Finals Forecast: Sydney versus North Melbourne

Wait, there’s two games on this week? Could’ve fooled me, everyone. The ‘Roos and Swans face off in what could be the last game at the seventh level of hell. It’s semi final number one.

The fourth-last game of football is to be played at dead set the worst professional footy venue in the country, and, well, an upset may just be on the cards.

Like last night, the sharps are backing history and ladder positions over recent form and player availability. Hey, it worked last night, right?

North were the surprise packet of Week 1, stomping all over the face of a Richmond team that has some strange sort of anti-finals affliction. The scoreboard was the epitome of flattery; it was a pantsing of the highest order.

Meanwhile, the Swans got sucked into Fremantle’s slow-play death spiral and couldn’t quite escape. Boy they got close though.

So do we back the winner with a near full-strength line-up, or default to the tried and tested? Your answer awaits you below.

Semi Final #1
Sydney v North Melbourne
Saturday, September 19, 7:20pm (AEST)
The Seventh Level of Hell, Sydney, New South Wales

The day of reckoning has arrived. Two teams of heroes, and somewhere between 500 and 50,000 spectators, will journey to the centre of the a ravenous landscape, littered with 4×2 homes and SUVs, to battle at the Seventh Level of Hell for the last time.

Is this the last game of AFL football at Stadium Australia? You’d have to think so. The Swans’ agreement with stadium management lapses at the end of this year, and you tend to negotiate extensions on these sorts of things ahead of time rather than after the fact.

Sydney have a record of 32-21 all-time at the ground, and hold a 2-0 record against tonight’s opponent, both in finals.

So there’s not a great deal to read into where this one is being played. On both occasions the two have played here, the Swans have come in as the better team on paper: the 2008 elimination final, when North Melbourne made the finals with a percentage below 100, and the 2014 preliminary final, which the Roos made the hard way.

In the 2014 preliminary final, Sydney put up 41 scoring shots on 69 inside 50s, to North’s 20 on 44, in a 71-point win that the Swans soon forgot a week later.

Lance Franklin and Kurt Tippett combined for nine goals (and 13 scoring shots) in the absence of a large swath of North’s tall defensive set, and the team as a collective took an insane 27 marks inside the scoring stripe.

That was where the game was won for Sydney and lost for North. And indeed, the Roos had their fair share of the play through the middle of the ground: won the clearances, were only a little down on contested possessions, and certainly didn’t get crushed on the outside (minus 21 for the game).

When the two faced off in Round 11 at the Docklands, the script was a little different. The Swans were woefully inefficient moving into attack, scoring just 21 times on 52 entries, while the Roos got the ball over the line 25 times in 44 attempts. But the Swans defence was in good form, and didn’t allow a lot of those shots to be in the prime scoring zone. Inaccuracy cost North what should have been a reasonably comfortable win.

The common denominator in both games? Franklin. In the 2014 preliminary final, Buddy kicked 5.2 on eight marks inside the stripe (and 11 total marks), in addition to pumping the ball inside 50 six times himself; earlier this year Franklin kicked four goals and got the ball inside to his fellow forwards eight times.

In case you missed it somehow, Lance Franklin isn’t playing in this game.

He’s one of a number of notable absentees: Luke Parker and Kieran Jack didn’t get up for this one, while Sam Reid, who had played himself into some nifty form, will leave Tippett to fight against a group of scrapping medium and large defenders.

In comes Nick Smith, which will lead to someone like Jarrad McVeigh spending more time on ball (not that he really plays as a defender as it is), and the flow-on effects from there will see the Swans play quite a small line-up in attack. Does that suit North Melbourne? By my estimations, yes.

North Melbourne average some 12 marks inside 50 against to this point in the year, ranked 10th in the league (which is about where they’re at from a defensive efficiency perspective). But when they lose, that figure balloons out to 14, which is among the worst in the league (only Carlton and Brisbane are worse on a BAU basis). When they win, their opponents tend to take 10 marks or fewer.

Tippett has been in great form, while Adam Goodes has been making a solid contribution to the Swans forward line all year, but outside of that the cupboard is a little bare. Isaac Heeney looked overawed against Fremantle – although a knee knock probably played a role there – while Ben McGlynn and Harry Cunningham don’t scream “kick it to them”.

It makes Sydney’s midfield match ups really important, because to go with the Roos they will need to hit the scoreboard.

Like Adelaide, North Melbourne’s forward line is clicking at the right time. Jarrad ‘The Tiger Slayer’ Waite had an excellent game last weekend, while Drew Petrie and Ben Brown aren’t getting any smaller, as they say. Shaun Higgins has been a revelation, and Lindsay Thomas (fresh from a mark of the year victory) may escape the sub vest this week after returning through the green from injury. Brent Harvey tore Richmond apart.

But unlike Richmond, this unit has been doing it for most of the year. Sydney’s defence will have a hard time matching up on the three talls, but the inclusion of Nick Smith – who was the best small defender in the game, as anointed by the All Australian selection panel last year – will help keep the Kangas’ mozzie squad quiet. Notwithstanding, this unit has 15 goals week-in, week-out, and that will be the case here.

This all makes the midfield battle super important. Whichever teams gets the ascendency from a possession perspective will win this game, and if the teams break even, North will score more heavily than Sydney.

Josh Kennedy therefore looms as the most important player in this game. He’s been one of the best inside midfielders in the second half of this season, setting a new record for consecutive 30-plus possession games (11). Kennedy has played mostly a lone hand at the base of stoppages, feeding the ball out to Sydney’s growing army of outside ball users and runners. The second and fourth-most clearance winning midfielders of Sydney will be absent in this one, and it showed last week – the Swans lost the clearance battle 28-42.

Tom Mitchell stepped up his rating last weekend, and will need to do so against the Roos. It will be an uphill battle for the Swans from the get go given the depth of inside talent suiting up at North Melbourne.

Where Sydney may have a leg up is when the ball gets on the outside. Jarrad McVeigh, as above, will spend almost the full game through the middle of the ground, while Dan Hannebery will have to switch to running mode, and the young brigade will need to chip in.

But North’s one knock remains their outside play, and it could come back to bite them if Sydney get on top here.

So once again, I’m going against the market in this one, which as a numbers guy is always a difficult thing to do. I just can’t see Sydney scoring enough to keep with North Melbourne’s fully fit and firing forward line group.

North Melbourne will get up in this one, to the tune of 18 points, and book in a Week 3 mincing against a rested West Coast.

That’s my semi-final one forecast, what’s yours?