This ancient miracle has occurred on each of the twelve mornings since the world was supposed to have ended following our game against Richmond at the Dome a couple of Saturdays ago.
Once again Mother Nature has defied hysterical predictions of our impending demise by continuing this ageless ritual.
If you’d read the papers, and listened to the endless bleating on talkback radio after the match, you’d have thought that the only Saints with any hope would be those riding in fiery chariots to collect the souls of the righteous on the day of judgement.
Saints fans were encouraged to lock themselves away with the collected works of Sylvia Plath and bottle of gin in a room with a functioning oven and get it over with.
All of this after a game that we’d actually won!
Has there been a team in recent years who’ve taken more of pummelling after winning a game of footy than St Kilda did after beating the Tigers?
Considering that the team held on with three of its best players confined to barracks after three-quarter time due to injury, the win actually stacks up as one of our best of the season.
Granted, the Tiges twice had the chance to win it in the dying minutes of the game. Never has the sight of a Riewoldt missing a goal brought such joy to a Sainter.
And there’s no getting away from the fact that we were smashed in the fight for the contested footy. At times we were made to look slower than a rainy weekend at home listening to the collected works of Leonard Cohen.
Yet, at the end, there it was: the scoreboard was in our favour and the four points were in the bank.
We’ve scrounged four wins from seven starts and sit fifth on the ladder. Importantly, we’ve been nowhere near as good as we know we can be.
The casualty list is long and some of our stars have yet to shine in season 2008. The footy scribes have written us off as a premiership chance and convinced many of us that we’re just making up the numbers for the remainder of the season.
They maybe right, I maybe crazy. And it just might be a lunatic you’re looking for… OK, maybe I should really take the Sylvia Plath/bottle of gin option now that I’m name-checking Billy Joel songs.
The point is if we’re that good being so bad there’s more than just draft picks to play for, eh?
And with Collingwood paying a visit this week, what better way to make sure that Saturday's sun rises with a beauty that only comes from knowing we've beaten them against the odds on Friday night.
