In any other week – one without another booing saga – David Mundy and Fremantle would have been the biggest story in football.
Fremantle, barely an afterthought with most pre-season pundits, sit second on the ladder after a Mundy-led 19-point win over the Western Bulldogs in Perth on Saturday night gave them their best start to a season since 2015.
Like Napoleon, whose theory of battle was “on s’engage, et puis on voit” (you enter the fray, and then you see what to do) the 32-year-old Mundy, playing in his 300th game, went in with eyes only for the ball, crashing into Mitch Wallis. It was the moment where his otherwise subdued night went from a “riding with his heart” hopefulness to one full of intent and purpose. Moments later Mundy surged through the centre square, ran inside 50 and slammed through a goal that not only lifted his team, most of the 43,700-odd fans at Optus Stadium.
By the end of the night, Mundy would finish with 28 possessions, six clearances and a number of bone-crunching tackles. “I’m glad I got through it and did my bit,” he said in his typically understated style.
Dockers coach Ross Lyon was pleased his team recognised the occasion with a ferocious win. “It’s hard and it’s a grind in AFL footy. But occasionally some special moments bob up, and this is one of them,” said Lyon with the charm of a small-town mayor and in stark contrast to last year’s sole unhappy narrative at Freo.
Grind can be something of a cliché in football, but sometimes clichés are God’s honest truth.
“We really ground it out; we’re not winning pretty at the moment but we’re grinding through games and starting to build a bit of atmosphere around our group,” said Freo’s captain Nat Fyfe.
Although Round 6, which ran for five days, felt anything but a grind.
On Wednesday night, Richmond played Melbourne like a $5 tin piano to just about end any hopes the Dees had of playing in September. The highlight, and perhaps a metaphor of the evening was the moment Tigers cult hero Sydney Stack put on a massive bump that had Jack Viney seeing colours not found in the rainbow.
The following day, before the booing became an issue and an argument in the binary world of social media (one not even the AFL can make disappear with the magic of its PR wand) Collingwood and Essendon played in one of the best games of the season so far. Having had a 33-point lead slashed to less than a kick, Collingwood held against myriad forward forays by the Bombers to win by four points. The drama that followed will only enhance the sense of theatre of next year’s clash.
On Friday, North slumped to 1-5, while the Power consolidated their solid start to the year. “The fight was evident, we were doing a lot of things right, but we just lacked the polish,” said North coach Brad Scott, reminding us that winners grin and losers spin. While this may not be entirely fair to Scott – the Roos did show some fight – the bigger issue is where North Melbourne are at as a club, as it is difficult to see where the exponential growth will come from in the current list.
On Saturday, Greater Western Sydney again demonstrated their incredible midfield depth when Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper helped the Giants ensure they’ll be the sole Sydney threat come September, and Adelaide rescued its slow start to the season with an away win over St Kilda at Marvel Stadium. In what is shaping up as an intriguing season of football, the Saints are now one of seven teams on 4-2, followed by five teams on 3-3. While you could only make a legitimate finals claim for 12 of the 18, you’d be hard pressed to make any such legitimate claim as to the order in which they finish.
Sitting a game clear on top of it all is Geelong, a team that has disappointed many of its critics by refusing to come down from a decade of success in a quick downward swoop, instead becoming the most dreaded of teams: the consistently good one.
And so it was again, in the round’s twilight when they beat the reigning premiers by the best part of 10 goals. This is a Cats outfit that is solid across all lines and does the hard things well. On Sunday they flattened the Eagles, making them look as one-dimensional as a Clive Palmer campaign ad. Gary Rohan continues to impress for his new club, and the born-again Gary Ablett was superb across half-forward, perhaps appreciative that the boos this week came for someone – or something – else.
