Five things we learned from the weekend’s AFL action
Roar Guru By David Wiseman, 12 May 2009 David Wiseman is a Roar Guru
- Tagged:
- AFL, Collingwood Magpies, Geelong Cats, Jarryd Roughead, St Kilda Saints
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Farren Ray of St Kilda evades Sharrod Wellingham of Collingwood during the AFL Round 07 match between the Collingwood Magpies and the St Kilda Saints at the Docklands Stadium. Photo Slattery Images
Two undefeated teams, two teams with one win, and twelve teams within one win of each other. It’s turning out to be a strange old season. Geelong and St Kilda now have a three game gap over the rest of the field. Is everyone else playing for third place?
Collingwood were the latest team to feel the wrath of St Kilda.
Before Round 7, Collingwood’s lowest score for the year was 86 points. Against St Kilda, they could only muster 40 points.
St Kilda needn’t have scored a point after half-time and would have still comfortably won. As it was, they only gave their percentage a considerable fourteen-point boost.
Rumours of their death exaggerated
The obituaries of Fremantle and all associated have now been scrapped as the Dockers have won three games in a row.
Hosting a lacklustre Hawthorn this week, they could make it four in a row for the first time since 2006 when they strung nine wins together. Kudos to Fremantle for getting their season back on track when everyone else was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
Over 22 weeks, the season is a rollercoaster ride, and therefore it’s critical that people stay grounded irrespective of whether things are going well or not.
You don’t want to get carried away by success at this stage, nor do you want losses to get you down.
But in this instant gratification world we live in, people expect results all the time. This isn’t realistic.
Not so exaggerated with the Tigers
Richmond have followed their win over North Melbourne with two losses.
To add injury to insult, they’re now without the services of Matthew Richardson for an extended period of time. In the revolving door which is Richmond, Ben Cousins was on hand to make his return to the side. Not only was Richardson Richmond’s best player, but he is their heart and soul, so his loss will be massive for the Tigers.
They need to win at least eleven of their next fifteen games to make it to the finals. Given how unlikely this is, the Punt Road brains trust should be working on their plan of succession.
A well oiled machine
Geelong is like the T-1000 from the Terminator: remove one component and another one simply takes its place.
Gary Ablett Jr may have been missing from the team which systematically dismantled the Swans, so that just meant that Steven Johnson, Joel Corey, Joel Selwood and Jimmy Bartel got more of the football.
There are no discernible weaknesses to this team who are playing some exceptional football. People were excited last year for Geelong-Hawthorn. Geelong-St Kilda can’t come soon enough.
Kicking themselves
Accuracy has been a major issue for some teams this year. North Melbourne made the most of their opportunities, kicking 20.5 to Port’s 18.12. Carlton has lost four games this year, and only in one of them did the opposition have more scoring shots than them.
Brendan Fevola’s 23.17 has hurt Carlton as much as it has helped them. Contrast this with Jarryd Roughead, who has kicked 24.5.
Recommend this story.
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- AFL, Collingwood Magpies, Geelong Cats, Jarryd Roughead, St Kilda Saints
May 13th 2009 @ 1:56pm
Redb said | May 13th 2009 @ 1:56pm | Report comment
Your read that piece as well. With such a massive attendance record the AFL’s attendances can really be sued as barmoet of discreationary spending in the economy. Plus with Collingwood, both WA clubs and the Crows under the pump it was inevitable the crowd average would drop. Although the mix of games so far this year has been different with less Collingwood home games at the MCG,etc. You would need top wait unitl the end of the year to really know. I think 2010 will be much the same.
Club membership is actually higher this year compared to last, it’s the discretionary spenders (non members) who have dropped off, no doubt the recession which is quite embedded it to blame.
Of course for every Ying there is the Yang, Foxtel viewer numbers are at record highs. The article mentioned the Buldogs V Saints game which had a lower than expected attendance at high 30K, well it broke the Foxtel record for an AFL match by about 50,000 viewers to come in as 2nd most watched program of the week.
Redb
May 13th 2009 @ 1:58pm
Redb said | May 13th 2009 @ 1:58pm | Report comment
edit: “Yeah read that piece as well. With such a massive attendance record the AFL’s attendances can really be used as barometer of discretionary spending in the economy.”
May 13th 2009 @ 1:59pm
Pippinu said | May 13th 2009 @ 1:59pm | Report comment
redb
where do you get those Fox ratings from?
May 13th 2009 @ 2:04pm
Lazza said | May 13th 2009 @ 2:04pm | Report comment
I don’t think the AFL has much to worry about just Iike I didn’t think tha A-League was going to break attendace records every year.
I just wish some people would be consistent.
May 13th 2009 @ 2:08pm
Redb said | May 13th 2009 @ 2:08pm | Report comment
http://www.astra.org.au/content/pdf/MediaReleases/ASTRA-Ratings-for-Week-090503.pdf
cheers
Redb
May 13th 2009 @ 2:14pm
Pippinu said | May 13th 2009 @ 2:14pm | Report comment
thanks redb
so that was a Sunday twilight game – that will certainly add some weight to make that a permanent fixturing time when we move to 9 games per week (and it makes sense if the other game is starting at 1pm the same day)
very rare for both St Kilda and the bullies to be involved in such a high rating show, very rare indeed.
I just noticed that of the two league shows that are right up there, both feature the Dragons – are they a regular high rating team? (it makes sense to me that they would be)
May 13th 2009 @ 2:26pm
Redb said | May 13th 2009 @ 2:26pm | Report comment
Pip,
Foxtel still has relatively low penetration in Vic, but particularly SA and WA, so I think your right, Foxtel can see subscriber numbers climbing and crowd unfriendly but TV friendly timeslots like Sunday twlights games very attractive.
There is more than a hint of crowd drop off due to live Foxtel games as well in these numbers, it was around last season but not to the same extent.
Redb
May 13th 2009 @ 4:41pm
MVDave said | May 13th 2009 @ 4:41pm | Report comment
Where is MCs report on AFL crowd’s for 2009?? Is he going to let Caroline Wilson do all the work? Geez after 1/3 of HAL he was already painting doom and gloom! Come on MC we’re all waiting…think it was 8% down overall!
Great to hear the excuses coming out for the drop off
May 13th 2009 @ 5:07pm
Michael C said | May 13th 2009 @ 5:07pm | Report comment
MVDave -
I’ve explained before – the AFL is way too hard a kettle of fish to do really meaningful comparisons on – - in that, in the HAL for example, a regular 21 round season at the same venues (other than MVFC crossover with TD and OP, and Ade Utd playing a game each year last 2 at Ade Oval).
The AFL is all over the shop. Too hard.
But you’re welcome if you care to.
btw 14,000 odd was a crap, crap crowd on Saturday night – - and I was close to not going, completely disenchanted with how North had been playing (i.e. it’s one thing to lose, but, it’s quite another to go down without a whimper). Well, I’m absolutely glad that I made the effort to get there.
Btw – part of the interest re the HAL was to perhaps get a reading, perhaps the first relatively easy to correlate ‘reading’. If the AFL does end up down at seasons end it’ll be interesting to work out what it means. Especially comparing some of the clubs with record memberships vs crowd figures (I know at North, we have a 5 game family ticket which we opted for rather than the 8 up to 11 Home membership…..as explained below)
For now, NOrth Melb actually suffer that we have a crap spread of H&A games. The last 10 years or so, we’ve only had 8 Home games in MElb, with 3 interstate somewhere. Suddenly, we get to pay that bit more for an 11 game card, and most the home matches are in the first half of the season (2nd half we have a heap of interstate trips). It makes it hard for people to go every week!!! (especially when they’re playing so crap…until Saturday….ah what a ripper game it was…………..(drifting dreamily off..)
May 13th 2009 @ 5:14pm
Pippinu said | May 13th 2009 @ 5:14pm | Report comment
Caro is well paid – she can manage it on her own!! (the numbers have been climbing for nigh on a decade – clearly that can’t continue forever)