The season is almost over, although before anyone starts thinking about winter I should point out that this is Melbourne, where winter does not actually end so much as temporarily go into hiding before returning unexpectedly sometime in November when you have finally put the heater away and confidently ventured outside without a jumper. No, I am talking about something considerably more important than the weather. I am talking about footy.

And by footy I do not mean that namby pamby game where somebody receives the lightest touch from an opponent, collapses as though struck by sniper fire, rolls dramatically across the grass while appealing to every available official, and then makes a miraculous recovery thirty seconds later when it becomes apparent that nobody is going to give him a free kick. I am talking about Aussie Rules, a proper game where enormous men launch themselves into packs from ridiculous heights, players are tackled into the turf, somebody loses a tooth, an umpire makes a perfectly reasonable decision and fifty thousand spectators immediately unite in the belief that he is blind, incompetent and possibly engaged in an international conspiracy against their particular football club.

More importantly, I am talking about my beloved Western Bulldogs, who have managed to keep the season alive for at least one more week after a close win over Collingwood. Naturally, being the Bulldogs, they could not simply establish a comfortable lead, maintain it and allow their supporters to spend the final quarter enjoying the football with a quiet drink and a smug expression. That would completely undermine generations of club tradition. Instead, we received the complete Bulldogs Supporter Experience, involving hope, anxiety, despair, renewed hope, several conversations with the television, a brief consideration of whether following lawn bowls might be better for my health, and the familiar conviction that the umpires were obviously participating in some vast conspiracy whose precise purpose remains unclear but undoubtedly involves preventing the Bulldogs from winning.

Then we won.

Better still, we beat Collingwood, and there is something particularly satisfying about that because victories over the Magpies come with an additional benefit unavailable when defeating most other clubs. Somewhere across Melbourne, thousands of Collingwood supporters suddenly became very quiet, stared blankly at their television screens and wondered how the natural order of the universe had been so cruelly overturned. I am sure they will recover eventually, although there is absolutely no reason why the rest of us should be in any hurry for that to happen.

So now the Bulldogs march onwards into another week of finals football, although at the time of writing I am not entirely certain who we are playing, where we are playing or precisely when we are playing. These are merely administrative details which can be sorted out later. The important thing is that we are playing, because twenty four hours ago the season was threatening to disappear and leave me facing that horrible football wasteland when weekends suddenly become available for gardening, household maintenance and all those jobs I have successfully avoided since March by explaining that the footy is on.

Naturally, the dangerous thing now is hope, because experienced Bulldogs supporters understand that hope should be approached in much the same way as an unexploded artillery shell. You know you probably should not fiddle with it, experience suggests that doing so may end badly, but eventually curiosity gets the better of you and you start wondering whether perhaps, just perhaps, this could be our year. Before long you have mentally mapped the entire route to the Grand Final and are explaining to anyone prepared to listen exactly why the Bulldogs can win the premiership.

I am not going quite that far.

Yet.

For the moment, I am simply enjoying the fact that the season continues for at least one more week, Collingwood has been dispatched, the Bulldogs are still alive and the blood pressure should return to something approaching normal before we have to do it all again.

A reprieve is a reprieve.

GO DOGGIES!

Thanks to ChatGPT for help with the pics.