Maher's Musings | Best games seen in the flesh

This week, in the 102nd edition of Maher's Musings — yes, we missed the milestone a couple of weeks ago — we will look back at the best district games of football this columnist has seen live across the past three seasons.

It is an extraordinarily tight field throughout the top 20 — mostly due to the fact that once finals begin Musings HQ moves out of HQ and into the stands of as many grounds as possible — but we have narrowed it down to a top five, and even managed to fudge the numbers to squeeze more than five matches into that list.

Enjoy.

Non-senior grand finals

If the current sporting lockdown does not encourage you to consume as much sport as possible when it is over, Musings HQ is not sure what will.

An easy way to do that is to ensure you get to the next grand final day in your league at the crack of dawn and take in all of the action on the day.

I have seen plenty of thrilling contests well before the 2 pm slot on the biggest day of the season, with the occasion bringing the best out of those not at the senior level.

Noah Wheeler features in two of the best under-age grand finals I have seen — starring for two different clubs.

In 2017 he played a match-winning role in Moama's under-17 Murray Football League triumph — its fourth in a row — over previously undefeated Cobram, with super coach Adrian Daly keeping Wheeler at the end of Mercury Dve where the wind was blowing before throwing him in the middle for a crucial centre clearance in the six-point win.

Wheeler's work at the coalface was on show once more in the Goulburn Valley League under-18 decider in 2018, helping Echuca complete a 34-1 final term against Shepparton United with his bullocking midfield frame.

Reserves grand finals are almost always gruelling, tight affairs, with Numurkah's three-point win against Barooga (2017), Mulwala's one-point success over Moama (2018) and Seymour's five-point triumph against Echuca last year all thrilling encounters.

The latter held one of the best grand final moments in recent history when Mitch McLean wrote his name into Lions folklore with a smother and goal to complete a miraculous comeback for his side.

Nathalia v Rumbalara, 2018 preliminary final

Rumbalara took to Mercury Dve in the 2018 preliminary final exactly as you expect a side playing for a home grand final would — ferociously and with a single focus on getting the ball forward as quickly and as often as it could.

It worked too.

Rumba kept its opposition scoreless to half-time and looked certain to take the chocolates and progress through to the decider.

But unfortunately for the home crowd, that opposition happened to be in the midst of the greatest dynasty in MFL history.

If it was any team except Nathalia, this game would have been Rumba's for the keeping.

Though the margin was only 27 points at the main break, the fact Rumba had yet to concede a point would have broken any other opposition.

But not the Purples.

Even before Liam Evans kicked his side's opener in the first minute of the third term, you knew Nathalia was coming.

It took until 16 minutes into the final term for the Purples to eventually take the lead, and they were able to dig in and hold on to it on their way to the fourth in a current run of five consecutive premierships.

Such is the power of a contest like this that you barely know what is going on around you.

I started the game behind the goals, but by the last term I had been compelled to move around to between the coaches’ boxes, drawn to the heartbeat of the action.

Mulwala v Nathalia, round 10, 2017

Ash Froud was always going to make an impact at Mulwala.

But perhaps his finest hour came mid-season at Lonsdale Reserve against the powerhouse of the MFL.

After a ding-dong duel with Harley Cobbledick inside a thrilling contest between the Lions and Purples themselves, the match came down to a shot after the siren for the star forward.

He barely paused at the top of his mark before delivering the dagger, setting the huge crowd into a frenzy and prompting one onlooker to shout "that was as a good as a grand final''.

It was certainly close to it.

Numurkah v Tongala, 2019 preliminary final

The battle of the Blues delivered everything you want from a brilliant game of football.

The action was fierce on a hot September day at Barooga, but eventually the clash boiled down to Numurkah leading by 20 points in red time of a preliminary final.

What happened next will be retold in Tongala circles for decades to come.

Somehow, some way, Jordan Souter's troops found the energy for one last roll of the dice - and their number came up.

A Cam Ilett pearler from almost the point where the 50 m arc meets the boundary line leveled the scores before Coby McCarthy snuck in the most crucial behind of his career to secure a one-point win.

It gives me shivers just thinking about it.

Kyabram v Shepparton, 2018 grand final

Speaking of shivers, Shepparton's win against Kyabram in the 2018 GVL grand final — where the impossible became reality — still sends goosebumps down this columnist's spine.

In one of the boxes in the Deakin Reserve grandstand I turned to Outside The Box's Alex Mitchell and uttered the words "it's over" when Sam Sheldon goaled early in the third term to put Kyabram 19 points ahead.

Talk about a commentator's curse.

From Sean Harrap's stirring three-quarter time address to Ted Lindon's "Hand of God" moment — and the heroics of Anthony Andronaco and Harry Boyd and despair of Kyle Mueller's final shot at goal hitting the post in between — this game had all of the moments that make any match, but especially a grand final, the best it could possibly be.

That it still stands as Kyabram's only loss since the 2015 decider adds the historic value it needs to be a clear number one on this list.