The 2005 AFL Grand Final was an
Australian rules football
Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...
game contested between the
Sydney Swans
The Sydney Swans are a professional Australian rules football club based in Sydney, New South Wales. The men's team competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), and the women's team in the AFL Women's (AFLW). The Swans also field a reser ...
and
West Coast Eagles
The West Coast Eagles are a professional Australian rules football club based in Perth, Western Australia. The club was founded in 1986 as one of two expansion teams in the Australian Football League (AFL), then known as the Victorian Football ...
at the
Melbourne Cricket Ground
The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadiu ...
on 24 September 2005. It was the 109th annual
grand final
Primarily in Australian sports, a grand final (sometimes colloquially abbreviated to "grannie") is a game that decides a sports league's premiership (or championship) winning team, i.e. the conclusive game of a finals (or play-off) series. Sy ...
of the
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...
(formerly the Victorian Football League), staged to determine the
premiers
Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier.
A premier will normally be a head of governm ...
for the
2005 AFL season
The 2005 AFL season was the 109th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season featured sixt ...
. The match, attended by 91,898 spectators, was won by Sydney by a margin of four points, marking the club's fourth Premiership and their first since 1933.
It remains the highest-rating
AFL
AFL may refer to:
Sports
* American Football League (AFL), a name shared by several separate and unrelated professional American football leagues:
** American Football League (1926) (a.k.a. "AFL I"), first rival of the National Football Leagu ...
game of all time (including 3.4 million metropolitan viewers) since the current
OzTam
OzTAM is an Australian audience measurement research firm that collects and markets television ratings data. It is jointly owned by the Seven Network, the Nine Network and Network Ten, and is the official source of television ratings data for al ...
measurement system was introduced in 2001. All told, a total average of 4.449 million people watched the game on TV nationally. It is one of the
most-watched television broadcasts in Australia since 2001, ranked 8th overall. Put another way, one in every 4.5 Australians watched the game live (22.25% of all Australians).
Background
This was West Coast's first appearance in a grand final since winning the
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...
premiership, whilst it was Sydney's first since losing in
1996
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...
, and the Swans had not won a premiership since
1933 (as South Melbourne).
Two players from the Eagles' last premiership in 1994 were appearing in this grand final:
Drew Banfield
Drew Banfield (born 27 February 1974) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the West Coast Eagles in the Australian Football League (AFL).
Selected as the number 1 pick in the 1992 AFL Draft, Banfield was recruited to West C ...
for the Eagles and
Jason Ball for the Swans in his last AFL game.
At the conclusion of the
home-and-away season, West Coast finished second on the AFL ladder behind
Adelaide
Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...
with 17 wins and five losses. Sydney finished third with 15 wins and seven losses. They met in the qualifying final at
Domain Stadium, and West Coast won by four points.
A major turning point in the Swans' season came when they lost to at
Marvel Stadium
Docklands Stadium, also currently known by naming rights sponsorship as Marvel Stadium, is a multi-purpose sports and entertainment stadium in the Melbourne Docklands, Docklands area of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Construction started in O ...
in round ten, after which Swans coach Paul Roos came under heavy criticism from the entire AFL for his side's game plan.
The Eagles then punched their ticket to the grand final by defeating minor premiers Adelaide in their preliminary final by 16 points. Meanwhile, Nick Davis famously rescued Sydney in their semifinal at the SCG against Geelong with four 4th-quarter goals including one just seconds before the final siren. The Swans then overcame
St Kilda in their preliminary final at the MCG after overturning a 7-point deficit going into the last quarter into a 31-point win with a seven-goal barrage.
In the week leading up to the grand final, West Coast's
Ben Cousins
Benjamin Luke Cousins (born 30 June 1978) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for and in the Australian Football League (AFL).
Cousins is listed by journalist Mike Sheahan as one of the fifty greatest players of ...
was awarded the
Brownlow Medal
The Charles Brownlow Trophy, better known as the Brownlow Medal (and informally as "Charlie"), is awarded to the " best and fairest" player in the Australian Football League (AFL) during the home-and-away season, as determined by votes cast by ...
.
Match summary
West Coast opened the game aggressively, with Sydney struggling to get the ball to their end of the field. However, better goal kicking accuracy by the Swans put them ahead by two points at the first change.
In the second quarter Sydney appeared to be asserting control of the game, kicking three goals while the Eagles got none. However, after the long break, West Coast put their stamp on the game, kicking three goals while the Swans went goalless.
Both teams had seemingly easy goals that were missed, but the Eagles most clearly would remember theirs from the fourth quarter. With just under five minutes remaining in the match, West Coast's
Brent Staker
Brent Allen Staker (born 23 May 1984) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the West Coast Eagles and in the Australian Football League (AFL).
Early life
Staker grew up in Broken Hill in remote country New Sou ...
almost cost his team the match following a
50-metre penalty to the Swans sending them out of their defensive 50 in a very costly play. With the Swans holding a five-point lead in the closing moments, Sydney's
Tadhg Kennelly
Tadhg Kennelly (born 1 July 1981) is an Irish-Australian former international sportsperson turned recruiter and coach. He is most known for his top-level careers in both Gaelic football and Australian rules football being the only holder of bot ...
rushed a behind to blunt a ferocious Eagles attack. After the ensuing kick in, West Coast regained control of the ball and sent a long kick back to the half-forward line by
Dean Cox
Dean Michael Cox (born 1 August 1981) is a former Australian rules footballer and current assistant coach of the Sydney Swans who played for the West Coast Eagles in the Australian Football League (AFL). Originally from Dampier, Western Austr ...
. Sydney's
Leo Barry responded by taking a mark in the midst of the pack full of Eagles players (with the commentator
Stephen Quartermain saying a sequence of words made famous through frequent replays: "Leo Barry, you star!"), denying the Eagles an opportunity to kick a game-winner on or after the final siren, thus ensuring that the Swans would win their first premiership in 72 years (when they were South Melbourne), ending the longest premiership drought in VFL/AFL history.
The match has been labelled as a 'classic',
Jim Main
Jim Main (1943 – August 2022) was an Australian sports journalist and writer. He is known especially for his coverage of Australian rules football.
He studied law at the University of Melbourne and later graduated from La Trobe University wi ...
, ''Aussie Rules: For Dummies'' (2nd edition, 2008) p 10. with the final margin being the closest since the
1977 drawn grand final. This was the first time since the
1989 VFL Grand Final that the grand final was decided by a goal or less.
Eagles player
Chris Judd
Christopher Dylan Judd (born 8 September 1983) is a former professional Australian rules footballer and captain of both the West Coast Eagles and Carlton Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL).
Widely regarded as one of the bes ...
was awarded the
Norm Smith Medal
The Norm Smith Medal is an Australian rules football award presented annually to the player adjudged the best on ground in the Grand Final of the Australian Football League (AFL). Prior to 1990 the competition was known as the Victorian Football ...
for being judged the best player afield, although he finished on the losing side; this is one of only four instances of a Grand Final player having won a Norm Smith Medal without being on the winning premiership team.
The same teams met again in the
2006 AFL Grand Final, in another close match, with the Eagles emerging victors by one point.
Teams
Scorecard
Match statistics
Entertainment
See also
*
2005 AFL finals series
*
2005 AFL season
The 2005 AFL season was the 109th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season featured sixt ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:2005 Afl Grand Final
VFL/AFL Grand Finals
Afl Grand Final, 2005
Sydney Swans
West Coast Eagles