This was published 7 years ago
Forget the winners, it's the villains who need the Christmas presents
By Malcolm Knox
Christmas came early for the fairytale heroes of 2016. No gifts are necessary for the players and supporters of the Cronulla Sharks, Western Bulldogs, Adelaide United, Sydney Thunder, Leicester, Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Cubs and the national football teams of Portugal and Brazil. They are still celebrating. In Leicester's case, they might soon be celebrating staying in the top division, but it's a celebration nonetheless.
Sad Swan: There was no joy for Sydney's Josh Kennedy in the 2016 AFL grand final. Credit: Getty Images
Instead, Christmas gifts should be sent to those who were cast as ogres. Like Herod in the other Christmas fable, for every crowd-pleasing redeemer in this magical year there was a shadowy outfit who threatened to be Killjoy To The World. If the sentimental champions of 2016 brought salvation to an otherwise foul year, saviours of the human spirit no less, spare a thought for those who, through no fault of their own, were the year's bad guys.
At one minute to midnight on the first Sunday of October, 80,000 people in Sydney's Olympic stadium were holding their breath. Time was up, but for the Sharks' supporters it stood still as the Melbourne Storm launched their last raid. The ball went left where they had a four-man overlap. Melbourne were, once again, going to do a Melbourne. The overlap got patched up, which only opened a new one on the right, where the Storm duly swung the ball. That silence was the sound of 80,000 black-white-and-blue hearts breaking. Not only theirs, but the vicarious hearts of millions of neutrals. It was so crystal clear what was going to happen, because it had happened so often before. The suspension-of-disbelief wires were snapping; the fairytale was becoming a might-have-been; the hand moved off the switch to the porch light.
Illustration: Simon Letch
What had Melbourne done to be not just the other team for one night but the avatars of disappointment? Put simply, they had won too often. The Sydney Swans had played that role a day earlier. The Bulldogs were everybody's team, even the umpires'. Lance Franklin's creaky body also took pity on them. Many neutral observers have described the 2016 AFL grand final as the best they have seen, only partially because it was a football game. It was a dramatic representation of all that is good in humanity (they do buff it up down there). But if the Bulldogs needed to win to uphold that underdog spirit and that hope for the future of the universe, it meant the Swans had to lose. I haven't met any Swans fans who thought it was much of a day.
For every hero, there must be a villain, and if the villain isn't actually villainous, the story has to be bent to that shape. When 5000-1 shots Leicester won the English Premier League – and it may be 5000 years before they do so again – there was almost as much celebration over the fact that Arsenal had come second. Leicester fans weren't gloating, they were just drunk on incredulity. But the fans of Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United were paralytic with glee about Arsenal's failure to take advantage of the fact that the other members of the cartel had had a year off. It was like four gross oligarchs were playing a card game, and one of them was off in the toilet when his turn came. That gave them more joy than the fact that the pot was stolen by the kitchen hand.
In the Big Bash League, the Melbourne Stars bucked the trend: they are the eternal bridesmaids whom neutrals still hate. The Sydney Thunder were the team that had had all the expensive imports and resources thrown at them, and yet somehow they had the sentimental favouritism when up against the Stars in the final. Perhaps the Stars are burdened by that name, perhaps by the lingering aftertaste of Warney and Eddie. They can't win, even when they lose.
Fate was even crueller to the clubs who were the underbidders in the fairytale auctions. At baseball's World Series, the piping sound in the background saying, "Us too, we haven't won since 1948!" was the voice of the poor old Cleveland Indians. But the Cubs out-underdogged them. In the A-League, Adelaide broke their duck after 13 years. But they had to break the neck of the Western Sydney Wanderers, who were left abandoned like orphans that no benefactor will take home. When you think about it, stories like that really take the fair out of fairytale.
The Golden State Warriors had only been basketball's glamour team for a couple of years, but that was enough to make them overdogs against the Cavaliers. LeBron versus Steph was a game of multimillionaire hot seat, but somehow in the crafting of fable, the city of Cleveland itself became the hero, its rust belt more lustrous, in the end, than the Warrior's golden gate.
And in the world game, it's hard to imagine Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar being underdogs at anything, except perhaps an IQ test, but phooey to that, after the first six zeroes you don't need to be able to count. Portugal won Euro 2016 and Brazil won the Olympic Games gold medal for men. Neither had won before, and in the salary cap-confined cosmos, where gifts must ultimately be shared out, it was deemed a good thing. Except by supporters of France, who could really have done with some good news, and Germany, a country learning that no good deed goes unpunished.
It's not nice, this fairytale business. Someone always ends up getting slain, when their only crime was to have done well enough to be the other team. So forget about all those winners. They've had their fun. If you know a supporter of the Storm, the Swans, the Wanderers, the Stars, the Gunners, the Warriors, the Indians, France or Germany, put something under their tree or just send them a festive greeting. Their time will come, and if it takes long enough, everyone will eventually love them, too.