The 10 best AFL grand finals of the last 50 years – sorted

Yes, I’ve left out 1972, 2005 and 2016. But these things are subjective and this column is an indulgence. Here, in grand final week, are the best grand finals of the last 50 years, incorporating what was once the Victorian Football League (before 1990) and now better known as the Australian Football League (present day).

My earliest memory is from this game, which is a worry. Carlton‘s captain-coach was writhing in the MCG mud, his ankle shattered. A very drunk uncle rose from the couch at home – “BURY HIM!” he boomed. Wayne Harmes won the first Norm Smith Medal, but it could just as easily have been Wayne Johnston, who’d been at a night club 12 hours earlier. More so than any other grand final, it’s like watching a completely different sport, mainly because of the state of the ground. We don’t see quagmires like that any more. “Players dived into it like seals and pirouetted out of it like parrots,” Barry Dickens wrote in his ode to mud-caked grounds.

This game often gets relegated in these type of lists, partly because of the Meat Loaf debacle, but mainly because it blew out in the final term. But up until three quarter time, it was the highest standard grand final I’ve seen. It was certainly the coldest. In driving rain, two crack sides at the peak of their powers went goal for goal. Tom Hawkins had played well in the Qualifying Final, but with the game in the balance and his opponent hobbled, he ripped the grand final to shreds. If he’d kicked straight, he would have romped in the Norm Smith Medal. He probably should have won it anyway.

“This Premiership is SHEEDY’S Premiership!” Lou Richards cried. And it was. Football had never seen anyone like Kevin Sheedy. Rat-cunning, he scoured the country for rough-hewn types