With the top four and top eight mostly set in stone once Carlton stormed home against Port last weekend, the final round of the footy season saw more dead rubbers than a death camp for school stationary.
Clubs took a range of approaches to these pointless match-ups, with two of the most contrasting examples being Fremantle and Collingwood (both of whom had already qualified for finals) up against teams that could no longer make the eight in St Kilda and North Melbourne.
While the Dockers famously sent out an Under-12 side to take on St Kilda, Collingwood offered up a basically full-strength outfit for a helter-skelter duel with North.
So the question is, which approach will pay off better when the finals comes around?
For Fremantle, Ross Lyon was obviously thinking to rest his team up ahead of their clash with Geelong next week, and – significantly – avoid two weeks of cross-nation travel in succession for much of the side.
He’d tried similar things with the Saints in previous years, but never quite to this extent, leaving out ten first choice players and then two more as late withdrawals.
His side was, as a result, belted to the tune of 71 points by the lowly Saints – a result that did nothing to Fremantle’s ladder position but could have cost them a home final had Brisbane upset Geelong at Simonds (as they so nearly did).
Collingwood, meanwhile, pulled out the best 22 they had available to take on North Melbourne, which ended up a much more competitive affair with North only pulling away in the final minutes. As discussed in my article last week, losing was actually a desirable outcome for Collingwood, but they certainly didn’t play that way.
It was a fast, energy-sapping contest, and a trio of Collingwood big men in Ben Reid, Travis Cloke and Quentin Lynch all pulled up sore from the clash. Lynch, in particular, is under a cloud for this week’s elimination final against Port Adelaide.
Fremantle, meanwhile, sails into the finals with a team well rested and with no new injury concerns to speak of. On the surface, it would seem Ross Lyon’s approach is the better one.
Many argue, though, that flirting with form is a dangerous thing to be doing so close to finals, and that each game should be treated as an opportunity to improve the team’s brand of football as much as possible.
I think this underestimates the professionalism of footballers these days – the Dockers have been playing sensationally all year long. It is hardly likely they will forget how they want to play from one lacklustre game.
As for confidence, they wouldn’t lose any more self-belief out of that loss then they would from losing a casual practice match in training. If they had actually played to win and still lost, like Collingwood did, well then perhaps that would have been a bit of a confidence blow.
As it transpired, Collingwood’s hand was forced by the end of the game and they too ended up taking their foot off the pedal – as players started going down during the match, Buckley admitted that by the final quarter, his main focus was player management rather than the four points.
So, if they ended up throwing the match anyway, shouldn’t they have just played a half-strength side in the first place and not risked injuries and fatigue to their key stars?
It will be hard to definitively say which approach was correct, but if the first week of finals goes as expected, it should be Fremantle versus Collingwood at Patersons for a knockout semi-final. If it pans out that way, we might just get our answer.
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