It was only two weeks ago that Aaron Sandilands broke the all-time VFL/AFL record for most hit-outs in a game, with 69 taps against the Crows. At the time, I said it’d be a long time before we saw the new record broken.
Well, obviously Sandi reads this column and took offence to that, because on Saturday against the Suns he surpassed his own record with a total of 70 hit-outs for the day.
Since the hit-outs stat has been recorded, there have been only five occasions where a player has had 60 hit-outs in a single game. And two of them have now come in the last three weeks.
I said last time around that this performance seemed to be flying under the radar and it once again seems to be the case. Let me tell you, it’s not going to be every year that you see a player break the all-time hit-outs record twice in 15 days.
Bravo, Sandi. I bet you can still top that.
The Bye rounds are the AFL’s full moon
Strange things happen in the bye rounds. Great players inexplicably have rubbish games. Rubbish players inexplicably have great games. Blokes like Lynden Dunn celebrate career milestones. It’s a weird and wacky time.
Probably the most notable case of it this week was the bizarrely low-scoring and close-fought game between Gold Coast and Fremantle. The Suns showed some renewed fight but even with them trying their hearts out it should’ve been a 10-goal win to the Dockers.
Nope. Who knows what it was but the Dockers were off, badly off, and it took until the last minutes for them to seal the win. Even then a late goal to Tom Lynch left them with only a seven-point victory.
My advice? Don’t read too much into it. It’s the full moon, and the full moon is not an ordinary night. Expect normal service to resume in Round 14.
Rucks: they’re handy to have
Probably the most puzzling selection decision this week was Essendon’s decision to omit Tom Bellchambers in favour of… no one.
Dumping Bellchambers back to the VFL was a pretty good decision considering the terrible form he has been in for most of the year and the last few weeks in particular.
But when you decide to drop a ruckman and don’t bring another one into the side, you’re not really solving your ruck problem, are you?
I’m not saying that the run-without-a-ruck strategy always fails, and the Bombers have in the past got some decent gains out of it, but it’s generally only ever going to work when you come up against a team that doesn’t itself have much to celebrate in the big-man department.
When you come up against West Coast, sporting the quality taps of Nic Naitanui and Callum Sinclair, then you’re just kind of asking to getting spanked.
The most baffling thing though was in James Hird’s post-match press conference when he came out with this gem – “We knew we had a struggle against us without a recognised ruckman.”
Given the Bombers have Jon Giles and Shaun McKernan running around in the VFL, fit and ready to go, maybe they should’ve picked one?
Does the rookie list need a re-think?
Adam Schneider and Jack Sinclair were both dropped from St Kilda this week, but not for the usual reasons. Both have been performing well, it’s not form, it’s not fitness, the fact is, the Saints were not legally able to name either player to their team.
Despite starting the year with some significant injury woes the Saints now boast the shortest injury list in the competition, with hamstrung Sam Fisher the only player currently unfit, and with a recovery time of only three weeks.
In order to play someone from their rookie list AFL clubs need to elevate them to the senior list, which they can only do if they have a senior player on the long-term injury list. The Saints no longer have any, which this week meant their hands were tied.
Schneider’s a veteran at the Saints and they’d ideally be playing him most weeks, while Sinclair has shown this year that he really does belong at AFL level.
It’s time to give the rookie list a re-think and widen the criteria, allowing rookies to play at AFL level.
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