Only six games on the slate, yet Round 11 will prove to be a most revealing weekend of football. Many theories were confirmed, and most of the weekend’s winners will take more than four points from their performance.
The bye rounds suck in many ways – most of all because it’s hard to get a complete read on where the order of things sits and changes by the week. But where they are kind of awesome is that no games overlap.
It is possible to binge on an entire round of football, getting swept up in the weekend narratives and tying them together in a net bow on a Sunday evening.
This weekend, the theme is clear: every game had a season-shaping outcome attached to it.
Thursday night saw Hawthorn join the list of cross off teams. Those aren’t my words – Alastair Clarkson said his club’s 2017 campaign is finished. It is the natural conclusion following a sordid and frankly bizarre fall from grace.
Hawthorn’s three-point first half – the lowest-scoring first half in club history – against the Power was a full stop. A new paragraph begins with a plethora of questions to answer. They begin with the six steps to AFL tanking perfection. Clarkson nailed step one: “I’m really confident these boys will be able to do it,” Clarkson said in his post-match press conference.
“When that is, it might take a little bit of time. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be this year. But we’re not going to give up on the year. And everything we do, whether it’s this year or next year, is all geared towards helping us win silverware again.”
Look, it’s not an outright admission that the tank is on, but it’s as close as an AFL coach can fly to the sun without catching on fire. And being slapped with a big fine.
That was something of a footnote on the weekend. Port Adelaide were always going to win this game – it was a matter of margin. Indeed, the 51-point gap between the Power and Hawks was incredibly flattering to the away side: four of Hawthorn’s seven goals came directly from free kicks or 50-metre penalties in the second half. The Power took their foot off Hawthorn’s throat as the game progressed, although did no harm to their league-leading percentage in the process.
(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Geelong made sure of that. The Cats find themselves in the top four at the halfway mark of their season, despite a patchy start which threatened to snowball into calamity after a three-game losing streak heading into Round 9. If a week is a long time in football, then three is an eternity.
Adelaide travelled to Kardinia Park with arguably their best chance of breaking a run of losses in at least half a decade. The Crows’ efficient outside game offered a strong contrast to Geelong’s more laborious, structured stylings. It’s not quite a spectrum because there are more than two dimensions to football strategy, but on this particular axis, the Cats and Crows are poles apart.
The meta-game is supposed to be pushing teams in the direction of Adelaide; dash and dare, with a depth of runners and gunners flanking a troop of inside-oriented midfielders. The Crows are taking it to the ninth degree, of course, putting a premium on scoring over stopping the opposition from scoring. It is a calculated risk that has paid off handsomely thus far, but means Adelaide are vulnerable when teams can chop off their attacking lanes.
Geelong expertly chopped off Adelaide’s attacking lanes. Through three quarters, the Crows had registered just 16 scoring shots on 35 inside 50s – extrapolated out to a full game, they would be Adelaide’s season-low marks for both categories.
When Adelaide don’t get the look they like, their system melts into a puddle of incompetent mush. Adelaide’s three losses have come about due to periods where their opposition has been able to either put up plenty of points (North Melbourne, Round 7) or through their opposition blocking up their hose (Melbourne, Round 8 and Geelong, Round 11).
It was a risk we flagged coming into the season, and one that is worth keeping in mind as we enter the second half of the home-and-away season.
Adelaide are certain finalists and probable top-four finishers. Their best football is insatiable. However, and we will be talking about this a lot more very soon, it is worth remembering one critical and oft-overlooked element of Australian rules football: match-ups matter.
Case in point: Friday evening. The Cats’ newfound accountability-centric football is an interesting point of difference in a league increasingly asking flexibility and team-based play.
It goes well beyond Scott Selwood and Mark Blicavs’ roles as stoppers at stoppages; the team seems to have been inspired by the prospect of a wasted year of Patrick Dangerfield and Joel Selwood’s collective prime.
(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Once again, Geelong were brutally efficient in the clinches, trapping Adelaide’s midfield and stopping the supply to their fleet of outside carriers. Time and again, the Cats were able to lay a tackle, deflect a handball or smother an Adelaide kick before it could become a dangerous link in a scoring chain.
Once again, Geelong laid more than two tackles per minute of opposition possession, extending their streak to three weeks after recording the season low (across the league) of 0.73 against Essendon in Round 8.
The Cats have also fine-tuned their press, installing Tom Stewart as a loose man floating across the centre square and as a result, conceding an extra number inside their attacking 50 in press situations. The scheme means their older, slower defenders Tom Lonergan and Andrew Mackie aren’t exposed for pace with anything like the frequency they were earlier in the season.
Of course, the common thread in Geelong’s recent string of victories has been the location of the games: their newly-renovated home base at Kardinia Park. The ground’s narrow dimensions are well-publicised, and teams that want to move the ball laterally will always struggle.
I’m utterly convinced it has played a role in Geelong’s success over the past three weeks; I am less convinced it is the dominant driver of Geelong’s past three wins.
We will know soon enough. Geelong have the week off before travelling to play West Coast and Greater Western Sydney in rounds 13 and 15 respectively (they host Fremantle in between). For now, we react to what we see and anticipate on what we know. We know Geelong have won three straight and are ensconced in the top four.
What I would give to know what is happening at West Coast. It is entirely possible the team has topped out, is a rung above mediocre, and should not be given a modicum of respect away from home.
Three straight losses, including a blowout against the up-and-down Essendon, is a terrible form line for a team expressly invested in winning a premiership sometime in the next 18 months.
The binary win/loss was not the shocking outcome – it was the way it all came together. West Coast’s formerly incisive ball use has given way to a tentative indecision.
(AAP Image/Joe Castro)
It all begins at the source. The Eagles have been obliterated in time in possession over the past three weeks, losing by an average of 11.4 minutes per game. To put that into context, the hapless Brisbane Lions are giving their opponents an extra 9.7 minutes of possession per game (ranked last) over the season. It’s a disaster.
There are no easy fixes. West Coast are winning a reasonable share of stoppages (for example, a 16-8 domination against Gold Coast out of the centre). But their lack of desire to move quickly is costing them dearly.
Are there solutions on the list? I can’t see them. The time for tough calls – like dropping Chris Masten – is nigh. West Coast should not pick a team with all three of Mark LeCras, Jamie Cripps and Josh Hill in it ever again.
It is funny (not haha funny) that heading into the 2015 finals series there were serious conversations across the league that West Coast’s high-powered forward line was head and shoulders above any other unit in the game. Against the Gold Coast, without Josh Kennedy, it was an active hindrance to the team’s success.
The Eagles too have a week off. Big wins to either Melbourne or Collingwood (who play on Monday afternoon) and St Kilda could see West Coast slip outside of the top eight.
Everything is fine #AFLSunsEagles https://t.co/vSNoXomk0w
— Ryan Buckland (@RyanBuckland7) June 3, 2017
We can yada yada over the Giants and Tigers, who also solidified their positions by winning games they should have won by margins they should have posted given the circumstances. We cannot yada yada over Collingwood’s road victory over Fremantle.
After obliterating the Dockers early via a blistering midfield performance, Fremantle did as they have all year: burst back into the game with pace and dare. By half time the game was in the balance, and Collingwood’s playing stocks were looking haggard.
Tyson Goldsack had badly injured his shoulder, but like the Black Knight he battled on in the face of what a mortal might consider more than a flesh wound (sidebar: there was a shot of Goldsack sitting on the bench at the end of the game. It looked like he had an extra half a metre of space between where his shoulder should have been and where it was).
Levi Greenwood copped a cork in his quad but also returned to the field after halftime. As the game progressed it got worse, Daniel Wells appearing to seriously injure his calf and Jamie Elliott re-injuring the ankle that kept him out of the first part of the season.
It was 18 men versus 22, and the Pies managed to resist repeated (if ill-directed) forward thrusts by the Dockers and put points up themselves. Collingwood have now won three on the bounce, and find themselves a win away from a spot in the eight come next Monday.
There were only six games of football. There was more than six games’ worth of season-shaping moves across Round 11.
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