Five minutes to go and the result is beyond doubt, yet still there are nerves. A woman dressed in blue in her 40s stands behind the goals, long ago finished chewing her nails.
The Kangaroos lead the Lions by 29 and there she is, with an entire finger in her mouth, agitated eyes darting beneath anxious eyebrows. Her partner, standing atop a pile of Great Northern cans, draining another then starting on his final numbing tin.
For any other club, the party would have already started, but North Melbourne have forgotten how to win. Until Saturday night, the Kangaroos hadn’t claimed a premiership since Wayne Carey and co pummelled Carlton in the 1999 men’s decider. Arden Street has more recently been the home of misery and ridicule, an abode so dank the club partly vacated.
When they couldn’t hack it on the mainland, the Kangaroos took some games to Tasmania. The club’s triumphant AFLW team is formally known as the North Melbourne Tasmanian Kangaroos under a tourism endorsement. Strictly, this is a first premiership for the island state, and they didn’t even need a new stadium. Now the Kangaroos are bounding westwards, financial realities taking the men’s team to Perth for two games from next season. But, after Saturday night, Errol St is the place to be.
The Kangaroos suffocated the defending premiers on a glorious evening at Ikon Park, prevailing by five goals. Lions coach Craig Starcevich called North’s performance “the best footy I’ve ever seen in AFLW”. To neutrals it was never much of a contest, but for those in blue the glory was long drawn out.
In the sweeping eastern stand, the suspense was hard to shake. There are four minutes left, and one elderly man is still shouting “ball”. Fans remain on the edge of their seats, even as the Lions struggle to play out of their defensive 50, let along reach double figures on the scoreboard. A chant stumbles a few bars, but peters out before the crowd deciphers its three-syllable lyric. The apprehensive fans, putting the err in “prem-i-ers”.
In the box coach Darren Crocker – who won a men’s flag with North in 1996 and has spent half his life at Arden St – is another holding back. “I didn’t relax until probably the last three minutes, I reckon,” he says, admitting he had felt pressure to win given the side lost last year’s decider despite leading late in the match, and came into Saturday’s contest undefeated this season.
“There was at no point that I felt confident,” North Melbourne president Sonja Hood admits. “With four minutes to go, I had to convince myself that they couldn’t kick five goals.”
But then, another chant booms, this one with more gusto. “Kanga, kanga, kanga”, it comes. “Roo, roo, roo”, from a group of younger fans. Almost simultaneously Emma Kearney, North’s spiritual leader, appears on the big screen, pumping her arms in apparent glory.
The effect seems to be permission, and more than 10,000 North Melbourne fans realise it’s okay to celebrate. In that moment a club rediscovers – and for many, simply discovers – how winning feels. The siren goes and, in the instrumental section of the victory song, a man in his 20s with blue facepaint screams: “we won something”.
The mania subsides, but half an hour after the conclusion of this historic night grand final, few are leaving. And with good reason, according to Crocker. “Every single person that was here can go away and at some point in time down the track can say, ‘I was there the night that North Melbourne AFLW team won their first ever premiership’,” he says. “That goes down in history, it actually makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, just talking about it.”
Gordon Smith, standing in the Kangaroos cheer squad alongside his primary-school age daughter, says the past 25 years have been “hell” but this night is special. “It’s my daughter’s very first grand final, and I’m in tears almost. It’s been a long, long time between cups,” he says, his voice cracking with emotion.
“It’s massive, right?”, Hood says. “Because we’ve had some bad moments, and we’ve had some bad luck, and we’ve worked really hard to rebuild our club from the inside out, from the bottom up.”
But victory takes practice. “Mate, I’ve got to redevelop the winning muscle,” she says. “And I’m looking forward to doing it.”
