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If tipping nine out of nine in Round 2 made me think I knew football, Round 3 gave my swollen head an always-useful deflation. There were upsets, head-scratchers, and superstar performances – here are my quick takes from the week.
All the wash-up from AFL Round 3
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Horrendous Hawthorn are about to feel the heat
First they lost to Essendon – fair enough, the Bombers are at least an OK side, and wanted the win pretty badly. Then they lost to Adelaide – okay, fair enough again, the Crows are a very good team.
Now they got minced at Metricon Stadium by the Gold Coast Suns – losing by 86 points! – who themselves just last week were slammed at Spotless by the GWS Giants. They kicked just seven goals for the match.
Some said the Hawks wouldn’t make the top four this year. Others said they wouldn’t make finals. Cam Rose said plenty of both, and hey, he’s looking pretty good at this stage.
But I don’t think anyone expected this. What’s gone rotten at Hawthorn? Has the talent drain from their coaching and management stocks – as struggling clubs everywhere have sought to poach their staff – finally caught up with them? Has the moving on of Sam Mitchell and Jordan Lewis soured their club culture?
Nobody knows at this stage, but we do know one thing for sure. The Hawks have Geelong, West Coast, St Kilda and Melbourne in their next four. The heat is about to get turned up at Waverley Park, and Hawthorn are going to sweat.
Oh and hey, a quick shout out to Gold Coast – during the week I questioned whether they had the heart to respond to last week’s debacle, and that was as good a response as any you will ever see. I tip my hat to them and can’t wait to see what they do next.
Rumours of Ross Lyon’s decline have been at least a little exaggerated
After Fremantle’s 89-point loss to close out Round 2 it was no surprised to see numerous angles sprout up over the weekend about the future of Ross Lyon at the club, and more than a few harsh comments made – such is the way of things in this business!
The Dockers made a strong statement by dropping six players at the selection table, and bringing in two debutants – and then, amazingly, they won.
It’s ironic really that in a night where all eyes were on a South Australian Showdown, the real match of the week was a massive upset in Perth where the Dockers downed the Western Bulldogs.
The net result? Fremantle and Ross Lyon have bought themselves plenty of time for this rebuild to show some results, especially given that they got this one done by playing the kids. The value of having youthful energy in the team is often underestimated. Strap yourselves in.
For the Bulldogs, well, they’ve got plenty of credits in the bank, but you can expect to see them follow suit by making a few changes themselves ahead of next week.
The Crows deserve to be flag favourites
Sydney, GWS and the Western Bulldogs were the standard top three among ladder predictions this year, and generally considered the three sides most likely to win the flag – but in three rounds, Adelaide have overtaken them all.
The Crows pasted the Giants in Round 1, though GWS have been good since then. The Bulldogs have been alright without being great, and have some question marks after losing to Fremantle on Saturday night. Sydney are winless.
Adelaide, on the other hand, are 3-0, top of the ladder, and have done it against arguably the most difficult slate any team has faced so far this year – GWS, Hawthorn, and a revitalised Port Adelaide.
It’s early days. Very early days. But right now, there’s no team going around that’s more impressive than them.
West Coast need to get real
I tipped the West Coast Eagles to win the premiership this year, so I’m probably as disappointed if not more so than most of their fans with their poor performance coughing up a win to the Richmond Tigers on Saturday.
Don’t get me wrong, the Tigers were good and deserve a bit of praise, but much like their game against Collingwood last week, this one should’ve been over by half time if the opposition had kicked a little straighter in front of goal.
It’s not West Coast’s only under-par performance of the season though. Although they got wins against North Melbourne and St Kilda in the first two weeks, with the talent they have, they should have won both games by bigger margins.
It’s hard to identify exactly what the problem is at the moment but it’s clear that they’re not playing with the same intent and physicality they did in 2015, and that’s probably a mindset thing.
They’re 2-1 and can still very much be a top four team and premiership contender this year – but they may need a boot up the backside, and soon, if they’re going to get there.
Murphy makes his Marc in a big Blues win
There was a time when Marc Murphy was a superstar in the top handful of players in the competition, or at least looked like he could be, but for one reason or another he hasn’t been at that same level much in recent years.
However on a wet day at the MCG and against one of Carlton’s most hated rivals, Murphy had 32 touches, ten tackles, and popped through two incredible team-lifting goals (in a match where only 13 were kicked) – a superstar performance if ever there was one.
It was a great win for the Blues, and some reward for effort after putting in strong performances despite their obvious deficiencies in the first two weeks.
For Essendon however, the real tests start now. If emotion was what got them going in the first two weeks, it has surely ended now, and whether or not they can bounce back from this poor performance will tell us a lot about this hard-to-read team.
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Sydney aren’t a top four team
The Swans have a few legitimate reasons for not having gotten on the board so far this season. As it often is, the biggest of them is injuries, with Dane Rampe and Isaac Heeney in particular being major absences.
However, being able to cope with injuries, even big ones, is the mark of a top side, and Sydney’s lack of depth is really hurting them at the moment – they’ve seen some promising signs from the players they’ve brought in, but that’s not what top four teams are built around.
There’s just too many passengers in the side at the moment and the superstars aren’t doing enough heavy lifting to cover for them, as they have sometimes in the past.
If we say 16 wins is roughly the pass mark for a top four team on average, then that means Sydney can only afford to drop three more matches from their remaining nineteen – and that just doesn’t look likely at this stage.
This isn’t the beginning of a major decline by any standard, more like a little speed bump along the way. They’ll be fine in the future and are definitely still in the mix for a spot fifth to eighth – but when it comes to a premiership assault, it appears 2017 is not their year.
Oh and as an aside, if you’ve never watched Sydney lose by one point while hanging out with the animated and vocal Riordan Lee let me tell you, it is a unique life experience.
North must make a tough call on former captain
Ask any North fan and they will tell you that Andrew Swallow is as admirable a servant as the club has had in the modern era, but a large number of them will also admit that his time as a part of the best side is running out.
With the Roos trialling a new mix of young blood through the midfield, and Jack Ziebell and Ben Cunnington in the prime years of their careers, there just isn’t room for him to play the same role he once did.
He has recorded only 25 disposals over the past two weeks and only nine of them have been kicks – he’s just not at the level of performance he needs to be to justify putting him in the side ahead of a developing young midfielder.
Maybe he could revive his career by finding a new role in the team – a shift to the backline like Matthew Boyd perhaps? – but he’s never been especially versatile or multi-dimensional, so it seems unlikely.
Don’t get me wrong, as a North fan I love the bloke, and he deserves and should get some chances to show he can still contribute – but if he doesn’t make them count, the club has to make a hard decision. I’m glad I’m not the person with their finger on the button.
If Max is Gawn, are Melbourne too?
If having six more scoring shots than the opposition and losing by 29 points wasn’t bad enough, for Melbourne fans to see Max Gawn go down with a hamstring injury and not return to the field on Saturday certainly drove the dagger in.
At first the word was that Gawn’s injury was your standard four-week hamstring – not ideal, certainly, given the value he offers to the team, but not a fatal wound for Melbourne’s season either.
However, further scans on Sunday confirmed that the injury was worse than first thought, and Gawn will need surgery. There’s no official timeline yet, but Gawn will likely be out for significantly longer than four weeks.
That’s a real problem for the 2-1 Dees because while Jake Spencer could be an able backup, Gawn gives them an advantage every week that they now won’t have. If he misses two or three months, are they still a finals team? We’re about to find out.