The aftermath of the 2013 AFL grand final was something like a wake for travelling Fremantle supporters as they trudged away from the MCG and down Wurundjeri Way towards their hotels – but the enduring image most of them took home was a nightmare montage of all those first-half misses in front of goal.
Put simply, it was not just Hawthorn’s excellence that won the day but also the Dockers’ inability to convert their chances.
The Hawks were by then September veterans, not yet swept up in their own dynasty but a side that clearly knew how to navigate its way around the MCG when 100,000 fans were whooping and hollering and the tackles were coming from every angle. By half-time they were 5.5 (35) to Fremantle’s 1.6 (10), with key Dockers having sprayed shots on goal in every direction except straight over the goal umpire’s hat.
That scoreline didn’t even factor in other missed chances that sailed out on the full. The Dockers bounced back admirably in the second half but they’d effectively kicked themselves out of it by the main break.
For this season’s old hands Sydney, it’s the kind of recurring grand final phenomena that might provide encouragement as they face the Western Bulldogs in this weekend’s decider. Excluding the Swans themselves, here’s some half-time scores posted by losing grand finalists in the last 15 years: 3.8, 1.6, 4.6, 1.8, 7.7, 6.12, 4.3, 4.6, 2.7, 6.7 and 4.7.
Only Collingwood – with 9.3 in the first half of their 2011 loss to Geelong – can claim to have bucked the trend towards the losing team faltering in front of goal when the heat has been on. The rest lost in large part because they failed to capitalise on early periods of momentum and apply scoreboard pressure. So often this is the case for sides unused to grand final pressure on the MCG.
But why can Sydney take heart from this and not the Dogs? Let’s grant the fact that regular season goal-kicking form is not an entirely reliable indicator of how things will pan out at the pointy end and look across both the home and away season and finals, starting with the Bulldogs.
Luke Beveridge’s side has put in the following first halves in September: 6.5 against GWS, 6.10 against Hawthorn and 7.6 against West Coast. Their yips in the Hawthorn game – on the MCG, where they’ve rarely played in the last five years – was what got some of us wondering about the potential they might kick themselves out of premiership contention, should the opportunity arise.
You could argue that this theory quite simply applies to any losing side, of course, but something might be drawn from accuracy rates in home and away games the Bulldogs lost: 4.5 against Hawthorn, 3.4 against North Melbourne, 6.6 against GWS, 1.9 against Geelong, and 4.9 against Fremantle. Two other losses featured better efforts (6.4 and 8.2).
The Dogs’ four-point win over their grand final adversaries in round 15 was of course full of positives, because it showed they could hang tough against top opposition. But it was instructive in another way, and perhaps showed us their small margin for error in beating the Swans on Saturday: the Dogs kicked 5.3 to Sydney’s 6.7 in the first half and ended up winning 13.5 to 11.13.
So Sydney had eight more scoring shots than the winners and kicked poorly. It’s a small sample size but suggests that the Dogs will probably need to nail their first-half chances. Sydney, on the other hand, proved the cliche that bad kicking is bad football.
In a goal-kicking sense, the Swans have generally stepped up when it’s mattered this season, overcoming their shocker against GWS in the qualifying final to beat Adelaide (a game in which they kicked 7.3 in the first quarter and 10.5 by the main break) and Geelong (the Swans were 7.2 at the first break and 11.3 at the half). Both victories were as much about clinical finishing as anything else. The Geelong result was particularly startling; Sydney seemed to capitalise on nearly every chance they had.
And what are grand finals about if not taking chance when they’re up for grabs? Sydney has on its side plenty of calm-headed forwards and sharp-shooting midfielders. Lance Franklin has had one of his better seasons in this regard, kicking 80.53, while Tom Papley (29.14) , Luke Parker (24.18), Gary Rohan (24.16), Ben McGlynn (24.10) and resting ruckman Kurt Tippet (17.7) all get the job done when they find themselves inside 50.
There’s obviously a bit to like for the Bulldogs, too. They’re not grand finalists for nothing. Tory Dickson is superb in front of goal, having kicked 37.17 this year after his remarkable 50.12 season in 2015, though he was uncharacteristically wasteful in both of the Dogs’ first two finals this season and will be one to watch with interest early in the grand final.
Jake Stringer’s (41.22) fortunes will be more reliant on getting the ball than what he does with it, while Marcus Bontempelli (26.17) takes plenty of his chances and Clay Smith (17.11) is proving a big-occasion player, but there would surely be concerns about third forward forward target Tom Boyd (10.10 this year when he’s been comfortable enough to take a shot) and some of the other bit-part players who’ll bob up in front of goal and have to take shots.
In the 2013 decider, Dockers stars Nat Fyfe, Hayden Ballantyne, Stephen Hill, Michael Barlow and Ryan Crowley had at least eights shots between them, and none could manage a single goal as their team went down. Last year it was the normally-sharp Mark LeCras, Jamie Cripps and Jack Darling who missed the kinds of chances that put the Eagles out of contention.
Could it be the Bulldogs are undone by a similar breakdown in one of football’s fundamental skills when the stakes are highest? The Swans will certainly hope so and history tells us that it’s generally the fate of one of the side’s out there.
All season Sydney have battled against a perception that they are “too slow”, but among many fascinating sub-plots in Saturday’s game we might be shown yet again that ice-cold nerves are sometimes a better weapon on grand final day than a pair of spring heels.
