AFL season 2016: Magpies snatch victory from jaws of the Tiger

In the cold light of Saturday, both sides will still wonder at what happened. Winning needs no explanation, which was as well, because there really wasn't one. Losing has no alibi, and don't the Tigers know it.

"Admirable," said Nathan Buckley, trying to balance euphoria with relief. Somehow, the Magpies had ground out victory, he said, but he was not in the business of celebrating grinding wins. "We're so far from where we want to be." But at least they are less distant than they were with five minutes to play in this match, and a whole lot closer than where they were in Sydney last week.

In truth, this whole night was an accident waiting to happen, or more correctly two of them, one happy, one not. In round one, Richmond had been unconvincing and Collingwood unseen. The Tigers needed a big win, and all but got one, and the Magpies any sort of win, which, at length, was what they got.

Happiness is as happiness does. The first half of this game was littered with intercepts, fumbles and misses as both teams tried too hard. "I don't think either side played particularly well," said Buckley later. "We gave them a chance, they gave us a chance." When at last they settled, Richmond dominated the clearances and had the preponderance of possession and shots at goal, which should have told and did tell and then suddenly didn't. Collingwood shaded the Tigers for inside 50s, but in the final tally, only the last mattered. But how!

It was a chaotic game, full of oddities, so the improbable finish should not have surprised really. Scott Pendlebury played much of the second half in the backline, perhaps to nurse a knock, perhaps to try to bring a bit of precision to that area of the ground for the Mapgies; coach Buckley was cagey. Once, he also overran the ball, as commonly seen as Halley's comet, yielding a goal.

A first-gamer, Jayden Short, kicked three goals for the Tigers. Jack Riewoldt kicked three, but all in the last quarter, and they looked to be decisive. Travis Cloke played better, but kicked only one, on his right foot, if you don't mind. Alex Fasolo kicked three, which suddenly became five. And all night long, Adam Treloar was booed because he wasn't playing for a club he had never played for. With 32 touches, that added up to a lot of booing.

The finish, like the match, was all crossed wires and happenstance. Nick Vlastuin was penalised for handballing out of bounds deliberately; it woudn't have been a free kick last year. Nineteen seconds remained. In the box, Buckley thought to himself that if Darcy Moore kicked to the top of the goal square, where Richmond waited in numbers, the Magpies would not score.

Moore kicked to the top of the square. The Tigers were on the lookout for a high-flying Collingwood six-footer. They mislaid a 203-centimetre ruckman, and so it was that Brodie Grundy gathered the crumbs and kicked the winning goal.

Coaches try to shape patterns out of chaos, but sometimes can only watch as patterns dissolve into chaos. For all the untidiness of this game in parts, Buckley was delighted with the Magpies' cool in the dying seconds, which, as it turned, out were the reborn seconds. "To be honest, the way we moved the ball in the last five minutes was the way we wanted to move it in the first five minutes," he said. 

For Damien Hardwick, the opposite held. He could only wring his hands as drills sharpened in many close games these last two or three seasons suddenly fell apart, perhaps because this wasn't really a close game until suddenly it was. "We played unintelligent footy towards the end," he said.

Nonetheless, for the Tigers, this must have felt like the last practical joke of Aprils Fool's Day, and that the Magpies were the Joker.