Devastatees,
Having been in the back blocks of rural north-western France for the best part of the month of September, it's been rather difficult to get a handle on what's been going on at the pointy end of the season.
Even Le Monde - which is still put on the back of trucks for same day delivery to the provinces and prints pages and pages of sports results in very small typeface every day - doesn't carry the scoreboxes from the Strayan Rules or the Sydney Rugby League.
It was at least 12 hours before news that the Swans had reached the Grand Final filtered through on the bush telegraph in that part of the world.
So, in no position to comment really, but let me go on, as it can't pass without mention.
A friend of the Good Lady Wife's remarked "not a very good day to save your worst game of the year for".
Which got the Stats Guru to thinking about some eerie similarities between the Swans' first and last games of the season.
Soundly beaten, nay thrashed, by the GWS Pygmies in the opening round of the year, then whip-sawed without mercy by Hawthorn in the last, which just happened to be "the only game that matters".
Everything in between went swimmingly; far too swimmingly as it turned out.
A mate of mine, who takes only a passing interest in the caper, made judgement: "they were beaten before they got to the ground".
That's the truth alright
After an absolutely stellar second half of the season, as the Swans swept all before them to easily take the Minor Premiership, they thought they were shit hot and so did everyone else.
Then, by all accounts, they had a saloon passage into the Big One, strolling through the semi final and then winning the premlinary final in emphatic style, by which time even some Melbourne based pundits rated them as short-priced favourites to take the flag.
Only problem was, after all that, Sydney wound up imbued with that fatal air of invincibilty, and ended up playing the Grand Final over and over and over in their heads well before they even got to Melbourne in the Last Week, let alone the dreams of grandeur they had in their sleep the night before.
In finish, the Swans were completely outfoxed by a much better "big game team", who pulled off some sandbagging of their own brilliantly just when it mattered; almost falling at the last hurdle before the Grand Final, only beating Port in a cliff-hanger to qualify, calling up injured players, and stamping themselves all over as the clear underdogs.
But by then, the Hawthorn Football Department had finished pouring over the well-worked gin-soaked plans and secretly determined behind closed doors not only to beat Sydney, but annihilate them.
No one saw it coming, except the Hawks.
Never mind the ten goal football lesson to end all ten goal football lessons, the hair pulling, the gnashing of teeth, and self-flagellation that followed perhaps the Swans biggest disaster since moving from South Melbourne - "Psych War" is what it's called - and there's no doubt at all about who won it.
Found myself knocking about in Champagne the week before they started to pick the grapes on the 16th of September, which is always a very nervous time for folks around those parts.
They know all too well their livelihoods and reputations rest on it.
They were most unsure about what would happen, but they erred on the side of pessimism, given that they thought the crop was probably ruined by the howling winds and flooding rains of August, and predicted the harvest would be more or less buggered.
They doubted very much that any Vintage Champagne at all would be made in 2014.
But, with knotted eyebrows and that marvellous Gallic shrug of the shoulders with upturned hands they passed it off with whatever the French phrase is for "Oh well. There's always next year", and just got on with it.
SYDNEY: 2.3, 5.3, 8.5, 11.8 (74). Goals: Franklin 4, Goodes 2, Jack 2, Kennedy, McGlynn, Tippett
HAWTHORN: 5.5, 11.9, 16.11, 21.11 (137). Goals: Roughead 5, Breust 3, Langford 3, Gunston 2, Hodge 2, Burgoyne 2, Hale, Hill, Puopolo, Suckling
Norm Smith Medal: Hodge.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 99,454.
