Remember 1998?#1
What a season… we played fast, exciting, adventurous football, interspersed with the occasional unexplainable poor performance but mostly it was just pure excitement. 15 games won, ladder leaders for 15 weeks, the other 7 spent in 2nd place. Any time we started to appear on the wane we turned it around with a sparkling performance.
Ladder Position Round By Round
We went close to finishing top for the first time in the club’s history, only missing by losing the last game to North by 5 points. The season’s theme “unfinished business” adopted to reflect our disappointment at narrowly losing the ’97 Prelim Final seemed about to be made redundant - full of hope we launched into the finals.
1998 AFL Ladder
Player List 1998
Certainly a great Home and Away effort, but how significant is it that almost the whole side played 20+ games? If you add others who were first choice selections when fit; Southern, Ellis, Liberatore and Dimattina we have more than a full side. Does this mean we were so good and stable, or that others were not pushing for places, or that talent was not deep on the list, or that others were not given opportunities?
Final Member Figures
Even the membership increased by over 33%, admittedly from a very low base.
The 1998 season figures as published in the Herald Sun
What were your favourite games and players? How did you enjoy the season? Were you part of the Euphoria? What teams/players were you most worried about?