In more than 160 years of Australian Rules football, there have probably been better games than the preliminary final classic that unfolded at the MCG on Saturday afternoon.
There have probably also been crazier, more dramatic finishes than the frantic final three and a half minutes as Geelong and Brisbane threw everything, including the kitchen sink at one another.
But I can’t think of many that supersede the former, and none that surpass the latter. This was a match for the ages, a privilege to witness and a thrill to write about, and a captivating reminder that our game is peerless among sports when it comes to the spectacular.
This is the story of 210 seconds of thrills, spills, brain fades, bonkers moments and several of the clutchest moments you will see, that left the Lions grand final bound and the Cats left to rue what might have been.
It’s with that amount of time left on the clock that the first sign of the drama that is to come happens: Josh Dunkley, under heavy pressure inside Brisbane’s defensive 50, thunders a long, high wobbling ball off the left foot that seems destined to come back with interest in seconds, as so many teams have found against Geelong.
Not this time. This time it’s Cam Rayner, a quite but menacing presence all evening, launching onto the back of Jake Kolodjashnij to pull down the sort of mark that maybe a handful of players in the competition could produce – or would have the gall to attempt – at this stage of a game with such high stakes.
What follows is Brisbane to a tee; the source of all that is good about a side with as much talent as any team in the competition, mixed in with an inevitable frustration about their limitations, both physical and mental.
As the Lions stream forward past Rayner, Zac Bailey makes a mad dash right up the middle of the MCG, screaming for the ball. He’s in the kind of open space that makes you immediately dread a trap, mostly because an opportunity like this simply has to be too good to be true… right?
Rayner has no such reservations, even making so bold as to direct his kick in front of Bailey, eschewing the safety of an uncontested mark for the opportunity of greater rewards with the riskier option.
It means Bailey gathers some 70 metres from goal, Tom Stewart frantically trying to make up ground behind him, Jack Henry immediately in front of him, and Charlie Cameron one out with Zach Guthrie as the only pair of players inside Brisbane’s 50, with Guthrie surely wishing he were anywhere else on earth.
Win a Ziggy BBQ for Grand Final day, thanks to Barbeques Galore! Enter Here.
The percentage play is probably to whack the ball in there straight away, and back Cameron’s pace, guile and smarts to produce the goods. Bailey’s good enough, and the Lions’ connection forward of the ball typically sharp enough, to attempt to hit him up outright, whether drawing him up the field with a pass or trying to get him out the back of Guthrie.
But Bailey has grander plans. You can see it in his eyes as Seven’s camera zooms in on him. Before he even executes it, you just know he’s going to attempt to baulk Henry, making it a two on one situation inside 50 and an all but certain goal.
This, though, is a bridge too far, a fate Bailey often succumbs to as a man whose many footballing gifts often cloud his judgement as a man caught holding the ball more than just about anyone else in footy.
While he gets past Henry, the Cats defender’s despairing lunge does just enough to slow him down, so by the time Bailey shrugs him, Stewart has arrived.
Most players here would cut their losses and try for a quick hack inside 50, still a viable option when your next man up is Cameron. Bailey, though, tries to get past Stewart too… and he pays the heaviest of prices.
If the Cats had prevailed, this would have been looked back on as the brain fade that cost the Lions the match. Whether overconfidence or plain arrogance – perhaps both – Bailey has tried the riskiest of manouevres – and it has blown up in his own face.
Suddenly, the Lions who were five metres goal side of their Cats counterparts find themselves five metres behind, and Stewart is quick to seize the moment. Barely taking a moment to gather his breath, he expertly pinpoints a pass into the centre corridor, for Tanner Bruhn, who hits the ground running as well.
The 50 he kicks into is congested at the front, but with open space out the back. The targets, having pushed back for a previous Geelong entry and not had time to return to their usual positions, are the ruckmen, Joe Daniher in the rare position of having to play full back on Rhys Stanley.
Stanley can’t mark as he falls to ground, but the Cats are surging: Bradley Close gathers, rides a tackle while giving to Jeremy Cameron, and when he hands back to Ollie Henry, the numerical advantage caused by the No.45’s quick shimmy bears fruit.
Henry’s snap is a beauty. Goal, and the Cats are in front, thanks to a play worthy of winning it for them.
There are two minutes and 42 seconds left; in most games, this would have been the climactic moment. We haven’t even scratched the surface yet.
After the centre bounce is neutralised, a second ball-up brings a winner: Tom Atkins bursts through congestion, released from his checking job on Lachie Neale that has barely slowed the Lions star, and looks to bang the ball forward again.
Except it barely clears his foot, because Daniher, not a man renowned for his defensive traits, having rucked for virtually the entire second half owing to Oscar McInerney’s dislocated shoulder, has laid a decisive smother at the most crucial time.
Miss it, and the Cats have territory, and the Lions’ backline a test on their hands again. But from the richochet, possibilities open up for the Lions, with even numbers ahead.
The Sherrin falls to Noah Answerth, who does what anyone would do when kicking to a forward line of the talent of Brisbane’s – he bashes it inside 50 as quick as he can, towards a one-on-one with Cameron and Guthrie.
Guthrie impacts the spoil, but the loose ball brings chaos, and it’s chaos that the Lions feast one: in his desperation to lay a tackle, Henry arrives a fraction later to the footy than Cameron, catching him high up the front to give away a free kick.
As Callum Ah Chee snaps from the spillage, having failed to hear the umpire’s whistle in the instant it took for ball to meet boot, you’d have forgiven Lions fans for fearing a repeat of *that* grand final advantage controversy from last year, where a Neale free was neutralised by an under-pressure Bailey kicking forward just seconds later.
But they needn’t have worried: Ah Chee, a Lions Mr Fix-It since crossing from Gold Coast five years ago, who has played every role from wing to small defender to Patrick Cripps’ victim in that 2022 incident to mid-sized forward amid a spate of injuries this year, has absolutely flushed the living daylights out of his snap.
Goal. Geelong’s lead, and Bailey’s blushes, has lasted all of 30 seconds. On the bench, Chris Fagan can barely watch.
Two minutes and one second remain when the next magical Lions moment begins. From a secondary ball-up, just on Brisbane’s side of the centre circle, the ball spills out the back – exactly where Geelong want it.
Mitch Duncan, a surprise choice as sub but seemingly perfectly suited to a last-quarter thriller that requires experience and poise, is the loose man just behind the ball, though without much time or space to work in as the Lions charge at him.
Evading a Dunkley tackle, he looks laterally, handpassing in the direction of the next link in the chain, Lawson Humphries… except it never reaches him.
Because before Duncan had even picked up the ball, Will Ashcroft, the 30-gamer whose extraordinary heroics in the Lions’ semi final win had already made this a spectacular debut September from the son of a gun, had sensed what was about to unfold, and where the footy was headed.
His timing is sheer perfection: on the move as Duncan handballs, he intercepts well enough to gather the ball at full pace, charging through the mire of blue and white as he does so, scattering the Cats and dishing off to Eric Hipwood.
If you knew at that point that a left-footed Lions goal would be kicked from outside 50 in the next ten seconds, it would surely be him. But as a despairing Humphries latches on to Hipwood as he attempts to fend him off right on 50, all he can do is handpass to the only free Lion he can see: Cam Rayner, who from the stoppage instead of charging forward like everyone else has sprinted to the outside, into vacant space.
He’s on his non-preferred foot, some 60 metres out from goal, and with several Lions pleading for a chipped pass just ahead of him as their Cats opponents charge back towards goal.
It says something about the player Rayner is, just as it did for Bailey mere minutes earlier, that the thought of passing never crosses his mind. He goes straight for the jugular.
Had he missed, or had his shot been marked by Mark Blicavs or Stewart in the goalsquare, then he would rightly have been flamed for the sort of selfishness that gets the Lions panned when they lose or when it doesn’t work. Remember when that very trait was seen as a key reason for the losses to GWS and Collingwood late in the home-and-away season that saw them spiral from second to fifth and needing to take on September the hard way?
But, of course, no one cares if you’re selfish when it comes off. And Rayner’s left-foot bomb from 50, spearing through the night like a laser-guided missile to land perfectly on the goal line and into a jubilant Lions cheersquad, is as outrageously talented a winning goal as you could wish for.
This is who Cameron Rayner is. This is who Brisbane is. A man, and a team, of near-limitless skill and spectacle, often criticised for not being able to produce it often enough, or when it matters most.
CAM RAYNERRRRR ICEMAN!!!!
@Toyota_Aus | #AFLFinals | #AFLCatsLions pic.twitter.com/cuGjMv3Xmb
— AFL (@AFL) September 21, 2024
He is this player, a No.1 draft pick whose career has been built on moments rather than constant excellence, having his biggest and greatest of them all at the most pivotal of times.
Brisbane, looking dead in the water a minute of game time ago, now lead by 11 points; with 105 seconds left on the clock, victory is all but theirs.
Under normal circumstances, this would be it for the drama, as indeed it was for the result. But the footy gods had even more in store for us yet. Because the Cats will not go quietly into the night.
After a Patrick Dangerfield centre clearance hits a dead end, forcing him to handball wide to the wing under pressure for lack of other options, Atkins, whose smothered kick led to the Ah Chee goal moments earlier, has a chance to redeem himself.
Shrugging a lunging Dunkley, he races into the clear, handballs on to Lawson Humphries, and with time of the essence, there’s no time for one of the young gun’s usually cool, calculating hit-up kicks. It’s bomb long and hope for the best time.
And it nearly works. From the subsequent contest inside 50, Shannon Neale, quiet all day, has a moment of brilliance: he taps the ball over his head, sensing rather than seeing a free Duncan running onto it, with fresh legs unlikely to be caught by knackered Lions.
Unlikely, not impossible. For as Duncan takes the smallest fraction of a second as he gathers to steady himself, 20 metres out and with the goals beckoning, Jack Payne, whose knee has barely held up enough to get him to this preliminary final, a key defender who does the unflashy, unglamorous things that allow Harris Andrews to intercept at will, chases him down, getting enough of a fistful of Duncan’s jumper with a despairing lunge that sees the Cat lose the ball.
It’s a moment that puts paid to all the claims that this Lions team are all style and no substance, incapable or unwilling to defend. This is desperation at its purest. It’s probably Fagan’s favourite moment of the whole game.
Holding the footy. Crisis averted… for now.
But still the Cats don’t yield. Payne’s clearing kick swiftly comes pinging right back, with Patrick Dangerfield launching a proper Hail Mary long to the goalsquare.
Insanely, the Lions haven’t flooded their entire team back: as Dangerfield kicks, there are just two Lions on two Cats underneath the ball, with just 10 maroon jumpers actually inside defensive 50. It’s the sort of structure that, had they not been victors, would have got Fagan an absolute bollocking for the next few days.
It backfires on them here: Andrews gives away a free kick for minimal front-on contact on a leaping Rhys Stanley, a panicked moment from a defender caught underneath the footy as it was kicked. From ten metres out, the Cats ruckman can kick to give them a genuine sniff with 42 seconds left.
But you can tell, even before he picks up the footy, that Stanley’s just not going to kick the goal. There’s the obvious pain on his face as he gets to his feet, an ankle tweaked in his fall. As he hobbles back to take his kick, he’s looking pleadingly around for someone to give the handball to.
In the cold light of day, away from the cauldron of a 93,000-strong screaming MCG crowd, the answer was obvious: Stanley could have remained down, caused time to be blown, let himself be taken from the field injured, and let someone else take the kick, thereby preserving both time and giving Geelong the best chance at kicking a simple goal for any single other player on the field.
But Stanley is frazzled, he’s hurt, and it takes his teammates screaming at him to spur him into taking the kick. Already, seven seconds have been wiped from the clock in his confusion.
So it’s perhaps the least surprising moment of the whole game when a limping, panicked ruckman thuds his kick into the post.
Game, set and match – and perhaps fittingly given what happened to McInerney, decided by a wounded big man. Just not a Brisbane one.
26 seconds remain on the clock, seconds that the Lions are able to safely negotiate, the final siren bringing an eruption of joy on the field and off.
For the first time since 2004, the Lions had knocked over Geelong in Melbourne.
Not since the 2003 grand final, some 21 years ago, have Brisbane had a greater win, at the MCG or anywhere else.
Will Ashcroft wasn’t even born when the Lions won that game; now he’s coming up with clutch intercepts that set up game-winning goals.
Joe Daniher was nine, and probably watching that match dreaming about one day taking to the field as an Essendon player; the thought that he’d pull off the match-turning smother that led to Callum Ah Chee’s go-ahead goal probably didn’t cross his mind.
Sports opinion delivered daily
function edmWidgetSignupEvent() {
window.roarAnalytics.customEvent({
category: ‘EDM’,
action: ‘EDM Signup’,
label: `Shortcode Widget`,
});
}
And so it was that, after the most dramatic, topsy-turvy season in a generation, it is Brisbane, on death’s doorstep in April, having squandered their season in August and being obliterated seven days ago in their semi final, secured their spot in another grand final.
The story has been compelling; and its most recent chapter was the most engrossing one of all. If we see better next Saturday afternoon, we will truly have been blessed.