“Run. Run, RUN!” I was shouting whilst frantically waving my arms and bouncing up and down in front of my seat.
Adam Treloar had just received the ball on the back flank from Shane Mumford after a beautiful clearing kick from Sam Frost deep in defence. My nerves had held out this long, but with the game on the line and momentum with the GIANTS I was losing my cool, and my voice. “Ruuuun!”
With three running bounces, Treloar steamed down the wing, before driving it deep into the GIANTS forward-line. With a juggled mark in front of goals; “PATTON!”
There was something in the air, something which had everyone in the stadium on their feet.
Unlike the lightning of the first quarter, the electricity now was being generated from the fans in the stands getting behind the players on the ground.
The GIANTS had taken the lead for the first time since early in the first quarter, and were about to make the entire AFL world stand up, stand tall, and take notice.
From watching lean eighteen-years-olds getting hit from pillar to post by seasoned veterans to Patton’s busted knee at StarTrack Oval, Canberra and the 100-point deficits at home.
From the ‘should have had it’ at the MCG against the Demons and the never was against the many teams in pouring rain; GIANTS fans had weathered it all.
We had experienced wins, but you could count them on one hand. The Gold Coast game in Canberra where veterans Chad Cornes and Luke Power lead the way for our first-ever victory.
The Power game at home where the win signalled a changing of the guard for Port Adelaide. The solemn win last year. But this was new territory. This was a game we were not supposed to get.
If you asked me at the time about the goose-bumps and the shaking taking over me, I would have played it off as being cold from cheering on the team at the end of the first quarter. But it wasn’t.
It was from the nerves and pride of watching a team which has been branded as ‘Guaranteed Wooden Spooners’ by some, a team ‘without heart or a home’ by others, or one that ‘no player would want to join’; and seeing it all channelled it all into one last lung-busting, heart-pumping, head over the ball at-any-cost final quarter.
Cameron, Frost, Patton and Whitfield go on to put it beyond doubt as the final five minutes of the game feels more like party-time than competition.
The Swans seemed motionless as new recruits Heath Shaw, Josh Hunt and Shane Mumford refuse to let the ball out of the Giants offensive half, adding polish to the work of co-captains Callan Ward, whose tough-as-nails approach dragged the team with him, and Phil Davis, who single-handed and with an injured kidney, stopped one of the best forwards of the past decade.
It may still be some time until Spotless Stadium becomes the Colosseum Kevin Sheedy envisaged, but if last Saturday’s win is anything to go by, it won’t be too long either.
The ground is modern, well fitted-out, and a magnificent place to watch football. As the wins start to come, and the fans make some noise, it really will be the Showgrounds.
Have no doubt about it; there’s a big, big sound coming from the west of the town, and it’s the sound of the mighty GIANTS; cheered along by their fans!
