5 Unforgettable Grand Final Musical Performances

This weekend the newly reformed Hunters & Collectors are going to perform Holy Grail at halftime during the AFL Grand Final. If you're the kind of person who gets a kick (pun intended) out of correlations between sport and music, you'll know that this is pretty fucking awesome.

Hell, even if you don't like the song, you have to appreciate that there's something about the band returning to perform their enduring hit, long used as an unofficial theme for the AFL Grand Final, that's just right.

Sometimes that few minutes of halftime entertainment provided at the biggest sporting events feels utterly perfect, sometimes it's anything but. Here are five examples of unforgettable Grand Final shows.

Billy Idol: NRL Grand Final, 2002

The pre-game entertainment for the 2002 NRL Grand Final was so atrocious that it appears that either the NRL or Billy Idol himself have destroyed every remaining copy of the footage – not everything is on the internet, apparently.

Basically, where this footage cuts out, Billy leaps onto the stage and everything goes to shit. The power has failed, there's no music and poor old Billy Idol is left floundering for around five minutes – though it felt like five hours – before the whole thing is cancelled. Beautiful stuff.

Angry Anderson: AFL Grand Final, 1991

It's hard to say what's best about this incredible moment in time; Angry Anderson's off-key, but ludicrously heartfelt performance, that amazing car they're driving in, shots of Robert de Castella and other athletes looking incredibly awkward as Angry belts through his inspirational song (though it wasn't so much a classic back then as it had just been released the year previous) or the number of times Angry thanks the city of Melbourne, despite looking pretty lonely out in the middle of the pitch.

Hopefully one of these days we can see a faithful recreation of this exact performance; the same futuristic car, de Castella can deliver the same speech and Angry can be the King of Melbourne all over again.

Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band: NFL Super Bowl, 2009

Never have I been so proud to be an American. Okay, I'm not actually an American, but damned if I didn't feel like I should be one after watching Bruce Springsteen tear it up at this momentous event. American Football plus The Boss; it's the kinda shit that'd make Karl Welzein tear up.

There have been innumerable incredible Super Bowl halftime shows – just ask MIA – but there was something spectacular about a good old fashioned American rock'n'roll hero bringing everyone together in the way that only he can. There may have been something in the vicinity of 150 million people watching, but to each and every person in the crowd, and watching on TV all around the world, it felt like The Boss was performing just for us.

Meat Loaf: AFL Grand Final, 2011

I don't want to piss anyone off by putting this here – goodness knows everyone involved with this glorious atrocity has absolutely washed their hands of any involvement – but it simply must not be ignored.

This is perhaps the funniest thing to ever happen at an Australian sporting fixture; funnier than a lady pissing in her seat so as not to miss Darren Lockyer's final Origin speech, even funnier than when Rex Hunt got a tiny little bit angry at a bloke for smoking a cigarette at a game.

GWAR: NFL Super Bowl, 2015

There is a petition circulating at present pestering the National Football League to enlist satirical horror-metal group GWAR as halftime entertainment for the 2015 Super Bowl (2014 has already been stitched up by Bruno Mars). Sure, it isn't going to happen and we all know it, but the petition does bring to light a pretty good point.

Pop music and football just don't go together, yet for some reason there is a continual emphasis on getting the hottest chart toppers to perform at these events. While large sporting events are undoubtedly as mainstream as an event can get, that doesn't mean mainstream music is necessarily the best fit for the occasion.

Give us rock music, credible rock music. Give us something iconic, something that makes us want to tackle a bloke so hard he hopefully won't get up. Something that instills a certain pride in the culture of the game – and goodness knows it can be hard to be proud of the game a lot of the time.

Or, if you're the  NRL, just give us Ricky Martin. We'll be out the back having a kick.