This was a vibrant celebration of indigenous Australia, a lesser celebration of the so-called indigenous Australian game.
It is not too far-fetched to say that the some of the best and boldest performers on the night were nearly bare dancers, some from Richmond's Laguntas program, who enacted the pre-game rituals as the temperature plummeted into single figures. It was not so much that the stars barely performed as that they were on a diminished stage. This was only to be expected. The Tigers are still gathering themselves up after a disastrous start to the season, and by coach Damien Hardwick's own post-match admission still have much to do. The Bombers' season was doomed from the start.
Richmond at their most fluent looked a credible finals candidate. Trent Cotchin, Dustin Martin and Brett Deledio in the same midfield would stiffen any team. It is the Tigers' rare pleasure just now. But in something of a Richmond affliction, having stamped their authority on the match, they let the Bombers steal a little bit of it away again with the first two goals of the last quarter. It was never close, nor should it have been.
Essendon's handicap was a handful of players not yet at, or no longer at, the standard. This was hardly news. For the Bombers, this season has become a kind of initiation rite; they have been turned out into the wilds and left to fend for themselves. There are plenty of signs that they will be stronger and better for it when the whole tribe is gathered again. They should and will take heart from playing the match out. It was still a big enough stage for that to be important in the club's memory banks.
Meantime, Pat Ambrose played full-back and Mark Baguley in attack, to see what they might do. If it was any other club, it would be called tanking. A silver lining for the Bombers this season is that they don't have to tank to get what they want out of it. Ambrose was led a merry dance by Jack Riewoldt, but was not daunted. Baguley looked proficient in everything except a forward's minimal obligation, to score occasionally.
If you wanted to be fanciful, you could say that the match took its cue from the war cries performed by troupes of indigenous for each club as they lined up before the first bounce. That is, they advanced in formation, made all the gestures and sounds of threat, then backed off and did it all again. This was because each started with a watchful extra man retreating into defence. It meant, among other things, that only one in every 10 marks in this match was contested.
The Tigers were at their best when they moved quickly, darting through the ranks. At first, they did it too rarely, playing into Essendon's hands. As the match progressed, and the Bombers' threat receded, and Martin came into his irresistable own, they began to run through them like a team still entertaining finals pretensions should.
Essendon showed commendable will to take on the game by playing through the corridor, as urged by coach John Worsfold, but a lesser ability to match actions to intentions. It is fair to say that the number of Essendon kicks that ended up in Richmond hands amounted to an extra player's worth. In fact, a prolific player's worth. The Bombers had to be content with counting other, more subtle blessings. There were forward pocket cameos from Orazio Fantasia and Darcy Parish, and another eye-catching game at half-back from the compelling Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti. Mind you, he has only to run onto the ground to be eye-catching.
But here is Essendon's real blessing in disguise, acknowledged by Worsfold: the fast-forwarding of careers that ordinarily might not even have begun yet.
For Essendon, this remains a time for dreaming. For Richmond, it has been a timely month of waking up. The crowd, just less than 57,000, was like the occasion, grand by any normal measure, a little bit lacking for this feature fixture.
