For a Grand Final I like to keep things simple. I listen to the build-up on the radio and I sit down to watch when they get to the anthem. I go out for a kick at half time but I try to catch the footballers sprint. When the game is over I go away and think about it for a while. Unlike most Richmond people I have no attachment to Mr Brightside because after the siren in 2017 I was up at the school kicking the footy with Marcus in the gloom, trying to make sense of what had happened. I couldn’t sit there and watch TV any longer once the Collingwood president started explaining it to me.
The night Grand Final is no good for many footy lovers but that won’t matter, it will be here to stay if that’s what the AFL wants. I’m curious what the players think of the extended half time to allow for extended warbling and prancing. Cotch does not seem to be a fan.
I would like a bit of openness. We’ve lost a lot in footy this year – assistant coaches, womens teams, programs and initiatives that were considered ‘non core’, the entire VFL. How much extra money does a night grand final bring in? Where will that money go? Can we have some of our pre-Covid footy normality back?
I am never going to watch the “entertainment” because the footy is the entertainment. It doesn’t matter to me that the sequins or the fireworks or the lasers are going to show up better. It does matter to me that the AFL handed out 31,000 button battery-powered LED wristbands that are now being urgently recalled because of the danger to children. They’re a choking hazard but can cause horrific internal burns if swallowed.
Kids watching at home at least were safe from the batteries but I know many who were sent to bed at half time. I think that’s good parenting but how terrible that mums and dads have been put in that position.
Please let this be a one-off, a future quiz question. As a non-Melburnian I am fairly relaxed about the Grand Final being played elsewhere, but please let me have some daylight to kick the footy at half time. Let the kids watch. Let the players have a reasonable half time break in line with their usual habits, home and away and finals, for the rest of the season.
No more night Grand Finals.
Malcolm McKinnon says
29/10/2020 at 9:26 pmWell said Chris. I couldn’t agree more. The cracker show, the lame singing and dancing. Who really cares?
Another thing: How can we have a Welcome to Country that acknowledges Aboriginal history and custodianship and then, 15 mins later, sing a national anthem that proclaims that ‘We are young and free’, effectively denying the deep human history of this land? We should be able to do better!
Chris says
29/10/2020 at 9:29 pmThat’s a great point. Before wrote that I went back and watched the Welcome to Country that I missed on Saturday night and it was very moving.