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It's All Over.

© Corrina Huxham

The AFL season officially ended on Saturday the 29th of September 2001 when Essendon met Brisbane in the grand final. The one day in September that stops a nation, supposedly. It did not stop my family though. It was a long weekend in Western Australia, and my husband, sons and in-laws high tailed it down to Margaret River for the week end. We had all these places to go, things to do and see, which meant that we were not going to be near a television to watch the big match. Thank god for radio!

During the course of our travels, we had the radio tuned to the ABC and listened to the match. It was a bit disjointed as we were stopping and starting the car every 15 minutes or so, so all we really heard was who was winning at that particular moment. We were all hoping that Brisbane would win. I even predicted that if the game was close, Essendon would come out winners, however, if Brisbane was going to win, it would be by a lot. Based on what we were hearing, the game was going to be close and Essendon was coming out on top...so far.

We would hear tht Essendon was 9 points ahead, then Brisbane would kick a goal to reduce the lead back to 3 points. The commentators kept telling us that Brisbane had a lot of the ball, but were not being rewarded for it. This was early on in the second quarter.

The next time we heard a score, it was 1 minute into the third quarter and Essendon had a 14 point lead. The third quarter is deemed the "Premiership Quarter" by those in the know. (Why, well I don't really know, perhaps I will find out). Then all of a sudden, Brisbane were three points in front, with 10 minutes to go in the third quarter. We were getting excited, but were not going to predict a Brisbane win just yet. There was still a quarter and a bit to go.

We stopped at our next destination and by the time we got back to the car, there was only 15 minutes of football left. We were fully expecting to hear that Essendon were in front, but were pleasantly suprised to hear that Brisbane had jumped out to a 20 point lead, and according to the commentators, it was going to be hard for Essendon to come back. We were all thinking Brisbane was going to win, it was just a matter of how much by. The final score was Brisbane 15 goals, 18 points (108) to Essendon 12 goals 10 (82). A 26 point win to the Bears. Our cheers of excitement and joy could probably be heard from miles away.

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