Going by the emails I have received over the past few weeks, Essendon is on its death-bed. The Bombers are gone, never to be revived.
According to my correspondence, their coach was a dill, the players are dunces, the administration is in tatters and no one cares a fig any more.
Bomber fans have walked away in their thousands and it is only a matter of the last person leaving the club having to turn out the lights.
Some of my Essendon friends stopped attending matches well before last week’s final round and claim they are no longer interested in football.
I often wondered how supporters of traditionally powerful clubs like Carlton and Essendon would handle failure, and now I know.
Several years ago I went to a Carlton-Sydney Swans match at Etihad Stadium and was staggered to see that the red and white in the crowd outnumbered the navy blue two to one.
Then, at the same venue earlier this season, I heard Carlton fans boo their team off the ground at half time. The same rock apes then cheered them off in a game after leading Richmond by a squillion points at half time. Talk about fickle!
However, even Carlton fans are a model of unswerving loyalty and devotion in comparison with their black and red counterparts.
I recently suggested to one of these feckless, faithless Bombers that his problem stemmed from never experiencing hard times.
“Hard times?” he thundered. “What do you think we have gone through over the past few seasons? We have had it really tough.”
My heart bled for this poor, deluded Bomber who rated two poor seasons as doing it hard as an AFL club supporter.
He would not know tough times if they bit him on the bum. Oh how difficult it must be for a supporter of a team which missed the finals four years in a row.
And, horror of horrors, the Bombers even finished 15th in 2006. How could any fan endure such everlasting agony?
My friend had seen his Bombers win four premierships since 1984, but was rabbiting on about “tough times”, even though his side had missed the finals a mere eight times since 1980.
So how would he have coped if he had barracked for the Swans, Fitzroy or Footscray?
I had not seen the Swans win a finals match – against Hawthorn in a qualifying final at the SCG in 1996 – until I was middle-aged.
In fact, the Swans to that stage in my entire lifetime had played just six finals, and lost them all.
I went through 26 consecutive defeats from Round 9, 1992, until the Swans defeated Melbourne at the SCG in Round 12, 1993.
But not once did I give up on the Swans and through all those dark, dreary 26 weeks I convinced myself that we would win the next week, or the week after.
I watched that game against Melbourne on TV and was furious when someone knocked on the front door with a couple of minutes to play.
Not wanting to miss the finish of play, I did not answer the door until the final siren. The door-knockers were neighbours who knew the Swans were about to win and had brought me a bottle of champagne.
Then there was the time the Swans, as South Melbourne, lost 29 in a row over the 1972-73 seasons.
Little wonder old-time Swan fans cried buckets of tears when the red and white won the 2005 premiership after 72 years of misery.
And what about the Roy­boys, especially over their final seasons?
Fitzroy suffered 27 consecutive defeats from Round 11, 1963, to Round 1, 1965. And, just in case you did not notice, this run of defeats included the entire 1964 season. How would Bomber fans cope with that?!
Fitzroy’s last game in Melbourne was against Richmond at the MCG in Round 21, 1996. The Lions had won just one game that season and were hammered by Richmond.
But their supporters were there, singing, crying and wringing their hands in the death throes of their beloved team.
And how would Bomber fans cope with Footscray’s history of one flag (1954) since being admitted to the competition 86 years ago?
The Bulldogs made the finals six times from 1938-51, but lost them all before breaking through for a semi-final win in 1953. How would Bomber fans cope with that sort of run?
But, as my friend suggested, comparisons are odious because Essendon is used to success and therefore fans are entitled to be bitter.
Yes, and that’s their problem. Too arrogant for too long and now that hard times have hit, they don’t know how to handle it except to walk away.
They could learn a lot from Richmond fans who have stuck fat through extremely lean times, with just three finals series since their last flag in 1980. It is called loyalty.

– JIM MAIN