Nine weeks in, season 2018 continues to be a real mess. The weekend just gone was a glorious gallimaufry that required you to put on gumboots just to wade through it. The round opened with a dour contest in pouring Adelaide rain and closed with an Indian Ocean summer and top-of the table clash. In between it visited Shanghai while celebrating country football on a day most country clubs, in Victoria at least, lay idle.
On Friday night, Eddie Betts (via Port Lincoln and Kalgoorlie) was the light that cut through the darkness of an otherwise unremarkable contest. In his 100th game for Adelaide, Betts opened the scoring less than two minutes in with a left-foot goal from right on the fifty-metre line on the boundary. It was the first of four goals for Betts on a night where the Bulldogs could only manage 2.14 – their lowest score since 1965 and only a marginal improvement on the club’s worst ever score of 1.8.
The following day, North Melbourne continued its most unlikely of seasons with a seven-goal win over Greater Western Sydney in front of a disappointing crowd at Hobart that surpassed the Giants’ injury list by less than 7,200. Broadcaster Tim Lane suggested the small turnout was a result of the AFL treating Tasmanians as football illiterates: “Tassies have fierce, established loyalties,” tweeted Lane. “The only team they’ll support en masse is Tasmania.”
The concerns that Lane and others such as Martin Flanagan have on the demise of football in their native state appear to be a long way from being addressed, seemingly stuck in an interminable steering group. To quote Lane again, “there’s still no sign of the administration seeking more than wallpaper.”
Of more interest to a league whose strongest values are market-driven is expansion into China… and then Tasmania India. Richmond, Essendon, Greater Western Sydney and Adelaide have all indicated an interest in playing in Mumbai, while the AFL’s general manager for China and India, David Stevenson, said there was been strong interest in the Shanghai from clubs looking to “diversify their revenue”. There may be less interest, however, from the Shanghainese after forgettable game in front of 10,689 at Jiangwan Stadium.
Forgettable was one way to describe Essendon’s performance last week. Another was to label the Bombers a tin-pot fraud. As the late Tom Wolfe wrote in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, “if you label it this, then it can’t be that.” Essendon was all that and more, however, when they demolished a Geelong whose midfield appears to swing between magnificent and mediocre.
The Bombers’ 34-point win – highlighted by four goals from Shaun McKernan and a return to form from Zach Merrett – was the coda to a “country festival” at the MCG that played to just about every rural stereotype in the Country Women’s Association book, with farm animals, a tractor display and a ute muster.
“This really is our opportunity as an industry to say thank you to our regional people, we love you, and you are the backbone of our country,’’ said Kevin Sheedy, whose intentions it must be said are sincere. However, given the AFL’s control on the game is now akin to the Communist Party’s stewardship of China, they could perhaps do more for country football than say thanks, and start redirecting resources to its “backbone” ahead of Bollywood.
That said, there are likely more than a few Blues supporters who’d appreciate being 10,000 kilometres from a team that radiated palpable disappointment in a dismal 109-point loss to Melbourne at the MCG on Sunday. It was Carlton’s biggest loss under coach Brendon Bolton and Melbourne’s largest ever winning margin against the Blues – enough to send Carlton firmly back to the foot of the ladder.
That was of course after Brisbane, who – led by Allansford’s Hugh McCluggage and Colac’s Luke Hodge – were Hawthorn-like with their link, run and precise disposal in a nine-goal win over… Hawthorn, dumping the Hawks outside the top eight. The Demons meanwhile increased their percentage by close to 14 points to storm into third, behind only Richmond and West Coast.
Of those two, it is West Coast who sit atop the ladder after a dominant second-half led to a 43-point win against the reigning premiers. While West Coast’s captain, Shannon Hurn, has banned any talk of a premiership within the club, blowing the Tigers’ doors off to bring up eight straight wins will do nothing to quieten the thousands of Eagles supporters who could be forgiven for being hyperbolic four months out from the last Saturday in September.
Commentators are certainly not holding back in that regard, after Jack Darling led the Eagles with 15 marks and a career-best six goals. “Darling is the best player in the comp right now,” said ex-Docker Paul Hasleby on SEN.
If nothing else, West Coast’s consistency is one of the few constants in a season with a story arch as twisted as the logic that underpins the belief that you can conquer the Bay of Bengal before you can navigate the Bass Strait.
