Round 19 stuff

Fremantle vs Carlton
Sydney vs Essendon
Adelaide vs West Coast
Richmond vs GWS
North Melbourne vs Geelong
Gold Coast vs St.Kilda
Melbourne vs Brisbane
Hawthorn vs Western Bulldogs
Collingwood vs Port Adelaide

Easy round to pick winners   

You might have 5/9 if things go your way

This round could be all guess work.

Freo
Swans
Crows
Richmond
Gold Coast
Geelong
Melbourne
Hawks
Port

Fremantle won by 5 points

From The Guardian Australia



AFL: what to look out for in round 19


Swans’ tired legs; coming Crows; Nick Dal Santo, king of free agents; Pies v Port; and the Tigers’ very own law student


Bombers have fresh legs but Swans hard to beat

The statistical trends set in the last 10 encounters between Sydney and Essendon are not pretty reading for the Bombers. To be fair, half of those encounters have been decided by single figure margins, but the Dons have only one once in the past five seasons, in their one-point victory of 2011. They’ve also been thumped a few times and another dose of tough love could be on the way this week as the Swans look to get their familiar winning feeling back.

Going in Essendon’s favour is the toll that Sydney’s magnificent tussle with the Hawks last Saturday night might have taken on game-weary bodies. That’s compounded by the fact that the Bombers themselves had the week off. Still, you always fancy the Swans at home and their potent forward mix has the potential to lay the Bombers defence to waste. A little unfairly, there’ll be a lingering doubt that the Hawks might have Sydney’s number again on the MCG’s expanses come late September but we’ve been there before, haven’t we?

Adelaide are quietly sneaking up on us

At least West Coast coach Adam Simpson has maintained his sense of humour. Though fuming over Tyrone Vickery’s ugly swipe to the face of his ruckman Dean Cox, Simpson says that last weekend he considered ignoring the AFL’s request that coaches abstain from comment on reportable incidents. “I did ask the match committee before I went to [the press conference] that if we all chipped in a couple of grand each, we could go to town – we could go as hard as we want,” joked the Eagles coach.

Unfortunately though it’s his Eagles team that have been the punchline this season as several key players have either trod water or gone backwards. This week they travel to Adelaide to face a Crows outfit boasting three wins in its last four starts and who are now masters of their own finals destiny thanks to a favourable draw in the final weeks of the season. Could Adelaide be a side that actually pick someone off in the first week of September? With the likes of Sloane, Dangerfield and Douglas on the ball and Walker, Jenkins and Betts up forward, they’re a danger side at the very least.

Chris Scott’s free agency attack


This week’s Heritier Lumumba Perpetual Trophy for full and frank disclosure of opinion goes to Geelong coach Chris Scott, who took the opportunity on Tuesday to remind us all of his dim view of the free agency circus that’s rolling back into town. “I don’t think there are many people – maybe apart from some of the players – that like free agency,” claimed the Cats coach in answer to queries about Geelong’s interest in Melbourne veteran James Frawley.

Having been through the fraught process of retaining Harry Taylor, losing Gary Ablett, fighting tooth and nail to keep his football department intact and now being faced with the prospect of waving Steven Motlop farewell, you can hardly blame him I suppose. It’s a matter of self-interest but Geelong also walk the walk when it comes to developing their own players rather than pillaging; Brad Ottens was the only player from their last Premiership side that you could say was poached from elsewhere.

Scott added that the free agency process was distasteful, disrespectful and ran contrary to the AFL’s competitive balance agenda. That’s all well and good as well, but you could also imagine his views softening a little if and when Geelong arrive at their inevitable trough. Everyone’s time comes.

One other point of Scott’s diatribe that begs some scrutiny is his claim that an abolition of free agency would lead to greater loyalty and some kind of ‘good old days’ scenario where all his players joined hands and sang songs about Paul Couch around the campfire. “I think history shows that most really good players, given a choice, would play at one club for their whole career,” said Scott. What he didn’t have a comment on was the 26 Brownlow medals won by multi-club players since 1970.

This Saturday night Geelong face North Melbourne at Etihad. What price a one-point Roos win on the back of an after-the-siren goal from last season’s free agent du jour Nick Dal Santo?

The Pies host Port

In Round 20 of 2011, reigning premiers Collingwood looked to be on the edge of a golden era as they subjected Port Adelaide, still reeling from a week in which coach Matthew Primus had been given the chop, to a 138-point humiliation at Football Park. Just three years on, almost to the day, that venue is dead to the AFL, the Pies finals aspirations are a shambles and it’s Port who have the upper hand in this peculiar rivalry.

Ken Hinkley’s side are not exactly setting the world on fire right now, of course, but a win is both expected and needed if they’re going to afford themselves a double-chance in September. Two weekends back in their last hit-out, they barely did enough to get over the line against the Dees and you’d hope there’s been some soul-searching and plotting going on over their fortnight break. The problem is that so many early-season superstars have been hit by the reality bus. Whatever the magic elixir is, Port need to find it by Sunday afternoon because the Pies boast enough wounded veterans to expose pretenders.

Bonus: this match will be coming to you live via the Guardian goal-by-goal blog.
The best and worst of the rest

The rest of the round is less exciting. Earlier in the week, law student and maligned Tigers ruckman Vickery got on-the-job training in the court of public opinion when his aforementioned slap to the mush of retiring Eagle Cox earned him a four-week holiday and the sustained ire of pitchfork-wielding maniacs. It’s hard to conclude that Vickery’s absence will be a significant blow to the spectacle as the Tigers take on GWS in one of those games that might have you flicking across for a double-shot of Ian Thorpe’s Commonwealth Games punditry.

The Suns desperately need a home win against St Kilda to stay in the finals race and the Saints really need to, ahem, lock in their No1 draft pick. In the knowledge of these two facts, hopefully sanity prevails. Those keeping close track of that draft order will also look to Melbourne’s clash with Brisbane at Etihad on Sunday. Here’s an alarming stat for you: Melbourne haven’t won at the venue since Round 19, 2007. The memory of that particular encounter is surely only pleasant for fans of Jace Bode, Ryan Ferguson and Stephen Tiller. By that, obviously I refer to the parents of Jace Bode, Ryan Ferguson and Stephen Tiller. Brisbane could send a QAFL reserves side and they’ll probably still win.

Hawthorn fans will have no former dual-Premiership superstars to loudly boo this week and might actually struggle to find anything to whinge about (they’ll give it a go, obviously) as their side take on the Bulldogs on Sunday afternoon. The Hawks are not in the habit of losing at Aurora Stadium and though the Brendan McCartney’s side is gathering relative momentum (read: not actually winning many games but showing further glimpses of potential), another honorable loss is probably on the cards.

Franklin out of tonight's match

Bombers coming back midway through third term. 10 points behind the Swans

Swans 20 points in front at 3qtr time.

A win to the Swans by 22 points

Sydney won by 22 points

Just a typical standard Sydney type of game, do enough, shut down the opposition etc etc.

Not a pretty game to watch.

the prowler wrote:Not a pretty game to watch.

yeah i agree but i'd rather watch a Scrappy stop start game of footy than go to work    

West Coast beat Adelaide by 31 points.

Actually, found that very predictable.

Richmond beat GWS by 27 points

Geelong beat North Melbourne by 32 points
Gold Coast defeated St.Kilda by 53 points

Brisbane beat Melbourne by 23 points.

Brisbane kicked the last 6 goals

Hawthorn beat Bulldogs by 62 points

Collingwood beat Port by 6 points.

7/9. Not bad considering it was a tough round.

From The Guardian Australia



AFL: what we learned in round 19

Carlton can get worse; relief for Eagles; Cats have a Premiership shot; why Port Adelaide are Badfinger; Pies fans stay away



The timeless inevitability of the howler

This round provided a salient example of the enduring theory that when your football side is struggling, things actually can get worse. Up to the plate stepped Carlton, who despite putting in a commendable underdog performance for much of their clash with Freo, conspired to lose by five points in another heartbreaker. Such is their tale of woe this year that only a week prior, ruck journeyman Cameron Wood seemed like a kind of saviour. The ex-Pie was more willing and more physical than Robbie Warnock, they thought. He could take a grab too.

On Friday night that brief window of popularity ended, obviously. There is nothing like the closing stages of a tight match to unfairly cement the reputation of a player and though the stakes were low (a win would not have altered Carlton’s 2014 fate a jot) Wood had his own moment of abject calamity, grabbing the ball deep in defence, spinning in a tackle and artlessly punting it straight into the hands of Fremantle livewire Lachie Neale. Neale slotted the resultant set shot to win the game. Of course he did. “Why in Bruce Doull’s name did he not just hit the boundary line?” screamed Blues fans as they fantasised about putting their foot through the TV. The poor bloke.

It’s always stupid to single out one mistake when your side loses. Instead Blues fans should ponder the fact that it was their most leg-weary veterans – Chris Judd, Jarrad Waite and Kade Simpson – who propelled them into a winning position in the first place. Judd played injured for most of the game, too. Tory Menzel aside, it’s been a struggle to find hope this year.

Subplot from the Freo win: has there been a safer bet (and I mean this in a literal sense; Tom Waterhouse is almost certainly framing a market) for an ineligible Brownlow ‘winner’ than Nathan Fyfe this year? The Dockers midfielder put in another three-vote performance on Friday. He shall henceforth be referred to in these pages as ‘Corey’.

West Coast provide the upset of the round

After performances like Saturday’s 31-point road win over finals fancy Adelaide, you scratch your head and wonder how West Coast can have been so shoddy throughout this season. Coach Adam Simpson rightly points to the fact that Matt Priddis aside, the Eagles haven’t gotten a lot of output from their top-tier players in an inconsistent and generally dissatisfying campaign. It’s so much more frustrating for a side to struggle when they possess the weaponry that West Coast have and much of it was on display against the Crows.

To begin with, it’s seemed business as usual as Simpson’s side allowed Adelaide a four-goal buffer in the blink of an eye. But just as quick as they’d gone behind, the Eagles turned it around, making a mockery of the home side’s recent form in a near 10-goal turnaround. Josh Kennedy stood at the apex of a potent forward group, while Andrew Gaff and Luke Shuey for once both played exactly the way their packaging suggests they should. With that, so many other elements fell into place and so with a typically-wonderful Shannon Hurn bomb from 60 metres out on the run, the Eagles at long last gave something back. The relief was palpable.

Could Geelong actually win a Premiership this year?


Firstly, this proposition is not as crazy as it sounds. OK, it kind of is, but humour me a little. After dispatching North Melbourne on Saturday night to bring up one of the more nondescript five-game winning streaks you could wish for, the Cats now sit equal on wins with Sydney and Hawthorn and well on track for a top-four finish, maybe even top-two if things fall into place.

In the final month of the season they face Brisbane and Fremantle at home, Carlton at Etihad and Hawthorn at the MCG in a finals preview. It’s improbable but not impossible that they’ll win all of those games to ensure a top two spot. The AFL ladder is not a perceptual map, remember. On the other hand, North Melbourne reverted to type. Nothing looked worse than Lindsay Thomas’s spectacular and quite epic dive. AFL football, you just surrendered one of your long-held moral high ground points to the round ball code and it’s all Thomas’s fault.

Taking care of business

On the topic of Premiership fancies, the two most likely from the top of the pile both got the job done this weekend as they continue to tune-up for September. In Hawthorn’s 62-point win over the Bulldogs, Jarryd Roughead was at his dominant best with six goals and alongside Jack Gunston (three) he’ll continue to pose headaches for almost any defence in the competition. Of slight concern to Hawks supporters was the sight of Gunston hobbling off the ground with an ankle complaint and he’ll be closely monitored this coming week.

One thing that Hawthorn do have though is depth. Sam Mitchell and Isaac Smith were both late withdrawals, but it’s a luxury to have youngsters of the quality of Taylor Duryea and Will Langford to call on in those situations.

The Swans found the going a little tougher against the Bombers on Friday night but won by 22-points, even with Lance Franklin sitting in the sheds with a knee complaint. The Swans have the struggling Port next week but then face St Kilda, the Bulldogs and Richmond on the run home, so a top-two spot appears a foregone conclusion. Sydney has now even passed the 40,000 member mark for the first time in the club’s history. The harbour city loves a winner.

Port have probably squandered their double-chance and they don’t even deserve it

These are the harsh facts. Last night against Collingwood, Ken Hinkley’s side was at first listless then frustratingly-competent for the short window of time it took to snatch back the lead from a workmanlike Pies outfit, but ultimately a giant let-down in failing to seal the game when their class should have shone through. Port only have themselves to blame. Early on they were tactically outgunned and for all that flirtation and excitement of the first three months of the season, their Premiership aspirations now appear to have been a mirage. Hawthorn and Sydney are the Beatles and the Stones. Port Adelaide are Badfinger.

It’s unfair to single out one player, but Chad Wingard is emblematic of the Port slump. His only major contribution on Sunday was to rather heartlessly shove Tyson Goldsack into a post. With a name and a haircut like his, the Pies defender needs all the help he can get, not a facial reconstruction. Goldsack and his team-mates were stoic all night, worming their way back inside the eight and giving the Pies back their chance of finals action and the fans who showed up should have no complaint with their endeavor. On the latter point, Eddie McGuire did an unintentionally hilarious Dad-dance in his post-game wrap, but you could tell he was secretly seething over the meager crowd number of 32,804. It was the Pies’ lowest home attendance in a decade.

By the way, it was “bring a friend” day for Pies members. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions from the statistics I’ve presented.