Well, after seven months, here we are on the eve of the culmination of the season. AussieRulesBlog doesn’t have the sense of anticipation we’ve had in the past, but perhaps that’s more about our recently-changed day-to-day circumstances and our not having a ticket to the big dance this year.

Intuitively, it has felt like a season of significant upsets, and yet, the Cats aside, those expected to figure at the pointy end have done so. A few sides have performed above expectation, but more have failed to live up to the pre-season or early-season hype.

With a wintry blast buffeting Victoria this weekend, we’re not terribly disappointed not to be heading to the G tomorrow, but we will really miss watching the setup and execution of the traditional Grand Final ‘entertainment’. Perhaps Vlad and his henchmen have stolen that ghastly truck/boat thing that Wills and Kate sprinted around the Solomon Islands in? Surely the worst vehicle dress-up since the infamous Angry Anderson ‘Batmobile’!

Whatever it is, the entertainment is sure to be half-baked, cheesy and amateurish and, in a way, that’s why it fascinates us. A bit like one of the awful movies that garner cult audiences.

Roll on 4.30pm and a close result!

From feeling quite nervous about the Barcodes winning at three-quarter time, AussieRulesBlog’s demeanour improved markedly as the final quarter unfolded. The Cats had, in our view, looked far more dangerous all day, while the Barcodes had made the most of their opportunities to keep themselves very much in the game right through to mid way through the final quarter.

When the game broke, it broke in a big way and the result didn’t truly reflect the intensity of the competition for the ball.

It was certainly far more pleasant walking away from the G after a Pussy Power triumph than it would have been with a Barcodes victory. We’ve suffered plenty of defeats at the hands of the Barcodes and their fans can be in your face and obnoxious in their gloating. It was a very civil end to the day yesterday.

The day was made far more interesting for AussieRulesBlog in anticipating, and then marvelling at, the pre-game.

Arriving at our seats, we couldn’t fail to notice a rather large facsimile Premiership Cup standing on the centre circle, standing perhaps eight metres tall.

As the time for football approached, ten or so black-clad ‘roadies’ appeared through a gate in the boundary fence. Each was carrying a white box. Ikea was our first thought, quickly followed by Lego.

The roadies installed these boxes in a line just inside the centre square and then retreated to the boundary again. Soon they reappeared and placed another five boxes, then proceeded to bring out yet more boxes and line these up on the other side of the centre square. A quick count suggested something to do with Premierships won.

What a good thing they hadn’t used this idea last year! Imagine the Barcodes fourteen boxes on one side and the Saints lonely single box on the other! But we digress.

Retiring players (and umpires) were paraded around the ground, followed by Rising Star, Dyson Heppell.

Craig Willis’ stentorian tones began announcing former Barcodes players and they began appearing from within the teeming mass that is the Barcodes cheer squad, carrying a Premiership Cup each. They walked in a rag-tag fashion, toward the line of boxes — now revealed to be plinths — and placed the cups atop the plinths.

Next the same happened with the Geelong Premierships from the Cats’ cheer squad end, except that the former Cats made the Barcodes greats look like a precision drill team, such was the disorganised nature of their progress toward their plinths. Organisation? Planning? Rehearsal? Telling participants what they’re expected to do and when? These are foreign concepts to those charged with AFL Grand Final ‘Spectaculars’.

In the end, one of the Geelong Cups appeared from the direction of the interchange benches and former Geelong captain, Stephen King — carrying the obligatory child: We’re coming around to Brian Taylor’s thinking on this — had to sprint from the parade of retirees to the parade of former champions carrying Premiership Cups. Organisation? Did no-one think to wonder how King would participate in these two ‘entertainments’?

Next, a roar of Harley Davidsons — have we just coined a new collective noun? — was heard and then seen on the big screen riding up a ramp and out onto the boundary verge. Not surprisingly, this signalled the beginning of Mr Loaf’s contribution to proceedings. Also not surprisingly, the Harleys fitted nicely with Mr Loaf’s rendition of Hot Patootie, famously sung in The Rocky Horror Picture Show by Mr Loaf astride a Harley!

We here at AussieRulesBlog Central are partial to a bit of Mr Loaf. He’s not on high rotation, but a bit of Bat Out of Hell or Paradise by the Dashboard Light can gladden our hearts occasionally, so we were quite looking forward to this performance.

It’s worth mentioning here that we attended five MCG finals this year, being lucky enough to have access to a series ticket and buying a ticket to see the Bombers in week one. For the previous finals, musical acts had provided pre-game and half-time entertainment. From where we were sitting, beneath the scoreboard in the Ponsford Stand, the bands were extremely loud but the sound quality was otherwise quite acceptable.

Having mentioned that, no-one will be surprised to learn that the sound for Mr Loaf, at least where AussieRulesBlog was sitting, would still have been abysmal if it had been improved by 400%. For some reason known only to the organisers, they had foresworn the perfectly good, albeit extraordinarily loud, MCG sound system and instead wheeled out speakers on little trolleys that were last used in the days before the redevelopment of the northern side of the stadium. What emerged from these toy speakers was undoubtedly a cacophony, but little of it was recognisable as Mr Loaf’s work.

Whilst Mr Loaf had been purveying his wares, one of the event staff came out onto the field and gave directions, individually, to the former Barcodes players still standing dutifully by their Premiership Cups. We were somewhat stunned to realise that said event person was repeating the same instructions to each former player — and some of them weren’t keen to buy! Organisation? Planning? Rehearsal?

Eventually, by the end of Mr Loaf’s set, the former players had retired to parts unknown and the Premiership Cups stood resplendent on their plinths, alone and unassisted (bar a sandbag each to keep them in place).

We had been curious that two drum kits on wheeled trolleys had been rolled out during the aforementioned Meat Loaf performance. They weren’t involved in the performance, but just sat there. Also during Meat Loaf’s gig, two groups of scarf-wearing people were escorted onto the arena, one to each end. Once Meat Loaf had finished, the wheeled drum kits were pushed to the top of the goal square at each end and sundry musicians appeared and plugged in their guitars. The two groups of people turned out to be two “choirs” whose task it was to belt out the respective club songs. They seemed not to be plugged into either the MCG sound system, nor Meat Loaf’s, because the Geelong choir’s rendition of the Toreador Song, at the other end of the ground, was very muted.

As the choirs sang, two helium balloons in the (rough) shape of a Sherrin football were elevated to about twenty metres and a banner for each club was unfurled as their song was performed. It was breathtakingly innovative and spectacular — NOT!

Now the former players of both clubs returned to their respective Cups, and retrieved them to two lines forming a ‘Guard of Honour’ before yet another plinth on which the actual Premiership Cup for 2011 would sit. We can’t say it was a total surprise, but we were nevertheless gobsmacked to see a door open in the base of the large Premiership Cup facsimile and a gent emerge carrying the real thing. The Cup was presented to Doug Wade and Murray Wiederman who would present the Cup in the event that either Geelong or Collingwood, respectively, won the game.

And then there were the Ross Oakley memorial fireworks, after which is was all but impossible to see the crowd on the other side of the ground.

Was the fun over? No on your life. The Premiership Cup facsimile which had stood at centre field was transported to the boundary where a team of construction workers disassembled it using tools including a scissor lift and a forklift — a process that seemed to occupy ten minutes of none-too-frantic activity.

Soon after, to everyone’s relief, a game of footy broke out and two hours was spent savouring a wonderful game.

At the conclusion of the game, the MCC, in it’s infinite wisdom, rolled out one of its officious besuited types leading half a dozen MCC staff along with two contraptions for dispensing rope. These people proceeded, Keystone Cops-like, to construct  a rope barrier in front of the dais where the Premiership Medal and Cup were to be presented. Clearly the requirements of the task had not been discussed previously (or the staff were all cloth-eared twits, which is not completely impossible!), because the ensuing action was worthy of a slapstick comedy award. Quite why these worthies were erecting a barrier when unauthorised entry to the playing arena carries a $7,000 fine quite escapes us. And the ‘barrier’ would stop who or what? It’s a rope for goodness sakes.

And so ended our big day. The game had lived up to the billing. The result was the one we preferred. The atmosphere was civil at the end of the game. The pre-game entertainment was an amateurish shambles. Our Grand Final  experience was complete.

January
Who can forget the fallout from the Blues’ players pre-Christmes ‘booze cruise’? Club culture was our constant companion through a very quiet month.

Reports of AFLPA draftee induction camps gave us hope that, eventually, we shouldn’t have to endure the infantile antics of AFL footballers.

Later in the year, 18-year NFL veteran, Brett Favre, demonstrated this is a forelorn hope with his ‘sexting’.

February
As we prepared to get into the semi-serious stuff of the pre-season competition, the AFL gave bloggers a late Christmas present by revealing its so-called staging sanctions. Confusion reigned with almost everybody expecting players staging for a free kick in a marking contest to be free kicked or reported. Hardly anyone took the trouble to watch the video and understand what the AFL actually intended.

Temporary Saints recruit, Andrew Lovett, who already hadn’t managed to hit it off with his new teammates, found himself facing a rape charge and his new club finding him guilty without the benefit of a trial.

As the pre-season comp got underway, there was plenty of controversy with an apparent video referral of a scoring decision resulting in the goal umpire’s call being overturned. Field umpires had got straight back into stride by paying free kicks based on what they thought had happened rather than what they’d seen and, following the lead of Stephen McBurney, keeping their whistles on a hair trigger.

March
As the FFA seduced some sections of the AFL world with deals to upgrade regional stadiums, the Saints descended into amateur hour with the most inept handling of a grievance against a player in AFL history.

The AFL umpiring department announced their somewhat hilarious sponsorship by spectacle retailers, OPSM, and then proceeded to umpire sensibly — to everyone’s surprise!

Finally, the season proper got underway and we had a bit of a rant about how media select BOGs.

April
The AFL’s long-standing desire to make the game more attractive was thrown into chaos by the proliferation of ugly milling packs where everyone was frightened to take possession of the ball.

We lauded Western Bullgog, Bob Murphy, and his old-fashioned notion of respect for opponents and the Magpies–Saints clash provided a gilt-edged example of disrespect. Not only that, but three other posts focussed on this game. In the meantime, Brendan Fevola managed to tick off another couple of deadly sins on his personal bucket list.

We penned another instalment in our campaign to remove The Giesch, this time for inflexible interpretations.

Melbourne Storm managed to outmuscle every other sport in the world for press column-centimetres for a few days.

May
The month began with us berating Jeff Gieschen. That was a surprise — not.

Some genius at the AFL decided the Demons and the umpires would look spectacular in (nearly) matching uniforms for the Breast cancer game. Demons players couldn’t find their teammates on the field and kept handballing to umpires.

Speculation bubbled along concerning the next big NRL convert to AFL (and will Greg Inglis now make it another?), Jeff Kennett inserted his foot firmly in his mouth over the Ben Cousins doco, followed in close order by senior coach Alastair Clarkson shooting his gob off.

The rushed behind rule became interesting with about sixty thousand definitions being flung around, none of them being one of several employed by the AFL umpires. We finished the month by writing off St Kilda, in the wake of Riewoldt’s hamstring and lamenting the demise of respect and sportsmanship on the AFL field.

June
The holding the ball rule, 50-metre penalties, the advantage rule interpretation, and Jeff Gieschen, occupied much of our attention in June, along with Stephen Baker’s mauling of Steve Johnson and chief umpiring zealot, Steve McBurney’s hair-trigger whistle.

July
Co-operative goal umpiring that still couldn’t get the decision right was in our sights as July began. But we managed to focus on non-umpiring topics as well!

Modern players’ penchant for dribbling the ball through for a goal caught our attention and indicated to us that these players are just show ponies.

Confusing and inconsistent Match Review Panel outcomes gave us some grief, while the emergence of Michael Barlow as a star for Fremantle suggested to us that home-grown, ‘mature’-age recruits would be a better bet than international fancies like the Bombers’ Irishman, Michael Quinn.

Mark Williams’ sacking by Port Adelaide brought to an end to his death of a thousand cuts, while debut umpire Corey Bowen’s five first-half 50-metre penalties against the Bombers had us almost apoplectic with rage. We didn’t have long to wait for retribution as Bowen didn’t feature in the list of umpires for matches played the following week!

Meanwhile, Jeff Gieschen fantasised that his charges umpired “to the DVD” each and every week! Yeah, sure Jeff, and we’re a dead ringer for George Clooney.

The AFL allowed a police-check armband for the Hawks and Saints, but no such leniency for the Bombers and their Clash for Cancer.

Einsteinian concepts of curved space were employed to justify Lance Franklin’s ‘natural arc’ when kicking for goal, to allow umpires not to call play on. Truly one of the more breathtaking rationalisations from Gieschen’s mob for the year.

August
Surprise, surprise, Steve McBurney and over-zealous umpiring caught our attention at the start of the month, but not quite as much as the huge cast we found encasing our left wrist and forearm, courtesy of a fall. A nicely snapped radius bone in what the medical fraternity know as a Colles fracture.

Jeff Gieschen, ignoring previous indiscretions by his charges in making scoring decisions, suggested talk and consultation would be more effective in weeding errors out of goal umpiring than an extra goal umpire at each end. We must conclude that goal umpires are extraordinarily well-paid, since the AFL seem incredibly reluctant to employ another eight of them!

Finally, the talk began that James Hird would replace Matthew Knights as Essendon coach. As we now know, Knights was gone by the end of the month and Hird was being very coy. Smoke? Fire? We remain unconvinced by the denials of preplanning.

September
We highlighted the MRP’s failure to act against blatant staging when Jarrad Waite lodged an Oscar-worthy entry against the Swans, while the AFL world debated the merits of free kicks that are “technically there, but . . .”

An exodus of almost biblical proportions at Brisbane in the previous summer and the failure of the big name import to have a meaningful impact on-field left the club looking rather sickly.

And then there was the Grand Final entertainment — a highlight of our year. This year’s baffling progress of the Premiership Cup from a tethered hot air balloon, through the hands of Tom Harley, to Peter McKenna and ‘Cowboy’ Neale was underwhelming in the extreme.

Fortunately, as we now know, the game itself lived up to all the hype and more. The Saints were a bee’s dick away from breaking their drought, needing only a mildly eccentric bounce of the ball for Steven Milne to goal in the dying seconds and secure the game. Instead the ball bounced at 120° and we were back the following week.

In a fitting finish to the on-field year, in the drawn Grand Final, emergency umpire Steve McBurney spent more time on the field than most of the players.

Oh, and, quite unexpectedly, James Hird was appointed coach of the Bombers, in case you missed that news!

October
Of course, the Grand Final replay imposed footy on October even more strongly than usual, with the ’Woods downing the Saints in no uncertain terms — sadly. AussieRulesBlog has no great affection for the Saints, but any day that Collingwood loses is a good day.

In the biggest jaw-dropping moment of the year, Saints coaches nominated perennial ‘rabbit-in-the-headlights’ Zac Dawson as their best player in the grand final replay.

Bomber Thompson left the Cats, taking the media world completely by surprise, and the impact of expansion teams on the Gold Coast and in Sydney meant we’d have a six-ring circus for the first round of the pre-season competition.

November
Once again taking everyone by surprise, Bomber Thompson was announced as senior assistant to James Hird at Essendon.

A trickle of assistant coaches leaving St Kilda became a flood, leaving coach Ross Lyon to book a telephone booth for the footy department’s Xmas party.

December
The FFA’s soap bubble of optimism for hosting the World Cup was unceremoniously burst, leaving Frank Lowy and Ben Buckley wearing egg makeup.

The Demons released their ‘cutting-edge’ new uniform, to a general yawn, Gary Ablett Jnr let it be known that Bomber Thompson’s problem was that he was trying to coach the football team and, just for good measure, the AFL announced another slew of temporary rule changes for the pre-season competition — some OK, some laughable.

And that’s how it was at AussieRulesBlog for 2010. We look forward to having our regular readers back for 2011 when, once again, we’ll prick a few balloons and renew our campaign to Release the Giesch!

Happy New Year and have a safe, enjoyable and productive 2011. Go Bombers!

Let’s leave aside for a moment whether there’s a need for pre-game “entertainment” at the AFL Grand Final. For 2009, inclement weather may have marked a partial return to sanity.

Mark Seymour, Jimmy Barnes and John Farnham performed from a stage situated above an access driveway onto the ground. Terrific idea on two counts: they were close enough to some of the crowd to actually feed off some crowd energy; and there was no need to construct a large and intricate temporary stage in the middle of the ground (which would then need to be dismatled and wheeled off the ground).

A small dais was in place for the performance of James Morrison and six accompanying trumpeters to play. . . the club songs? Why?

Of course, there was also the obligatory crowd of youthful people performing in unison. One suspects the AFL “entertainment” gurus are students of Kim Jong Il and feel a similar need to display massed uniform conformity. In the extremely windy conditions, it would not have been surprising to see performers being lifted off into the stratosphere by the piece of picture (of the Premiership Cup) they were holding aloft.

But it was all topped off by the contextually-isolated arrival of the real Premiership Cup via some sort of flying fox arrangement strung between two light towers. What the #*^@ did this represent?

Let’s return to why this “entertainment” is needed. The NFL has a tradition, on a far smaller and more intimate arena, of providing an “entertainment” extravaganza at half time of the Superbowl. Given the stop-start nature of NFL football, perhaps it’s not surprising that the crowd need something “exciting” to gee them up at half time. The NFL also cater to the cultural needs of their audience — see examples in sport such as cheer leaders at gridiron games and organists leading crowd chants during the many breaks in baseball.

I fail to see how the AFL’s hit and miss attempts at “entertainment” cater to the needs, cultural or otherwise, of a Grand Final crowd.

From the Great Southern Stand, the sight of the Carlton Draft hot air balloon drifting across the ground had bets being hurriedly laid on its chances of taking out a light tower, or perhaps a couple of beamers in the car park. One of the better moments from the pre-game 'entertainment'.

In what must surely rank with the infamous "Batmobile" of 1991, the AFL plumbed anew the depths of lameness with the pathetic squirt of sparks and smoke that followed the Premiership Cup down on it's ill-conceived journey from the roof of the Great Southern Stand to the playing surface last Saturday. So 'powerful' was this gush of pyrotechnics that the Cup appeared destined to hover tantalisingly out of reach at one stage. Last year's balloon-flight delivery was, by comparison, a totally masterful presentation.

In order to distract attention from the preparations for the Cup's dizzying descent, the producers of what was amusingly labelled pre-game 'entertainment' also contrived to have a set constructed, the dimensions and complexity of which would have turned Cecil B de Mille in his resting place. One expected a cast of, literally, thousands. Yet there were a mere twenty-six 'performers', sixteen of whom were perched atop some of Steve Hooker's spare vaulting poles. The purpose of this acrobatic display remains a mystery.