A baptism of fire for John Barker’s mini-era at Carlton
“In the desert they don’t remember your name,” said America’s Dewey Bunnell. I must admit to having a similar feeling early this week trying to conjure a list of Carlton’s assistant coaches in my mind as news swirled that Blues coach Mick Malthouse was to be sacked. Cometh the hour, cometh John Barker, the Fitzroy-Brisbane-Hawks forward turned well-travelled coaching assistant who has earned his stripes under some high-profile bosses in Alastair Clarkson, Ross Lyon and his recently-departed comrade Malthouse.
Expectations can’t get any lower among Blues fans but you still have to feel a little sorry for Barker. A few caretakers of his ilk have indeed gone on to win the full-time job – Brett Ratten to name a recent example at Carlton - but not many. The club is telling him he’s good enough, but only for now because publicly-stated plans are already in place to find someone else. And how is Sydney at the SCG for a first assignment? There’s the keys Barks, don’t be alarmed if the engine drops out and the brakes fail.
The Swans have beaten Carlton as a hobby for the last four years and unless the game format is changed to a retro hologram duel where Alex Jesaulenko plays on David Strooper, Greg Williams on Peter Filandia and Anthony Koutoufides on Sanford Wheeler, you can’t imagine that changing tonight.
Bonus: we’ll be covering Barker’s first steps into the brutal world of senior coaching and all of the other action on the Guardian goal-by-goal live blog.
Melbourne could pull off a minor upset in Alice Springs
Like US Late Night shows, Bubble O Bill ice-creams and Dermott Brereton’s hair, Port Adelaide aren’t quite what they were. From the delirious highs of last season’s Preliminary Final nail-biter, the 13th-placed Power now find themselves only a single ladder position above this week’s opponent Melbourne and desperately low on mojo. There’s also nothing to say that they’ll definitely win this Alice Springs match-up as their struggles of recent times honestly place them no better than the Dees.
Last week Melbourne forward Jesse Hogan did everything to destroy the Bulldogs bar uprooting a goal post and spearing it at their cheer squad and how transformed this long-impotent side looks when they move forward with the confidence of knowing he’s on the march. Ditto the confidence of having Tom McDonald taking the opposition’s best forward out of the contest and once Chris Dawes is back full-time, the spin of the side is shaping up well. Melbourne’s yet to put back-to-back wins together this season and have been deemed poison in this game by the bookies, but you couldn’t be entirely surprised if they pull this off either.
Can Adelaide stop Fremantle?
Like a dodgy kebab repeating on them in the middle of the night, Adelaide must have been mildly horrified to be dragged into Mick Malthouse’s messy departure at Carlton when the outgoing coach indicated that Crows forward Eddie Betts’ current contract had been “stitched up 18 months out” from his departure from the Blues and in contravention with AFL trade regulations. Now the morning after, the playing group has to deal with the garlic sauce aftertaste that is a visit from Ross Lyon’s Fremantle.
The Dockers treated North Melbourne with disdain last week, smashing the Roos in the contest and on the scoreboard to register a resounding 12-goal win. Of Fremantle’s 17 goals, 13 came from turnovers as their harried opponents flailed and so many of Nat Fyfe’s 37 possessions felt like devastating right hooks to the chin. How does Adelaide cope with the onslaught? Of their five wins this year, three have been to strugglers Melbourne, St Kilda and Gold Coast and they’re now battling away with an injury list that would make for a particularly eventful episode of RPA.
Adelaide is a decent side, there’s no doubt, but the Dockers are on another level this year.
Will North slip into an abyss in season 2015?
Collingwood’s MCG twilight date with North Melbourne on Sunday is a clear-cut chance for the Pies to put a handy 2-game gap between themselves and a side that should really be better placed as a mid-range finals contender. The bad news for North is that if they lose this, the difficult run of games against West Coast, Sydney and GWS that follows could almost put them out of contention altogether. They can’t argue that they’re better than that, either.
The Pies got a little of their early-season swagger back in a 69-point schooling of Gold Coast last week, absorbing a momentary counter-punch from the Suns and then dominating all facets of the game from end to end. Scott Pendlebury controlled the midfield and kicked three goals as well, Jamie Elliott booted five and even maligned Jesse White managed four in an encouraging showing. Like the Roos, tougher times await Collingwood either side of the bye with games against GWS, Fremantle and Hawthorn. The stakes are high for both sides.
The best and worst of the rest
On paper at least, this Indigenous Round will provide us with fixtures between a number of evenly-matched teams. The Bulldogs were woeful at times last week against Melbourne and have a battle on their hands to avoid dropping four games on the trot, but something close to their optimal effort will push the 4th-placed Giants on Saturday afternoon at the Docklands. If picked, Tom Boyd will face off against his old GWS teammates, though he probably wasn’t there long enough to learn half of their names if we’re honest.
Then attention switches to Dreamtime at the ‘G and the encounter between Richmond and Essendon, battling away in 8th and 9th respectively and in the long-run, both in need of winning games like these if they’re to scrape into the finals. The Tigers have a shocking record in these games and coach Damien Hardwick huffed out of his press conference on Thursday after sustained questions about the future of All-Australian defender Alex Rance. If this was Sixteen Candles, Hardwick would be Jon Cyer’s ‘Ducky’ and Rance Molly Ringwald’s ‘Andie’. Tigers fans will just have to hope that the Brisbane Lions aren’t Blane.
Elsewhere Hawthorn will likely feast upon struggling Gold Coast, the Brisbane Lions and St Kilda are both at such similar junctures of their rebuilds that a dartboard is the best method of predicting an outcome in their Gabba clash and West Coast will for the first time in a long time feel reasonably comfortable about the prospect of hosting Geelong.
