Despite it signalling the end of an era. How good was this match. I miss the good old days
Remember the day so much.
That morning I umpired my only (to this point anyway) representative match at Elsternwick Park that morning and didn’t arrive at the MCG until 1/4 time. The Cheer Squad said at that point I should have gone home.What…and miss the rest of the excitement?
One of the best games of football you’ll ever see.
It’s like it was written by Spielberg and was formulated to be “the game” to endorse the code. A perfect production of skills, toughness in the contest, speed, agility, many scoring records broken in one game…
North were perfect in that first quarter and Essendon had no right to comeback like that, then the roller coaster ride of the second half…
A game you’d never seen before, you’ll never see again.
Had zero to do with arrogance, North Melbourne were just brilliant in that first half and Essendon were a bit startled by it all. For Essendon to comeback, well…what more you can say…there are no words…simply popcorn…chocolate…ginger ale, just sit down and watch genius in the form of a game of football…
The booing of David King by fans of both teams at the quarter time break was awesome.
And yes, I did actually comment aloud at quarter time that we weren’t out of it, and that wasn’t bravado.
How good was it to be more than 10 goals down and still feel you could win.
How good was it to be more than 10 goals down and still feel you could win.To be fair, thanks to King's incompetence we were only 58 behind at that quarter time break...
I’ve never liked this game. It epitomised the arrogance of the club that year. The team simply didn’t bother turning up until we were ten goals behind. Our performance in the first quarter was absolutely disgraceful.
It was that arrogance that brought us down, and this game showed it to perfection.
This one better Shelton???
I've never liked this game. It epitomised the arrogance of the club that year. The team simply didn't bother turning up until we were ten goals behind. Our performance in the first quarter was absolutely disgraceful.It was that arrogance that brought us down, and this game showed it to perfection.
Rubbish. We were good in that first quarter, but North were amazing. Similarly, North did not give up in the last 2.5 quarters, they just got outplayed.
That’s what raised this game from merely a record breaker to a fantastic contest.
Unbelievable that so much time has passed since then. What a great game. Funny thing is, even thiugh we were getting smacked on the scoreboard, there was always a sense that we were in the game.
Unbelievable that so much time has passed since then. What a great game. Funny thing is, even thiugh we were getting smacked on the scoreboard, there was always a sense that we were in the game.That sense was warranted. When you kick ten goals often enough in a quarter across 3 years, you can lift your game. We would have done that around ten times during that period. Similar to the Port v Hawthorn game this year.
This one better Shelton???
That was similar in that we went into the game assuming we would win, but it was just about excusable because we had a team of kids in 1993 who didn’t know any better. In 2001 we had a team of seasoned veterans who knew exactly what was required but were too arrogant to bother producing it from the beginning of the game.
The 1999 prelim was another game with similarities, but an unhappy ending. We had beaten Carlton by 75 points a few weeks before and turned up to the game expecting Carlton to lie down and let us do it again. But Carlton had no intention of doing that and they had got a number of good players back who had been missing from the earlier game. Even so, we could and should have won. We got a good little lead late in the game and decided the job was done, and when Carlton refused to give up and got the lead back, we had left it too late to win.
Some supporters talk about how good it is to be arrogant. Arrogance is not good. Confidence is good. Arrogance is believing that because you are good, you’ll get what you want as of right, without having to get your hands dirty. So you don’t bother to get your hands dirty, and surprise, surprise, along comes the 1999 prelim. Confidence is the belief that if you do what you know you need to do, you’re good enough to win. So you do what you know you need to do, and you get the 1993 and 2000 grand finals.
On now on Fox Footy. Flicked it on a Jason Johnson kicked a goal to bring the margin back in from 69. Just a few minutes later and it’s only 33 points. What a passage of play! Lloyd has 5 already it’s not even half time.
I remember I was in Geelong the day of the game. It was back in the days when you only got scores at the end of each quarter when another game was on TVs. The despair of quarter time turned into hope at half time. Absolutely amazing comeback!
A mate at quarter time said to me that we can still win, his logic says that we have outscored teams by more than 10 goals in 3 quarters so why couldn’t we do it again. My dad said if we outscored them by 5 goals in the 2nd quarter we will win. I was more pessimistic (surprise surprise)
Despite it signalling the end of an era. How good was this match. I miss the good old days
Irresistible Force.
farkyounorf
I admit to cracking the ■■■■■ and throwing the remote away and storming off when Spider Burton snapped that goal out of the ruck. When he’s pulling ■■■■ like that you know it’s not your day…
I came back shortly after and started watching again expecting a massive belting. The game ended up a modern classic.
I remember being at a match at Subi Oval that day watching a match between the Dockers and Geelong and seeing the score flash up on the scoreboard that had us the 69 pts behind.
My friend’s dad couldn’t believe the scoreline and I remember saying to him that we would win.
I just had this feeling that I knew if any side could come back from that sort of deficit it would be that particular Essendon team.
Suffice it to say that my attention was glued to that Subiaco scoreboard for the rest of the day and not the game in front of me.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I've never liked this game. It epitomised the arrogance of the club that year. The team simply didn't bother turning up until we were ten goals behind. Our performance in the first quarter was absolutely disgraceful.It was that arrogance that brought us down, and this game showed it to perfection.
Agree with the sentiment. maybe not the word to describe it.
may have been arrogance who knows, but that day and game IMO was the start of the clubs thinking as a whole changing from trying for ultimate perfection in what they do too, putting in as minimal an effort as possible to come away with a win.
Tis hard to use an analogy to describe it, cos theoretically off the field and the prep may have been the same, however the 2 hours it mattered the most, the thinking seemed to change from go at it 100% for 4 qtrs, to going in 1st or 2nd gear for games, and only pull out top gear when necessary.
This mentality/culture has since that year plagued us ever since. That good old footy saying about being “switched on” sums it up perfectly.
So I definately agree with you, I despise this game, I did at the time there was just something wrong about it, obviously was happy with the comeback and win, but North or anyone really shouldn’t have been in that sort of position against us back in those days.
It was the original domino falling IMO that started the next 14 odd year rot we’ve been in.
I even hate/despise this game more than the 99 prelim. That at least spurred us on to 2000. but this game like i said lead to a 14 year culture shift from striving for perfection to only wanting to do the bare minimum.
Who the fark hates the comeback game? I mean, seriously DP?