The team Joel Selwood led out on Saturday was the oldest to ever take the field in a VFL/AFL game. It was his 40th final. At the top of the race, Gary Ablett Jnr nodded to his former captain and handed over his son, Levi, who has a rare degenerative disease. Selwood, one of the most booed footballers in the history of the game, could have been elected, unopposed, the first Australian president at that exact moment.
Thirty years ago, almost to the day, young Levi’s grandfather ran onto the MCG with murder in his eyes. He spent the first half trying to kill any West Coast Eagle in his path. He spent the second with that blank, detached look he’d get when things weren’t going his way. West Coast coach Mick Malthouse later said he knew, watching the Cats in the warm-up, that they were too wound up, that they wanted it too much, and that they’d be ripe for the picking in the second half.
