‘Should this be happening?’ Hall lifts lid on son’s viral celebration
Barry Hall was initially embarrassed when live vision of his nine-year-old son Miller going wild in the stands after a Charlie Curnow goal flashed up on the big screens at the SCG.
It then dawned on the 2005 Swans premiership captain just infectious the now-viral celebration was proving to be.
Ball Hall and his sons watching the Swans beat the Lions. Fox Footy
So he relaxed his hulking shoulders.
“I was like, ‘Ah, should this be happening right now?’” Hall, blushing, recalled on Nine’s Today.
“And then I just saw the joy of everyone around us and how much they embraced it and loved it, and we heard the crowd, and it was like, ‘Go for it, kid – do your thing’.”
‘Big Bad Barry’ looked back on the fanatical celebration alongside his wife Lauren and their four sons, Miller included, from the Today studio on Tuesday.
Curnow booted a goal in the second quarter of Saturday’s qualifying final between Sydney and Brisbane to extend the Swans’ lead to 25 points – and the young tacker erupted.
He whipped off his shirt – it was a Swans guernsey, of course – and waved it around his head.
He spotted himself on one of the big screens, and celebrated that with just as much vigour, screaming his lungs out and beating his chest.
“Well, once I went to one game,” Miller said, explaining the origins of his priceless celebration.
“We won by four points, I think. It was a very close game. And we won, and I didn’t really know what to do, so I just took my shirt off.
“Then the next time I was at a Swans game I was like, ‘It’s my time’, and I took my shirt off.
“In this game when Charlie kicked that goal, it was like, ‘I feel like this is my time’. I waved my shirt as hard as I could, screamed as loud as I can, and there I was on the screen.”
Barry Hall lifts the AFL premiership cup after Sydney’s win against West Coast in the 2005 grand final. Dallas Kilponen
The Swans beat the Lions, and beat them well, thrashing the two-time reigning premiers by 53 points to earn a week off and book their spot in a preliminary final.
That was despite the absence of ‘the Pullman five’ – Isaac Heeney, Nick Blakey, Chad Warner, James Jordon and Riley Bice – who Sydney stood down for the rest of the season for breaching club standards.
The challenge facing the Swans became even greater when captain Callum Mills ruptured the ACL in his right knee late in the first term.
Some have hailed the win as the Swans’ best in history outside their premiership victories.
Sydney will play the winner of Fremantle and Geelong in a preliminary final at the SCG.
