Giants bring new romance to freshen up the AFL’s reheated nostalgia | Geoff Lemon

Carlton, Collingwood and Brisbane may have longer histories but after 12 seasons GWS have a claim to sentiment of their own

Just before 11pm a few nights ago, Lygon Street was dead for a Friday. A few scattered tables of people along the restaurant strip. No hordes of students trailing from the pubs to cheap pizza at Intersection Cafe. Tiamo was closed, dark wood panels blended with the shadows. The blacktop of the road empty aside from an occasional rideshare cab drifting past like a reef fish scouring the coral. Then as we topped the hill from Elgin towards the cemetery: “Baggers!” screeched a woman on a rental bike who went careening past on the sliver of remaining footpath. She lurched up to the crossing, almost crashing into a couple of gormless young men waiting on rental scooters. For a beat, the three of them stared at one another. “Baggers!” she crowed again, and weaved off towards the green light.

Yes, the Blues were in the prelim. That was the first Carlton support we had seen on the suburb’s main street except a few men out the front of University Cafe, watching a TV through the window of one of Lygon’s dwindling band of Italian institutions. They must have erupted when Blake Acres scrubbed his kick to the good side of the post with under a minute to play. Within an hour they were no longer alone, an impromptu parade leaving the scene of victory at the MCG to stream back to the heartland. Drums, flags, chants, and above all, the look of disbelief. The football writer Martin Flanagan caught it: “When an old club comes from nowhere and a whole section of the city bursts into life like a paddock coming alive with daffodils.”

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