AAMI Stadium, West Lakes, Saturday June 5, 2004

Kevin Bartlett: “What a kick for Brendan Fevola. What a kick for Carlton. He’s booted six big ones today, three in this last quarter ...  just two-and-a-half minutes left ... Brendan Fevola, from an almost impossible angle ... could he kick it Chris?”

Chris McDermott: “Put some pressure on him, the best kick in the club, wrap him up.”

Bartlett: “If anyone can kick it, this man can. Fevola ... stands his ground ... starts to bend it back!

McDermott: “Oooooooooooooooohhh!”

Bartlett: “He’s kicked a goal! Carlton are in front! Fevola’s kicked seven! What a kick! What a goal!”

And what theatre! Fox Footy’s Kevin Bartlett and co-commentator Chris McDermott completed the dramatic call of the dying moments of the Adelaide-Carlton match on the Queen’s Birthday weekend, the 11^th round of the 2004 season.

They had just seen Brendan Fevola bag a lazy seven goals, including the match-winning thread from seemingly three rows back on the boundary from the 50-metre line, in the dying moments of the gripping contest, which ended with Carlton running out 14.7 (91) to 12.15 (87) winners.

On a day in which one W. Carey contributed three goals to the Crows’ final scoreline, Fevola’s outstanding individual display before 41,617 punters not surprisingly earned him three Brownlow votes for his efforts, with Adelaide’s Mark Ricciuto (two) and Carlton’s Scott Camporeale (one) completing the all-Italian trifecta.

The Carlton players had somehow overcome a horrible start to find a way back into the contest, and it seemed that the finale was truly set up for ‘Fev’. Sure enough, with just three minutes on the clock, and Adelaide ahead by just two points, Fevola took a fingertipper on the lead to a gloriously deft Heath Scotland pass by the boundary line at around the 50-metre mark, despite the best efforts of Adelaide’s Nathan Bock.

Though the ball was initially adjudged out of bounds, the officiating boundary umpire was overruled by field umpire Kieran Nichols (God bless him) as Fevola’s mark was rightly deemed a one-grabber rather than a juggler as he fell across the line.

Hugging the fence, Fevola took clinical aim and completed what ‘KB’ later declared was “the best goal he’s ever kicked”.

A number of Carlton staffers who have had to endure the bleakest days of the club’s 21^st-century existence unhesitatingly declare Fevola’s sealer as the most exhilarating on-field moment in five years.

So too Nick Stevens, Fevola’s teammate and a former Port Adelaide player in 127 contests, who is still having trouble living down his part in the final play.

Stevens quite rightly thought he could impart some local knowledge on ‘Fev’ as the man in the No.25 guernsey lined up for that famous set shot at windswept West Lakes.

“I remember going up to him (Fevola) and saying ‘The kick will definitely go right to left’,” Stevens recently recalled. “He then said ‘Don’t worry ‘Stevo’, I’ll make it go left to right’ – and he kicked it left to right.

“The ball went ‘bang’, straight through the middle – and he ran past and said: ‘I told you, mate’. It was one of the funniest things that I’ve had happen on a footy field.”

Stevens stressed that in all his time at Port, never had he seen the ball veer left to right from that pocket. “Even recently, when we were back there kicking balls in a training session, he said to me ‘You’re right – it goes right to left every time’.”

Well, almost every time - and as Stevens conceded: “It just shows, if you’re a good kick, you can make the ball go whatever way you want, and that’s obviously what he did”.

But Fevola is man enough to admit that Stevens is only half-right in his telling of the tale.

“He (Stevens) said ‘Right to left, right to left, trust me, I know the ground’, and I said ‘Righto mate, just watch it’,” Fevola said.

“I kicked the ball left to right, but I probably shouldn’t admit that it came off my shin. It was a floater and it came in, and a ball that swings like that doesn’t come off sweetly. It was heading out of bounds on the full, but luckily it found the middle.

“I remember seeing Matty Lappin and the boys running out of the goalsquare all excited. I also remember looking up to ‘Stevo’ and saying ‘Mate, I don’t know how that went in’.”

The former full-forward also revealed that in a tender moment immediately following the final siren, Denis Pagan actually puckered up.

“It was the first and only time I copped a kiss off the senior coach,” Fevola said.