Australian rules: Sydney win will make national contest dream a reality

SYDNEY - The Australian Football League's dream of creating a truly national competition will become a reality today should Sydney beat West Coast in the grand final.

The AFL's expansion into the brave new frontiers beyond Victoria has already been wonderfully successful, with four of the six interstate teams all winning titles.

West Coast and Adelaide, both in traditional Aussie Rules strongholds, won two premierships each in the 1990s and Brisbane won three on the trot from 2001-03 before losing last year's decider to Port Adelaide.

That match broke new ground as the first grand final played between two teams from outside Victoria. This year's is the second.

The only two new teams not to have won the flag are Fremantle and Sydney, and Fremantle only joined the competition in 1995 to give Western Australia a second team in the wake of the Eagles' two titles.

But the Swans have been at the centre of the AFL's expansion plans from day one when South Melbourne relocated to Sydney in 1982, five years before Brisbane and West Coast entered the competition.

The AFL has poured millions into trying to help Aussie Rules gain a foothold in the league stronghold but are still waiting for an elusive premiership.

The Swans hit their lowest point in 1992-93 when they lost 26 games in a row but things have improved a lot since those dark days.

They reached the grand final for the first time in 1996, losing to North Melbourne, and have made the finals seven times in the past decade.

They ended one game away from the grand final in 2003 but went one step better this year with a fairytale run through the finals.

Luck seemed to have conspired against the Swans when they lost their first qualifying final to West Coast by just four points, before a last-gasp goal from Nick Davis enabled them to beat Geelong by three points in their sudden-death semifinal a week later.

Revitalised by their close-shave with the Cats, Sydney then thumped St Kilda by 31 points in last weekend's preliminary final although the drama was far from finished.

Sydney's inspiring captain Barry Hall was in danger of missing the grand final after being reported for striking a St Kilda player.

Hall pleaded guilty to the offence but escaped a ban, allowing the Swans to pick an unchanged team for the grand final, after the tribunal agreed to downgrade the charge from level two to level one because the incident occurred in play rather behind play.

West Coast also had a victory at the tribunal when defender Travis Gaspar beat a charge of striking Adelaide's Ken McGregor before the opening bounce of their preliminary final in Perth.

For the Eagles, midfielder Sam Butler and forward Phil Matera, who faces a fitness test, replace Michael Braun and Rowan Jones.

- REUTERS