It’s lucky all the stuff we write and talk about during a footy season isn’t studied too closely by people who are detached from the game, otherwise we just might be assessed as a bunch of self-absorbed, minutiae-obsessed tragics.
I mean, if a person who knew nothing about football began to innocently inquire of me why there was such a fuss about one free kick in one game last weekend, I suspect I’d have trouble coming up with a completely satisfactory explanation.
Sure, I’d open with the standard defence – delivered somewhat patronisingly – that it wasn’t just about one umpiring decision. Assuming my most learned, barrister-like pose and with a touch of feigned pity for the ignorance of my questioner I would explain that it was about the potential for the sky to fall in were that particular umpiring interpretation to be applied in the year’s biggest game.
With suitable pause for effect and to allow my opening to fully impart itself I would then embellish said hypothetical with the fact that the scores might be locked together late in the last quarter when the fateful moment occurred.
This, I would state, is known as The Grand Final Test.
But what if my questioner replied in all innocence that there are many ways a contentious umpiring interpretation could influence a close grand final? I fear I would be forced to concede that, yes, this probably has happened in the past and, no, it didn’t cause the sky to fall in.
Anyway, you get my drift. This week’s headline will quickly be tomorrow’s fish-and-chips wrapping. Last week it was the dreaded jumper punch, this week the rushed behind. Next week?
I’m tipping it will be the emptiness and loss of direction in the lives of hundreds of thousands caused by the rolling bye. Let’s face it, the bye gives rise to something less than the full quota of games on three weekends and an inconclusive ladder to boot. It needlessly disturbs the equilibrium of too many innocent people.
It’s all a bit crazy, isn’t it? A month ago, after they’d made a flying start to the season, there was a suggestion the Adelaide Crows might go through the season undefeated. Their coach, Don Pyke, was forced to dismiss the tag ‘the Unbeatables’. The following weekend they lost to 15th-placed North Melbourne by 59 points.
The next week they were dumped on their home ground by Melbourne, whereupon the Crows were dismissed as too reliant on Rory Sloane and unlikely to pose a serious threat at the business end of the season. Then they flogged Fremantle by a hundred points.
More recently we’ve had the curious case of the sinking, soaring, then sinking again Sydney Swans. The Blood Brothers lost their first six games of the season and, hardly surprisingly, were assessed as having misplaced their mojo. Then they strung together three wins: against bottom team Brisbane, 14th-placed North Melbourne and the promising but unproven St Kilda. Suddenly the Swans were spoken of as premiership material.
Like really, really serious contenders. That they still had to win ten of their last 13 games to be reasonably sure of just making the finals was mere fiddlesticks. The Swannies would be there alright, and once they were, it was unlikely anyone could stop them – which of course reckoned without 17th-placed Hawthorn last Friday night.
Then there’s that fine Tiger custodian, Alex Rance, who was recently declared the best key defender the game has ever seen. There’s no doubt Rance is exceptional – it’s just that the game has changed, the role of key forwards has changed, and consequently the measure of key defenders has changed too. And who has seen them all to be able to compare?
(Photo: Justine Walker/AFL Media)
But ‘the best of the current crop’ doesn’t quite do it in these days of media super-saturation. Commentators must call early and call often for their voices to be heard above their rivals.
So, what can we cling to with certainty? Statistics, you’d think, would be a good start, for more than ever they are relied upon as revealing the inner truth of what happens in football matches.
Yet last Saturday I saw the game between the Western Bulldogs and St Kilda. The Dogs won it by 40 points and I thought had eight of the best ten players on the ground. Marcus Bontempelli, to me, wasn’t necessarily among that group.
Then I looked at the stats and player rankings, and Bontempelli was placed highest for the Dogs but with five St Kilda players ranked above him. The Saints’ Jack Newnes achieved 40 more points than the Bont. St Kilda accumulated 229 more points than the Dogs. On average that’s ten points more per player.
So what’s the moral of this story? Apart from the fact that we know there are lies, damned lies and statistics, maybe it’s just that we’re in danger of analysing the game to death. The scary thing is that with the bye rounds to come, we’re going to have to analyse harder than ever.
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Now that was a quick change of mind!
