Once at the MCG, it was a case of if Lillee don’t get you, Thommo must. Fifty years later, the modern version is if Curnow don’t get you, McKay must. That is, if Nick Daicos don’t trump them all, which he did, of course. It won’t soothe Carlton hearts at all to dwell on the idea that Daicos this night was young Chris Judd reincarnated.

“What a player, what a player. Geez,” wheezed Collingwood coach Craig McRae. “That late in the game, to be running with that intensity, and then the finish … ” Carlton’s Michael Voss used what was once the highest form of Australian praise, understatement: “Daicos........

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