Anatomy of the loser AFL club: when is the sting of sporting failure worse? | Geoff Lemon

To fall just short? To never know how it feels to get close? To land between, avoiding either pole?

When I was a kid, our family friend Lyn was my first introduction to a football devotee. In my house our team was Geelong, but we didn’t live and breathe their success or failure day to day. Lyn loved the Melbourne Football Club with a completeness that was both puzzling and brave. Puzzling in that I was not used to adults demonstratively adoring their interests like we did. Brave in that even then, I knew some teams were marked with a shadow, doomed to suffer.

The anatomy of the loser club fascinates in its variety. Growing up through the 1990s, Fitzroy and St Kilda wrestled in the mud at the foot of the ladder while Sydney watched on. There was Richmond always finishing ninth, missing the knockouts by one. Footscray’s long streak of preliminary finals without ever breaking through. Geelong made grand finals but lost them relentlessly – four in seven years. It makes a compelling philosophical debate: when is the sting of failure worse? To fall just short? To never know how it feels to get close? To land between, avoiding either pole?

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