You walk with the crowd through the dark on the footpath from the stadium to Dryandra Street. The procession is very quiet but not silent. Normally, this is one of the most charming game-day traditions. On this night, it's almost funereal.

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A few people are speaking, but you and your group have nothing to say. And you're in good company.

Mercifully, family and friends who'd been messaging you from their homes as the game ratcheted up from wild to "OMG this is insane!" have stopped, respectful, you imagine, of the fact it's one thing to have watched this one on telly and another to have suffered it in person.

On this stretch of footpath, you entertain the obviously insane thought that the bunker will call all 25,000 of you back to the stadium, realising they've got it horribly wrong.

You do a mental audit of who you could blame, but come up short and end up putting it on the football gods, cruelly over-correcting for the Miracle of Mudgee.

Then, in your introspection and despondency, you start to imagine, like a horror film scriptwriter, how it would be possible to come up with a more viscerally painful way to rob a team of victory. You give up. There's no way this could be engineered to hurt more, and so you trudge on.

Canberra wore its heart on its sleeve on a perfect Sunday afternoon. That heart was ripped off, drop-kicked into the right upright, flopping over the crossbar to be trampled on by celebrating Broncos.

Elation at twice - twice! -........

© Canberra Times