The spirit of ’26 – one hundred years on…

Nigel Dawe

I don’t think I’ve ever commenced a single piece of writing in my entire life not knowing exactly where to start. The topic of Melbourne’s 1926 premiership win however (today being exactly 100 years since Sir Albert Chadwick led our team to that season’s flag) presents me with such a selectional dilemma.

The pin-up literary figure of that same period, F. Scott Fitzgerald, wove into his now 101-year-old novel The Great Gatsby: “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart… Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window”. And that single window, for mine is the year 1926. A year upon which the roaring ‘20s peaked, not just across the globe, but at the MCG on grand final day for our Melbourne Fuchsias, or Redlegs – as they were then interchangeably known.

That we beat Collingwood by near-on 10 goals, isn’t the most delightful facet of a day that commenced with heavy rain before the clouds parted to produce brilliant sunshine, and a premiership win – the club’s first since 1900. But if the Magpies had won the 1926 grand final, they would have strung 5-premiership wins together, instead of the four they managed from 1927 through to ’30. They shouldn’t have got past us in the prelim final of 1928 though (a game that resulted in a draw, which should have been a Melbourne win, as a point was awarded to the Pies after the 3-qrt time siren) the following week, the black and whites went on to win the replay by 4-points.

Who can guess what the footy gods are thinking, if they think at all, let alone if they ponder the construct of posterity, when they make provision for, or just simply turn a blind eye to such things. Once a final siren sounds, that’s it, there’s no turning back – history becomes written, and the full stops therein are as outright and irreversible as the forward march of time. That nothing can be re-lived, if not altered in the slightest, is as old as the oldest utterance in Western culture: “[For] no man ever steps in the same river twice.” We can revisit the same riverbank, by all means, as often as we like, but we can never wade into the same waters to change anything, once they’ve played out.

Relatedly, I grew up in Broken Hill, a town some seven hours away from the nearest beach, and I was a member at one stage of the 3rd Broken Hill Sea Scouts (an irony that wasn’t evident to me at the time) but one that has now assumed a full-blown Monty Python-like aura in my mind. But it was during this ‘nautically’ inspired phase of my childhood that I conceived of eventually owning a yacht called ‘The Spirit of ‘26’. A yacht I still hope to one day own, and plan to one day sail into the eternal sunset of my love for the Melbourne Demons.

That Melbourne beat Essendon in the 1926 preliminary final (one player down after Bob Corbett was king hit behind the play at half time. He later snuck back onto the field in the dying moments of the game in an absolute quadruple-vision daze, with his head draped in bandages). A team first gesture, and an overall team effort that led to a 3-point win and one that gave rise to the stainless-steel notion of The Spirit of ’26. Ensuring that no player got suspended for the club in the two seasons leading up to that year’s grand final, provided an additional gloss and mystique to a team that still personifies discipline and selfless commitment.

As we reflect and breathe life once more into the legend and legacy of the club’s most infamous premiership win, one hundred years on; it is fitting that the origin of the word ‘spirit’ comes from the ancient Greek term for ‘breath’. And the gust of fresh air that thoughts of ‘26 rekindle in the hearts (and lungs) of Melbourne fans is something we should savour and surely give voice to, for as long as the game is played.