MVP Tommy Boyd - The Grand Final Enigma

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August 20th 2016 Page 185

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Western Bulldogs premiership star Tom Boyd comes of age in AFL triumph | Craig Little
Craig Little at the MCG

Saturday 1 October 2016 20.06 AEST

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Western Bulldogs forward Tom Boyd proved the doubters wrong as the Western Bulldogs beat Sydney in the AFL grand final, starring with three goals in a mature performance. Photograph: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
The Western Bulldogs are five-and-a-half minutes away from the greatest story in football. But just as the story has built over the course of two hours there remains the sense there is time enough for the joy to evaporate. Too many times have we associated the Western Bulldogswith tragedy, and a nine-point margin is not under any definition “comfortable”.

Lance Franklin has the ball between wing and halfback for Sydney. In a split second he comes across as a slow study: football, which normally comes so naturally, now seems brutally hard. As does Dale Morris.

So the ball spills to Tom Boyd. Boyd takes three steps, four steps, five steps…

In 2014 the Bulldogs were on their knees. They needed to make a statement. And make a statement they did, with a seven-year contract for an unproven 19-year-old key forward with huge potential but no runs on the board. The contract was worth the price of a decent painting by Sidney Nolan.

One media outlet described Boyd’s contract as “perhaps the worst of all time,” and they were far from a lone voice. It was part of an echo chamber on social media and a football analysis climate that rewards trained and empowered cynicism. We’ve all been guilty of it.

The Bulldogs on the other hand were optimistic. “We haven’t had a player like this in a long time,” said their list manager Jason McCartney. But once he’d arrived at the Bulldogs, it appeared Boyd was burdened by some toxic and paralysing weight.

We’re back at the MCG. Boyd throws the ball onto his right boot. As it has been all game with what Boyd had done, it is a moment of high energy. He has already kicked two goals and taken eight telling marks, playing with such confidence that the volume of the entire game appears to be cranked up. As he shapes to take his kick – 60-odd metres from goal – you sense that he knows, right in that moment, he is limitless.

Cut back to Boyd’s worst day, just three months ago. He was slugging it with middleweights in the VFL, somehow embroiled in a drunken blue with teammate Zaine Cordy. To hear it reported on Seven News, he snapped after “teammates had been mocking Boyd for his poor performance and inflated salary.” The Bulldogs suspended him indefinitely, fined him $5000 and ordered him to undergo counselling. For all intents and purposes, he was unloved.

The critics came hard. Speaking on 3AW just eight weeks ago, former Bulldog Nathan Brown doubled down and said that if Peter Gordon could have his time over, “there’s no way Tom Boyd would be at the Bulldogs and it might hurt them down the track.”

Yet since, Boyd has played with a purpose that suggests the Cordy incident and subsequent punishment focused his attention. During the past month each performance has been dialled up several notches from the game before.

We’re back at the MCG again. Boyd swings his right leg across his body and the football explodes off his boot. The flight of the ball seems to be defined not by hope, but by destiny. It sails. And sails…

There is five-and-a-half minutes to go in the biggest game these Bulldogs will ever play, and while the camera follows the flight of the ball, it is hard not to picture Boyd with a self-knowing smile floating across his face in the revelatory moment, his place in football history secure. The ball bounces about two metres out on the edge of the goal square. How will it bounce? Only six years ago, football romantics became all too aware of the heartbreak a break of the ball can bring. You can feel the air sucked out of the MCG as 99,981 people hold their breath. Entire suburbs hold their breath.

The ball seems for a moment to defy time before it breaks right and beyond the reach of the Swans’ Jake Lloyd for a goal. It is a redirection of a truth that has been building, almost undeniably and irresistibly, since the Bulldogs dared to become the story of this finals series – right from that first Thursday night in Perth.

The roar is immense. To call it deafening would be to undersell it. Boyd runs towards the boundary, arms raised like Rio’s Christ the Redeemer, a man made man. He is mobbed and embraced. What looked probable just moments ago now appears a destiny fulfilled. From this moment the Premiership belongs to the Bulldogs.

Tom Boyd’s big moment is one that will live forever not only in his club’s history, but the game’s history, a suburb’s history... hell, a people’s history. There’s peace in that moment.
 
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