“Melbourne in footy season,” he says in his unmistakable drawl. “It’s terrible. Its like we’ve all got a disease!”
Hunter, a Bombers man since 1949, is of course joking. But walking into the MCG tonight, there was a strong feeling that the footy epidemic is more virulent than ever.
Where Big Bill is wrong, of course, is in diagnosing Melbourne alone as suffering the disease. Tonight the MCG is the focus for millions of fans spread not just across the Victorian capital but in Bathurst Island and Burnie, in Berri and Berrigan and Broome.
A small percentage of the watchers are lucky enough to be at the 'G for the big game. There are 50 players charged tonight with producing football drama. There are a dozen coaches and senior staff.
But there is one other integral member of the cast: the MCG itself. It is impossible to imagine such an event taking place anywhere else – and headquarters looks magnificent tonight.
As the countdown to the match continued, more bunting than in a suburban car yard was tacked across the gorgeous green surface. Hundreds of people in plastic ponchos funneled along the bunting lines, before forming into the numerals 1,5,0.
Then the lights went out. The great auditorium in darkness – and the ponchoed participants broke thousands of glowsticks and waved them at once, like a gigantic birthday cake or a fluorescent mutant caterpillar.
Cue fireworks.
Cue fire-up music.
All anyone wants now is the anticipation to end and the action to begin.
Noticeable and perhaps surprising is the relative absence of club colours amongst spectators. It is as if an ecumenical spirit has infected the fans, a sense that club affiliations might be put to one side for one night only.
Amidst the massive crowd is AFL Chief Executive Andrew Demetriou.
“It’s fantastic – we can’t really believe the support we’ve had from the public,” he told afl.com.au. “It’s been phenomenal. The response from the players, the clubs, the coaches has been fantastic. We just hope now we can top it off with a great game.”
