You'd see them trudging along late on a Saturday afternoon, their Bulldog colours trailing behind, as they headed for the train into the winter evening. They'd learnt to live with defeat, their hearts protected by low hopes; enough that their players were valiant in another loss. Now, time and persistence has delivered what it does, and their daring to dream and a magician or two has rewarded their dedication. Elation and joy and holding the reality of that dream stirs their hearts and imagination and they hug and skip and play. So now what, as they embrace that dared-for dream? I feel their long apprenticeship will serve them well as they learn to live with success and treat those two impostors the same.
Peter Brown, Kawarren
Powerful message to the west's battlers
After wooden spoons and near annihilation in 1989, the Western Bulldogs' victory is much more than a football victory. It is an economic and social boost to all the battling families of the Western suburbs. It says to every child that dreams and success are possible. It shows that neighbours don't need barriers – that people of all creeds and colours can gather united in love and friendship. Most importantly it shows young men that it's cool to love and express feelings openly of both joy and sorrow.
Patrice Hunder, Dromana
Swans on a hiding to nothing
You have to feel for the Sydney Swans. They were on a hiding to nothing. They were never going to win the game. The media and everyone who doesn't follow them were wanting a fairy tale. I just wanted the game to be over, so nauseous was I of the hype around "poor Bob Murphy" and his "poor battling Bulldogs". I don't recall any of this hullabaloo when Sydney made its first grand final after 51 years in 1996. Why? Because it wasn't a Melbourne team at the time. There was only ever going to be one team playing this final, the other just an afterthought. Even the men in green seemed swept along by the hype – 20 free kicks to eight in 100 minutes of play, none in the second or third quarters to the Swans, and plenty of what commentators have called "head scratchers" and "iffy" ones to the Bulldogs. Even the Footy Gods proclaimed that Buddy Franklin should be injured in the first quarter. Yes, the Dogs played very well but circumstances decreed that the Cinderella story was always going to come true.
Garry Rice, Kangaroo Flat
Jury out on final round bye
The AFL considers the final round bye such a success it intends doing it again next year. The two teams that won their qualifying final to advance to the preliminary final and found themselves playing one game in 27 days might disagree, as for the first time neither went through to the Grand Final. It seems that what was once an advantage is now not so.
Ray Liversidge, Coburg
Power and privilege
The MCG's capacity is 100,000. Competing clubs are given 15,000 tickets each to distribute to members via a ballot, with the remaining 70,000 shared between private corporate suites and MCC members. In Melbourne, power, privilege, entitlement and money talks. It's just not cricket.
Sarah Russell, Northcote
Please now give scribes a rest
Is it too much to hope The Age will send all its football scribes on leave for the entire summer so that we long-suffering members of the other AFL – the Anti-Football League – may enjoy an all-too-brief but blissful three months free of the interminable scribblings devoted to satisfying Melbourne's mystifying obsession?
Ian Brown, Sandringham
THE FORUM
Where does it all end?
Economists and bankers take it as axiomatic that eternal growth is good, because their highly paid jobs depend from top to bottom on "development" (not my choice of word for exploiting the environment for private profit) and the easy riches made from it ("Cutting migrants would hit growth . . .", 3/10). They would have us multiplying without limit until we are all standing on top of each other.
If we need population growth to support the ageing population, then we will need even more growth in the near future to support today's expanding population as it ages. Where does it end? As for putting jobs at risk if we halt population growth, what jobs would they be? Fix the 30 per cent youth unemployment in Melbourne's north west, and the social disintegration that is occurring as a result, before extolling the benefits of bringing in more immigrants to create jobs.
And halting immigration would not solve traffic congestion? No, but it would at least stop it worsening, which it is by the week, with 2000 people flooding into Melbourne weekly. Harder to find a doctor? Why not throw in, for good measure, that the sky would fall in?
In the study of economics, it is easy to advance whatever view you have by selecting factors that suit. It is how different people, both equally expert, can come to opposite conclusions. Economists and bankers are not the people we need advising us on the benefits of growth. A supporter of a sustainable Australia would be a good source to put forward a counter argument.
Don Gillies, Canterbury
Better, not bigger
Julia Medew reports on over-stretched hospitals and ambulance service ramping (The Age, 30/9). It is pertinent to note that Melbourne's population has grown by more than 500,000 in the past five years. Where is the new tertiary hospital to maintain the same level of service to the people? The faster we grow our population, the worse the infrastructure deficit will become. We should be aiming for a Victoria, and an Australia, that is better, not bigger.
Christopher James, Melbourne
Well over the limit
Most ecologists, including Tim Flannery, say we are already well over our sustainable population.
Mick Webster, Chiltern
Cutting off our nose . . .
An Essential Media poll reports that 49 per cent of Australians believe Muslim immigration should be banned. Meanwhile, Islamic terrorism has caused, on average, less than one death a year in Australia since the turn of the century.
Indonesia is widely regarded as our most important neighbour and for good reason. The world's largest archipelago is predicted to surpass Australia economically and militarily in the near future, placing enormous importance on our ability to develop bilateral defence relations and navigate complex trade negotiations. Australia's future is inescapably tied to Indonesia, which is also home to about 200 million Muslims, well over 85 per cent of its population.
I'm sure Indonesia's Consul-General for Victoria, Dewi Savitri Wahab, would agree with me when I say a ban on Muslim immigration would be detrimental to our bilateral relationship.
Jarrad James Elmer, Burwood
Logic on jobs illogical
Pauline Hanson, Cory Bernardi, Malcolm Roberts, Peter Dutton et al try to scare disaffected Australians by preaching that refugees and asylum seekers will take jobs that belong to locals. Yet as soon as the backpacker tax threatens to scare away foreigners from working in Australia, the Nationals cry "we'll all be rooned". Apparently Aussie workers don't do menial agricultural jobs, but backpackers do, while asylum seekers and refugees can't. Because they'll take jobs from backpackers? There must be some logic there somewhere, but it escapes me.
Gail Macrae, Ocean Grove
Breakdown in trust
The Coalition of the Willing is again meddling in the affairs of a sovereign nation, namely Syria, with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop stating "all trust has broken down" as a result of "unprecedented atrocities". Really?
Did the Australian airforce attack on the Syrian army, killing 62 soldiers, increase or decrease trust? Wasn't our participation in the illegal invasion of Iraq, causing the death of 150,000 plus Iraqis, an atrocity amounting to a war crime? Perhaps the "Lockerbie-style" investigation Ms Bishop suggests could widen its terms of reference to include the activities of the Australian government abroad.
Ms Bishop needs to come clean about the true reason we are again meddling in the Middle East. Does it have parallels with our "humane" involvement in East Timor to get our hands on its gas reserves, complete with our spying just before Coalition ministers "negotiated" a repositioning of maritime boundaries in our favour. It's time to uncover the true motives of our government's involvement in Syria.
Jeremy MacCreadie, East Melbourne
No longer up to task
Just before the federal election Bill Shorten told a forum in his seat of Maribyrnong that he was "completely relaxed about having some form of plebiscite . . . I would rather that the people of Australia could make their view clear on this than leaving this issue to 150 people," he said. So before the election we were capable of making this decision but suddenly after the election we are not?
Adrian Gunton, Acacia Ridge, Qld
A more polite version
Malcolm's transformation into polite Tony is complete. Once a supporter of strong action on climate change and even an emissions trading scheme, Mr Turnbull was one of the first to attack renewable energy and strong renewable energy targets after the South Australian storms.
Timothy Phillips, Coburg
No praise for workers
Where was the praise for police directing traffic in the dark, emergency personnel rescuing people from floods or electricity workers working in windy conditions restoring power supplies? All these people risked their lives but there was no acknowledgement from Malcolm Turnbull.
Australians deserve better from a PM who should have been shaking the hands of emergency workers rather than holding press conferences about renewable energy.
Peter Soucek, Mount Evelyn
Blank between ears
I was eager to read the book Malcolm Turnbull: My Plans for Australia's Future. Discovered it only had a dust jacket. And between the front and back covers were only blank pages. Can't wait for the sequel.
Nancy Zamprogno, Doncaster
No friend of academia
University of Sydney academics have been criticised for demonstrating against an honorary doctorate being awarded to John Howard. The academics say the former PM is "considered a racist and a war criminal" and "not a fit recipient of the university's highest honour". Unfortunately, the academics have ignored the most relevant reason. John Howard cut funding to the university sector, to the detriment of quality, as a Senate inquiry majority agreed. Furthermore, he labelled academics who were doing their job in their areas of expertise as "latte-sipping elites". He was no friend of academe so why award him an honour? Indeed, should universities be awarding honours at all to people who are not academics and who have not contributed to the academic enterprise?
John Biggs, Hobart, Tasmania
Tale of two teams
Aaah, Cronulla and Essendon. Both had a Dank moment and indulged in supplements and alleged illicit drugs. One copped the moderate penalty offered and subsequently became premiers. The other rejected the moderate penalties and became litigious. It took a heavy toll and the team got the wooden spoon.
Ray Frost, Jan Juc
Fickle followers
NRL followers are a fickle lot. Cronulla Sharks have 14,000 paid-up members and get an average crowd of 10,000 to a regular NRL game. So who were the tens of thousands of blue-and-white clad Shark supporters at the NRL Grand Final on Sunday night? Why don't they go to regular games or buy a club membership?
Troy Hammersmith, Port Melbourne
Vow to repent is phoney
The Catholic Church and its Truth, Justice and Healing Council is an oxymoron ("Church accused of ignoring review", 30/9). Ongoing Treachery, Injustice and Harm is what the Church hierarchy and its cover-up team is offering victims, their supporters and the community. The avowal from the Church to repent for its nefarious transgressions and commit to "healing" was clearly phoney. Just how much more inhumanity and despair is the Church planning to perpetrate on victims?
Kerry Bergin, Surrey Hills
Show the many losers
I agree with Mathew Nelson in his attack on misleading ads (Letters, 1/10). It is illegal to show the features of a luxury Commodore when trying to sell, for example, a Barina, yet Lotto ads only show winners, not the many losers. "Truth in advertising" means accurately representing the product being sold.
David Rose, Hamilton, NSW
Gem of a program
I agree with Margot Hansen (Letters, 3/10) regarding Landline. This great show is both educational and entertaining, and not just relevant to rural viewers. Unfortunately it is relegated to noon on Sunday. If it were aired during the evening it would undoubtedly grab many more viewers.
Ann Moorfield, Donvale
AND ANOTHER THING...
It is not "shark-infested waters" as the ocean is their natural habitat. It is human-infested waters.
Brent Baigent, Richmond
Grand Final
Great game, great atmosphere, huge crowd, no seats trashed, no flares. As good as it gets.
David Bleazby, Seaford
To the tin rattlers at the Whitten Oval all those years ago: on Saturday you were rewarded a million fold. Congratulations Bulldogs.
Daryl Goldie, Camperdown
The Dogs gave a profound gift to Australia: if you give it your best shot, anything is possible. Now that is a celebration we should embrace.
Grant Nowell, Cumberland Park, SA
Thousands of words about the Bulldogs' great win but not one on the recruiters who put this side together.
Bob Graham, Yarragon
To call the pre-match "entertainment" underwhelming is an understatement.
Rowan Forster, Surrey Hills
Politics
What supreme irony that the energy of wind power destroyed the ability to deliver power from coal mines.
Peter Weatherhead, Wantirna
The PM is more interested in pandering to coal interests than providing a sustainable future for the country.
Dean Wotherspoon, Northcote
Our empty suit PM and his hillbilly mate. What a vision for the future.
Beth Muller, Glenorchy, Tasmania
The PM's message to climate-change deniers: whatever it takes, I'll buy your policies.
Lidio Bertelli, Dallas
Finally
If Russia truly believes Ukraine was responsible for downing flight MH17, why did it veto a UN-backed inquiry into the tragedy?
Jim Thompson, Williamstown
I thought same-sex marriage was the norm. Year after year ours has been great. Both my wife and I enjoy it. I hope they make it legal soon.
Graham Cadd, Surrey Hills