Dressed up in the garb of a bank sponsorship, and labelled a 'Challenge' for reasons other than the difficulty of finding 26 blokes to play for Essendon, the NAB Challenge is in truth just a glorified series of practice matches. The abolition of the pre-season cup was one few lamented, but it does mean that in essence the 27 games set to come in the next month are no more than trials, with no trophy or prize money on offer.
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What better time then to delve into the past, and take a look at 10 oddities from VFL/AFL practice matches of yesteryear.
1. Skinner Reserve
Nestled in the mean streets of Braybrook, rustic Skinner Reserve was from the 1950s to the 1990s frequently used as a venue for pre-season scratch matches, both intraclub and interclub. The venue was the anti-modern stadium: simple scoreboard, rotting grandstand and no perks. Name a VFL/AFL star in the period it was in use though, and they will in all likelihood have strode the sacred turf.
2. 4pm Fridays at Carlton
With the lights at Princes Park not up to AFL playing standards; and with the sun of February and March in Melbourne making it unwise to play games in mid-afternoon, 4pm Friday games at Carlton became to the pre-season what 2:10pm Saturday at the MCG was to the home and away campaign. While seating was never an issue at the relatively modern venue, as anyone who ever dared to try to drive to one of these peak hour inner suburban outings will tell you, getting there was another matter altogether.
3. Heading overseas
While the league's post-season exhibition match at The Oval in London proved a popular concept between the 1980s and 2000s, particularly for drunken expats and a raging Alastair Clarkson, pre-season games overseas have been less common – most likely because they didn't quite as readily allow for a post-season footy bender. Nevertheless, there have been a handful of pre-season practice matches played in other countries, most recently Carlton's clash with Fremantle at Centurion Park, South Africa, in 2008. Pre-season cup games have also been taken to South Africa, New Zealand, and even the United Arab Emirates.
4. Obscure trophies
Scenic North Sydney oval is more renowned for a defunct NRL team and obscene domestic cricket totals than any footy action, but in the early 2000s Sydney played a series of matches at the venue, most notably the 2002 match against the Bombers in which the sides played off for the time-honoured Fox Footy Cup to mark the first game broadcast by the game's new 24-hour pay-TV channel. The match was also memorable as Tony Lockett's first in his ill-fated comeback. The Bombers took the spoils (and the cup), and with little archival material, the game was replayed incessantly by Fox Footy for much of the next week.
5. Weather intervening
Home and away fixtures are not easily cancelled. TV carriers pay a pretty penny to show these games – no matter how meaningless – and there is the little matter of four points always on offer. Those issues do not arise in the case of practice matches, as the Brisbane Lions and Geelong discovered on a hail-laden day in March 2010 on which their match at VISY Park was cancelled. That night's NAB Cup sem-final between St Kilda and Fremantle was delayed after the Etihad Stadium roof suffered minor damage, but with a cup at stake, the show went on in front of 5000 or so diehards.
6. Roads less travelled
Possibly the best part of the pre-season circuit was the fact that clubs would often be forced – against their will – to travel to parts of Australia only familiar to locals, and possibly the Leyland Brothers. For many footy fans, only in the context of a practice match would minds turn to Nuriootpa, Burpengary, Coorparoo, Narrandera, Thebarton, Willaston, Renmark and occasionally even Geelong.
7. Representative teams
Until the late 1960s, VFL clubs wold often spend weekends left vacant by interstate football to take games to the bush. In 1960, St Kilda even lost to a combined Murray Football League team. These matches live on in the form of the biannual Indigenous All Stars game, but perhaps most memorable of these matches was the 1994 encounter won by the Aboriginal All Stars over Collingwood in Darwin, less than 12 months after the infamous day at Victoria Park when Nicky Winmar lifted his jumper, and lifted the lid on racism in football.
8. Unlikely farewells
Sometimes the end comes abruptly, and in football there can be no more famous example than that of Wayne Carey at the Kangaroos. The day before Lisa Archer's infamous birthday party, Carey rolled back the years to play a blinder in the Roos' 127-point victory over St Kilda at Moorabbin Oval. Four days after that, he was quitting the club in disgrace.
9. A dying breed of experience
Even practice matches are becoming sanitised, but they are the last games featuring bona fide AFL teams at which you can rock up with a six-pack and possibly not have it confiscated. Sausage sizzles and turnstiles can also still be spotted if you get to the right ground.
10. Word of mouth
Even in this day and age, some of the NAB Challenge matches will not be televised or even streamed. This means for those unable to attend, reports of feats achieved on the fields of Port Lincoln and Moreton Bay next weekend are at risk of being exaggerated. If some North supporter claims to have been in the Eyre Peninsula next Sunday, don't necessarily believe it if they tell you Jarrad Waite is moving like a 21-year-old again.
