This game would’ve been the first time in a very long while that we’d been genuinely belted off the park.
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i think this was the genesis of the discourse around sheedy starting to shift from “haha he’s so eccentric” to “sht he might actually be delusional”
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Port really should’ve got more than one flag out of that period. They were very very good
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We should have got more than 1 premiership while we were ascendant in 99-2000. For such a good team, we should have achieved more.
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Funny thing. In 2000 we showed we were really serious by thumping Port by 96 points at our new Docklands home ground in the first round. That was our last premiership year.
In 2004, Port’s premiership year, they thumped us in the first round of the year by exactly the same margin, 96 points, at their home ground.
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It may appear later on but there was a sydney one that was a good 10 goals at the Olympic stadium in 2003.
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You could see the early stages of Essington here on this day.
It was not a thumping we were expecting.
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Losing by 10 goals interstate became almost routine for us after 2001, so that one slipped under my radar.
I think Brisbane did a job on us very early in 2002 at the Gabba. I’m pretty sure it was the ’01 GF rematch and we got smashed after trying to intimidate them.
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When did we last been Brisbane at the Gabba? Or Port in Adelaide?
I’ll take a punt and say the last we knocked off the Lions at the Gabba was the return game in 2022 (major upset). Port, I’ll say 2018 (the Francis mark).
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There are so many of them.
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Winning premierships is hard, and I don’t think they were ever as good as the Lions of this era (yes, I know who they beat in the GF). I don’t think one flag was unders, but they probably should have lost a couple of grannies. Instead they twice lost to Pies teams with much less talent.
Not that it impacted Brownlow voting but that ‘03 elim performance of his against Freo was champagne footy
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I think we did underperform. We lost the 99 prelim because of complacency and arrogance, and the entire 2001 season was grossly mismanaged by Kevin Sheedy.
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We finished top of the ladder and went into the GF as favourites.
We may have been favourites in the bookies eyes, but that’s all. Everyone else knew we were ■■■■■■
I think 1999 was just one of those days at the worst time. It was 33 shots to 24, which is pretty much always good enough to win. In particular, arguably our two most skilled players (Mercuri and Caracella) combined to kick 0.7. I don’t think arrogance or complacency had anything to do with it, the game should have been over at three quarter time.
As for 2001, it seems like the team ran out of puff at the end. The comeback game was kind of the last hurrah. They finished the season 3-3 (one of the wins was after the siren) and Hawthorn fans would say we were very lucky to win the prelim. We looked a lot more like 2002-2004 Essendon rather than 1999-2000 Essendon.
The other side of the coin was Brisbane, who had been kind of underachieving for years (even at the time, everyone knew they were ridiculously talented) before finally putting it all together in the second half of 2001. The famous “Predator” win over us was the turning point of their season and they didn’t lose another game after that. The result of the Grand Final wasn’t the slightest bit surprising, it was basically two ships passing in the night.
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IIRC it was a milestone game for Sheedy. Maybe 400th game as coach or something?
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Brisbane won 15 games in a row leading into the 2001 Grand Final - and mostly by large margins.
They had cracked the code to win in Victoria consistently by that stage too, something they had struggled with since they joined the competition.
How we were favourites for the 2001 GF is baffling. After that ‘comeback’ game against North, form was very scratchy for the reminder of the year.