Biblical scholars generally agree that on the seventh day God created the Essendon Football Club. And so it came to pass that in 2000AD, as humanity braced for the second coming, the mighty Bombers did descend from heaven and banish the Melbourne Demons with righteous fire.

And lo how the people rejoiced; yet away from the dancing and merrymaking the prophet Leigh Matthews was watching the skies, waiting for a sign…

Matthews was the coach of the Brisbane Lions, a relatively new team which derived its strength from the gayness of anyone who barracked for it. Yet while this power source was abundant, Matthews was a cautious man and carefully studied the form of the Lions’ nemesis.

When the two teams met in Round 10 of 2001 Essendon had lost just two of its previous 34 games. Matthews simply told his players this: “If it bleeds, we can kill it.”

Students of cinema and politics will immediately recognise this as the immortal line from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Predator.

Predator is a significant motion picture for a number of reasons. For example while Schwarzenegger had already been out-acted in a number of films, this was the first in which he was out-acted by an invisible alien.

Schwarzenegger plays “Dutch”, a cigar-chomping army special forces officer sent to rescue some people in Guatemala.

The nickname Dutch was of course used to justify Schwarzenegger’s heavy Austrian accent and also as a substitute for the character’s slightly less macho birth name “Alan”.*

On the way to the mission Schwarzenegger teams up with his old army buddy George Dillon, played by Carl Weathers. (I say this only to remind people that Carl Weathers once existed.)

Once deep in the Guatemalan jungle Dutch and his team are gradually plucked off and flayed alive by an invisible alien game hunter. In this sense it is a fairly accurate reflection of life in Central America.

Like most action films of the 1980s and 90s Predator contains many lessons for parliamentary democracy and is essentially a political work.

The pivotal line “If it bleeds, we can kill it” is perhaps the most fundamental law of politics and pretty much sums up Labor’s campaign strategy at the 2007 federal election.

Dutch’s accidental evasion of the Predator by getting covered in mud is also deeply instructive.

Neville Wran once observed: “You get nothing in the Labor Party without getting up to your armpits in blood and shit.” Clearly one must employ the same tactic when dealing with an interstellar serial killer, although obviously the latter process is far more humane.

Predator is also one of the finest examples of the “last man standing” genre, in which everyone who can possibly be killed – without losing the MA15+ rating – is.

To wit, Dutch is the only man in his team to survive. Again, there is an almost uncanny similarity with the NSW Right, which appears intent on wiping out every Labor MP until the only one left is Joe Tripodi. In political terms this is known as “consolidating”.

It is also no coincidence that the film likewise served as an instruction manual for Matthews, who was affectionately referred to in his playing days as “Lethal Leigh’’.

This came about because his signature move as a rover for Hawthorn was to run out on to the field and demolish anything he saw. Objects ranged from Geelong player Neville Bruns to a goalpost he broke in half with his head.

Indeed an argument could reasonably be mounted that nothing makes Leigh Matthews happier than thumping things, were it not for the fact that nothing makes Leigh Matthews happy at all. It is rumoured that even after winning his third Grand Final in a row he still didn’t pat the cat when he got home.

So there is certainly good reason to indicate that Matthews and Dutch have a similar modus operandi. Indeed, a famous photograph shows him in the dressing room after a game literally covered head to toe in mud, predating Schwarzenegger’s effort by a decade. The only difference is that in taking on the Predator Dutch used a machine gun and several explosives whereas Matthews would rely solely on the power of his moustache.

A typical technique would be to spot the Predator at a bar, wait for him to go to the bathroom, and then sit on his stool. If the Predator dared say anything upon his return Matthews would simply show him a video of the 1983 Hawthorn-Essendon Grand Final. Once the Predator saw the moustache in action he would hand himself over to authorities.

Of course in 1984 Hawthorn again reached the Grand Final only to be defeated by the glorious Essendon and then in 1985, in Matthews’ final game, the Bombers did it again. I watched both matches at my grandmother’s house surrounded by cheering relatives and eating a new dish I had invented which involved stirring cheese-flavoured corn chips into vanilla ice cream.

We believed then that Essendon had forged their place as the indisputable gods of the Victorian Football League, the only truly international football competition.

Little did we know we had merely made Leigh mad.

The following year Matthews went on to coach Collingwood and four years later in the 1990 Grand Final Essendon got pounded like a prison hermaphrodite. Then after a decade of rebuilding (notwithstanding an accidental win in 1993) the Bombers had again established themselves as virtually unstoppable, when they came up against the Lions in that fateful Round 10 match of 2001.

The two teams met again in the Grand Final and Brisbane completed the humiliation. Indeed it is testimony to Matthews’ skill as a footballer that he was able to kick 18 grown men in the nuts at the same time.

Now, as the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close, the Bombers remain a broken and dispirited force, just as the Predator was when he was defeated by Danny Glover in Predator 2.

Meanwhile Leigh Matthews’ moustache remains thick, full-bodied and lustrous.

And yet there is hope. We know that in Alien vs Predator the Predator finally won a fight with somebody.

All it required was the unholy coupling of two completely unrelated franchises. The message for the Bombers is clear: They can indeed win again; all they have to do is play the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

*Ill-informed cynics might say here: “Well why didn’t the writers just give him a more masculine name than Alan?” What they fail to remember is that in the 1980s Alan was a very cool name and it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that it started applying only to camp Presbyterian stamp collectors.