You are a beauty: the glittering emerald in the Australian crown, a globally iconic metropolis.

Let's face it, you are so stunning, so accomplished, you might condescend to dance a few twirls with New York, you'd spend most of your time beating off Buenos Aires and Rome with a stick. And while you might go out with Paris – once or twice if it promised to behave – you are pretty much over London.

But as to Melbourne??? Please.

This weekend, as it happens, in the realms of sport it will be time to show the southern city you are simply out of their League, precious, and playing in a realm of Rules they can only dream about, let alone try to match.

In the two grand finals of the two major codes – oh, do stop snivelling soccer, it is sooooo unsightly – Sydney's teams of Cronulla and the Swans will be going up against Melbourne's finest – the Storm and the Western Bulldogs. (Come to think of it, in rugby league, the former is Melbourne's only league team, while the way Melbourne works, it wouldn't surprise me if they not only had a Northern, Eastern and Western Bulldogs, but perhaps a North-East and North West Bulldogs, too? But I digress . . .)

So let's look at the very rightness of both Sydney teams winning.

As we all know, Cronulla has never won a grand final in their 49-year history, and their victory, after years of wandering in the wilderness, would be a great thing, a real shot in the arm for the code as a whole. Like, if Cronulla can win the League, surely, all things are possible? The Parramatta Eels might get themselves a board! Robbie Farah might send Jason Taylor a Chrissie card! Jarryd Hayne might live the life he so publicly professes to, beyond Sunday mornings! Eddie Hayson might do an honest day's work!

But, the best of all – and this is no small thing – after 100 years of having nothing to boast about bar their beaches, the Shire would actually have something to put on their mantelpiece!

But if the Storm win? Seriously, for the code as a whole, would it not be all but forgotten by Tuesday morning? Another Storm win. Ho hum. What would distinguish it from all the other Storm victories? Would Melbourne itself even blink? Of course the Storm are a fabulous side, boasting two notably extraordinary players in Cam Smith and Cooper Cronk, together with a wonderfully accomplished coach in Craig Bellamy, but . . . beyond that? I guess the 12,000 or so Storm fans who turn up to their games will be thrilled, but I repeat: do you seriously think Melbourne as a whole, the actual tribe, will raise a flicker of interest?

You know they won't. The Storm has been in existence for the better part of 20 years, but how Victorian are they actually? Exactly the same team, flying in and out of Perth, and playing from Subiaco, would be equally successful, and likely attract about the same depleted following.

It is right that Cronulla beats them, more exciting that Cronulla beats them, and a better YARN when Cronulla beats them!

And now compare the Storm with the Sydney Swans, who were artificially transplanted in Sydney from Melbourne, a decade or so before the Storm were equally artificially created in Bleak City.

I write this as one who once derided that transplant, in these very pages, noting the game of Aussie Rules in general as "a cross between an upturned bowl of spaghetti," while the Swans were "an un-natural grafting, that won't work." I was demonstrably wrong on both counts. For I had forgotten, Sydney, your magic powers to relate, to reinvent, to transform, to embrace and invigorate and charm all comers, to pass on some of your magic to make them believe in YOU.

And look at the side now!

The Swans winning really will be a big deal, celebrated by the city as a whole, led by the 50,000 or so who regularly turn up to their games. It will be a triumph for them, for the code, for AFL.

And for you, Sydney.

Ah Sydney, it's all about you!

Twitter: @Peter_Fitz