From the moment Isaac Heeney kicked us into the lead some seven minutes through the last quarter on Friday night, I just wanted to close my eyes, wrap my head in my Record and block my ears. I wanted to get up and walk away, leave and let the others absorb it all and just wait to hear from the wings how it went. I couldn’t bear the not knowing, the fray of hope, the deluge of wishing, the utter discomfort of powerlessness.

I had been at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Thursday and Friday. Had spent days listening to others telling their stories, their own ways, the ways they knew, in the voices they worked so hard to find. I’d been thinking a lot about the overarching theme of the festival—‘refuge’. I’d been wandering between sessions bewildered by why the societies we have created struggle so relentlessly to extend and protect us all equally. I had been thinking about the date—National Sorry Day, Saturday’s 50^th anniversary of the citizenship referendum and 20^th anniversary of the ‘Bringing Them Home’ report into the forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, the 25^th anniversary of the Mabo Native Title decision next week. I’d been thinking of how any one of these moments in time could have been catalysts towards a different kind of refuge for our First Peoples. I’d been thinking about Marngrook and the Sir Doug Nicholls Indigenous Round—what it means, what it could mean, whether it, like these days of writerly bliss, could be more than an annual and temporary refuge.

At the end of a full day on Friday, I found the 333 bus on Elizabeth Street. ‘AFL!’ called the driver. ‘Footy!’ A guy in a Swans jersey ran past me to jump aboard. I followed. We were joined by four or five Hawks. ‘Isn’t there a separate bus for them?’ we joked.

Football supporters are trained in the use of binaries. We are enculturated into ‘us and them’. Oppositions. Some even call them enemies. We are encouraged towards rivalries. It’s good for business. Hawthorn and Sydney have one of the most statistically sound and humanly felt rivalries of the newest century. We’ve shared two grand finals, and sorted them one a piece. And we’ve been swept up by the current between our clubs: Kennedy defied his ancestry and captains us today; McGlynn was theirs then ours; Buddy was theirs now ours; Mitchell was ours, now he’s theirs.

So there was willingness and energy on Friday night, from players and supporters, to write the next chapter. Hawthorn broke a banner of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, Sydney one in Dharawal language and the game tried its way into something special.

There was intent, especially from Hawthorn early. And there were contests, match ups that delighted, old friends flipped into foes. There was the comedy of Tom and the boos, players down in form and downed by injury, the drama of a two man bench. There was some ongoing improvement from youngsters like Newman and Melican (We can’t decide on his nickname: Pelican, Meli-CAN or our initial idea ‘The Swarthe’.) There were opportunities taken and missed, frustration with turnovers and errors and plenty of niggle to go with it. But ultimately, from the stands, until that moment when Heeney put us in front, it felt like a syncopated dance between a not-quite-the-right-fit handball game requiring manically accurate judgement and a structurally brave and now rare set-up of kicks and marks requiring a same-same-but-different precision.

But there was also this character called Lance. And his five pointed star of goals: a perfect arc of ball, bent from the 50 without deviation; a free kick that flew unflaggingly through; a third so clean and sure and surprising in its straightness; four small steps, an obedient line from 55 and a spot inside the top ten kickers of history; a ball dropped free and fetched, kicked without a step, flying higher than both posts, hanging us all in suspense before dropping perfectly between them.

Anything is possible when this man has football in hand.

A lot of football is beyond language; it is sensory and instinctive and cannot always be described. His teammates flocked to him. We responded with the uproar that communicates how we feel about him. He makes us feel anything is possible. And Hawthorn has known him too. He is the pinnacle of this craft.

It occurred to me that many of the things I seek in good writing—careful choice of tools, brave decisions, unusual combinations, an individual style, the right structures to make spaces and characters that allow us to feel the familiar world anew—are not so far removed from what I look for in the game, my team, our players. And the more I think about creative work—art or sport—the more I understand that its success is rarely achieved alone. The only way the joy and power and metaphor of a creative act can be extended is if we, as readers or spectators, are willing to carry the thoughts, feelings and questions that arise beyond the original frame, out into the world.

Indigenous players tell us that their round is a refuge for them, to be recognised for the significant contributions they make to the game at its highest level, to express themselves fully in the sharing of their complex and living cultures in ways that are meaningful to them. And non-Indigenous Australians perhaps have to take care that Indigenous Round does not operate as a refuge for us, insofar as it becomes the conveniently framed box provided for our tick of solidarity. What happens once the final bulbs of the SCG light towers go from dim to dark?

Up in O’Reilly Row U we talked of our role. We talked of the clamour of voices, especially those not asked to speak. We talked of our shared desire to turn ‘us and them’ into ‘us and us’ and even take second place. We talked of the discomfort of not knowing how to join the discussion without interrupting the very self determination that Australia’s First Peoples are entitled to and desire. This is something Marngrook is for, I thought to myself.

I stayed watching in those final minutes; we can’t afford to turn away if we care. Fatigue and a press inside 50 that just couldn’t convert to more score. Clangers and reprieves. A superb goal from the quintessentially classy and durable Burgoyne who never fails to leave Sydney without a souvenir. Even when the clock was almost past ticking, the players kept working into the unknown, bearing the knowledge that neither hope nor wishes would be enough, owning the power to affect the outcome. Skills and decisions buckled or held under pressure and a captain turned a draw into a win. Or a loss, depending which side you’re on. There is always more than one story.

While we in the O’Reilly barked the mantra of ‘Not to them, not to Hawthorn!’ the players approached each other. Roughy went to Lance. Kennedy went to Burgoyne. A few of them went to Mitchell. They know that any one of a game’s moments can switch the places of triumph and heartbreak. Our beloved Goodes and O’Loughlin placed a medal on Franklin and gave a trophy to Burgoyne. Burgoyne and Franklin embraced.

On Sunday, The Sydney Writers’ Festival attributed their ‘Quote of the Day’ to American writer George Saunders: ‘You can abandon the idea that dialogue needs to look like real speech. It should look like poetry.’ Extending that idea, dialogue might even start by looking like footy.