An ending. A beginning.

And a sun that beamed light and warmth upon the GABBA like the hopes of so many defiant fans who’s hearts and nerves had so often been trampled into the sodden turf of the 2017 season.

Writing this piece a week and more after the fact has been both liberating and challenging – while it was nice to indulge in not having to think of ludicrous similes for obscure passages of play as they occurred, with each passing day those specific ‘in game’ moments faded from immediate recall.

From the obsessive realism of a nineteenth century portrait, my interpretation of the match shifted to something more akin to a drunken paint-fight between a surrealist and an impressionist.

The result may occasionally flirt with profundity, but will more likely result in damage to public property and some form of dangerous vulgarity.

I think next year I’ll try and punch these out by Tuesday.

Sure, semiotics is a fine thing to explore for those blessed with a keener nose for deeper meaning than myself, but the hole left by the passing of Umberto Eco isn’t going to be filled by any long drawn bows comparing our ability to win contested ball to the political undercurrent of early twentieth century Latin America.

I’m dangerously close to losing the plot entirely here, I know.

Suffice to say I enjoyed trying to read The Name of the Rose, and I think I understood parts of it. It had something to do with Sean Connery entering a nunnery, no?

But I don’t feel comfortable trying to create its sporting equivalent here on a weekly basis only because I couldn’t be stuffed writing about a game of footy less than two days after it happened.

Next year I’ll try harder.

Trying was a key theme for last Saturday’s finale for two teams who, much like Atlas, have held the football world above their mighty shoulders for the majority of the year.

Be that as it may, in a game that promised to many a chance to witness (without the need for a scuba pack) the sort of race to the bottom more usually seen in free diving competitions across the equatorial line, any feeble remnants of the tanking talking point died-out with the speed and pointlessness of a one-man Mexican wave.

Indeed, the only Hispanic reference worth noting in the first quarter was that of Higgins’ nine possession domination. He was ‘en fuego’ early. More ‘en fuego’ than a bucket fire in a Majak Daw instagram post.

At least, he got a lot of the footy. We had no issue with getting the footy at any stage throughout the afternoon.

We did have issue with kicking the footy through the big sticks.

Intriguingly, for those who did care to indulge a penchant for ‘tanking talk’, North’s first quarter might have dabbed at their conspiracy-buds as a grand master dabs oil onto canvas.

As we dominated possession, inside fifties and pretty much everything else – shot after shot slid wide or very wide.

And with magnificently innocent-looking regularity, Brissy would break through the middle (a suspiciously unguarded middle to the conspiratorial eye) to kick goals from about two metres out.

But we turned it around. The Lions helped.

Despite Saturday, their climb back into public favour has been well earned, in my opinion.

Their spine (I can almost hear the popping of early onset arthritis in the chronically crossed fingers and toes of my Brisbane brethren) should at some point be elite.

Their midfield can go with anyone on their day. Their flanks and (for want of a better term) foot soldiers seem to need an injection of quality, but hey! – they may say the same of us.

And after all, who doesn’t enjoy seeing Daniel Rich unload a RPG every time he rolls onto his left foot?

Rich played well. Zorko played well. If he gets sick of footy, his thighs look like they’d be reasonably suited to peddling around a velodrome.

They’ve got a good one in Witherden and Mathieson has potential to be the sort of beautiful pest a fan base can rally around.

And behind the ‘world’s best Grandad’ motif, Fagan might be encouraging the sort of self confidence that brings with it a bit of mongrel to a team that (from afar) has lacked just that since the golden ages of the early naughties.

But that’s the future. Saturday happened and it worked out well for us.

Time and again, the Lions took on the corridor with overlap run and promptly gave the footy back to us, sometimes in new and creative ways.

Sometimes they gave the footy back to us when it wasn’t even in the corridor.

It would have been more enjoyable, if it wasn’t so tragically familiar.

I dunno. Their club’s difficulty in recent years to retain elite talent should by rights see the footy department be swimming (Scrooge McDuck style) in an AFL funded pool of list-supplement money. They didn’t asked to have the Gold Coast dumped on their doorstep.

As it is I’m sure I’m not the only North fan who can’t help but feel an affinity with what is a club (in theory) half made up by what once upon a time was no more than a small, proud Melbourne club who’s only crime (like a human pyramid player after team curry night) was to be at the bottom of the pile at the worst possible time in history.

Fitzroy’s journey could and would have been our own – as such they act as a reminder of what we as a club fought and fight for – our history, our future, our identity.

Anyway, if the first quarter was tanking, it was the tanking of true artists. None of your ham-fisted, Hrovat into the ruck and Simpkin to full back type farces.

No, this was the sort of disciplined display that Shinboners could only have dreamed of witnessing in the previous twenty two rounds of 2017.

That is, they would have done if we had kicked straight.

It took the long awaited first goal of Sam Durdin to get us on the board in a meaningful way. Dare I say, welcome Sam Durdin. Sometimes it takes getting your head wrapped like a tennis ball seamed for the first session of a backyard test match to make you feel as though you’ve properly arrived. If this is the case, the broad shouldered utility has found his place amongst the troops.

And if getting a head wound is the key to unlocking a sense of emotional achievement, Ben McKay will swagger into the 2018 season with the bravado of a Capulet gangster.

His debut will be commemorated here, if not in the mind of McKay himself. He may not remember much, if anything at all…

Perhaps it is the influence Ben Brown is having on the young and impressionable, this whole ‘getting knocked out’ thing.

What is not ‘perhaps’ was Mckay’s attack on the ball and man from the opening bounce.

There was nothing ‘perhaps’ about his game at all.

The bloke can clunk a mark. He has the sort of loose limbed gallop you’ll see during the upcoming Spring Racing Carnival. And he reads the ball beautifully when able to set up behind the play.

It’s the reason for his recent return to defence and no small factor in his immediate success down back.

His game was a highlight of intercepts, clean disposal and a magnificent double effort against the experienced Walker (who I respect purely for the fact that he’s confident enough to roll around on an AFL field with a fully furnished bald spot).

Around McKay the flanking midfielders continued to rack em’ up.

Ryan Clarke didn’t get a Rising Star nomination this year. He was eligible. His last five rounds have seen him accumulate over twenty disposals in each game. On Saturday he pushed further up the ground to link into the transitions and deliver telling balls to the advantage of our forwards.

Maybe next year he’ll win the Brownlow.

He’ll be helped to do so if Trent Dumont can keep stopping the oppositions best midfielder from getting near it.

Dayne Beams is a gun by any measure (except literal – he’s not actually a firearm).

But Dumont wore him like a magical blanket – the kind that renders you invisible whilst emptying your pockets of cash and valuables.

The French Connection picked up twenty six touches while shutting down the Brisbane skipper – Beams had eighteen but zero influence.

Très bon, Monsieur Dumont.

For the day we had more tackles (56-52 (24-8 inside forward fifty)), more clearances (47-29) and more possessions.

And (miracle of miracles) more uncontested possessions.

Dead rubber or not, ’twas lovely to be able to kick back and enjoy the luxury of some quality time between the Kangas and the Sherrin.

After the first quarter we weren’t really challenged – at least not with scoreboard pressure.

The Lions never stopped cracking in, but even their fans may agree that after what has been a long overdue sense of positive momentum in the second half of the year, the wheels fell off a little bit the second half of Saturday’s game.

Credit to us though. It’s important to credit yourself, when you can.

And credit to Shaun Higgins.

Higgins could have been AA this year. He has more balance bursting clear of a pack than I do during stage four of my sleep cycle in a queen sized bed.

The thought, the dream of another quality midfielder cruising alongside of him in 2018 gets me through the working day.

Goldy had the better of Stef Martin.

Thompson earned his chair lift off the ground with a 200th game to be proud of.

McDonald and Gibson rolled around the wings like African hunting dogs.

Hrovat hit the scoreboard and Turner hit others lace out.

And then there was Jy.

Simpkin changes direction with the flair and prancing joy of a wild colt. His is the sort of loose-limbed lateral movement that started teenage riots in the fifties. He is Swayze and Baby all at once – the dance teacher that nobody put’s in a corner.

Lindsay didn’t bother turning around to see if ‘that goal’ went through – instead he pointed upwards and started strolling towards Simpkin to offer his approval.

The Victorian state government should considering hiring Simpkin as a consultant on urban development. In recent history we’ve never seen someone in the royal blue and white able to create space with such ease and decisiveness.

Phil Krakouer eat your heart out.

If we’re taking of the heart of the team, we’re talking about Hansen and Thomas.

Hansen returned for one last laconic trot. And I mean laconic in the best possible way. He leaves us with memories of a player who did everything that was asked for him – largely during a time when North needed him as a key forward and key back at once – often within the same game.

Injuries curtailed him, but they never defined him. If Ben McKay wants a blue print on how to model his game as a marking defender, he has one ready-made in Lachlan Hansen.

God it was nice to have Lindsay back on the big screen again. More than once he slid out of trouble like a leech – a leech with an innate sense for the goals.

He and Anderson having the chance to hit the scoreboard and doing so was a tonic more vital than any beer cracked after a final round loss could ever be. Seven tackles from Jed didn’t hurt, either.

Thomas is a, if not the leader at the club. His journey is one of growth, redemption and defiance.

I fear he will always divide opinions, but I’ve long since stopped fearing him losing sleep over the fact.

Opinions aren’t divided on Ben Brown.

By the end even the Lions players were trying to feed him a Coleman.

Yeah, he could have snagged another couple in the dying seconds of the game, but (as my old friend Joe Fagan said), ‘that would have been predictable.’

What a season the big boy has put together.

It wasn’t enough to woo the back-page lickers of the All Australian selection team; but astute judges and myopic Shinboners alike would agree that his has been a standout key forward performance of the competition.

With the reliability and soothing rhythm of his Westminster counterpart, Brown’s pendulum-like lope and physical dominance of surrounding skylines is the top middle and bottom of our forward structure as we strive ahead with whatever branches Scott and co. seem fit to spread from the trunk with a ginger canopy.

Let us dream of this future, comrades.

Whatever players we bring in from afar, I shall welcome them with open arms.

Those that depart, depart as Shinboners. There is no greater honour.

Farewell Lachie Hansen, Prince of Bonnydoon. Shinboner for life. First Lord of the Dodgy Moustache.

Farewell Will Fordham and Matt Taylor. We barely knew ye, but your time at North Melbourne helped in the telling of a story that will never end.

And whose latest chapter is being written even as we speak.

Whatever 2018 may bring, it will be an adventure.

As it is, we can rest and ponder.

Ponder the reuniting of Paul Ahern and Josh Kelly.

Ponder Nick Larkey’s first goal, Cameron Zurhaar don’t arguing Dustin Martin into a moment of soul-destroying regret and Brandon Preuss kicking a torp from seventy after cleaning up Brody Grundy with a bump so perfect that Leigh Matthews is moved to tears in the Channel 7 commentary box.

We don’t have to ponder a return of North Melbourne to Arden Street.

It’s happening, and will be glorious.

Let each VFL home game be awash with royal blue and white. The raucous noise from the Gasometer wing will echo the echos of Barker, Dugdale, Cable and Grieg.

It’s going to be fun. Fun because 2018 will be another step forward for the club that now knows that the best way to embrace new supporters from Victoria, Tasmania and Timbuktu is to ensure the home fires burn brightest in North Melbourne.

Im sorry this piece was so late.

But as Shakespeare once said, ‘To thine own self be true.’

Umberto Eco wrote books with more meaningful layers than a ten-story yoga complex. In doing so he was true to himself.

Ben Brown takes a mark inside fifty and walks out the percussion section of the Radetzky March during his run-up. In doing so he is true to himself.

And I? I submit an under-researched written composition more than two weeks after a natural deadline.

In doing so I am true to myself.

I’m comfortable. With myself and with North.

We’ll be right. We’re cashed up with high draft picks and a raft of young players who have shown a taste for battle.

Bring on 2018.

Come on you Roo boys.