Ghosts of matches past

It's one of the legacies of barracking for a not-so-successful team: ghosts are always hovering. 

Their whispering presence may have explained a gnawing anxiety that I couldn't shake, before this week's game against the Saints.

Our two teams, far and away the least successful of the original VFL clubs, have been locked in a macabre dance, trying to jostle the other out of position and claim the title of Greatest Failure. While the Saints have had the sneaky advantage of being longer in the competition therefore accumulating more wooden spoons, their relative success over the past 20 years or so, where they've made three grand finals, has had the Dogs roaring back into Biggest Loser contention.

The Saints dominated us in the period where we were most recently a flag threat: 2008-2010. While it is still a bitter pill to recall the heartbreaking seven point 2009 preliminary final loss, a home-and-away loss to them in 2010 was almost as galling. This, many tipped, would be OUR year - we'd been so close after two consecutive preliminary final losses. And early indications in the season were that the Dogs had added a more steely, defensive edge to the free-flowing style that had been found wanting in previous Septembers.

And so the Saints and Dogs met in a grinding dreary spectacle at Docklands. With Ross 'The Process' Lyon (naturally) in charge of our opponents, we'd apparently abandoned our recent futile attempts to outgun them. We met them flood-for-flood, laborious defensive ploy for laborious defensive ploy, ugly ball-up for ugly ball-up.

At three-quarter time, we had only scored six goals; but the Saints had struggled to scrounge out four. Our defensive net seemed to be holding strong. I told myself (with some regret) that this was the sort of hard-nosed though unattractive footy that the Dogs needed to master in order to taste the ultimate success. It was exhausting, gruelling, but, to coin a recent infamous phrase: Whatever It Takes.

What transpired next had an awful inevitability. In the following quarter the Dogs did not score a goal, while the Saints somehow kicked three. If there was ever a worse feeling after a mere Round five loss, I'm yet to experience it.

Perhaps this was the moment that Terry Wallace once described, the moment when a team realises, and even accepts, somewhere deep in their psyche, that they cannot win a flag. And I think that as a fan, I knew (though I can't say I accepted it) at that moment too.

Ghosts, swirling in the background. 

Ghosts of matches past: even as recently as 2015, the Dogs, still on a high after a magnificent win against Sydney, inexplicably squandered a 70 point half-time lead against the Saints and suffered one of our more ignominious defeats.

Ghosts, so often featuring Nick Riewoldt, the big blonde athletic St Kilda champion, applying the final blowtorch, marking, leaping, running, finding one last effort to deny us a win.

This is Riewoldt's 300th game. He's as beloved for the Saints as our Bob, who should reach this milestone in a few weeks, is for us. No doubt his team, his whole club, will be pumped. Motivated. 

My misgivings only grow when the umpires march, in their comically ostentatious formation, onto the ground. For who else would be officiating but Shane 'The Perm' McInerney? Yes, the cartoonish villain of the 2009 preliminary final, who in a suffocatingly tight match awarded Riewoldt an off-the-ball free kick, directly in front of goal, for the push and shove between forward and backman that occurs dozens of times in a match. (I choose, naturally, to forget our own blunders and countless missed opportunities).

It can't be a coincidence surely, that The Perm (I thought, hoped, he'd retired) is back on centre stage for Riewoldt's milestone. With conspiracy theories jangling as I recall that moment on the MCG grassy knoll, a nightmare scenario for the last few seconds of tonight's match begins to flash before me. 

The Dogs haven't played well against a Riewoldt-inspired St Kilda outfit, but are clinging to a one point lead.

The Saints launch an attack, via a chain of handpasses from our fatigued and flatfooted forward line. Men in red, white and black surge along the wing: Steven Milne/Lenny Hayes/Robert Harvey/Darryl Baldock. (I'm a bit too overwrought by my own fevered imaginings to allow facts to intervene).

One of them - it could even be Barry Breen - then kicks it towards Riewoldt. Our blonde nemesis is in the forward line; somehow only Caleb Daniel has ended up remotely near him. The 'Wee Man' charges bravely towards the spiralling ball. He's ten metres in front of Riewoldt and sprints further in front of him to mark the ball cleanly, just as the siren sounds. Our jubilant celebrations falter; instead there is a bewildered silence. Yes, The Perm, loving a moment like this, reaches for his whistle. He rules that our 168 cm player has somehow ''chopped the arms'" of the 193 cm giant and awards Riewoldt a free. Right. In front. Of Goal.

I blink, shake my head, and realise that while this ridiculous reverie has been unfolding, the teams have run onto the ground. Saints and Dogs fans alike, even a somewhat shaken and pale Tragician, rise to their feet to applaud Riewoldt and acknowledge his magnificent career. 

The two very different champs and captains, Murphy and Riewoldt, embrace in the middle of the ground. I realise there's a poignancy to their stories that is familiar: despite his heroic fearless efforts on his club's part, Nick Riewoldt is playing in the knowledge that a premiership will almost certainly elude him, a scenario that our Bob had almost come to accept before the 2015 Ride. Harvey, Burke and Loewe sit ahead of Riewoldt in the Saints' forlorn 'most games without a premiership' ladder; for Bob, the names Johnson, Grant, Hawkins, West and Smith (all but Dougie his former teammates) are a silent reminder. Ghosts of years, seasons, opportunities gone past.

As always it is fortunate that the teams (and especially The Perm) don't have a window into my imaginings. The Dogs open briskly, purposefully. We have just as many opportunities as in our lightning start against the Heave-Hos the week before. But we're sloppy, wasteful. Points rather than goals accumulate; we keep the Saints in touch by poor kicking and some downright weird decision-making. (Just like 2009).

It becomes clear that the Saints are trying to play an ultra-defensive style; at many points, all players are crammed into our half of the arena. (Another ghostly echo from Ross The Process.) It's a much more intense, suffocating and exhausting contest than last week. So much so that I don't really notice that we're pulling further and further away. 17 points up, 25 up, 38 up. And while I'm worrying that Jake Stringer looks lethargic, and why The Bont is uncharacteristically blazing away, and how come Easton Wood doesn't seem to be flying for so many marks tonight, I don't seem to be noticing what's right in front of me. The margin keeps widening, and it's ultimately a thrashing, No amount of emotion for Riewoldt is going to bridge the gap in the two clubs' talent and desire; even not playing anywhere near as well as I'd like, we have the match well in our keeping.

It's a win that demonstrates the evenness of our list; that even though some of last week's bright lights were more serviceable than brilliant, others stepped to the fore. The Wee Man calmly, methodically, almost clinically amassed possessions and barely wasted one. Toby Maclean flew for and took speckies, Luke Dalhaus who is getting closely tagged every week, had a staggering 13 tackles. Lachie Hunter has done one of the more amazing of recent transformations, from flashy half forward to ball magnet and gutrunner, releasing the pressure on those we thought we'd be depending on, Libber, Wallis, Stevens and Bont. Meanwhile since JJ adopted his Nathan Eagleton nude-nut hairstyle, he has done a Sampson in reverse. In a largely unattractive spectacle, his intercept and breathtaking run down the wing was a rare highlight; his blinding pace did not unbalance him as he speared a pass that could not have landed more perfectly and precisely onto the chest of Jake Stringer.

When the match ended, we magnanimously joined Saints' fans as they heralded their champ. Now that the four points are in our keeping, I can see that far from being hysterically fired up to honour Riewoldt, there had been a note of resignation in the attitude of Saints' fans and players towards the outcome from an early stage; they never really looked like challenging us at all. And despite the media narrative, the Saints aren't younger or less experienced than us. The average age of their list was 25.3, while ours was 24.7; their best players are still their older ones. Our 'rebuilds' are at different stages; we're looking for finals while they are still a work in progress.

Now free from my blinkered fears about the match, I realise that they come from too many ghosts in our past, the lack of the alternative narratives available to successful clubs: of triumph from adversity, of bad times quickly turned around to glory. To our young talent The Bont, Stringer, Hunter & Co, St Kilda are just another opponent, one to approach in workman-like fashion, just four points along the way to what they want to achieve. I'm pretty sure the smug Three-Peat Brigade don't endlessly relive their period of vulnerability to Geelong or fume over long-gone injustices before each match; for them, countless other triumphant moments can be drawn upon from their over-filled memory banks.

Only M Boyd, Murph and Dale Morris survive from those that came so close in 2009. Riewoldt's opponent that long=ago night, and the instigator of the infamous bump, Brian Lake, is a retired triple premiership player and Norm Smith medallist; our Dogs' attacking, audacious and devil-may-care approach is the talk of the footy world and sees us proudly perched on top of the ladder, Round two, 2016; Stevie J's wearing orange; and The Perm is - well, he still has looks like he has a perm. But perhaps he's biding his time for an outlandish decision in our favour in a final in the not too distant future.

MORE: the Dogs and Saints' rivalry in a story called 'What becomes of the broken-hearted.