mianfei
Club Legend
Those who have looked around BigFooty will be aware that there is quite a bit of discussion of the absence of the 1962 to 1964 Grand Finals (see here and here) and even about the lack of footage of the 1956 to 1960 Grand Finals that were never fully televised.
Having studied the Name A Game master library over recent weeks, I have decided I should turn my attention to Preliminary Finals. People unfamiliar with Name A Game will have never seen old Preliminary Finals for sale, but Name A Game has all the MCG, Docklands and interstate Preliminary Finals since 1987.
It also has Preliminary Finals of:
The situation is further complicated because Channel Seven holds full footage of the 1984 and 1985 Preliminary Finals (both shown on 7TWO), but for some reason does not want them publicly available on DVD. I have seen footage of the 1973 Preliminary Final where Richmond came back to beat Collingwood on YouTube, and the 1980 game where the Magpies beat Geelong narrowly also has footage. I wonder if the full 1973 game is available somewhere on video?
That leaves nine Preliminary Finals since 1971 with no or very little surviving footage outside of private collections (1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1986).
The real prize here would be the 1977 game, where David Dench produced perhaps the best display by any full back and gave Hudson an inglorious ending to his VFL career. Like the 1934 and 1992 Grand Finals and Carlton’s amazing thrashing of Sydney in Round 19 of 1987, it shows how being an incomparable scoring team will not win a premiership (except in wet weather when the value of skilled backmen disappears). I wonder why Seven when it kept the 1976 game did not try to release this one as well: it must be one of the best performances by a North team ever to keep such an attack to five goals and one in the second half. One wonders why North fans did not appeal to Seven to keep the game?
Having studied the Name A Game master library over recent weeks, I have decided I should turn my attention to Preliminary Finals. People unfamiliar with Name A Game will have never seen old Preliminary Finals for sale, but Name A Game has all the MCG, Docklands and interstate Preliminary Finals since 1987.
It also has Preliminary Finals of:
- 1970
- 1971
- 1972
- 1976
The situation is further complicated because Channel Seven holds full footage of the 1984 and 1985 Preliminary Finals (both shown on 7TWO), but for some reason does not want them publicly available on DVD. I have seen footage of the 1973 Preliminary Final where Richmond came back to beat Collingwood on YouTube, and the 1980 game where the Magpies beat Geelong narrowly also has footage. I wonder if the full 1973 game is available somewhere on video?
That leaves nine Preliminary Finals since 1971 with no or very little surviving footage outside of private collections (1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1986).
The real prize here would be the 1977 game, where David Dench produced perhaps the best display by any full back and gave Hudson an inglorious ending to his VFL career. Like the 1934 and 1992 Grand Finals and Carlton’s amazing thrashing of Sydney in Round 19 of 1987, it shows how being an incomparable scoring team will not win a premiership (except in wet weather when the value of skilled backmen disappears). I wonder why Seven when it kept the 1976 game did not try to release this one as well: it must be one of the best performances by a North team ever to keep such an attack to five goals and one in the second half. One wonders why North fans did not appeal to Seven to keep the game?