What a week that we have just witnessed! With upsets, down-to-the-wire clashes and superstar-making performances, the season isn’t slowing down any time soon. We won’t talk at length about the success that was AFL Gather Round (Spoiler, it’s our Good section). But, there are a few honourable mentions to talk about. There wasn’t a whole lot of negative things happening in the footy landscape this week, but there was plenty of highlights.
First off, Carlton being completely blitzed by the hometown heroes. Adelaide’s captain, Jordan Dawson, was the star of the show, leading from the front with plenty of touches and 9 tackles. Rory Laird chipped in a rare goal to go with his 37 touches and Darcy Fogarty proved to be a major threat up forward, kicking 5 goals. The Blues, on the other hand, struggled to keep up with Adelaide’s fast-paced and dynamic play style. They were completely exposed by the Crows’ speed and precision, and it was clear that they have some work to do if they don’t want to replicate last year’s late-season fade. The Crows can play finals footy this year, it’s time to believe the hype.
Essendon pulled off a similar upset in what was an incredibly positive performance from the Dons. Can they keep the momentum going? They’ve already made me look foolish after I boasted that they wouldn’t win more than 4 games this year. Aren’t I silly? Maybe that finals curse will finally come to an end.
Elsewhere, Nick Daicos picked up another likely 3 votes with a staggering 42 disposals and Nick Blakey reminded us why he is one of the best running halfbacks in the league, picking up 15 touches in a single quarter, with 6 intercepts alone. And who can forget Tom Papley, what a performance, 6 goals and 25 touches, I could write a whole article on him alone, but I can’t keep rambling on. Let’s get stuck into the review.
The Good
Gather Round A Raging Success
Make no mistake about it, Gather Round was a huge success and it will remain to be for years to come. Was it an original idea? No, of course not. The NRL has been doing it for a few years now to similar success, as has many sporting leagues around the world. But, the unoriginality doesn’t detract from the reported $14 Million that it brought the AFL. That’s right, 14 million smackeroos is what the SA government contributed to the AFL in order to hold the event and they’ve also paid even more to keep the event in SA for the net 3 years. Why would they do that? Well, it generated $84 Million for the State in both tourism and hospitality. A booming financial triumph in every way for both the AFL and the city of Adelaide.
9 sold-out games. 220,000 tickets sold, 60,000 of which went to people who lived outside the state of SA. The festival of footy with games, big screens, zip lines and more, the suburban footy grounds getting to host games as well as an abundance of open training sessions and junior clinics, meaning fans got unprecedented amounts of direct interaction and engagement with their sporting heroes. As I mentioned, it is a tried and tested formula and this sort of event works and it will continue to work, no matter the state/city it is held in. Eventually, they will go to Perth, they will go to NSW, they will go to QLD and even though they probably shouldn’t, for the same reason that the NRL doesn’t have Magic Round in Sydney, they will go to Victoria. But, for now, it is Adelaide’s event to own and it will only get bigger and better.
My theory, Gather Round’s next destination is Tasmania. It is a no-brainer to have the event on the Apple Isle in the year that the Tasmanian team gets introduced to fully debut their new shiny stadium that is in the works. It will be a great way to immediately generate a tonne of funds for the new club, as well as surrounding businesses. On that theory of giving the event to a new expansion side, I also believe that this is the exact reason why they settled on Adelaide in the end. They could have gone with WA, but they didn’t, because they wanted to test the waters and market to see if a potential 3rd Adelaide-based team would work. The AFL will need a 20th team when Tassie gets introduced. Adelaide is that spot. The market has now been tested, Adelaide Oval has proven it can house 2-3 games a weekend, even in testing weather conditions and even more significantly, the suburban ground facilities were successfully able to house both AFL-level training sessions and games. They didn’t need to play games at Norwood, the club rumoured to be preparing a bid for the 20th club license, but they did. They wanted to see if it could work and it did. Expect the city of churches to have a 3rd team introduced not long after the Tasmanian club is announced.
The Bad
Fremantle Continue To Faulter Out Of The Blocks
Freo have a problem on their hands. They have yet to win a first quarter this year. While they may be really good at a last quarter kick back, that will become irrelevant when they play the really strong teams who will just put their foot on the Dockers’ throats instead of relenting. This fact gets even more concerning when you realise that they have only won 3 out of their last 20 first quarter match ups. Oh boy.
Like I said, there is no point being one of the strongest second half teams in the league if you continually miss the kick. Everyone loves a good backmarker, but sometimes all you need in a race is a strong lead and then you can coast to the finish. Which many teams have done to Freo in the past. Longmuir needs to light a fire under the team from the very first bounce instead of waiting for half time to give them a spray, because the current method clearly isn’t working.
Go back 6 months and Fremantle are finally back in the finals picture after many years stuck in mid-table squalor. They manage a rousing comeback upset of the Western Bulldogs in the Elimination Final and then got beaten all around the ground against the Pies. What did these games have in common? They only managed a single point in the first quarter. Worrying signs to say the least and a trend that is only now starting to become painfully obvious that they are losing many games that they should be winning and the old method of a second half comeback has stopped working. Gold Coast is acceptable, they were heavily expected to win this even with the slow start. But teams like Geelong, Melbourne, Collingwood and Sydney will make them pay dearly for it and those are the games that will make or break their chances of finishing in the Top 8 again.
The Ugly
Bulldogs’ Badly Exposed…Again!
Luke Beveridge is quickly going from one of the competition’s most secure coaches, to one with the most pressure, because at this rate, he won’t be seeing out the entirety of that shiny new contract he signed last year.
The boys from Footscray have managed to recover quite well from their less than desirable start to the year and sit 2-3 instead of the 0-5 that looked more likely than not, but the one thing about it all that sticks out like a sore thumb is the coaching decisions. He has spun the magnets a bit throughout the last few weeks and it has seen some strange moves, Sam Darcy playing VFL, Caleb Daniel playing in the forward line and Jack Macrae taking on a new rotation plan that has seen his usual 30+ touch games become almost non-existent. One can respect that, as the same game plan cannot work forever and experimentation needs to be done in order to find the winning formula again. But one thing that has remained the entire time, despite STILL not working is the giant sized forward line, dominated by key forwards all trying to share the 50 metre arc. It didn’t work in Round 1 and it remains that way heading into Round 6. It didn’t even work in the dry conditions they have had in their 4 games to date, so what made Bevo think it was going to work in the wet?
JUH, Naughton and Lobb were left pretty much rudderless in the torential downpour that occurred on Saturday night and they were left with little support when the Port Adelaide crumbers pounced on every ball that came to ground. It’s funny that the only Bulldogs forward that contributed a strong game was Cody Weightman, with 4 goals, a small forward. This is a trend that is clearly going to continue to happen, so, if the Bulldogs are serious about their chances in 2023, Bevo needs to figure out his Forward line and quick, otherwise the Dogs are going to continually be exposed.
What did you think of the week of footy that was? Was I too harsh? Or am I bang? Comment below with your thoughts! I would love to discuss it.