Western Bulldogs fan Roger Le Grand has seen his team rise from wooden spooners to within a hair’s breadth of the grand final – but on Saturday night he couldn’t bear to watch the final minutes in which the Bulldogs pulled off a historic, six point win over the GWS Giants. 

Next week will be the first year the Bulldogs have been in a grand final in 55 years.

Mr Le Grand watched the game with wife Emma, their five-year-old twins Poppy and Fergus and four-year-old Harriet. 

“After 41 years I never thought I would see the day especially after experiencing so much heartache, we’ve been so close before but never been able to get over the line,” he said. 

“I’m relieved that they’re (the kids) not going to experience what we did – I remember at their age we were on the bottom every year, we were wooden spoon after wooden spoon and then we started to have a bit of success but just couldn’t crack that elusive grand final until now.”

The dying minutes of the game were too painful for Mr Le Grand to watch.

“I couldn’t watch the last couple of minutes because I was so nervous, I was fully expecting that the ball would go down the other end and GWS would kick that goal and we would lose by a point or two and that heartache that I’ve lived through in all those other preliminary finals would come back and relive itself.”

Mr Le Grand’s daughter Poppy said the Bulldogs were “the best team in the whole wide world”.

By the time fellow Bulldogs fan Shaun Kelly’s head hit the pillow at midnight on Saturday he had been awake for 23 hours.

The diehard fan left Ballarat at 2am that morning for Sydney’s MCG, where he led a gaggle of 50 fans to the field. 

A Bulldogs grand final had been Mr Kelly’s dream since childhood, he said.

“It's still a bit surreal to think we're going to go through the most exciting week of any football fan's season, having watched so many other supporters and so many other supporters go through it, it will completely change the way I look at grand final week this year.”

Mr Kelly will watch the grand final on Saturday with his Nan, with whom he has watched every game for 20 years.