In expert tips this week I said: “Round 7 feels like a somewhat straighforward round of footy to tip, which if you’ve got any experience in this caper you should know is a massive red flag.” Well, I was right. Plenty to talk about this week, so let’s get right into it.

Flawed contenders make for fun finals
In June last year I wrote about 2016 being the year of the flawed contender – every team had chinks in their armour, a situation I said was “bound to make for a thrilling finals series come September”, and I reckon I got that one about right in the end.

Round 7 made it clear that we could be in for another such finals series this year – I’m not sure I’ll live to see something top the Bulldogs’ brilliant run, but there’s no doubt this is going to be a cracking year of footy.

A week ago you could have been forgiven for thinking the Crows were ready to cruise to their third premiership given that they were tossing aside previously undefeated teams like they were cellar dwellers and averaging some ridiculous number of points per game.

But lowly, underrated North Melbourne played Adelaide like a fiddle on Saturday morning in Hobart, and I promise to only mention the result another five or six times in this article.

The Roos took full advantage of Adelaide’s lack of experience at Bellerive, kicking with the wind in the first term and making an absolute killing in hay while the sun shined to be up 64-0 at the first break. At this point in the afternoon I was comfortably certain that I was on Mars, or at very least, certainly somewhere that isn’t Earth.

When the Crows got the wind, they didn’t know how to work it like the Roos, preventing what could’ve been an almighty comeback after they kicked the first four goals of the second quarter.

North also just bullied them – both teams had about the same amount of disposals but North were +40 in tackles. That’s not a typo. That’s a mashing.

As a North fan with an enormous amount of hate-respect for Adelaide, it was up there with the best games I’ve ever watch. But okay, okay, enough about that one (for now).

As if the Crows being knocked off their perch wasn’t enough, we also saw GWS, Geelong, Richmond and Port Adelaide all take another hit. The only ‘contenders’ who didn’t lose this week were the Bulldogs and the Eagles, but they’ve got enough questions over them from the first six weeks.

Simply put: if you thought you knew after six rounds where this season was going – and I was one of you – you were wrong. We’re still in for a magnificent ride between here and the last Saturday in September.

Oh, and how about an enormous shout out to all those underdogs who put in a good showing this week? St Kilda, Carlton, Gold Coast, North, even Hawthorn and the Eagles. Bravo. It’s efforts like those that make our game great.

(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

Right now, Melbourne aren’t mature enough to play finals
Forget the fact they came back from a ways down and nearly won the thing – Melbourne should never have been in a losing position against Hawthorn on Sunday, and kicking one goal to five in the first term showcased a disappointing lack of maturity in this side.

It’s still a young team in many respects, still a work in progress, and still something of a hot mess mentally after a tumultuous decade or so, but with the talent they had on the field compared to Hawthorn’s poor form so far this year, there’s no excuses.

Melbourne have definitely improved this year but – like a young team does – they’ve let themselves down for a quarter at a time here and there, and it has cost them wins. For all the good footy they’ve played, they’re still just a 3-4 team.

Spots in finals are tight. If you were to say that Adelaide, GWS, West Coast, the Bulldogs, Richmond, Geelong and Port Adelaide should all get in (and the Saints have really clicked into gear too), that only leaves one spot left for a host of worthy contenders to squeeze into.

If the Dees don’t find a way to leave those lapses behind, it’s not going to be them.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

The Giants have got to get down with the grind
After a Saturday stuffed with upsets, GWS’ surprise loss to St Kilda on Friday night almost seemed like a distant and entirely reasonable memory.

Really though, with the amount of talent the Giants have managed to assemble and get on the field each week, they have no excuses to be losing games to anything bar the very best.

They’ve got a few problems. Their depth is being tested after their list has been repeatedly raided by other clubs, they’re yet to prove themselves away from home, and their valued veterans aren’t in the form they were last year.

However the one that is most troublesome for mine is that they haven’t learned how to play grunt footy and grind down an opposition team. They went up against St Kilda, the grinding kings, and they got taught a lesson in hard work.

What’s that old saying about a champion team beating a team of champions? There’s something deeply satisfying at a basic level of the soul in seeing a small club like the Saints upstage the AFL’s silver-spooners.

GWS mirror Hawthorn in some ways, a team so full of sublime skills that they can conquer all before them, and they’ve got a snootful more speed than the Hawks did too.

But the Giants have to remember that speed and skills aren’t what made Hawthorn great – it was unsociable footy that put them over the top of their rivals.

The 2014 AFL Grand Final was a seminal piece of work in the footballing school of thought that an opponent you’ve run through five or six times before the first quarter ends is an opponent defeated.

Yes the Giants have a few tough guys and a competitive culture, but as a team they need to back that bravado up by putting in the hard yards chasing, tackling, and putting on pressure.

When they have the ball in their hands they look like a living work of art. It’s when their opponents have the ball that they need to lift.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Essendon must settle on their best side
They say the best teams in footy are the ones that are in tune with each other – they know without looking where their teammates will be. They move as one.

Essendon have plenty of talent on their list at the moment – and very little of it injured, which is nice. But it’s almost a problem – the list is so well stocked that picking a best 22 has become very hard to do.

Last week they made five changes to a winning side, which must surely be in contention for a record of some kind. Then this week they made another six!

Granted, they’ve had some short breaks and several of those changes were “rests” – but if that was the strategy, well, they only have two losses to show for it.

With the style of footy they play, they need to find a way to settle their lineup and get the players in tune with each other – otherwise, they’ll do no better than being stuck in the middle of the table.

That may mean making some hard decisions, possibly on well-loved players – but they just cannot keep chopping and changing a quarter of the team every week.

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Can Nathan Buckley coach? There are no excuses left
Somehow we’re in the sixth year of this bloke’s career and we still don’t know the answer. But maybe we’re starting to find out.

In years gone by, pundits have lamented Collingwood’s calamitous injury lists that have prevented us from really finding out what they could do with all the pieces in place.

Well, no such excuses exist this year. The Pies might have one or two players absent but they can’t pretend that they’re the difference between get blasted by the baby Blues and going deep into finals.

I said last week after Collingwood quelled the Cats that while it was a good win, the manner of it didn’t convince me that the Pies had made a change for the better.

I do feel a bit vindicated on that one after their loss to Carlton this week. If their midfield stars don’t dominate the game, they just don’t seem to have any other tricks up their sleeve.

Nathan Buckley is going to have to give us more than that if he wants to keep his job in 2018 and beyond. It’s time to prove you can coach.

Oh, and don’t for a second feed us that line about fatigue and short breaks. Sixteen other clubs will gladly take the Anzac Day fixture off you if it’s getting too hard, mate.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Get your money for nothing, and kicks for free
There was a bit of a kerfuffle in the media during the week ahead of Gold Coast versus Geelong, with Rodney Eade first giving the umpiring committee a bit of a nudge nudge wink wink and Chris Scott then calling him out on it.

Look, I agree with Scott – it’s pretty average behaviour when coaches make a splash in the media about umpiring because it always seems to be designed around getting a few favourable calls the next week. It’s even more average behaviour that the AFL rewards it.

But when a club’s week in the media involves talk about maybe resting Patrick Dangerfield and some banter about the umpiring, you look pretty damned silly if you get smacked around by a mid-table team when push comes to shove.

Given that’s the second week in a row that the Cats have had that kind of result, they have no excuse for not getting their heads in the game this week and focusing on footy rather than umpiring chitter chatter.

And that goes for the vast majority of umpiring talk in the game as far as I’m concerned. Have those conversations behind closed doors where they belong rather than splashing them about disproportionately in the media – you’re only encouraging irate fans to do the same.

As it was, the Cats had three fewer free kicks than Gold Coast on Saturday night, and 67 less disposals. If they’re concerning themselves with the former rather than the latter, they’re way off the mark.

(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

North Melbourne were justified in keeping Jarrad Waite
With five of North’s most valued veterans out the door at the end of the year last season, there were more than a few scratching their heads asking why the club had room to keep Jarrad Waite, but didn’t have room for the rest of them.

It’s a fair enough question to ask – the bloke has no lack of injury problems and can be a maddening player to watch at times, like his “bag” of 1.7 in Round 1 this year (which ended in a five-week shoulder injury, because of course it did).

He gave the critics something to think about this week when he smashed the Crows for six. It’s clear that, while he might not have been adored the way some of North’s over veterans were, he fits into the team the Roos are trying to build in 2017 in a way they wouldn’t.

The key difference between Waite and the rest is that he reliably puts in top level efforts defensively. North’s forward line is so much better with him in it, not just because he kicks goals, but because he creates them for others.

That’s the kind of example that North Melbourne wants its veterans to show for the kids and it paid off big time yesterday. Six snags didn’t hurt either.

Having embraced a new brand of defensive minded footy but also backing in the young talent and giving them the confidence to attack when the enemy is exposed, I reckon it’s reasonable for a North fan like myself to be pretty chuffed about the changes that were made, and excited about the years ahead.

Plus, how good’s this team going to look with Josh Kelly and Dustin Martin in it in 2018?

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Jaeger O’Meara is a long way from fixed
Seven weeks into his Hawthorn career, Jaeger O’Meara has missed three games due to ‘knee soreness’, the most recent coming this week as a late withdrawal.

In the last two games he’s played he’s had under 20 disposals in each. He had 36 touches in Round 2, but only six of them were kicks.

Short version: although the Hawks have got him back on the field again, at least occasionally, he is still a long way from being back to his best.

Is he ever going to get there? We’ll find out in time I suppose, and fingers crossed he does because he’s a supreme talent and it would be tragic to never see him bloom.

But right now if you’re a Hawks fans you’d be concerned, very concerned, especially given how high that first round pick they sent away to get him might still prove to be.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Sydney better off without Buddy? Yeah right, Roosy
Former Sydney coach Paul Roos said his club’s on-field struggles this year were related to Lance Franklin’s big contract during the week. He ought to be feeling a bit silly right about now.

AFL talk as a collective does have this kind of obsession with the idea that superstars are actually bad for footy clubs, and I’ll admit that I buy into it a bit myself sometimes, against my better judgement.

Yes, there are some negative flow-on effects from bringing across an opposition player on a million dollars, but if you’ve got the chance to get a Lance Franklin or a Patrick Dangerfield on your team you’re absolutely mad not to take it.

Buddy seemed to take the comments personally and slammed home eight goals against the hapless Brisbane Lions. It’s not just that he’s the kind of player who can take you to a flag, but also the fact that he means bums on seats in the same way Tony Lockett once did. Sydneysiders will buy a ticket every week just to watch him play, and rightly so.

Maybe bringing Buddy over cost the Swans a little something here or there, but I would cut my own foot off to have him playing for my team, and if Paul Roos is honest with himself, he’d do the same to have had him at Melbourne during his time at the club.

(AAP Image/Dean Lewins)

Give it a rest! No more sneaky drops at the selection table, please
This one’s a relatively obscure bugbear of mine but it continues to annoy me this season, where I feel like it has cropped up more often than not.

Why do coaches insist on taking a player out of their side and saying they are being “managed” or “rested” – then never bring them back?

Braydon Preuss has been the most frustrating one personally in this regard – “rested” from North Melbourne’s Round 5 game and then never seen again. He must have been really tired!

Harrison Macreadie was the latest victim this week – “managed” out of Carlton’s Round 6 side, and then only named an emergency this time around.

AFL clubs, just be honest with us! If you want to drop a player, drop them. Why do you think fans feel disconnected at times when you won’t just be straight with them? Right, that’s my rant done.