“Ross the Boss!”, they chanted on Saturday night, “Ross the Boss!”. As always, the Boss seemed a bit bewildered by all the fuss. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a slog. Ross Lyon had spent the best part of summer tempering expectations, and watching his best players go down, one by one. What the hell is going on? Half his list is on crutches or in a sling, yet here here is, undefeated, and in danger of becoming a cult figure.
To understand what this means for St Kilda, the pre-match sesquicentennial is a good place to start. It was so different to Essendon’s celebration last year. Essendon’s focus was on the glorious past. Carrying a Sherrin and dressed for the boardroom, James Hird emerged through a wall of smoke. The current players and the old legends linked arms and formed a circle in the goal-square. “Spine tingling,” Jono Brown growled from the Fox Footy studio. “A crock of shit,” Patrick Cripps probably said to himself at the top of the Carlton race. He had a chuckle, licked his palms, helped himself to about a dozen contested possessions in the first term, and blew the anniversary boys back to Tullamarine.
