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Round 20 of the AFL season has been run and won, so what were the big stories of the weekend? Take a look at our talking points from Round 20 and let us know what you think.
Brisbane needs more than just a change of coach
Don’t get me wrong – I’m definitely of the opinion that the Lions need a change of coach, and with Brisbane announcing a review of Justin Leppitsch’s position after their 138-point loss on Saturday night, it looks like that will happen soon enough.
However, it would be a major mistake if the Lions thought that the answer to all their problems was simply to switch one coach out and one coach in.
There’s a lot that needs to happen before they’ll be back on the right track.
Every area of the club needs to be subject to a serious third-party review to determine where there’s rot and how to fix it. At the moment, it doesn’t feel like there’s a single aspect of their program that is working the way it should.
If you plant a fresh sapling in bad soil, it’ll look nice and new for a while, but it will eventually whither and die. That’s what has happened to the Leppitsch era – he was put in a situation where he was doomed to fail, and really wasn’t that great a candidate to start with.
The Lions do need a new sapling, a new coach, but they also need new soil – and that’s a much harder, much more thorough task. It’s time for a new era to begin.
The Dees may be finally coming out of the wilderness
The Melbourne Football Club has spent a fair chunk of the past decade being the AFL’s laughing stock – an organisation that has experimented further than any other into the depths of just how much pain you can put your member base through.
These past few seasons under Paul Roos however, have seen the Demons very gradually turn it around, and Saturday’s 29-point win over Hawthorn will turn out to be the crown jewel of Roos’ tenure as Melbourne’s senior coach.
I’ve said a few times earlier this year that the Dees are on the road to somewhere great.
The centre-square combo of Max Gawn, Jack Viney, Angus Brayshaw and Clayton Oliver will someday be the hardest to play against in the league, and the emerging class of Dom Tyson, Christian Petracca and Billy Stretch is more impressive with each passing week.
Point that all towards Jesse Hogan and Sam Weideman in the forward line and you’ve got something very exciting.
That’s not to say they’ve arrived. They’re still an inconsistent bunch. But they will get more consistent as time goes on and their maturity increases. And as that process continues… who knows? The sky is the limit.
The gulf between sides is pretty big
Port Adelaide are arguably the best side not in the top eight, or at least they’re in the mix for that title along with St Kilda and Melbourne, but on Saturday afternoon they were given a 67-point smacking by Sydney.
When you consider that they themselves just a week ago walloped Brisbane by 94 points, it’s pretty clear that we’ve got a major gulf between the top, middle, and bottom tiers of the competition at the moment.
Probably more concerning for the AFL is that those top teams aren’t too different from what the top teams were almost a decade ago – Hawthorn, Geelong and Sydney in particular have all been not too far off the mark for a very long time now.
Consider the fact that what many see as a fading Hawthorn could easily trade in Jaeger O’Meara this year and then sign Nat Fyfe as a free agent at the end of next and you’ll get a sense of what I’m concerned about.
Look, I’m not one of those doom-predicting types who likes to say that the AFL is struggling or collapsing at the drop of a hat. But it’s something to think about.
The Giants are still average away from home
I said in The Roar AFL Podcast ahead of this round that if the grand final could be played at Spotless Stadium, the GWS Giants would be my tip to win the flag – unfortunately, it cannot, so they’re in real trouble.
Gold Coast put in a really good effort on Saturday but the truth is that no matter how well the Suns played, give their outs, a comfy GWS should never have been in doubt. Yet, at Metricon Stadium, they were pushed hard, and nearly coughed up what would’ve been a disastrous loss.
The Giants have done some great things at Spotless Stadium this year – they’ve had smashing, memorable wins over Hawthorn, Sydney and the Bulldogs.
But on the road their best win is over Port Adelaide, and they’ve been regularly pushed by lower sides, even beaten by Melbourne. They’ll have to hit the road at some point this year in their quest for premiership glory, and when that day comes, my tip is it’ll trip them up.
The Dogs get it done despite the odds, North need to do the same
It’s one thing to be brave in the fact of injury and fight out and respectable loss – it’s quite another to turn it into a win, and that’s what the Western Bulldogs did on Saturday night.
Boasting only about half the experience of their opponents North Melbourne, the Bulldogs tactically outplayed the Roos, flooding back at every opportunity and restricting their ability to move the ball.
That’s the kind of tactic that just turns the Roos to water, and a mid-game injury to Ben Brown didn’t help affairs. Without the tall targets of Brown or Jarrad Waite to kick to, either in the forward line or pushing up the wing, North just couldn’t move the ball effectively.
The Bulldogs now have given themselves a slim chance still to make the top four, with what should be three wins left on their fixture.
North on the other hand now need to emulate what their opponents did. If Brown is added to their already lengthy injury list, they’ll need to find a way to rise above and win against the odds if they’re going to have any impact in what’s left of the season.
A loss may have come at the right time for the Hawks
If you were on social media when Hawthorn lost on Saturday afternoon, you might have mistaken it for the fall of the Berlin Wall or something other massive, planet-shaking event.
But while we’re all very quick to say that the Hawks have lost it – because so many of us really, really want it to be true – you’re setting yourself up for heartbreak if you think they’re not still in the race.
No, they aren’t the same team they were in years past, and they’re not as far ahead of the rest of the pack as they once were. They might not even be in front at all. But toe to toe, no team in the league has more maturity and confidence come final time.
This loss may prove to be a massive wake-up call that sets them back on the right track. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news – while some may say “if it bleeds, we can kill it”, I’m saying this – unless you see a boy, it’s not dead.
JJK has one hand on a second Coleman
Sunday’s Western Derby was one of the least interesting matches played between these two sides in a long time, and drew the lowest crowd to one since 1999, but Josh J Kennedy’s bag of seven goals may decide one of the season’s key awards.
If you had asked me at the halfway point of the season, I would’ve told you Lance Franklin was going to win the Coleman medal without a doubt – but he has slowed down a bit and JJK has continued to do what he does best, pick up bags against the irrelevant sides.
He’s now six goals ahead of Franklin and Tom J Lynch, he’s on 67 and they’re both on 61. It’s clearly one of those three, but has Kennedy got enough of a lead?
The Eagles have GWS, Hawthorn and Adelaide in their last three so Kennedy may have kicked his last bag for the year. Sydney have St Kilda, North and Brisbane – soft enough match-ups that Franklin is in with a real chance. With Essendon, Collingwood and Port in his last three, Lynch is still a shot too.
Always rather be leading than chasing though, and at this stage you’ve got to think Kennedy is only one more big game away from making it a certainty.