Hundreds of thousands of excited Aussie Footy fans jammed into Melbourne Friday for the GrandFinal Parade, the last celebration of Australian Rules Football before today'sGrand Final Match. The root istraditional, the pageantry traditional, the arrival at the storied MelbourneCricket Grounds, traditional. In short, fans know what they want and theyget it, from the first cheers on parade morning (a public holiday in Victoriastate) to the rally like finish at the MCG, perennial home of the Grand Final. Fans of the two teams in this year'sPremiership Championship, the Adelaide Crows and the Richmond Tigers, wereextremely excited and happy to glimpse their favorite players throughout theday. Police presence, a symptom ofmodern life, was indeed heavy, but there were no untoward events. Instead it was a love fest in celebration ofAussie Football. Amidst the special events of the northern Summer and southern Winter, Aussie Rules is there for us, along the the international tours of Cricket, and we thank all of you who have emailed or otherwise expressed your appreciation of this space's coverage of these exciting matches, and the parade love fests, of the AFL.
Saturday's match will be anything but a love fest. It will betime to battle. The Grand Final wasfirst played in 1898. Adelaide has notplayed in the Grand Final for 19 years. TheTigers will play in their first Grand Final since 1982, and last took home thecup in 1980, not quite as long a streak as last year's champs, the WesternBulldogs, but still quite a droughth. TheTigers may not have been in a grand final recently, but their win over GWS inlast week's prelim at the MCG may have shown them what they might dotoday! Both teams have shown no sign offinals nerves, crushing their opponents in the first two games of their finals,winning by a hefty combined average of 46 points. This year, for the first time in Grand Finalhistory, none of the 44 players who take the field has ever been there before,in other words, not one player has ever been to a Grand Final before. A record standing since the first game in1898 will fall today! Richmond will likely have to hold Adelaide to less than 100points to break its 37-year premiership drought. The Crows were undefeated inthe 15 games they scored 100 or more points this year – they drew withCollingwood in round 19 – but won just three of nine games when held to lessthan triple figures. Richmond's challenge is formidable. The Tigers' defensive pressure has beenoutstanding this September and they will be banking on it carrying them tovictory one more time. Whichever team wins, there will hardly be a dry eye inthe MCG. The Tigers Faithfull's long wait has been well documented, while theCrows have had to overcome the tragic death of coach Phil Walsh in 2015 andquite a wait themselves. Congratulations to the Richmond Tigers, the Adelaide Crows and their fans! We wish everyone an exciting and hard fought game! -- Posted By Rex to SR at 9/29/2017 06:29:00 PM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
