There is some talk of Shannon Noll headlining entertainment for the NRL grand final.
Nollsy delivered a stellar performance at Moe Racing Club a few years ago.
Truly one of the great guys, he honoured the racing club’s booking that had been previously cancelled due to COVID.
Fittingly, he closed with his signature song What About Me, changing the last lyric to “What about Mo-eee”.
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Desperate and divided
HATS off to the AFL. They have absolutely nailed the last two years’ pregame entertainment (Kylie Minogue and Snoop Dogg).
In years gone by, the grand final pregame show was accurately described as “two dollar shop entertainment”.
The Killers were very good in 2017.
I was lucky enough to be in the crowd, and thought it was apt they sang a Midnight Oil cover of Forgotten Years.
“These should not be forgotten years” seemed rather appropriate for all the fellow long-suffering Richmond supporters among us.
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Mere millimetres
HOW fine the line can be.
Brisbane’s three peat is now in the history books, but has anyone stopped to think: The Lions could so easily have walked away empty handed each time?
Brisbane came back from 44 points down in the 2024 semi-final, had to beat the same opponent it lost to in the qualifying final last year, and has now survived two near-death experiences this finals series.
The luck of the draw in September.
Current Warragul coach Gary Ayres, who also coached Geelong and Adelaide deep into finals, has publicly said as much.
“You need a lot of things going right for you,” he told the Herald Sun in 2020.
“You can structure up and do certain things in home-and-away, and probably early finals, but when you get into a prelim and a grand final, the big power forwards (make a huge difference).”
You can see his point.
Think Tom Boyd in 2016, Tom Hawkins in 2011, or going back even further, Darren Jarman in 1997.
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Nothing to see here
PLENTY of conspiracy theories in footy at all levels.
Taking nothing away from Shai Bolton, but you do wonder if the AFL is trying to protect Dustin Martin’s record.
Will Ashcroft is probably the first bloke in history to have 31 disposals, nine clearances and not win the Norm Smith Medal for a third time.
Nick Daicos was never in danger of losing the Brownlow, but had Isaac Heeney been a sniff, you can bet your bottom dollar the AFL would have stepped in.
If the Swans had of made the grand final, it would have made for a very interesting free kick count as well.
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Full tank
THE Brisbane boys were straight into the XXXX Gold cans after the grand final.
While nationally associated with Queensland, XXXX was reportedly the most popular beer at the Thorpdale pub in a previous era.
The reason? Thorpdale to Brisbane was the most common spud run for truckies.
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Freezeframe
THERE’S no denying Fremantle choked it up big time.
I won’t dare compile a list of the biggest local sporting chokes, of which there has been plenty (I’ve been involved in a few myself).
It does seem to happen more often than not though, where a team blitzes the regular season, only to fall short later in the year.
In my 200 odd games of wheelie bin astro cricket, I’ve always found the semi-final is the hardest game to win.
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Self-evident
WILL Brisbane becoming the most successful AFL club of the 21st century finally convince people that mergers have merit?
If it’s good enough for the AFL, surely it’s good enough for country sport.
Yarram District Cricket Club was formed by merging the previous Alberton Cricket Association clubs together. Cricket has lived on in the area, and the club already has an A Grade premiership in its keeping.
Woodside District FNC is practically a new-age club, and has become a North Gippsland powerhouse after realising it couldn’t survive in its previous form.
Whatever the next Gippsland footy review spits out, it seems inevitable that merging leagues will be a focal point.
It would be interesting to revisit the fabled ‘G25 report’ to see exactly how wide or close to the mark those commissioning it were.
The Cricket Latrobe Valley season begins this weekend.
The new league is only three seasons old, but already there has been three different premiers in A Grade, and most clubs have featured in finals in all divisions.
Some of those clubs wouldn’t have even dreamt of playing in finals, yet alone winning flags, had things stayed the same.
