In the modern era, rivalry is a brand. Just like a wee bit too much of the wide, wide world of sport these days, it is used by some people to extract a few extra bucks from other people. Go back a little while though, and I think rivalry was both a little more serious and a little more real.
Today the Eagles, the footy team I’ve supported since not long after they came into existence, played Sydney in “one of the great modern day rivalries”. What a load of poppycock. I’m sorry to bang a hole in the fictional world of the media and the AFL’s marketing department, but the so-called “great rivalry” is not much more than the lingering effects of five close games in a row between two evenly matched teams.
The fact that four of those games were finals, and resulted in consecutive grand finals being shared one apiece, does make for something of a rivalry – but more a temporary crossing of paths than a passionate competitiveness. As the paths of the two teams have taken diverging paths since 2006, it’s harder and harder to see that rivalry anymore. Some mutual respect for recent history? Yes. A primeval need to win? Sorry, no.
Many of my friends are Eagles fans, and one of my best friends a multi-generation South Melbourne – Sydney fan. In all the conversations we’ve had that touched on football, and that is most of them, the Eagles-Sydney ‘rivalry’ has never once been mentioned. Never once.
The term ‘factoid’ was invented by Norman Mailer writing about Marilyn Monroe, and his meaning was not ‘a small fact’, but rather “facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper”. Speaking as an Eagles fan, and I am prepared to be contradicted, but I think that the whole “enduring West Coast – Sydney rivalry” falls precisely into this category.
It got me thinking about who we do have a rivalry with. There is a hype about the ‘local derby’ against Fremantle, and there is no doubt that there is some passion there. I do think it means more to Freo fans than Eagles fans, but whether it is factoid leading fact or the other way round I am not 100% certain. I do know that in 2006 when the Dockers beat the Eagles three times and made a prelim for the first time they celebrated at least as hard as the West Coast fans did for winning the flag.
When we were introduced to the VFL it was mandatory to hate Collingwood, but it’s never really felt all that genuine. Certainly not to the extent that Port Adelaide means it!
Which leaves Essendon. Kevin Sheedy is to marketing what the genuinely dangerously good looking guy is to a sleazebag – it’s what they’re trying to convince people that they actually are. In 1993, to celebrate a close, important win over the defending premiers he ran onto the ground waving a scarf over his head. The gesture was picked up by fans and for a number of years was a passionate celebration of the winning fans. The massed jackets and scarves of winning home teams was quite literally a breathtaking sight at times, and the defiant waving of victorious away fans equally inspiring, and a I’m certain even more satisfying.
Now THAT was rivalry. Didn’t matter where on the ladder we both were, the result of THAT match mattered.
I was at Subi oval last Friday night when the Eagles beat the Bombers, and I have to say that while that scarves were waved, it was more for form than with the emotion, the release, of the first few years. It also wasn’t a close game or a convincing win, so that might have had something to do with it. Nonetheless, there was a part of me that was unaccountably satisfied about beating Essendon.
I have to say, I think that is rivalry. Today watching what is left of the Eagles, it was no more disappointing that they were playing Sydney. No rivalry. Next week we are very likely to get toweled up by the Dockers. That WILL hurt, so I guess there is some real rivalry there.
So, for all the non-partisan viewers of a Sydney-West Coast game, don’t get hung up on the so called rivalry. We’re not.
