The Final Story - 1990

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Just watched this on ye olde IQ. Another very well put together doco, and obviously a very painful day for our club.

There are a few things in there that are interesting, the WCE/Coll draw stuffing us up is well known, and my father can vividly remember the fumbly, shambolic training session at Windy Hill, but what I found extraordinary is that we had a club function after the parade on Friday at Flemington, with Salmon saying he didn't get home until 10PM.

I mean... what the hell? Surely Collingwood weren't doing the same thing. Surely it wasn't the done thing at all. Maybe I've just grown up in this sheltered idea of professional AFL, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Anyone else got any info on this?
 

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Doss

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I wonder if said function was always meant to be on that Friday- the assumption being, of course, that the season would already be over by that point.

I wonder what that function actually was though?

1990 is the one that got away for EFC, far more so than 2001 IMO.
 

yaco55

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I am yet to be convinced that 1990 was the one that got away.

Beat Collingwood twice in the H and A - Very close games - Well beaten in the second semi - Thought Collingwood was slight favorites in the 1990 GF.
 

BrunoV

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A family friend who supports Richmond once explained to me why he and many others hate Essendon.

Given that we crumbled in a GF and allowed Collingwood to win one for the first time in 30 odd years I don't hold the haters' hatred against them.
 

Bunk Moreland

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Loved TD.

“We shaped up. I just jobbed him. He was meant to go down, he wasn’t meant to stay down.”

Also liked the slow-mo footage of the incident. Although it didn’t show it completely, it did show Brown hitting the deck and where TD was in relation to him. Dispels the myth that many (such as my old man) still perpetuate to this day – that he was king-hit from behind.
 

Doss

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I am yet to be convinced that 1990 was the one that got away.

Beat Collingwood twice in the H and A - Very close games - Well beaten in the second semi - Thought Collingwood was slight favorites in the 1990 GF.
I didn't so much mean the GF itself, obviously we were well beaten on the day.

Had the draw between the Pies and Eagles not happened, though, I reckon there's a fair chance we would have won. Obviously it's all well and truly hypothetical.

In that sense, it's the one that got away. 1999 was a choke, and a terrible one at that.
 

NAB777

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This WAS one that got away.
Certainly the WC/Collingwood draw didn't help, but from memory, we suffered a few injuries in the late part of the season, which put a few players a bit down on match fitness. According to Jobe's dad, we needed games in the legs & the extra week off really flattened the team mentally.

I did hear a whisper that it wasn't Sheedy's finest hour in that he tried to overcompensate the lack of match hardness by going nuts on the track - as a result the team were overcooked going into the game.
General consensus is that it's better to be slightly under done. Once you are over done, the drop off is steep...
 

Doss

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Several of our stars didn't play in the Round 22 match against St Kilda because we were virtually assured of top spot as our percentage gap on Collingwood was large (and completely unassailable for West Coast and Melbourne) and we were a game ahead. So we rested players.

Problem was, because Collingwood and West Coast went and drew the next week, that Round 22 rest created a situation where some of our players wouldn't have kicked a ball in anger in an entire month by the time the second-semi finally did arrive.

I'm pretty sure I remember reading that Essendon organised a practice match with Fitzroy in that unexpected extra week off to try and maintain conditioning, but obviously it was no substitute for the real thing.

As underdone as Essendon was, they were lucky that the preliminary final was against West Coast. The poor Eagles had, by that time, been on the road for six weeks straight (including a 'home' final against Melbourne at Waverley), so they were never a serious shot in the prelim.
 

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