Sideline Sid Sports correspondent & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

One sport that Sideline Sid usually bypasses on the box is Australian Rules Football.

However on Saturday he took his once a year look at the game, with the end of season AFL Grand Final, played in front of a full house at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Few of the one hundred thousand crowd at the MCG or of the large television audience, could have imagined the dramatic finish that went down to the wire.

Few sporting stadiums in the world come close to rivaling the MCG for size, atmosphere and easy access right in the heart of Melbourne.

Last Saturday, two teams from very different spectrums of Aussie Rules Football came together to decide the 2018 AFL "Flag".

Collingwood from inner Melbourne was formed in 1892 and was a foundation member of the VFL (Victorian Football League), which kicked off in 1896. Nicknamed the Magpies because of their black and white striped kit, the "Pies" have a huge following in Aussie Rules mad Melbourne.

They became the first AFL Club to break through the eighty thousand paid-up membership and attract the biggest crowds of the season (outside Grand Final day) to the MCG, when they play home-town rivals Carlton, Richmond and Essendon.

The East Coast Eagles call Perth in Western Australia home and entered the AFL as an expansion team in 1987. They share West Australian AFL loyalties with the Freemantle Dockers, with the two home-town games between the two Western Australian teams, attracting big bands of their passionate supporters.

Collingwood entered the Grand Final as the bookies favourite, although there seemed to be an equal number of West Coast fans in their blue and gold colours at the MCG.

The Melbourne side made the early running and led 31-14 at the end of the first quarter. The West Australian side narrowed the gap and trailed by twelve at half time. With seven points for a goal, West Coast were well in the encounter at the half way stage of the match.

Fifty-five points apiece at three-quarter time gave some indication of the dramatic finish to come. Collingwood stormed out after the last break and snapped off two goals in the opening couple of minutes, before an Eagles reply.

West Coast trailed by a couple of points with less than two minutes on the clock, before a dramatic mark and near miracle goal from an acute angle alongside the posts, put them in front for the first time in the match.

While history will show that the West Coast Eagle grabbed glory by 79 (11 goals - 13 behinds) to 74 (11 goals - 8 behinds), what it won't show was the absolute despair on the faces of the Collingwood players, management and fans, whose team led all the way except for the last two minutes.

There was no better indicator of the Collingwood pain, than that shown by well-known Australian television quizmaster and Collingwood President Eddie Maguire, when the cameras panned to him near the end of play.