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ESSENDON 15.10 (100) d COLLINGWOOD 11.16 (82)
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Reborn Bombers leave Magpies with nowhere to hide

An hour before the first bounce at the MCG (which wasn't a bounce), two mounted soldiers got a standing ovation, just for riding along the boundary line. Then followed a motorcade of old soldiers, and more applause, until it began to feel like the final curtain at a recital or opera, when your hands hurt and you begin to wonder when it is decent to stop.

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Essendon break Anzac game drought

Jo Daniher delivered one of his finest games to win the Anzac Day medal, as Essendon held on by 18 points against Collingwood.

But it was all innocent enough, and maybe in truth that is what we celebrate on Anzac Day, not a military history, but the privilege of being innocent. The ground was still ringing to echoes of football's most enduring and innocent hope, Richmond's. It should have been buried in an unmarked grave years ago, but instead springs again every year, like poppies in a Flanders field. It is this year's feel-good story thus far.

Essendon certainly appreciates the joy of innocence reborn. They had it, lost it - devastatingly - but this year have it back in spades. Though this fixture is said to be a law unto itself, not to mention a a lore, it has not been kind to the Bombers in recent times. Victory this day will feel like the sun back in the sky and wellness everywhere in the world.

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Clinically considered, without the emotion, the Bombers should have won by more. All day, they were quicker and cleaner than their opponents, even in the wet patches. For long stretches, they looked about to rip the Magpies open. Joe Daniher was a deserving medallist this day, but would have had an even more heavyweight impact if he had kicked straight. You don't want to make too much of the Anzac allegory, but Daniher is one footballer who you can easily imagine in a slouch hat, roll-up on his lip, lobbing lazy left-footers across the Suez canal on his days off. He lobbed one from 65 metres this day.

Daniher dominant on Anzac Day, Watsons everywhere you looked, Collingwood underfoot; if the good old days are not back for the Bombers, they are well on the way. Captain Dyson Heppell is their personification. He was not the best player on the ground, but in a match made slippery by the conditions and the occasion, he made the fewest mistakes. At a time when it is a sport within a sport to name and number so-called "clangers", this was no idle boast.

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The best that can be said of the Magpies is that they hung in. Richmond the previous evening had demonstrated the rewards that sometimes accrue from this virtue, But Collingwood's hanging was more in the nature of clinging than slip-streaming.

The Magpies matched the Bombers in most categories and dominated in one, 66 inside 50s to 43. But in the era of slingshot footy, this is becoming the most deceptive stat of all. One team grinds away like ditch-diggers at one end, only for the other to spring the ball free and run it across the empty and boundless plains to goal at the other. This was the pattern again this day. It also explains the stats sheet and why you can safely ignore it.

Really, for Collingwood, there are no innocent happenings henceforth. Everything about 2017 now is freighted and fraught. Like Icarus, they appear to have aimed too high and are now burnt and plunging. After five rounds, they have won one game, by one point. No-one has blown them away, but that is a hollow boast and in any case as confidence ebbs and pressure rises and the spotlight glares, it need the caveat "yet".

Earnest and competitive, but inefficient; it is the eternal lament of the plebeian also-ran. You don't hear it about the Western Bulldogs, or Adelaide. Daniel Wells showed enough to say that he will add polish to the Pies, but he is only one man, and elderly at that. Even he had his wobbly moments this day. Whatever the anti-Midas touch is called, Collingwood has it.

The day ended as it began, with the two teams mingling and the crowd on its feet, half of them to acclaim their heroes, the other half to leave, but live to fight another day.

On a day set aside to remember the battlefield fallen, here was the bottom line; that however grim footy felt for the Bombers last year and the Magpies now, at nightfall, everyone gets to go home.