The old saying goes that a week is a long time in football. Well, a year is an even longer stretch of time, and as I walked out of ANZ Stadium last evening after watching a comeback of record-setting proportions – the Swans overcame their biggest ever fourth-quarter deficit to beat a Bombers team that had dominated them for three quarters – I saw the glow of the light towers of Spotless Stadium.
Spotless is home to the Royal Easter Show at the moment but, one footy year ago – a 4:35pm twilight bunch – it was where the Swans suffered a rather embarrassing loss at the hands of an upstart GWS Giants squad in similarly wet weather, though, thankfully, without the ridiculously apocalyptic storm that stopped the game for a long stretch in the first half.
Remember? The sky was falling in, and already the knockers – typically, mostly supporters of clubs who had been spurned by Buddy, though some from misguided Swans fans who, amongst other social media howlers, openly wondered if the club could somehow trade Buddy to Collingwood and get Jesse White back – were out and about in force, and, after just one game, everyone and their seven dogs, including some gleeful rugby league journalists, were declaring the Buddy trade was a bust.
The vaunted Bloods culture was dead and buried, they said, and Lance Franklin was single-handedly to blame. He’d come in and taken only one game to destroy a decade or more of success. It seems crazy now to look back on those days of hysteria, considering the Swans made the Grand Final last year (the less said about the actual result, the better) but it was a strange time of over-reaction and a lack of calm from most.
Short of suffering half a dozen calamitous injuries, you don’t lose a premiership on opening day, just like you don’t win one. There were a number of factors last year. The wet weather didn’t help. The interrupted pre-seasons from some players didn’t help. The momentum-stalling storm probably didn’t help, either. Nor did the way the Swans seemed to believe the game would be theirs without putting in much effort.
I remember waking up with dread Sunday morning after the GWS game and opening the paper cautiously, afraid of the knee-jerk reactions surely contained within. I wasn’t disappointed. Buddy had been unfairly heaped with most of the negative press attention. Unfairly, because his midfield didn’t look good, and a key forward is only ever going to be as good as the service that the on-ball brigade is able to provide. For most of the game, they were dominated by their GWS opponents.
I can’t remember a time where there was so much insanely-unfair assertions being made about the Swans. The fact that Buddy, so maligned after round one last year, single-handedly won a handful of games on his own last year – remember the giant nine-goal haul against St Kilda, his long-range efforts against Port Adelaide and the scintillating, match-winning bursts against Carlton and the second GWS game – is now feted by the Swans faithful is interesting.
A number of Swans fans I know hated the idea of Buddy on the team, called for his head after the first few losses, and are now fully on the bandwagon, and now admit to me that I was right all along. Once he got match-fit, Buddy went on a tear. Winning does that.
For a while yesterday, it didn’t look good for the Swans, staring down the barrel of another upset loss in the first round, in the wet. Playing with less heart and soul than the upstart team on the other side of the footy. You know, I wasn’t even sure the Bloods would be triumphant when Buddy – marginalised last year, a hero to the masses this year, and a catalyst for the Swans comeback to boot – kicked the goal that put them up by six, still with ample time on the clock for some Bomber heroics.
We’ve seen a team get close so often, but use all their petrol tickets and succumb late, and I wondered if maybe the Bombers weren’t waiting for the Swans to do just that, and ran over them late. As it turned out, the Essendon squad, many of whom haven’t played a pre-season game, had spent all of theirs in the first three terms. They failed to trouble the scorers at all in the final segment, and that, as they say, was that. I wonder if the season-opener last year was on the minds of the players as they stormed home last evening?
Watching this morning’s replay, I was struck by the general pattern of the games and it’s sort-of similarity to the GWS game a year ago. Just, it was the other way around. Last year, the Swans started strongly and were run over late by a younger, more-committed squad who’d obviously had a better pre-season preparation. Any of that sound familiar? Last night, the shoe was on the other foot, and the Swans were the ones finishing like a locomotive. Everything they didn’t do against GWS, they did against the Bombers. The final quarter was a joy to watch. Last year’s? Not so much.
The important thing? In a season that should be all about redemption after their team-wide brain fade in the Grand Final last year, the Swans got off to a winning start, and winning heals all ills for a footy team. Suffice to say, the Sydney faithful opened their post-opening game Sunday newspapers with much less trepidation this year compared to last!
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