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There were more than 88,000 people at the MCG on Monday. But there was an absence, a void. There was lots of money raised, and celebrities and comedians of various grades sliding for laughs and donations. There were entire bays of supporters wearing blue beanies. There was Neale Daniher’s daughter, heavily pregnant, the spitting image of her dad, and now very much the public face of Fight MND. There was Jai Arrow, a 30-year-old former NRL player who was recently diagnosed with MND, tossing the coin. There were doctors and researchers talking about the disease with an optimism that we hadn’t heard in previous years. There was talk of significant progress in prognoses, in improving quality of life and in tapping into gene therapy.
But there was still that pall. When Daniher was wheeled around the MCG boundary line this time last year, it felt like a farewell. Such was his personality, you checked yourself whenever you felt pity or sorrow at what he was going through. Only in his absence could we get a proper appreciation of how much he’d done, how much he’d endured, and how much we’d lost.
Neale would have called that sentimental slop. Neale would have said there was money to raise, a hideous disease to beat and a footy game to win. And he would have loved this match – a freewheeling contest where both coaches eschewed tags, spares and floods and instead encouraged their players to attack. All that came to a halt when Melbourne’s Brody Mihocek was piledriven into the turf – as distressing an incident as we’ve seen on the MCG for a long time. Mihocek is still a beloved figure with Collingwood people, a player who’s taken more knocks and put his body in more perilous positions than most. One thing among hundreds that Daniher taught us was that footy really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. But injuries like that are a reminder of what the stakes are out there.
The second half was replete with drama, errors, individual brilliance, ping-pong footy and moments of controversy. It ended with Kozzie Pickett, wearing shorts better suited to paragliding and coming off two dire misses, sealing the win 11.9 (75) to 12.11 (83). If he’d sprayed it again, it would have handed the ball back to Collingwood with 30 seconds to go. The goal netted him the Neale Daniher trophy, voted by the two coaches and members of the Daniher family, awarded “to the player who best demonstrates the values Neale lived every day – bravery, resilience, unity, care, conviction and selflessness – and who best reflects his enduring mantra to ‘Play On’”. Kozzie played on all right. With criteria like that however, it could easily have been awarded to Mihocek, who was in hospital, or Max Gawn, who’d toiled through the second half with a bung shoulder, or to Brayden Maynard, who’d been charging around like a maniac with his shoulder hanging out of its socket.
It was a fitting end to a terrific round of footy, with six of the eight games decided by eight points or less, the first time in the history of the VFL/AFL that has occurred. Perhaps the best of the lot was in Sydney. Ross Lyon says there’s a clear, proven formula to beating the Swans – you harass the hell out of them and you set up witches hats in the middle of the ground. And for much of Sunday afternoon’s game at the SCG, Lyon’s Saints resembled his 2013 Dockers. The Swans sought their propulsive handball game at every opportunity. But the visitors suffocated them. Sydney were down several players and a major upset brewed.
St Kilda have half a dozen of the best power-endurance runners in the sport. This was a torrid affair, and they were still charging at full pelt with minutes to go. Where they so often err, however, is at managing key moments and at stemming tides. And so it proved again against Sydney. They coughed up two goals in the final 50 seconds of the third term – one a predatory shark from Isaac Heeney, the other right on the bell when the normally sure-footed Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera tripped over his own feet.
In a game with no elbow room, the killer blow came with 20 seconds to go when Heeney was granted too much real estate at a forward stoppage. His strength, spatial awareness and craft tilted the game Sydney’s way. But it was hard as a neutral not to be rooting for St Kilda. It was hard, when Liam Ryan leapt coolly and vertically to pull down one of the best marks of recent years, not to think this was their day. It’s hard not to see that there’s a really good team waiting to burst out. But as always with Lyon’s Saints (if we ignore last week’s no show), we commend the effort and rue the execution.
