But at least their lack of success has not been blamed on a curse put upon the club by an angry priest decades ago, incensed that celebrating players showed too little respect for a funeral procession.

If Doggies fans feel that they have been out in the cold for long enough, then spare a thought for another big club from a code with which Australian Rules football has close links, Gaelic football.

Top county Mayo, a regular contender for title honours, has not won an All Ireland final since 1951, making their champion ship wait, at 65 years, even more frustrating than that of the Bulldogs.

Like the team from the western suburbs Mayo, from the west of Ireland's Connacht province, has the chance to atone this year.  Twenty four hours after the Bulldogs face Sydney at the MCG, Mayo line out at the home of Gaelic football, Dublin's Croke Park, to face perennial powerhouse Dublin in a replay of this year's title decider, the two teams having drawn in their first meeting two weeks earlier.

In some ways Mayo supporters' agony has been even worse than that of the sons of the 'Scray.

While the Dogs have only made one grand final since their last title – in 1961, when they lost to Hawthorn – Mayo have appeared in eight other All Ireland deciders, and lost the lot.

The curse is now one of the most enduring sporting stories in Ireland. Legend has it that in 1951, after securing back-to-back championships with a comfortable win over Meath, the Mayo side were making the most of their celebrations in the back of the coach taking them on the several hours' journey from the Irish capital to their base on the country's west coast.

The story goes that when the team transport passed a funeral procession in the town of Foxford and failed to stop or pay their respects, a local priest placed a curse on the county's footballers, decreeing that Mayo would never again win the All-Ireland championship until all members of that team had died.

Just two of that team, including a doctor, Padraig Carney, who now lives in the US, and defender Paddy Prendergast, survive. No other Mayo players have yet been able to emulate them in claiming a title.

Prendergast, who now lives in Kerry, told the BBC that while he doesn't believe in the curse, he understands why plenty are happy to sheet back Mayo's lack of success to divine intervention.

"The story was that there was a funeral and that the team didn't get off the truck to go to it. It's nonsense," he told the BBC.

"We were in the back of the truck and we didn't even know there was a funeral. How could we know? We couldn't even see out over the sides.

"I thought it was totally ridiculous when I first heard it some years ago. There was talk that some holy woman or a priest had put a curse on us. What priest would do that to us? But when a story like that starts in Ireland, it's hard to stop it.

When reminded about Mayo's litany of failures, he conceded: "It would make you think there's something in the curse.

"After all the defeats, you'd have to think there was something in it."

Some Mayo fans are clinging to the hope that this year things will be different because the championship decider will be staged in October as a result of the drawn game a fortnight earlier when Mayo skipper Cillian O'Connor snatched an equalising point in the seventh minute of stoppage time as Dublin clung on to their narrow lead.

The All Ireland final is alway staged in late September, and so they are hoping fervently that any curse that does apply will be nullified by the fact this match takes place on October 2.

Some fans have, according to reports in Ireland, made pilgrimages to the country's most sacred mountain, Croagh Patrick in Mayo, to pray for an end to the curse.

Four years ago, the then Taoiseach (Prime Mininister) Enda Kenny, a Mayo native and supporter of the team, even announced that he was going to ask the Pope to help break the drought with a blessing from the Vatican to change the team's fortunes.

It was all to no avail though, as Mayo lost the 2012 final to Donegal, as they had lost in 1989 to Cork, in 1996 to Meath (by one point in a replay after a first final draw), to Kerry in 1997, 2004 and 2006, and to Dublin in 2013.

Looking at that record of disappointment, whichever set of fans is despairing on Saturday night might consider themselves rather fortunate.