AFL grand final parade as it happened: Qantas engineers threaten action during NRL finals; Bumper AFLW crowd for Dons-Dees

Download our sweeps for your AFL grand final parties on Saturday as Sydney and the Brisbane Lions vie for the 2024 premiership.

Here is a sliding gallery with pictures from Friday’s parade as the Swans and Lions fans took to the streets of Melbourne to support their side ahead of the grand final.

You can find many more pictures at our stand-alone gallery. Click here to have a look.

Brendan McCartney sat on Collingwood’s bench on grand final day last year, and in team meetings as one of their assistant coaches. The former Western Bulldogs coach was also with the Magpies when Craig McRae’s plans undid the Lions twice more. He has a clearer idea than most of what it takes to tame the Lions.

McCartney said one of the keys to beating the Brisbane Lions in last year’s premiership decider was the same as it will be on Saturday.

Sydney have to get through the first tackler.

“What Brisbane do very well is press forward. So if you want to run and carry through there like Sydney do, they will come at you really quickly,” McCartney said.

“If you are going to take Brisbane on through the corridor with using your numbers and shape and run and carry, then you have got to get through the first tackler. If they try and go through hands, or handball over hands [of defenders], the Lions will get you every time. They want you to panic handball or loop handball, then the next wave gets you, or they smash up on the player you’ve handballed to,” McCartney explained.

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Hawthorn defender Tamara Smith has been whacked with a three-game suspension for a bump that concussed Geelong’s Kate Surman. Surman laid a shepherd for teammate Aileen Gilroy in the second quarter of Hawthorn’s 18-point AFLW win over the Cats at GMHBA Stadium on Thursday night, catching Surman completely unawares with her bump.

While the bump was shoulder-to-shoulder, the pair appeared to clash heads. The match review officer charged Smith with rough conduct and graded the incident as careless, severe impact and high contact.

Like fragments of an old song, unexpected images caught in passing have the power to drag us to places that have rested in the far reaches of our memories.

A couple of weeks ago, I drove past a country footy ground on a Saturday afternoon. And there sat my childhood.

Spectators’ cars were drawn up to the boundary of the oval, side by side.

I did not have to stop and listen to hear the happy hoots of horns if a goal was kicked. It was the forever sound of country Saturday afternoons.

How many of those cars would be equipped with a picnic hamper and two Thermoses, one filled with hot soup, the other with tea? These were my mothers’ essentials for an afternoon in the car at the footy.

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Download our sweeps for your AFL grand final parties on Saturday as Sydney and the Brisbane Lions vie for the 2024 premiership.