Geelong cheer squad crafts banners ahead of Grand Final

GEELONG’S cheer squad has gathered again to make banners for their AFL team to run through – only this time, it’s for a Grand Final.

About 30 members met earlier today (Wednesday, September 24) in the Deakin Cats Community Centre on the ground floor of GMHBA Stadium to construct the banner for the premiership decider against Brisbane this Saturday, September 24, as well as the banner for the AFLW Cats vs Hawks Round 7 game tomorrow (Thursday, September 25).

Putting the banners together is remarkably similar to how it has been done for the past few decades, and involves long rolls of crepe paper, cut-out letters of crepe paper, two long wooden planks to hold it up, and a huge quantity of masking tape.

It also involves many hands willing to trace and cut out letters, and many sock-clad feet to walk over the masking tape and anchor it securely to the banner.

Cheer squad member Max Accheni said the Geelong Football Club crafted the message each week and then sent it down to the cheer squad, who worked out how best to realise it.

“The crepe paper’s only 1m wide, so we’ve got to make sure we’ve got enough rows.

“We do one side, flip it over, put crepe paper on the other side – other people are cutting the letters while we’re doing this – and when all the letters are finished, we space them out onto the banner, flip it over again, and put the message on the other side.”

He said the process usually took two to three hours each time.

Both the AFL and AFLW banners are almost as wide as the largest space in the Deakin Cats Community Centre, but it is unclear whether the banner size is dictated by the size of the room it is built in, or if it is, by tradition or regulation, a width that is the same size as the Deakin Cats Community Centre space.