Trouble looms for the Melbourne-centric AFL on Saturday afternoon. They won’t be able to avoid Sydney for a few hours.
Here in Sydney, centre of the AFL universe, the Sydney Swans are playing the Greater Western Sydney Giants in the qualifying final at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday. In Sydney. Just near Sydney Harbour.
The Sydney team is smashing them. The commentators spend all their time wondering what “Collingwood” can do to turn it around, how many “Collingwood” players need to lift, what tweaks the “Collingwood” tactics need, whether the “Collingwood” coach will be on the boundary line or in his box. It gets a bit wearying, not to exist. And Sydney’s existence is going to be a mountain, this weekend, for Melbourne and its voices to overcome. Sydney is an AFL thing and, this year, a thing that can’t be airbrushed away.The more that Sydney exists, the more Melbourne suffers an existential threat. Saturday’s match, which is at the Sydney Cricket Ground, in Sydney, may be a preview of the grand final.
One of the remarkable features of both Sydney teams is that they have defied the wisdom that you can’t change a tyre on a moving vehicle. The Swans have rebuilt their list while continuing to excel, integrating a new generation of stars – Heeney, Papley, Chad Warner, Errol Gulden, James Rowbottom et al – while their older players were on the fade. Their renewal advanced so rapidly that they made the 2022 grand final while still green, and were duly walloped that day by Geelong.
And the majority of 20-to-25-year-old footballers don’t give a flying fart about history. They give a nod to the old boys but would really rather they get out of the way. It’s another of the remarkable features of the Swans that they have so smoothly woven their South Melbourne and 40-year Sydney histories into a truly 21st-century club.
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