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Some semblance of reality returned to the AFL this weekend. Most of the market fancies won the day, and one of the game’s best reminded us of his potential for outright desolation.
I’m talking, of course, about Geelong’s Patrick Dangerfield, who scorched the Kardinia Park turf on Friday night as he once more became the avatar for his team.
Dangerfield’s on-field heroism had verged on mundane at times this season, his lofty possession totals lacking the drive and aggression of last year’s record-breaking Brownlow medal-winning exploits.
Not so on Friday night. Dangerfield exploded for 36 disposals, 20 contested possessions, ten clearances (five from the middle), 553 metres gained, 12 tackles, eight score involvements and four goals off his own boot. Read that line twice over and it still makes your head spin.
(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
He has been putting up similar numbers throughout the year: Dangerfield has had two games of nine tackles or more, two games of 35 disposals or more, two games with ten clearances or more, and three games with 20 contested possessions or more. But for the most part, they have been in separate outings. Friday night was the first time this year it all came together in a single 120 minutes of influence and dominance.
Dangerfield’s night started early, with a monstrous first quarter that netted 12 disposals and two of his four majors, including an absolutely mad effort on his opposite foot from the left forward pocket. He had 23 in the first half, as the Cats opened up a 26 point lead.
This is a goal kicked by a right footer #AFLCatsDogs pic.twitter.com/IbRhs2vrnQ
— Ryan Buckland (@RyanBuckland7) May 19, 2017
Throughout the evening, Dangerfield took just one mark, suggesting he did most of his work gathering loose and hard balls across the ground. He slowed down as the game went on, but it mattered little; his team started whiffing the nuclear emissions Dangerfield was emitting.
Early on, as Dangerfield dropped bombs with every touch, the Western Bulldogs were able to resist. In spite of Dangerfield’s dominance, the Dogs were ahead by nine points and looked by far the more damaging side when the ball got to the outside. Their seven scoring shots came on 16 inside 50s – long kicks and daring run on the switch powering an attack that looked set to condemn the Cats to another long night.
It was not to be, Geelong’s midfield halting any transition from inside to out by the Dogs unit – literally stopping them from scoring in the second quarter.
Their pressure at the ball was in stark contrast to weeks past, their desire to plant Mitch Wallis, Marcus Bontempelli, Luke Dahlhaus and their 19 other friends into the Kardinia Park turf evident from the second quarter onwards.
Plenty was made of Geelong’s low tackle count from the past four weeks – there were at least 12 mentions of it by Channel Seven’s overzealous commentary team in the first two minutes of the game – a counting stat the Cats corrected with gusto. They laid 2.68 tackles per minute of the Dogs’ possession, literally four times the rate of last week’s disaster against Essendon.
Their willingness to work hard on the inside turned the game into a stoppage-based slog, with 103 hit-outs recorded in the game.
The Dogs took just 51 uncontested marks, 26 below their season-long per game tally and by far their lowest amount in a single game for the year. The Cats barely stopped play on the outside either, taking just 56 themselves.
It’s the kind of game one would have expected the Dogs to thrive in; the ball in tight, small pockets of space to work, the handball mightier than the kick. Geelong’s single-minded pressure cut off their angles of attack and blunted their midfield’s influence. This has been a pattern of behaviour for Footscray this year.
The only Dog to get off the short leash was Wallis, who gathered 20 contested possessions, laid six tackles and generated 12 clearances in his return from a healed broken leg. He notionally took Tom Liberatore’s place in the Dogs’ lineup and played his role better than Liberatore has in the year to date.
If he can work his way into some form at VFL level in the weeks leading into the bye and return at something close to his 2016 form, the Dogs will be a long way down the path of solving their inside midfield challenges.
(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
One team that would welcome the luxury of dropping notionally best 22 players for middling form is the GWS Giants. The Giants got out of jail for the second week in a row and now find themselves 7-2 and in second on the ladder. This was always a likely outcome of course, but the process has been anything but expected.
Saturday afternoon was perhaps the worst game the Giants have played as a collective since last year’s first Sydney Derby. Richmond strode out to a five-goal lead in the first quarter and didn’t do a lot wrong except kicking a tonne of behinds from there on out.
It once again came down to the final few minutes for Richmond. The familiar outcome must feel like a recurring root canal on a particularly feisty tooth for Richmond fans.
If there is any comfort in another agonising loss for the Tigers, it’s that they did almost everything right in the dying stages this time around – Phil Davis’ expert spike creating a chaos that turned a manageable high ball into a 50-50 opportunity that the Giants took.
The Giants nabbed victory from Richmond’s defeatable jaws.
Think about this for a moment. The Giants injury list (below) reads like the top half of a fringe top eight side. So far this year, the Giants have made at least one change to their lineup a week, and have handed debuts to four players (including a 2016 draftee and two rookies).
They’ve turned to Matt de Boer and Tendai Mzungu, who were the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency top ups of last off-season.
| Player | Injury | Return |
| Brett Deledio | Calf | TBC |
| Jeremy Finlayson | Groin | 2-3 weeks |
| Tendai Mzungu | Hamstring | 4-6 weeks |
| Jacob Hopper | Finger | 5 weeks |
| Ryan Griffen | Ankle | 5-7 weeks |
| Will Setterfield | Ankle | 5-7 weeks |
| Devon Smith | Knee | 6 weeks |
| Nick Haynes | Hamstring | 8 weeks |
| Stephen Coniglio | Ankle | 10 weeks |
| Matt Buntine | Knee | Season |
| Adam Kennedy | Knee | Season |
Critically, the Giants have got two of a possible 18 games out of Stephen Coniglio and Lachie Whitfield. The duo are very handy players, but more importantly are critical structural pieces whose unavailability force coach Leon Cameron and company to shuffle the deck chairs all over the field.
Whitfield is back now, but Coniglio will likely miss all but the last month of the home-and-away season.
(AAP Image/David Moir)
GWS lost Devon Smith, another important structural piece, to a medium-term knee injury during the week. They have lost their two best mid-sized defenders for long periods; Matt Buntine for the season, and Nick Haynes for another two months at least.
Brett Deledio is yet to play a game, and fellow depth midfielders Ryan Griffen and Jacob Hopper are out for another six weeks or more. You get the picture.
Between May and October last year, the Giants evolved from looming threat to clear and present danger to the rest of the competition. The AFL made a big deal about a planned paring back of their list concessions. Their recruitment zone has been trimmed. They received a humungous handicap from the league’s fixture department.
And now, their injury list has swollen like a hot air balloon.
The Giants are 7-2. It’s remarkable. Every conceivable roadblock has been erected, and Cameron and his crew have charged straight through them.
They confront another this weekend, with a road trip out west to face the mortal West Coast. The Eagles were trounced by Essendon yesterday in what was easily the most surprising result from the weekend – if not in direction then most certainly in magnitude.
West Coast’s loss was not as substantial as a ten-goal margin to a fringe finalist conveys. It was worse. While the inside 50 count was even, the Dons had an extra 120 disposals and a remarkable 140 marks across the field. They scored on 30 of their 49 forward 50 forays, and battered the Eagles by 31 on the contested possession count.
The Eagles may as well have not shown up; their past two trips to Melbourne have left even the most ardent football analyst questioning whether there is something about the Eagles and a trip to the world’s most liveable city.
Too many of West Coast’s lesser lights were kept out of the play by Essendon’s relentless pressure on the prime movers and ability to hold possession of the ball when they won it.
Like the Giants, West Coast find themselves well ahead of the ledger in spite of what logic and reason might dictate. The Eagles have a rollicking home ground advantage, and in their current form will be leaning on it heavily for the rest of the year – starting this week.
GWS’ trip out west to face the Eagles is one of five games in which the current top ten face off in the weekend coming.
@RyanBuckland7 Furthermore, Round 10 has the Top 10 all playing each other! #menfromboys #wheatfromchaff
— D ▵▿ I D (@dav1dmartin) May 21, 2017
The AFL ladder looks a little confused after nine rounds; Port Adelaide sitting in sixth despite a percentage of 150.8 (albeit with a game in hand on the competition), Fremantle in fifth, and the on again, off again Dees all the way down in 11th.
Sydney are rising, the head of a pack of 3-6 teams that, given the tumult above them, still hold some hopes of Steven Bradbury-ing their way into September.
Who needs a wildcard round when the AFL is delivering one every week?
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