Carlton vs Richmond: Opening Night Forecast

No more broken hand stories. No more 11-year-old illicit drugs stories. No more Comeback Stories. No more previews, predictions and prattling. Let’s go.

This year, the AFL has pulled out all the stops to make Round 1 a four day spectacle. The reigning premiers on the first Friday night; St Kilda and Melbourne, two teams projected to rise, on Saturday; two teams embarking on new eras on Saturday evening; a Sunday slate with three must watch games (albeit they overlap). It’s mint.

To get to all of that, we begin with the annual two hour mutual nervous breakdown that is Carlton vs Richmond.

It’s easy to make fun of the opening night tradition. Does any other professional sporting competition guarantee clear air for two of its oldest and largest clubs regardless of their recent history?

Will this game matter in the scheme of things? Are people going to turn off their TV if they see the Western Bulldogs host Greater Western Sydney as the first game of the year? Here we are though, so let’s get to it.

Richmond should be a much improved team in 2017. After adding Dion Prestia, Josh Caddy and Toby Nankervis, the Tigers have a core midfield that affords them the lucre of the current league: flexibility.

Questions remain about their ability to transition the ball from half back to half forward, but as we discussed a few weeks ago Damien Hardwick has options. Richmond’s preseason form was strong enough to suggest 13th place will be a low watermark, and a push for finals football is on.

Carlton’s season begins with less hope for the immediate term, but with potential for green shoots in their long-tenured rebuild. Another season outside of the eight is assured, but for the Blues, should be welcomed as a sign that the team’s youngsters are doing more of the work.

The Blues off-season saw them farewell another handful of older players. Team veterans Andrew Walker and Michael Jamieson retired, as did Cameron Wood, while a plethora of sub-par players were shown the door. There remains further work to do to unwind the mistakes of the past, but progress continues.

In their place come some more GWS Giants – high potential Giants this time around – more high draft picks, and a couple of older players in Billie Smedts and Rhys Palmer who are surely one step removed from salary cap fillers. In the aggregate, the Blues have dropped to 17th in both average list age and average games played.

With some more pruning likely in the 2017 off season, 2018 could be the long awaited bottom of Carlton’s list cycle.

Indeed, Carlton enter the year with an odd distribution of players. A league-leading 15 players are aged 21 or younger, but also 15 players aged 24 to 29 and six aged 29 or more. We should expect to see more of those players in the youngest bracket get solid game time in 2017.

It begins tonight. Carlton are rolling with seven players aged under 21, including 2016 draftee Sam Petrevski-Seton and first gamer Jarrod Pickett. Smedts made it into the team as expected, but a surprising omission is Palmer, who was expected to be a mainstay of Carlton’s forward line in 2017. Despite the youth movement, Carlton will play with an average team age of 25 and change – the same as Round 1 last year.

The Tigers have also made a number of changes to their final 2016 team, with newbies Prestia, Caddy and Nankervis stepping out in the vibrant yellow and black for the first time. Joining them will be Dan Butler, who impressed in his the preseason as a small forward, and Jason Castagna off of the rookie list.

It’s almost impossible to get a tactical read on this game given it is the first game of AFL football for the year. Richmond won the only game between the two teams in 2016 in a typical two part nervous breakdown. Carlton led by three at quarter time, Richmond by seven at the half, Carlton by nine at three quarter time, and Richmond won the game by nine points.

My memory of this game is deliberately vague, but my notes tell me the Blues had excellent control of the ball in the main, making it hard for Richmond to launch counterattacks or get any drive from half back. Of course, as the season unfolded, we learnt getting drive off of half back a more systemic problem for the Tigers. Carlton out-marked Richmond 105-79.

The Blues built a solid defensive system last year, which served them well in stopping the blow out losses of 2015. That will surely be the strategic direction of Brendon Bolton in year two of this rebuild project, as the team figures out which of its young players will be around for the next push up the ladder. An interesting element of this is how it will mesh with Richmond’s newfound want to move the ball quick and straight.

Opening night has been the domain of the Tigers in recent years. Richmond have won the past four meetings that happen in Round 1 or Two (remember the crazy 2014 fixture?) and have kicked 106, 98, 105 and 92 points in those four games. On paper – which is all we can really go on right now – that looks set to be the case again.

I’m bullish on Richmond’s prospects, and the only thing stopping me from picking an emphatic victory is their pathological need to let these games get out of hand. The Tigers will win by 18 points.

That’s my Opening Night Forecast. What’s yours?