Temperamentally, it’s hard to imagine two more different footballers than Jeremy Cameron and Matt Rowell. Cameron kicked 11 goals on the weekend, and slotted each one with the same leisurely air as when he’s whacking golf balls into the lake on his farm. Rowell had 37 possessions, most of which were earned in a footballing form of hand-to-hand-combat.
Rowell met considerably stiffer opposition than Cameron, whose bag came against a lamentable North Melbourne, a team that is driving its fans to despair. Rowell’s 37 came against a crack midfield, with one of the sport’s best two-way runners in his back pocket all afternoon.
Rowell’s motor often takes half a quarter or so to properly turn over. And Josh Dunkley, who has blanketed him in recent meetings, seemed to have his measure in the early minutes of the Queensland derby. He was doing all the right things – bumping him off balance, blocking him at stoppages and involving himself in possession chains.
But in horseracing parlances, this was run on a Heavy 9 and Rowell is built for those conditions. He’s low slung, incredibly strong through the glutes and legs, and excellent at holding his centre of gravity. Scrimmaging on his hands and knees – one of the more exhausting things you can do on a football field – he’ll shovel out the handball at the fourth or fifth effort. For such a brute of a footballer, he also has fast feet and a recurring sight all afternoon was of him giving Dunkley the slip at stoppages – sometimes with twinkle toes, sometimes just sledgehammering his way out.
It’s impossible to write about Rowell and not mention Noah Anderson. The best friends are polar opposites as footballers. One pursues the ball in an almost demented manner. The other glides and slaloms his way through congestion. Anderson took a while to adapt to Damien Hardwick’s ways. But he has been exceptional this year, and would be a worthy Brownlow medallist and All Australian captain. In a recent profile on the AFL website, three people who coach and work with him compared him to Scott Pendlebury. Words like “calm” and “unfazed” were peppered throughout the article. It’s a shame he and Rowell aren’t playing in front of 80,000 people every other week. But they drew their marbles, went where they were told and have made Gold Coast a serious football team.
There are several things that stand out about the Suns. The first is how much they resemble Hardwick’s great Richmond side just as it was about to pop – the frantic, raus raus football, the determination to attack from half back in great sweeping waves. Like Richmond’s Tigers, and unlike any Suns side in its first dozen years, they don’t drop their bundle after a bad loss.
And there’s finally a bit of mongrel about them, an attitude that GWS had right from the beginning but which the Suns failed to cultivate. A lot of them, including Rowell and ruckman Jarrod Witts, are prepared to do the dirty work, allowing thoroughbreds like Anderson the full expression of his game.
Like Melbourne, they wined and dined all the prominent media figures in February. All the big movers and shakers were there – the president, the CEO, the coach, Anderson, Rowell and a lot of the best players. They were selling their story. They were asking for a fair ride from the media. And underpinning everything was a steely resolve that they weren’t going to roll over for anyone any more.
Yeah yeah, most probably thought, thanks for the dinner but we’ve heard it all before. After all, this is the time of year where the Suns traditionally fall in a heap. In the last seven games of a season, they’ve never won more than three of them. They had a poor recent record against Brisbane, they were towelled up by Adelaide last week and they were without Daniel Rioli and Touk Miller.
But they took on a premiership midfield, a midfield with depth and variety and talent to burn, and they obliterated them. Their 12th win is the most they’ve registered in a season. At the final break, in teeming rain, coach and players were squeezed in tight and grinning broadly. I’ll take a stab and suggest Hardwick was saying something along the lines of “How good is this?” and “we finally belong with the big boys”.
A final word on Rowell and Anderson. There’s a photograph of them with Nick Daicos in the same school team in 2019. Pity the poor VCE students, concerned mainly with their studies, their social lives and playing a bit of footy on a Saturday, who had to try to quell that trio. The poor buggers should get a spot in the motorcade on grand final day.
