The opening round of an AFL season is unlike any of the other 22 which follow it, for some obvious reasons.
With six months elapsed since any previous game played for tangible stakes, a week to week routine of preparation and play isn’t yet finely honed or instinctive, and while the mind after that long a layoff should be more than able, the body, by way of conditioning and touch, may not be.
No team knows nearly as much it would like know, or will soon enough, about how its opponent will set up, play or perform. Which can lead to some surprising results. And did again this year, six of the nine winners last weekend the outsiders on betting markets.
Perhaps some of those turn-ups will over the next couple of months in hindsight prove not to have been upsets at all, merely a reflection of the pecking order in 2019. Others, in contrast, might seem even harder to fathom. And there’s a few clubs right now very much hoping it’s the latter in their case.
The historical omens don’t bode well for first-round losers who fall again in round two, particularly in more recent times.
In seven seasons from 2000 until 2006, there were nine teams who lost their first two games of a new football year but recovered strongly enough to reach finals. But in the dozen completed seasons since then, that’s been far from the case.
North Melbourne in 2007, Sydney in 2014 and 2017 and Collingwood last season have been the only teams to end up being part of September among no fewer than 61 which have gone winless in the first two rounds.
That’s an ominous strike rate of just over 6.5 per cent, the clear message that now, more than ever, a decent start is critical, a sobering statistic indeed for Carlton, Collingwood, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, West Coast, Gold Coast, Essendon and North Melbourne approaching the next few days.
It was the manner of several teams’ defeats in round one more than just the loss itself which seemed most significant. And has consequently made the nature of their responses this weekend even more important again.
You certainly wouldn’t put Gold Coast in that bracket. Indeed, the Suns might have been more pleased with their narrow one-point loss to St Kilda last Sunday than were the Saints in victory, given it was a road trip and that Gold Coast had two important players in skipper David Swallow and Ben Ainsworth hobbled by knee injuries early in the piece.
The losses by Carlton, Collingwood and Sydney (away) were at least fathomable. And even Brisbane’s stunning defeat of reigning premier West Coast, whilst superficially the biggest upset of the weekend given it was 15th on last year’s ladder beating first, was far from the most shattering loss.
The Eagles were without six players from their premiership winning team and had to do with a largely makeshift forward line due to injuries to Josh Kennedy, Willie Rioli and Jamie Cripps.
They also happened to come up against, on its own deck, a Brisbane side that already looks a likely big improver this season due to a clutch of ever-evolving youngsters and some deft recruiting from other clubs.
In arguable order, it’s Essendon, Adelaide, North Melbourne and Melbourne whose coaching panels would have had the most sleepless nights so far this week.
As good as Greater Western Sydney might be, the Bombers’ 70-point belting was an inexcusable lapse, especially given their shocking start to last year almost certainly had cost them a finals appearance.
There were structural issues which emerged, but none so stark as the sheer lack of intensity which saw the Dons outgunned for contested ball by the ridiculous figure of 41, the biggest discrepancy of coach John Worsfold’s four-season tenure with the club. All of a sudden, Essendon’s clash on Saturday with expected struggler St Kilda is an absolute “must win”.
Adelaide coach Don Pyke, too, won’t have had much rest since last Saturday. If the Crows were supposed to bounce back from a nightmarish 2018, this was a strange way of showing it, with Hawthorn – even without Brownlow medallist Tom Mitchell – giving their opponent a lesson in efficient ball use.
If Fremantle continues to play with the sort of new-found panache it showed against North Melbourne, the Roos’ 82-point hammering might in retrospect not look the disaster it first appeared. But it was sobering afternoon nonetheless for a team which has backed itself to continue to climb the ladder with a considerable splurge on established players from rival clubs.
The issues emerging from Melbourne’s surprise loss at the MCG to Port Adelaide, meanwhile, might be as much structural as psychological, which could arguably be of even more concern to coach Simon Goodwin.
The Demons are a great “inside” team, having dominated the AFL for contested ball. They’re not nearly so strong on the outside. On Saturday, Port Adelaide racked up nearly 100 more uncontested possessions than its opponent.
The Power, who have concentrated on adding run and speed to their game, made Melbourne look like plodders. It was a lesson which will have been heeded by all upcoming opponents of the beaten preliminary finalist.
And the vanquished? Each of these beaten teams will have had obvious and specific areas of study on the track laid out for them this week. And, most likely, a more general lesson to take on board.
Whether it’s Winston Churchill’s line: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”, perhaps Confucius’s saying: “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail”, or maybe Nelson Mandela’s quote: “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again”, I’d lay short odds on at least a variation of those having done the rounds in a few AFL dressing rooms this week.
*You can read more of Rohan Connolly’s work at FOOTYOLOGY.
