Friday night football
There was a reaffirming level of predictability to the way the Tigers dismantled Hawthorn last week. This isn’t a football side anybody can take lightly anymore, not even the rampaging Hawks. Their road assignment against the Crows tonight is tricky in different respects, though Richmond should still enter it favourites and expect nothing less than four points, having gotten the better of Adelaide in recent years.
Is it possible for a highly-paid former number one draft pick to become underrated? Tiger Brett Deledio could almost have qualified for that honour in the past couple of years and did the bulk of the scoring damage against Hawthorn, one of the most commanding and team-lifting performances of his career given the stakes of the game and opposition he faced.
There’s obvious reasons why we should cut Adelaide a decent amount of slack right now but against the Swans last week they were lacking in both intensity at the contest and also answers for Sydney’s tall forwards. If they let the Tigers midfielders off the chain like they did Dan Hannebery, Luke Parker and Tom Mitchell last week, they’ll struggle again as they cling to finals aspirations.
All aboard the Bulldogs bandwagon
These are heady days for Luke Beveridge’s in-form Bulldogs, firmly ensconced in the eight now and actually pursuing a top-four slot as September approaches. At the beginning of the year you’d have had more chance of selling their supporters a leftover Ryan Griffin badge than the plot of their season so far, but here they are entering a Round 19 game against Port Adelaide as the clear favourite and heading towards the finals with possibilities seemingly limitless.
The Power has travelled at the opposite trajectory of course and now lose midfield bulwark Ollie Wines, whose dislocated shoulder puts him out for the remainder of what’s turned out to be a forgettable year.
Though they started quietly last week, the Dogs piled 18 goals on a hapless Essendon in the space of three quarters of football, ample proof of the destructive and multi-faceted nature of their forward group. Jake Stringer gets most of the plaudits because he’s so explosive, versatile and skillful on both sides of his body, but how to cover him, Stewart Crameri, dead-eyed Tory Dickson and a host of Bulldog midfielders who can also tear you to pieces once the ball’s moved forward? The Dogs will be a nightmare match-up for whoever gets them in week one of the finals. With games against Melbourne, Brisbane and unpredictable North still to go, things might get even better.
Adam Goodes returns
Though both sides have a lot to play for when Geelong host Sydney at Simmonds Stadium on Sunday night, the return of Adam Goodes creates the unique and morbidly fascinating scenario in which the crowd forms a significant part of the interest in this game, if not most of it. The Cats beat Brisbane at home last week and Sydney rediscovered some of their lost mojo in dispatching the Crows, so both have at least hit their straps again.
It’s probably true to say that no stadium in the league is more a ‘home ground’ than regional Geelong, where opposition fans are generally scarce and the stands and terraces fill with vocal Cat supporters. “The whole country is going to be watching us on Saturday night,” said former Cat Cameron Mooney this week. “From a Geelong point of view, we need to show the entire country who we are and what we stand for.” Even at home, a Geelong win here would qualify as an upset, one that will take place in a heightened emotional atmosphere.
The match of the round
Sometimes a draw can feel like a loss, as the cliché goes, but having jeopardized their hold on a top-two position in last week’s stalemate with the Suns, this weekend the West Coast face the tricky proposition of a Hawthorn side that’s already got its customary late-season clanger out of the way. At least the Eagles are on their home track – where the Hawks haven’t faced them in three years - but they don’t have the luxury of being tactically cagey heading towards September because a win in this game will virtually lock them into 2nd place and force the Hawks into a return trip to Perth come finals time.
Both of these sides attack relentlessly and also do well to lock the ball inside their forward fifty, so hopes remain high that we’ll get an even contest, even if it’s not a shoot-out as such. West Coast’s midfield group will have to lift having been beaten by Gold Coast’s second-stringers last weekend and wayward goal-kicking didn’t help either. Dominant throughout their run this year has been rookie midfielder Dom Sheed, who might not win the Rising Star Award this year but certainly looks a bona-fide star. The Hawks only kicked 7.11 last week, a paltry score by their standards. You can’t see them being shut down so effectively two weeks running.
The best and worst of the rest
The rest of the round throws up the usual tonnage of football landfill. Carlton-Collingwood grudge matches always carry with them a default level of anticipation but in the Blockbuster realm, you’d put their Saturday afternoon fixture in the same sphere as the failed video rental chain of the same name, probably parked between the Danny de Vito and Michelle Pfeiffer themed car spaces or wedged behind the cardboard standee for a Kevin James movie.
If it wasn’t scheduled in the dead-air twilight slot, Brisbane and Gold Coast’s ‘Q Clash’ at the Gabba may as well be recorded onto Betamax and North’s encounter with Melbourne might really put the ‘lack’ into lackluster. The Giants have faded in recent times but should easily account for Essendon at home and rounding out proceedings, Fremantle will probably bury the mini-hoodoo that is their recent Etihad Stadium struggles against St Kilda.
Again this week there’s been a lot of focus on the ugliness or otherwise of football right now, the game apparently so overwhelmed by stoppages that it needs some kind of emergency administrative laxative. Yet sifting through the fixture, you find yourself wondering why so little of this debate – laced with a lot of nostalgia and subjectivity as it is – focuses on the sheer volume of football we subject ourselves to and the inevitability that a certain amount of it will be interminable dross.
Was the game more attractive in the early 90s? To the eyes of many of us, probably, but that’s undoubtedly influenced by the fact that we didn’t have even replayed TV access to the really bad stuff; half-decent teams demolishing Fitzroy on a regular basis, those deplorable Sydney and Brisbane sides that got kicked from pillar to post for years on end. When properly executed by the best, the tactical and aesthetic permutations of modern football can be every bit as compelling as watching Lockett and Ablett in their pomp, if not quite as spontaneously joyful. Perhaps it now just pays not to gorge on every item at the buffet for the sake of it.
