Another Friday Night special
Having dragged Friday Night Football out of its 2015 torpor during the course of their upset win over Fremantle a fortnight back, the Tigers are back in the premium timeslot again to take on West Coast at the MCG tonight. Expectations should be higher still for this game because fresh from their bye week, Richmond are on a 4-game winning streak and the Eagles themselves have lost only once in the past month. In form, at home in front of vocal, optimistic supporters and likely to benefit from the Eagles’ lack of tall-defenders, the Tigers are going to be tough to beat.
West Coast really ground out their 50-point win against Essendon last week but what they lacked in aesthetic appeal they more than made up for in exactly the kind of resilience and application that the critics had hoped for during Adam Simpson’s second season in charge. Matt Priddis continues to win the contested ball with unflinching zeal, brutish Jack Darling is back from injury to provide an imposing one-two punch with Josh Kennedy up forward and some of the players who really needed to step up this year – Andrew Gaff, Jamie Cripps and Luke Shuey – have started to do so. That 2010 All-Australian Mark LeCras (how is he still only 28?) is getting back to his defence-slashing best doesn’t hurt either.
Carlton has the faintest whiff of a chance against Port
As strange as it may sound of a club as comically inept as Carlton this year, the 1-win Blues enter this weekend’s meeting against Port Adelaide with a legitimate chance of pulling off an upset. Carlton come off the bye with fresh legs and if they get the jump on Port the same way Melbourne did three weeks back, who knows what could happen? Of the many reasons for circumspection, the loss of Dale Thomas for the rest of the season this week - added to the fate of Robbie Warnock and the forced retirement of Chris Judd - is hardly ideal.
That this now counts as a danger game for Port is a particularly sad state of affairs for a side that sling-shotted itself to within a single kick of a grand final appearance last year. To be blunt they’ve been picked apart, worked over and undone ever since and must either make significant changes to their approach during the bye period and beyond or risk missing out on the finals altogether. That’s not being overly dramatic. The honeymoon is well and truly over.
But how to kick-start the romance? Though they’re still missing Jared Polec and Paddy Ryder from an ideal line-up, Port’s bigger problem is how incapable any of their fringe players have proved at offering something different, something that’s likely to make an opponent second guess itself. They’re not getting battered in key team stats but the vaunted run and carry of Ken Hinkley’s first two years in charge has ground to a halt. Another loss here would be diabolical.
The Giants are walking wounded but North remain capable of farce
Sitting in 5th place now with a home game against flaky North Melbourne probably would have been a dream scenario for the Giants if you’d put it to them in the pre-season, but their Saturday-afternoon fixture is just as likely to be decided by omissions as what happens on-field. GWS ruckman Shane Mumford’s gone for the season while Stephen Coniglio, Phil Davis and Joel Patfull all miss this weekend too. When you tally all of the losses up the Giants’ relatively soft run home feels like a godsend.
After a spirited win over West Coast two weeks back, North really hung tough against Sydney last Saturday but didn’t kick straight enough to pinch it, leaving them in uncomfortably familiar ‘must-win’ territory for this road trip. The positives include the fact that Ben Cunnington and Jack Ziebell – often unfortunate barometers of this side’s limitations – have both thrived in the past fortnight and dominant ruckman Todd Goldstein could absolutely monster the Giants in Mumford’s absence. Still, you find yourself inverting all of the factors going in the Roos’ favour for this game and instead viewing them as cruel, ironic pointers that they’re due to balls it all up. At the very least they’ll want to bring their kicking boots.
Time for the Bulldogs to kick on
No team in football has a better schedule over the next month than the Bulldogs, whose clash against strugglers Brisbane this weekend is followed by games against St Kilda, Carlton and Gold Coast. Win all of those and they’re 9-5 as they head into the closing third of the regular season. Justin Leppitsch’s Lions (that sounds like a ropey magic act, doesn’t it?) have the opposite of that luxury because this road trip is followed by encounters with Adelaide, Fremantle and Sydney. Who wants to be an AFL coach again?
Recent history suggests that this one could be close and the Dogs should be happy to welcome back midfield ace Marcus Bontempelli, who if anything has exceeded the lofty expectations placed on him since his arrival at the Scray. This week I heard a draft expert say that ‘The Bont’ has redefined what clubs will look for in the first round of future drafts, which is unfortunate news for any 17-year-olds who aren’t 192cm tall midfielders boasting elite endurance, sublime foot skills, the ability to win the ball inside and out and superb goal sense.
The Dogs have no excuses if they drop this one.
The Hurt Locker
Finally to Kardinia Park, where for a second consecutive weekend Melbourne fans are faced with the prospect of reliving nightmares past as their side takes on a resurgent and recalibrated Geelong. There’s not much left to say about the Dees’ last-minute brain explosion against St Kilda last week. You just can’t imagine how any side could commit a more shambolic tactical blunder for the rest of the season unless Carlton sack caretaker John Barker and unveil a coaching dream team of Brendan Fevola and Laurence Angwin.
It wasn’t all bad – Jesse Hogan should try to trademark his name in combination with the words “rampaging” and “marauding”, Aiden Riley’s overhead marking was superb and Angus Brayshaw just gets it - but Melbourne didn’t really even deserve to beat the Saints. Watching Geelong dismantle Port Adelaide last Friday night you’d be a raving lunatic to tip against the Cats in Corey Enright’s 300th game.
Enright’s recent form (29 masterful touches last week especially) is instructive because at their best, Geelong is taking that unfaltering service from the old stagers and combining it well with youthful vigour. Josh Caddy and Cameron Guthrie were in blazing form against Port and so too was a refreshed and confident Rhys Stanley before he succumbed to injury. Stanley won’t play this week and also on the casualty list are Jimmy Bartel, Mitch Clark, Mitch Duncan, Nathan Vardy, Daniel Menzel, Hamish McIntosh and Dawson Simpson. Do we underrate how deep Geelong’s list actually is? Injury-hit now themselves, the Demons cling to only meagre hope ahead of this one.
