In 1976, the comedian Steve Martin opened a show with the line “I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry. That’s tomorrow night.” Forty-odd years on, the joke has evolved into the AFL fixturing department’s business model.
In a weekend of thrills, tragedy and drama, the Friday night slot was handed over to farce. The nicest thing you could say of the prime time shlockbuster between St Kilda and Carlton was that it was blessed comic relief. But if comedy equals tragedy plus time, the Blues stopped being funny a long while before submitting to the Saints by 64 points. Carlton’s past 12 straight prime time fixtures prior to this week resulted in seven losses exceeding eight goals.
There’s an old saying that “good advertising is the fastest way to kill a bad product.” This is a truth so brutally self-evident that the scalpers were hardly chumming the waters at Etihad Stadium after St Kilda slashed the price of tickets to its home game to $13 – about $13 too much to watch Carlton’s overpaid journeymen and high draft picks pinball between mere competency and pure dreadfulness as if last week’s ten-goal loss to Brisbane had only been a rehearsal.
The Blues now finds themselves in a hole so deep they should consider hiring a Thai Navy SEAL team to replace outgoing head of football, Andrew McKay. Carlton supporters, whose football souls have grown calluses, should be encouraged to take up an interest in Australian politics, so as to have something else to by disillusioned by.
Saturday night, however, was a stark contrast to the one that came before and produced one of the games of the season – a game that was everything the previous one wasn’t, most notably close and consequential. Come evening’s end, Greater Western Sydney jumped back into the top eight with a two-point win over the premiership favourites at Spotless Stadium.
Last year, the Giants and Tigers staged a classic in the corresponding fixture and this game matched it, again begging the question as to why it was overlooked for the coveted Friday night slot. Whereas nothing that happened on Friday night informed what will happen come this September (and likely, next), the game between the Giants and Richmond had any number of relevant threads – most notably, can these Giants, under arguably less pressure than last year, make a run at the pointy end of the season?
The return of Toby Greene, who missed nearly three months with a foot injury, goes part way to suggesting they might. Green was his usual brusque self, kicking two goals, including Greater Western Sydney’s only one in the last quarter. Another promising sign for the Giants was the performance of its highly talented midfield of Stephen Coniglio, Lachie Whitfield, Josh Kelly and Dylan Shiel, as well as younger players such as Tim Taranto and Zac Langdon.
“Tim [Taranto] had a really important third quarter and ploughs in every week, and Langdon has been terrific for us and he delivered on the big stage,” said Giants coach Leon Cameron.
West Coast’s record on the MCG’s big stage prior to Sunday had little to recommend it. Since its loss to Hawthorn in the 2015 Grand Final, it had won just twice in its past eight games, and both of those have a navy-blue asterisk. But on Sunday, they ended Collingwood’s seven-game winning streak with a remarkable 35-point win – remarkable, as the Eagles lost their star big man Nic Naitanui half-way through the second quarter with what appears to be a serious knee injury. Naitanui missed the entire 2017 season with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, and now looks set to miss considerable time with a similar injury to his right knee.
Naitanui’s knee was another, albeit miserable, example of a game that had all the consequence that Friday night’s lacked. While the Eagles have now drawn level on wins with ladder leaders Richmond, as impressive as midfielder Andrew Gaff and defender Jeremy McGovern continue to perform, and as welcome as the return from injury of key forwards Josh Kennedy, Jack Darling and Mark LeCras is, the loss of the Eagles’ ruckman leaves a hole considerably larger than his 201 centimetres.
“He’s such a loving person, and no one ever says a bad word about Nic Nat… he’s resilient, he’ll be okay but it’s a bitter pill to swallow at the moment,” said an emotional Adam Simpson in a post-match interview.
“I’m not really good at this stuff… but I think you’ve got to show your emotion at a football club, and that’s what we’re all about. We’re here to support him and support the players around him.”
Naitanui’s loss is one not only felt by the Eagles, but by all who genuinely love our game. His athleticism, spectacular marking and, er… dunking, make the ruckman one of the best advertisements for the AFL.
He is certainly a better advertisement than a wretched game between 15th and 18th deep into a season where one game separates first from fifth, and just two games sixth through 12th. Surely the AFL can’t wait any longer to introduce a rolling fixture as soon as next season. The joke must end.
