Blues, Lions and Crows on the tipping point

Just three weeks into the AFL Premiership and already we have many of the usual suspects lining up for a tilt at the business end.

Geelong and Hawthorn look certainties to carry their form of recent years deep into winter and beyond.

Hawthorn’s form has been menacing. Built upon midfield depth, fleet of foot, confident ball movement and precision kicking, the Hawks are clearly the team to beat.

In my mind David Hale remains one of the most inspired pick-ups in modern footballing history. Jarryd Roughead ploughs ever onward in the absence of his now departed and decade-signed comrade, Buddy Franklin, and the enigmatic Cyril Rioli is leaving Bruce McAvaney in the thralls of an orgasmia so intense TV viewers should ponder watching in a raincoat whenever he’s calling. All the while the likes of Breust, Smith and Gunston offer an outstanding array of goal-scorers.

Geelong just keep on keeping on. Their devil-may-care ‘take it on’ style is still enthrallingly intact. Tom Hawkins has grown as a player and rendered the absence of James Podsiadly a triviality. Johnson, Kelly, Selwood, Varcoe, Stokes and Bartel show no sign of slowing down and the defensive structure of Taylor, Hunt, Lonergan and Mackie remains completely reliable (if still strangely undersung).

Over in the West the hitherto forgotten Eagles are a hard, physical unit dripping with options. In many ways geography has eastern types like me filing the West Coast under ‘gloss over’, but three impressive and often brutal victories have served to remind us the Weagles were total underachievers last season having finished fifth and fourth in the years prior.

Things should have turned this season. So far they have.

Essendon have been a surprise for a number of reasons. The burden of a drugs scandal, the lingering possibility of ASADA infraction notices and the threat of more naff ‘Hird Camp’ soap opera all swirl in the air above Windy Hill, but to their eternal credit the Bombers keep on flying.

Much can be attributed to the sublime form of free agent Brendon Goddard, whose weekly poise is something to behold. Paul Chapman, too, has been a brilliant get.

But two imports don’t make a team. Essendon’s aggressive balance across the park has been riveting and entirely commendable given everything else.

These are the top cards in the deck of course. But for mine the ladder’s bottom rungs provide all the intrigue.

Even if we are just a few weeks into the season further defeat for a number of sides this week will be near enough to calamitous.

Let’s begin with Adelaide.

They’re in strife.

The Crows toiled hard for a while against the Cats in Geelong in Round 1, but were blown away late. Since then they’ve been annihilated. Their start at the Adelaide Oval Showdown against Port was hugely concerning. Their capitulation against the Swans a week later was meek.

A rejigged forward setup looks impotent and with more points scored against it than any other side the Crows’ back six is quite easily the league’s worst.

Coach Brenton Sanderson swung the axe after the Port Adelaide loss. Fresh faces were given the task of tackling Sydney. That it backfired speaks of a serious depth and experience deficiency just as much as it says ‘kneejerk’.

It may be premature to think such things but its worth noting Sanderson is borne of the same era that offered us player-turned-coaches Mark Neeld, Brett Ratten, Michael Voss and Scott Watters. Something in that? Does the job necessitate a longer apprenticeship? Should questions be asked?

What of the Lions?

On the eve of the season I wrote that if they played to their strengths they could cause a surprise or three. Turns out my genuine optimism was totally ill-founded.

Having watched the Lions closely in the early stages of the season, several things are clear. Jonathan Brown is looking lost below his knees and his opponents are running off him. Brown is at a stage of his career where he needs the ball served on a plate. Unfortunately his midfield is simply not equipped to do it.

With Michael Close struggling to make an impact as a second tall forward option the Lions simply have no consistent avenue to goal.

Legspeed across the paddock is an issue. Ball movement is sluggish. There’s also a glaring skill deficiency. Against the Suns last week you could have been excused for thinking Brisbane were being paid per unfound target.

When those targets are being missed chipping the ball around deep in defence it can only spell trouble. Adcock, Rockliff, Patfull, Golby and young Mayes give their all, but the Lions are a long way removed from being any kind of prospect. With Daniel Rich’s shredded ACL seeing him off for the year Brisbane could well be facing a bottom two finish.

To Melbourne.

Another year, another belittling.

The appointment of Paul Roos offered new hope, but there’s little evidence of any kind of progression. Judging by his heated boundary-side display during the Dees’ loss to GWS on the weekend, frustration is bubbling over.

Did Roos underestimate the task? Are the players not listening or is his plan simply sagging? AFL 2014 is nothing like the AFL of five or so years ago when Roos’ coaching stocks were highest. And the Demons are far from the Swans he once knew.

On field things are disconsolate, the club so drained of life we are too readily reminded of Fitzroy’s sad twilight. The Demons were primed to knock off preseason spoon favourite St Kilda in Round 1 but the lingering feeling seeping from their failure to do so was ‘we couldn’t even do that…’.

This week’s sobering news that gun recruit Mitch Clark will leave the game all together to concentrate on his health is for Clark a good thing. But for the club – as concerned for and supportive of Clark as it no doubt is – it’s just one more dagger.

A player brought in to help bandage up the tanking shambles is now leaving for good. It still beggars belief Melbourne could have acted deliberately to secure such a core group of unconfident battlers, but that’s what remains.

Add to all this early talk of key defender James Frawley departing as a free agent at season end, scuttlebutt that stings almost as much as Tom Scully’s defection. Scully left for money but even if Melbourne’s heart beats only softly, it is a beat for which Frawley is predominantly responsible.

Left for the D’s are an improving Jack Watts and the admirable Nathan Jones (who must surely be running on the faintest of fumes by now). There’s the occasional Jeremy Howe leap, of course. But just as St Kilda had with Trevor Barker, intermittent magic masked the sting of consistent failure only briefly.

But as somber as Melbourne’s predicament is, theirs is not the biggest story of the early rounds.

Enter Carlton.

A newish coach with an imperfect list need not find things so troublesome. Look at what Ross Lyon did with a St Kilda group top heavy with a hotchpotch of dogged role players. But there is no doubt Mick Malthouse’s ‘Baggers are sliding backwards.

Leaving aside a single spirited burst against Richmond, the Blues are unwilling to run. They are panicky in possession, and lack spark in and around goal. Mercurial Eddie Betts, these days a Crow, is an obvious absence. His kind of energy lifts a side otherwise relying on the surly presence of a lumbering Jarrad Waite to see them through.

The Bryce Gibbs ‘will-he-won’t-he’ saga has the whiff of just about every other poorly cloaked club departure. And then there’s Mick Malthouse himself. His cantankerousness is a distraction.

Was he simply lured rather than motivated? Did he take the job out of a spite rooted in his ugly separation from Collingwood? What sign is there that the Blues are buying into the Mick way? One need only look at Hinkley’s Port Adelaide and Richardson’s St Kilda to understand the effort inspired by coaches who utter words that stick.

And so to this week’s matches.

There are teams for whom defeat will be no more than a minor hiccup. And yet for the four already at the ladder’s foot losing will offer near enough to certainty that 2014 finals are already a bridge too far.

Carlton up against Melbourne will carry with it a perverse appeal that Blues defeat – fanciful as it may seem – could well bring the kind of consequences usually foreshadowed by a statement of the Board’s full support for the coach. And we all know how that ends.

The story is not dissimilar for Adelaide who must travel to Melbourne to beat a young but impressively plucky St Kilda side. The Saints are traditionally tough combatants under the roof at Etihad, too. Meanwhile Justin Leppitsch must confront the prospect of his stagnant, listless, Daniel Rich-less Lions taking on the hard-running Port Adelaide at AAMI.

As far as Melbourne is concerned, the top eight was probably never a genuine goal. But for the other three pre-season hopes would have been high. For all four improvement would have been expected.

Still, as they say, there’s time enough if they’re good enough.

The question remains, though. Are they?