Cardiac Arrestee's,
The headline on this bloggy-blog-blog thingy was going to read "One for The Ages", thought that's pretty clever, but then consulted the Official Match Report on the Sydney Swans website to get the scorebox, only to find that it was already taken - their media department had thought of it first - so another cliché needed to be found.
Thought "Miracle Win! Swans take cliffhanger in dying seconds!", yep , but nah, old hat, what about "Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat", nup, been done to death, or maybe "Phoenix rises from the ashes", or as my Spy at the Ground helpfully suggested "Swans rise from the ashes".
That'll do.
The whole dang shooting-match was worthy of ancient Greek legend.
Appropriate, of course, given that who would have thought after the frightful sight of Sydney going 0-6 at the start of the season, that the Swans would, with a lot of luck and a fucking unlucky shocker against Hawthorn of all bastard teams (the classic "the one that got away") somehow sneak into the top 8 [albeit temporarily] after a one-point final-second last-gasp win over Essendon at HQ, to go 6-7 just past the half-way point in the season.
Who would have thought, indeed?
Phew.
Things like this don't happen, do they?
Down 19 points with a few minutes to go, and they pull the frypan right out of the fire.
Nurse! Brandy!
It was good in retrospect that the last quarter ran to 31 minutes; the Swans were running out of time to rescue the game in a big hurry, and they left it to the last few clicks of the stopwatch.
A fiercely contested, well fought football match, but also a laughable comedy of errors that would have left any forwards' coach with agonised tears streaming down his cheeks.
Both sides had numerous chances to just put the game away, but neither capitalised; in retrospect the game was there to lose, not to win.
According to the Stats Guru, among the host of crazy digits, the number of intercept marks was completely silly, and he very much doubts that he's ever seen 11.20 beat 12.13.
Which again brings the time-honoured Rules scoring system into conjecture.
Coming up to half-time with kicks for goal being sprayed, hooked and shanked everywhere, the GLW remarked on the number of behinds that had been scored but added "but they all add up, don't they?"
They certainly do, 28 points in behinds by the end of the Champo; but the game certainly has always put a big premium on goals.
But, really, having six straight kicked on you late in the piece while being utterly unable to find the big sticks you'd think you were dead, buried and cremated.
And they were.
By three-quarter time, Buddy was a shot bird.
Sydney were in big trouble.
He had lost all confidence after being tagged stupid all night by that clever No.12 Mark Baguley of the Bombers, but at least with the settled brain Lance has now, he could just admit it to his team and say "I'm gone, I'll try my best, but it's up to you to do the heavy lifting" without causing a problem, because he already had, by kicking 0.6...the poor bloke could just not kick a goal to save himself.
If he'd been on target just once or twice, it would have been all over red rover for the Bombers.
But he wasn't the only one, and it doesn't help when you are carrying passengers, when whatever Plan A was wasn't working.
While JPK was outstanding with a very heavy workload, had to give Isaac Heeney "The Cardiff Zucchini" Best on Ground simply because he went flying in a tackle and landed flat on his back and smashed the sea anemone that he has growing on his head into the turf - his brain box bounced, a time or two - but instead of going straight to the Head Injury Assessment [HIA] room to be inspected by the medics, he got straight up, dusted himself off, went back in to the play and booted the goal that may well have been the match-winner.
Don't get me started on the Bamfords.
Please, just don't.
Without doubt the worst umpiring display seen at the SCG this season.
The officials did their level best to hand the game to Essendon on a platter with gift free kicks, technical nonsense like penalising a swift clip over the ear, finding infractions that weren't in the rule book, that sort of thing.
It made it very difficult to follow what they were thinking, or if the fools were looking at an entirely different game on another planet.
In fact, with five minutes to go, the Swans had been robbed blind by the Umpires plain and simple, and officialdom could take the brunt of the blame when they lost.
The whole match was bizarre, how bizarre.
SC Horse could not look at the last 30 seconds or so - he had his head buried in his hands in the coaches box - [which now looks more like a crude movie set from NASA] - refused to watch, there was nothing he could do knowing that the entire season rested on getting the four Premiership points with a single kick, bang smack straight in front, after the siren.
There was no need to watch it anyway; the last minute was all a blur of colour and movement even if you were just glued to the Crystal Bucket, and you could read any number of versions of what happened in the papers the next day.
After it was all said and done and the Fat Lady had sung, Longmire just ran his fingers through whatever hair it is that he has left on his head with the look of a stunned mullet.
Could see him in my mind's eye the next day at Sunday morning smoko down by the Magic Waters, quietly puffing on his pipe and gazing out to sea, as one of his many forwards' coaches [most likely Plugger] used huge ice-tongs to hurl massive blocks among the players in the already icy sea pool, just for a jolly jape.
That would've woken them up.
SYDNEY: 2.5, 5.11, 8.17, 11.20 (86). Goals: Heeney 2, Newman 2, Parker, Papley, Reid, Hannebery, Hayward, Florent, Rohan.
ESSENDON: 2.4, 4.9, 7.11, 12.13 (85). Goals: Stewart 2, McKernan 2, Daniher, Zaharakis, Bellchambers, McKenna, Orazio, McDonald-Tipungwuti, Colyer, Hurley.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 34,575.
