AFL premiership cup ambassador Simon Black and league boss Gillon McLachlan in Brisbane on Monday. Photo: AFL MEDIA
On a warm and sticky September morning, the ping of drivers on small, white rockets and the occasional purr of approval from the striker are audible in the distance.
An elderly woman slowly motors her way past in a personalised bright pink golf cart, bedazzled with sparkling silver rims, and some sort of freshly-trimmed poodle trotting alongside.
It’s not the standard setting for an AFL club’s media session, but this is 2020, and this is the Gold Coast, after all.
In the shadow of the neighbouring resort hotel that has housed his team in a temporary hub for months, the premiership captain being quizzed by the gathered media hops on the front foot before this journalist has time to spit out his full question.
“That’s got to be just totally gone, doesn’t it? That conversation can’t be around still,” Easton Wood says, almost as if offended by the mere mention of an “asterisk”.
The startled nature of the response belies the relaxed setting. Clearly, the query needs to be clarified.
How do the players feel about the “asterisk on this year’s premiership” discussion now, after completing the most challenging and unconventional AFL home-and-away season on record?
Wood, skipper of the Dogs’ 2016 flag team, now preparing for an elimination final against St Kilda, is still a little taken aback by the topic being raised.
And given everything the players, coaches, staff and their families have been through to keep the competition alive this season – uncertainty, displacement, pay cuts, job losses – you can understand why.
“It’s just as valuable as any other year and potentially, if the asterisk is there, more so because of everything that we’ve had to deal with,” Wood says. “This is coming up to our 12th week in this hub and that’s thrown up a curveball.
“We had a 10-week break between round one and round two, the uncertainty of the entire year … we came up here expecting that it was going to be 32 days and we’re coming up to 90-odd.
“You’ve just had to throw caution to the wind and it’s who’s been able to deal with it and process that the best and still perform. It’s been a huge challenge.”
Wood knows it as well as any in the AFL bubble. The father-of-one had partner Tiffany and young daughter Matilda in the Royal Pines hub with him for almost three months, living out of a hotel room, and is genuinely grateful for the experience.
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But they had to wave goodbye this week, with Tiffany due to give birth to the couple’s second child in early November and returning to Melbourne in preparation.
Wood, meanwhile, still has a finals series to focus on. The Dogs are right in the hunt, ominously starting from seventh spot on the grid (wink, 2016, wink). And the family “distraction”, for want of a better term, won’t ever be far from the experienced defender’s thoughts.
An hour up the Pacific Motorway, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan launches the finals series beneath the Story Bridge, with the Brisbane River as his backdrop.
In the heat of the day, there’s no hint of the heavy dew and slippery conditions that some fear will ruin the grand final spectacle under lights at the Gabba.
There was a time not so long ago when McLachlan, not unlike Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, seemed in desperate need of a haircut and a few days’ sleep, as the grind of his most difficult season in office took its toll.
Now, as he unveils former Brisbane champion Simon Black as the 2020 premiership cup ambassador, there is a palpable sense of relief in the way the game’s heavily-scrutinised leader speaks.
His vision of a 153-game home-and-away season has been realised, and only a month-long finals series remains.
“The team that wins the premiership will go down as one of the all-time greats and I sincerely believe that,” McLachlan says. “It will have achieved success in what will go down as one of the most challenging seasons in the history of our game.
“I’m a big believer in karma, we’ve got nine games to go. We’re not there yet, but I think beyond getting it done, it’s been a compelling season.”
October’s finals series will be an intriguing watch on the end of the arduous campaign, with the premiership race wide open.
Are we finally going to kick that asterisk into touch?
“I think time gets it right at the end,” Wood says, now seemingly on the same page as the bloke scribbling notes.
