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The South Australian teams, Collingwood and North Melbourne were among the big winners in a round of comebacks, tight finishes and near misses, as the top 13 places on the AFL ladder shuffled around like a primary-school barn dance.
Not that Port Adelaide endured either of those three things, pulling away from a back-and-forth tussle with Geelong in the first half to finish 40 points clear.
There’s been plenty of excitement about Ken Hinkley’s Power team after their strong showing last year and their early 2014 form, but to this point they’d only beaten modest opposition.
This time Port took on an unbeaten Geelong side that had just disposed of Hawthorn and mugged them for top spot on the table. All three of those sides now have five wins and one loss for the season, with the Power ahead on percentage. They can shore that up against Greater Western Sydney next week.
More impressive, though, was the way they took on and took apart parts of the Cats game plan, using long cross-field passing and hard running to open up contests. The margin didn’t entirely reflect the balance, with the Cats harmed by inaccurate goal-kicking, but it was a surging win for Port who have already laid firm claim to the new Adelaide Oval.
Their local rivals, meanwhile, came from 28 points down against the Western Bulldogs to repair their dire start to the season. Adelaide had to withstand some intense final minutes of all-out Bulldog attack, but scored twice on the counterpunch to shore up the win, taking them to 3-3 and outside the eight on percentage.
Collingwood have also shaken off a poor start to rise to fourth thanks to immense Anzac Day games from Dane Swan and Scott Pendlebury. The first of the public-holiday games was a strange affair, Essendon starting the match with the first six goals, then Collingwood responding with a run of nine.
Swan kicked four to claim the Anzac medal, in a win that coach Nathan Buckley thinks is the big step forward his team needed. Another traditional rival awaits in the form of Carlton on Friday.
North Melbourne were elated to travel to Perth and beat Fremantle on their own turf, in the process rising from seventh spot to fifth. In an intense and scrappy game the Kangaroos trailed by 26 points before they’d kicked a goal, but held Fremantle to four more goals thereafter, and none in the last quarter, to get over the top by 13 points.
Freo away, Sydney away and Port at home are three very impressive wins the Kangaroos have now racked up, and they have Gold Coast to come next week.
The Suns were also massive winners this week. While the youthful Giants may not be the toughest challenge in the league, closing out routine wins at home is something that Gold Coast has had to learn to do. This one took them to the unknown heights of a 4-2 win-loss record, sitting clear of the chasing pack in sixth spot on the ladder, and level on points with Collingwood and North.
Not to say it’ll last, but for now the Suns are mere percentage points off the top four. That’s worth a grin on the Coast.
Carlton chalked up a significant win against West Coast, putting the teeth-gnashing of four straight losses behind them to win their second in a row. Even Mick Malthouse was clearly pleased with the job, describing it as one of the best wins he’d been involved with. Five goals in the last ten minutes to dive over the line can do that to a man.
Finally, there was Brisbane, crawling over the line with arrows in their back to claim their first win of the season, and knock the competition’s last zero out of the W column. They started bouncily enough in the exhibition match in New Zealand, skipping out to a 32-point lead, but were very nearly overrun by St Kilda in the dying minutes.
For the Saints, it was one of the worst losses of the round. Trailing by a goal with nearly 15 minutes to run on the ground clock, against a winless side running out of legs, for a team likely to face their own struggles this season, this was a game they simply had to take. Instead, even as the Lions went goalless, the Saints kicked four behinds and lost by three.
Geelong’s loss cost them too, taking them from topping the league as the last undefeated side to trailing Hawthorn and Port Adelaide in third position. Travelling to Adelaide Oval is shaping as a hard task this season, so there won’t be any panic buttons pressed at Kardinia, but they need to be ruthless against a struggling Richmond team next week to stay clear of the chasing pack.
West Coast slumped to seventh this round, having led the league three weeks ago, mimicking St Kilda’s inability to close out a match when they hit the post twice in the final minutes when a single goal would have done. Across town, Fremantle dropped from fifth to eighth, one of the pre-season favourites now in distant orbit.
Finally, there was Essendon. The Bombers were supposed to improve after their difficult yet promising 2013 season, but right now they look at a loss. Turning a 37-point lead into a goal drought that lasted half a match is an impressive feat. Even when they tried a late comeback it was unconvincing and unconvinced.
The Anzac Day loss has dropped them to 12th, and Mark Thompson does not look like a man who is loving life. A percentage of 105 with a 2-4 record shows they’ve lost narrowly and won handsomely, but that stat is all that’s keeping them above 16th spot.