Well, if you hadn't guessed from the title of this post, the St George-Illawarra Dragons won the day on Sunday in the final game of the National Rugby League season this year. I was lucky enough to be there, too. For the first time in my life I had the wonderful experience of a live Grand Final Footy match. It was beyond my imagination - especially when my team won for the first time in 31 years!
Several times in the past two decades, the Dragons have made it to the finals and either been eliminated on the road to the Grand Final, or been defeated (the last time dismally) to be runners-up. Not this year. Not this time.
Some people will blame the refereeing on the day. Others will say it was just because of the coach. I will not disagree with those that say there were dodgy calls by the referees on the day. There were a few. I certainly wasn't sure that Mr Morris's foot wasn't out when he passed the ball for the first try to occur. But hey! If the ref doesn't pull it up, you play on. That is the game! The Roosters were able to get away with a few things as well. Just deal with it...
Anyway...on to the game... Or rather, the drama before the game...
My Dad had been lucky enough to get tickets in the middle of the week without knowing much about them. All we knew was that they must be pretty good, considering how he wasn't saying how much they were costing. When we turned up to pick them up from the Box Office there were no tickets. Joy...
After pretty much two hours of waiting, and a suggestion from my Dad to look under the name of the person who had ordered the tickets for us (an hour beforehand), they finally print new tickets for us because they could verify that we had these tickets. Two hours... Yeah, thanks NRL for the joy leading up to the footy! No Toyota Cup for us! No watching inbetween the Toyota Cup and the Main Game. No - waiting outside with nothing to do, instead. Anyway, starting to read a book always works to get things happening - so I started reading 'Bran Hambric' (which has magic in it - what better thing to read?) and Dad turns up with the tickets not two pages later. The tickets...oh, you'll love this one! They weren't situated amongst all the St George supporters, were they? No! Me and my Dad were 10 rows back from behind the Roosters sideline bench. With Rooster supporters in front and behind us, and about half a dozen brave St George supporters in the seats somewhere around us. I wasn't complaining, though: to be that close to the action, no one would complain about being in enemy territory!
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| Luke Priddis |
Enough of that, though. Dad and I were able to get to our seats with about half an hour before they started the pre-game songs and dances, and about 45 minutes before we were wanting to put out ponchos on. I must admit, I was a bit impressed with Jessica Mauboy's singing of the national anthem - it didn't sound painful to listen and sing along to at all! Before that, though, was the Retirees arriving in the Utes; amongst them was Trent Barrett (former St George player) and Luke Priddis - with his trusty video camera!
