The road to the last Saturday in September starts here.
Brisbane 85 Carlton 86.
Carlton are the real deal. Harry McKay kicks the winning goal with a minute left after the Blues had been 46 points behind. A statement victory.
A few early take aways from the season.
Carlton get it done in close games. Of their last six games that were decided by a goal or less, theyâve won them all. An 86-81 victory over Richmond makes it two from two this season. Harry McKay has started the season like a train.
Collingwood are in trouble. A 32 point defeat to GWS followed by a 39 point defeat to Sydney at the MCG in a game they were lucky to not lose by 50 plus. The only consolation is both GWS and Sydney look like being there at the business end.
Carlton, GWS, Sydney the early standouts from the first six games of the season - the way the AFL has managed the fixtures in the first two rounds is bizarre with several teams having played twice already and most teams yet to play at all.
The league badly needs Essendon back competing at the business end. They blew Hawthorn away in the final quarter.
On the evidence so far an all-Sydney Grand Final is a distinct possibility.
Essendon played decent enough at the SCG tonight but were comfortably dismissed 131-101 by a Swans team in second gear.
Collingwood are in big trouble with three straight defeats and they go to Brisbane on Thursday for a Grand Final rematch. Brisbane are also winless from two games so far but youâd expect theyâll plough through the failing champions. Collingwood look done already and I donât expect them to make the finals.
Bar Carlton itâs hard to see a Victorian club challenge for the Premiership this year.
Melbourne will probably make the finals but I donât think theyâre near 2021 levels. St. Kilda are on the up and Geelong are trucking along as they rebuild but neither will be a real contender. Essendon will be a contender in two or three years but not now.
Richmond and the Dogs are past it. Hawthorn and North Melbourne will be plumbing the basement.
Right now this would be my prediction for the top 8:
GWS
Sydney
Carlton
Brisbane
Melbourne
Port Adelaide
Gold Coast
Fremantle
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AFL suffers from some of the same dynamics that blight Gaelic football, chiefly the flood defence. Itâs not uncommon now to see almost every player on the defending team flood back inside their own 50 metre line whereas that never used to happen.
Todayâs Sydney-Essendon game was Game 18 of the season overall.
Sydneyâs 131 points was the highest score by any team in the competition so far and Essendonâs 101 points (they kicked a consolation goal after the siren to reach that number) was the first time this season a team has scored 100 points or over in a losing effort.
I had a quick Google of the glory days of ye olde footy. In the 1993 season, there were 39 games where both teams scored 100 points or over. By 2023 that was down to just 7.
The average number of points per game has gone down over the decades. This chart only goes up to 2018 but you get the general picture. Whatâs interesting is that in Gaelic football, scores seem to have gone up in the era of flood defences, whereas in AFL itâs the opposite.
You donât get players reaching 100 goals a season any more, which used to be a regular occurrence in the 1990s. Buddy Franklin in 2008 was the last to do it. Teams donât have big bustling marquee full forwards who would boot 12 or 14 goals in a game any more, there are no Tony Locketts or Gary Abletts or Wayne Careys in todayâs game. Tactics have changed a lot. The one on one contests are less common and short handballs done at speed are all the rage these days. Pace and ability in a tight situation are the qualities that are most prized.
Personally I think the game has lost a lot from these developments, but a close game that matters is still one of the best sporting spectacles in the world.
But you wonât ever get a game like this ever again. Essendon 171 North Melbourne 159 in 2001 with a 69 point deficit overturned. Footy in those days was big, bad, free scoring and often crazy.
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I chanced upon this last night. Itâs probably the most entertaining sports interview Iâve ever seen.
The guy being interviewed is Mark âJackoâ Jackson, who played for several VFL clubs in the 1980s, and was quickly run out of each of them for being a complete headbanger. Heâs briefly parodied in the Simpsons episode about Australia as he was the face of Energizer batteries in the US and did several ads which apparently are quite well remembered there. He was then ditched in favour of the Energizer bunny.
The interviewer is veteran footy journalist Mike Sheahan.
In the interview Jackson abuses Sheahan for 40 minutes, including wishing he gets cancer, which he clarifies to mean âcancer of the fingerâ, while Sheahan expertly stirs more and more and winds Jackson into utterly frothing levels by the end. To be fair Jackson was already utterly frothing at the start.
âYouâre a pollutant. Youâre a toilet trained AFL jerk media journalist. Youâre a public hair.â
âJackoâ would make an incredible poster here. Heâs like a real life Tossy.
You just donât get content like this here any more, not since Eamon Dunphy retired at any rate.
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Collingwood are back baby!
Brisbane 72 Collingwood 92 FT
Iâd be very surprised if weâre not discussing GWS come GF weekend.
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Grand oulâ arm wrestle between Port Adelaide and Melbourne here. 83-83 with 10 minutes left.
Melbourneâs big boys Petracca, Gawn, Fritsch and Neale-Bullen get the job done. 89-96 FT. The Demons have the quality, but itâs a question of whether they can time their run well in September and whether they can stay off the Coca-Cola.
I was at his last ever game. Header of a man
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Wow. What game was that? Must have been 1986 or so?
It was south fremantle in the WAFL id say 88/89ish. He gave the fingers to the ref, climbed out over the fence and fucked off mid game!
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Himself and Jimmy Sloyan would have been well matched.
He had an acting career jimmy never had. Energizer tv ads.
Carlton GET IT DONE in close games.
Fremantle 63 Carlton 73. Three goals in the last two and a half minutes at the Adelaide Oval turns a 63-55 deficit into a 63-73 win.
The Baggers go 4 and 0 for the first time since 1995, the last time they won the Premiership.
Tremenjus almost live scenes in the second part of todayâs exceedingly attractive double header at the Adelaide Oval as Footscrayâs Ryley Sanders charges maniacally in the wrong direction.
This can happen in the upside down world of Southern Hemisphere. Itâs called the Footy Coriolis Effect and is punishable with a half time booting.
He was my tip for the Rising Star award preseason.
To my knowledge, no previous winner has ever ran the wrong way in a game so itâll be hard to win from here.