Friday night’s a good night for football
Remember that 1990s Channel Seven jingle? “Friday night’s a good night for football!” The vocals were Diet Jimmy Barnes, if memory serves correctly. Whoever was singing it was right and tonight finally marks the momentous point of the 2015 season at which the words “football”, “Friday night” and “interminable crud” are no longer synonymous.
Sure there’s one more painful period between Rounds 15 and 17 when Carlton inexplicably have two more Friday night games in three weeks but that aside it’s something close to fixturing bliss as a succession of teams that do not contain any traces of Liam Jones, Dennis Armfield or Geoffrey Edelsten battle it out in the prime TV slot. Tonight it’s ladder-leading Freo at home to a suddenly buoyant Richmond. The Dockers’ evergreen veteran Michael Johnson will bring up his 200th game here as part of a defensive group which has now been labeled “miserly” more often than George Costanza.
Tigers coach Damien Hardwick has magnanimously promised a repeat dose of last week’s Dangerfield-on-Fyfe heavyweight bout in the middle, which either means that Trent Cotchin/Brett Deledio will square off with the midfield sensation (26 contested possessions, 14 clearances and 10 inside-50s? Is he man or machine?) or that Hardwick has walked us all into a cunning trap. A trap in which Fyfe still probably racks up 35 possessions and kicks 2 goals, but a trap nonetheless. The Tigers haven’t lowered their colours out west in the last few years but let’s be honest, Freo should get the job done against a middle-tier side a little lacking in attacking potency.
Bonus: this game will be coming to you live via the Guardian goal-by-goal live blog.
The uninteresting enigmas
Saturday night’s Etihad Stadium encounter between Essendon and Geelong pits against each other two truly enigmatic teams. Uninteresting enigmas, perhaps, but in a game of minor consequences, that and the likelihood of an even contest at least make this match-up interesting. Essendon’s a side that beat reigning Premiers Hawthorn in Round 2 but can’t match it against middle-tier try-ers. Geelong sometimes rekindles its Harlem Globetrotters moments but just as often dons the Washington Generals kit.
All of this is to say that there’s plenty to like about this one as a pairing of oddballs. Jordan Murdoch’s looked a special, game-breaking talent at times this year for the Cats, Darcy Lang another Colac sporting special and Mark Blicavs’ rapid development continues. Pint-sized Orazio Fantasia will make his first Essendon appearance for 2015 but Jobe Watson will miss for the Dons, compounding a wretched club-wide run of injuries this year. For that and a host of other reasons, including a healthy head-to-head record, Geelong will fancy themselves in this game.
Port Adelaide has a game on its hands against the Bulldogs
If there was a stat column for lifted eyebrows, Luke Beveridge’s Bulldogs side would be racking up the stats this season and no time more so than their eight-goal opening-quarter splurge against GWS last weekend. It’s hard to compute sustained periods of brilliance like that with the shaggy mess of a side Brendan McCartney helmed last year and how pleasing that must be to fans. The Dogs’ 45-point winning margin over an increasingly-competent Giants side could well have been wider, too.
This Bulldogs side is obviously bursting with hard-running midfielders who kick goals but also highly effective role players like Tory Dickson, completely anonymous in some senses but a smart, instinctive player capable of kicking bags from nowhere. Good sides need players like him. The Dogs will have their work cut out for them on the road against Port Adelaide, but the inclusion of forwards Jake Stringer and Stewart Crameri certainly won’t hurt. Port’s season continued to slide into quicksand when it found itself 24 points down early against Melbourne last week, but they recovered well from there and follow this encounter with a string of very winnable games to get 2015 back on track.
North Melbourne’s broken record
There comes a time in armchair punditry when you have to throw your arms in the air and admit that you’ve run out of ways to describe the kind of shambolic, harebrained displays that Brad Scott’s North Melbourne have regularly produced for their fans in last five years. As they squandered a 39-point lead and fell to that jaw-dropping 17-point loss against Collingwood last week, North played an entire half of football like it was that sped-up, infuriating last few seconds in a game of Tetris, losing all sense of composure and just thrashing around with everything piling on top of them.
On his way out the door for a four-week sabbatical, Scott labeled the effort “disgusting” and “appalling”, while stand-in coach Darren Crocker promised to follow through on plans to swing the axe. Still, you really have to wonder how much the tough talk sinks in and whether 13th-placed North really have it in them to right the ship in a tough month of fixtures. They couldn’t have run into 2nd-placed West Coast at a worse time, that’s for certain.
The Eagles’ 56-point win over Geelong last week was one of the most misleading scorelines in recent memory with Adam Simpson’s side managing a staggering 40 scoring shots to 14 in a dominant if wasteful showing. If they kick straight at Blundstone Arena, not even North’s stellar record in Tassie will help them.
The Best and worst of the rest
There’s some real dross on offer on the undercard this weekend. Carlton could be coached by Wile E. Coyote and sponsored by ACME at this point and things still couldn’t get much worse against Adelaide in Saturday’s MCG fixture. If the Crows lose that one they should have to walk home. Only a side as bad as the Blues could keep Gold Coast off the foot of the ladder and the fortunes of the Suns’ frat-pack are unlikely to improve against Sydney.
Brisbane will make their inaugural trip out to Spotless Stadium to face the Giants on Sunday and you wouldn’t give the Lions much of a chance the way they’re travelling in recent weeks. St Kilda continue to subtly defy a bleak short-term outlook this season but fresh from a stirring, Nick Riewoldt-led victory against the Lions, might get a reality check against Hawthorn. Belted off the ground in the second half against Port Adelaide last week, Melbourne remain a risk of again achieveing the near-impossible; actually spoiling a public holiday when they take on Collingwood in the Queen’s birthday clash. With scores of 3.10 (28) and 5.9 (39) in the last two corresponding fixtures, the Dees might again send TV viewers straight to the Foxtel IQ menu for those weeks-old episodes of Storage Wars.
