I was not surprised that Adelaide won the premiership in 1997 nor did I shed any tears at St Kilda's demise, let me tell you why. I knew that the Sainters would lose because a Melbourne supporter revealed it to me weeks before that fatal weekend in September.

I was invited to go see St Kilda and Melbourne play by a submarine St Kilda supporter (you know the kind of supporter who only surfaces when their teams winning). Thankfully one of her friends was a fellow Dees supporter so I had someone to commiserate with. Half way through the third quarter we were making the rationalisations Melbourne supporters often make.

"If you take out the first quarter and that bad patch in the second quarter then really we're only two goals down" or the classic "we're not playing badly, we're just not kicking goals". But things suddenly turned ugly, St Kilda kicked a couple of goals from set plays that looked depressingly like training runs and my new mate jumped to his feet and yelled "Ya getting predictable St Kilda".

A couple of easy St Kilda goals later and in the midst of cheering Sainters fans he yelled something that would come back to haunt everyone of them "ya think ya good St Kilda but ya wont win the flag!!". Something happened at that moment, the cosmos shifted, the great unspoken football knowledge revealed itself to him, he was its messenger, its prophet and so it came to pass that St kilda lost the flag.