Even if your life doesn’t revolve around AFL, that is, you’re not a Victorian, you would have heard about the drawn grand final on Saturday between St Kilda and Collingwood. Hubs and I were with friends at their friend’s place in Melbourne, so we only knew 3 other people out of the 30-odd who were there, but that didn’t stop us from cheering like mad. As I’ve mentioned, you either support Collingwood, or you hate them, so most people were hoping the Saints would win.

St Kilda were behind for almost the whole game, and at one stage by 3 or 4 goals, but we were never out of it. We never lost hope of being able to come back. And in the 3rd quarter, named “the premiership quarter” we came back and kept Collingwood goal-less. It was incredibly exciting and certainly the best game of football I’ve ever seen in my life. When we hit the lead for the first time, the room, bar the 3 Collingwood supporters, went absolutely nuts! But it wasn’t won yet. Both teams stepped up to the challenge and played like they’ve never played before, and to be honest, a draw was one of the best results possible. What I mean by this, is that you just couldn’t separate the 2 teams on the day. They were both deserved winners, and Hubs thinks they both should have been able to take a trophy home and be done with it.

But that’s not how it works in the “real world.” When the final siren blasted with the scores deadlocked at 68 all, we assumed extra time would be played. But no. That’s not how they do it in the AFL. They started talking about “coming back next week to battle it out again.” Say what now? I have to go through this all over again??? I barely avoided labour this time around!!!! (People at the party kept looking at me and a few asked “when are you due again??”)

So that’s the way it’s going to be. This Saturday at 2pm they will have a re-match. In a lot of ways, it’s no big deal. Another game of footy to watch – what’s wrong with that? But if you consider all the things that are planned for the week after the AFL grand final, Victoria is a mess! All the grooms who have said to their brides-to-be “as long as the wedding isn’t in September, that’s fine” to which they reply “okay honey-bunny. We’ll make it for the first weekend in October.”

Oh boy. There would have been a lot of nervous brides at full-time.

Anyway, the main point of this post was to say how amazing the game was and how much Hubs and I enjoyed it and how it was all people could talk about afterwards. We witnessed history and it was great to be a part of that. Now we just have to go through it all again this Saturday. GO SAINTS!!!