The Western Bulldogs yesterday ended their 62-year premiership drought with a 22-point victory over the Sydney Swans in a pulsating Australian Football League (AFL) grand final played out in front of a crowd of 99,989 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The first team to reach the final, having finished seventh in the regular season, the team from Melbourne’s western suburbs belied their underdog status with a huge team effort to become premiers for the second time since their 1954 win as Footscray.
Two late goals from Liam Picken, whose father Billy played and lost in four grand finals, and a long-range effort from the outstanding Tom Boyd settled an epic battle in which the lead changed hands with regularity.
Photo: EPA
“It’s just an amazing performance from our boys,” Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge said as his players shed tears and hugged each other on the field after the final siren.
“Some of those efforts in the last quarter were just sensational,” he said.
The Sydney Swans were looking for their third title in 11 years, but were hampered from the fifth minute when their star forward Lance “Buddy” Franklin turned his ankle in the frenetic early exchanges.
Photo: EPA
The pace of the contest never waned but, fired by inspired inside-forward Josh Kennedy, the Swans were always in it until the three late goals ensured the Bulldog’s 13.11 (89) to 10.7 (67) victory.
“Huge congratulations to the Bulldogs, it’s been a really even year, but you guys play footy the right way,” Swans co-captain Kieren Jack said. “We couldn’t get the job done, but we’re coming back.”
Boyd’s late goal was his third of the contest, but it was South African-born teammate Jason Johannisen who won the Norm Smith Medal as the best player on the field.
A club that almost went out of business in 1989 and lost inspirational captain Bob Murphy to a season-ending knee injury in April secured the title despite having to win playoff matches in Perth and Sydney.
The loudest cheer of the day came when Beveridge called Murphy up onto the presentation dais to hang his own winner’s medal around the skipper’s neck.
Murphy was also allowed to lift the trophy aloft with stand-in captain Easton Wood.
“He’s the heartbeat of our club. He’s our leader,” defender Matthew Boyd said.
Earlier, the national anthem was played without incident despite calls from indigenous rights campaigners for Australians to follow the lead of NFL players in the US and boycott the pre-match formalities.
Additional reporting by AP
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later