Riggsy: When Footy Feels Small, the Scoreboard Doesn’t Matter
I’ve barracked for Essendon long enough to know that sometimes the final score is the least interesting thing that happens on a footy weekend. This was one of those weeks, and fair play to the Swans and everyone at the SCG for getting through it with their footy intact, even if their hearts were doing something else entirely.
Sydney beat North Melbourne up at the SCG, and under any other circumstances that result would have meant almost nothing. A round 24 dead rubber between a top-four side resting up for finals and a Roos outfit playing out the string. The kind of game where you check your phone at three-quarter time and can’t remember who kicked the last goal. Instead it became something else entirely, a footy match played under the weight of a week that had absolutely nothing to do with kicking a Sherrin through the big sticks.
A club feeling like it, not just watching it
I won’t pretend to know exactly what went on inside the Swans’ walls this week, because I wasn’t there and neither were you, most likely. But you didn’t need to be a mind-reader to see it written across faces at the SCG. There’s a particular kind of rawness that creeps into a footy club when the football itself becomes secondary, when players are hugging each other for reasons that have got nothing to do with a goal after the siren.
Essendon people know a bit about weeks like this, unfortunately. We’ve had our fair share of seasons where the actual footy became a footnote to whatever saga was unfolding around it. I’m not saying it’s the same situation by any stretch — every club’s version of a horror week is its own thing — but there’s a shared language among footy people who’ve lived through it. You play the game because that’s what you do on a Saturday or Sunday, but your mind and your heart are somewhere else completely.
The AFL’s week in the sewer
It wasn’t just a Swans problem either. The whole competition had one of those weeks where you’d almost rather not turn the news on. Tribunal dramas, MRO charges flying around like confetti, off-field strories bubbling away that had nothing to do with who’s kicking straight in front of goal. I’ve become an accidental expert on the tribunal system over the years — genuinely, ask me anything about how a sling tackle gets graded, I could probably do it in my sleep — and even by the game’s usual standards of chaos, this felt like a particularly grubby seven days for the code.
Footy loves to present itself as this pure, uncomplicated escape from real life. Most weeks it mostly is. But every so often the sport gets a reminder that it’s populated by actual human beings, with actual human problems, and that no amount of four-quarter footy can paper over genuine grief or genuine hardship. This was one of those weeks for the industry as a whole, and Sydney just happened to be feeling it most acutely on the day everyone was watching.
Why the scoreboard genuinely didn’t matter
Normally I’d sit here and pick apart a North Melbourne performance, have a bit of a go at whether the Roos were competitive enough, whether Sydney’s midfield brigade toyed with them in patches, all the usual stuff columnists like me get paid to bang on about. But honestly, running through the stats from this one feels almost beside the point.
Sydney got the four points. They’ll take that into their finals campaign with the double chance still sitting there for them, which under normal circumstances would be the headline of the day — a first-ever something at the club, a day for the fanbase to properly celebrate. Instead the result felt like it was playing out in the background of something much bigger. That’s not a criticism of the players, who by all accounts stood up and did their job under circumstances that would rattle anyone. It’s just an acknowledgement that footy, for all the noise we make about it, knows its place sometimes.
What footy people do in these moments
The thing I’ve always admired about footy clubs, even ones I can’t stand on the field, is how they rally in weeks like this. The playing group leaning on each other, staff putting an arm around blokes who need it, opposition supporters — even ones as parochial as us Bombers fans — putting rivalry aside for a moment because some things are just bigger than the contest. North Melbourne people would have understood that too, I reckon. Roos supporters have had their own version of tough years, on and off the park, and there’s a decency in that footy community that gets underrated because they haven’t tasted much success lately.
It’s easy for us keyboard warriors to get carried away with premiership windows and finals permutations, and normally that’s exactly what this column would be about. But every now and then footy gives you a reminder that the ladder position, the percentage, the double chance — it’s all just scaffolding around something much more human. The Swans will get back to talking finals footy soon enough, and rightly so, because that’s their job and their focus now heads into September. But this week wasn’t about that, and pretending otherwise would be doing a disservice to what actually happened.
Perspective, footy’s most underrated commodity
I’ve sat through enough Essendon disasters, self-inflicted and otherwise, to know that perspective is the hardest thing to hold onto when you’re inside the bubble of a football club. Everything feels enormous in the moment — a loss, a Tribunal date, a bad headline — and then something genuinely serious comes along and reminds you what actually matters. This was one of those weeks for Sydney, and probably for the whole competition if we’re honest with ourselves.
So no, I’m not going to spend paragraphs dissecting whether North’s forward line troubled the Swans backline, or whether Sydney’s midfielders will need a spell before finals. None of that felt like the story on the day, and pretending it was would be missing the point entirely. Sometimes footy clubs go through weeks that have got nothing to do with footy at all, and the most respectful thing the rest of us can do is acknowledge that, extend a bit of empathy, and let them get on with healing in their own time.
Finals will come soon enough for Sydney, and the ladder will sort itself out the way it always does. This week wasn’t about any of that. It was about a footy club, like all footy clubs eventually do, being reminded that they’re made up of people first and premiership contenders second.
