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Nine hot takes from AFL Round 2

Expert
2nd April, 2018
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Joel Selwood, Patrick Dangerfield and Gary Ablett. (Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)
Expert
2nd April, 2018
270
5252 Reads

Two weeks into the AFL season and safe to stay we’ve still got more questions than answers. That won’t stop me delivering these hot takes, fresh out of the oven – here’s nine.

First though, a small stylistic update – yes, these are officially ‘hot’ takes now for two reasons. One, they always were, this is just being honest, and two, they were getting a bit long to be called quick.

Instead I’m also introducing a ‘quick and nasty’ section at the end of the piece full of the spare thoughts that are worth a mention, but couldn’t quite justify their own more detailed writeup. Enjoy!

Hawthorn humble the holy trinity in another classic
It was meant to be the unveiling of a new era of Geelong dominance but instead Easter Monday brought the old phrase that a champion team will beat a team of champions to mind – even if only just barely.

One couldn’t much fault the terrific trio of Gary Ablett, Joel Selwood and Patrick Dangerfield – plus Tim Kelly was super impressive too – but beyond them there were too many passengers in the Cats’ 22.

Then, on the opposite side of the field, Tom Mitchell was more impressive than any of them. Somehow a guy that broke the all time disposals record last week is still underrated.

I spent the second half just waiting for the Cats to wake up and mount a challenge, and they did – but it was just a few minutes late.

This could have been history in the making, but future chroniclers of the Cats will probably skip over this one, maybe at best offering a terse footnote.

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I’ve been to see Hawthorn and Geelong at the MCG more times than I can remember, and I’ve seen some amazing games of football because of that. It’s a credit to this giving tree of rivalries that I’m not even sure this match cracks the top three.

Hawthorn go 2-0 and I have a sinking feeling in my gut that we did not enjoy a year without them in finals nearly enough while we had the chance.

Most impressive was that they did this while missing their silkiest player in Shaun Burgoyne for most of the game.

As for Geelong, they are somehow both lucky not to be 0-2 and unlucky not to be 2-0. What a great and terrible game footy is.

Tom Mitchell

(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Port Adelaide slay the flat-track bully tag
I was impressed by Port Adelaide in Round 1 but a big win against a listless Fremantle side left me wondering if they had really improved, or if it was just another display of their ability to beat up on bad teams.

Those questions are quietened now after Round 2. All hail our new teal overlords.

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Sydney were dominant in just about every aspect of the game bar the scoreboard in the first half – and they really should’ve taken it away from Port Adelaide then.

But Port’s ability to keep adding goals to their tally even against the run of play – something you can do when you have as many forwardline options as they do now – kept them in the match.

Then in the second half they returned tit for tat and by the end stats like inside 50s that they had been getting slammed in early were all even, or close to.

It was the kind of match where two quality sides were both going to have periods of momentum and for Port Adelaide, they were far better at capitalising on it when they did.

Todd Marshall has to get some serious recognition for his performances in the opening fortnight. I was sceptical of him being included in this side at all when the season began but he has kicked seven goals in two weeks.

A Rising Star nomination would be very well deserved – and wouldn’t Port love that, to be 2-0 and have the first two nominations of the year. Of course Daniel Venables, Darcy Fogarty and Tom Doedee might all have something to say about it.

Most importantly, Marshall’s efforts allowed Port to split the ruckwork between Charlie Dixon and Justin Westhoff, and while they were ultimately beaten in the hitout count, they both had an impact at stoppages, finishing with seven clearances between them.

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So much to like from Port Adelaide so far, and they should go 3-0 hosting Brisbane in Adelaide next week. After that, matches against Essendon and Geelong offer the chance to really cement themselves as premiership contenders.

Charlie Dixon

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

So, when can we start judging Carlton on wins and losses?
Speaking ahead of the start of the season, Carlton CEO Cain Liddle came out with these words that Blues fans must be feeling overly familiar with by now:

“What you will see from Carlton is the continued investment in those young players and you will see continued development,” said Liddle.

“I urge all Carlton supporters not to judge that on wins and losses, because they can be misleading.”

It’s been an annual message from the Blues ever since Brendon Bolton took over at the end of 2015, and Blues fans to their credit have bought in and been pretty patient with the club.

I reckon that patience must surely be wearing thin by now, though. Brendon, the honeymoon is over.

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There was so much to like about Carlton in the preseason, and despite the loss, so much to like about them in Round 1. To then come out the next week and play such nauseating footy was indefensible.

There are problems wherever you look for the Blues.

No.1 draft pick Jacob Weitering’s form is going backwards at a rate of knots, and he appears devoid of confidence no matter where he is played.

Liam Jones mania looks set to be one the biggest flashes in the pan in recent memory. In his past three games he’s had Buddy kick ten goals on him and Lynch kick eight. Wasn’t great against Richmond either. He’s not up to it.

Perhaps the biggest issue though is leadership. Skipper Marc Murphy’s 30 touches on Saturday belies the fact that he played woeful footy. A match-high eight clangers and only three tackles (17 out of 22 opposition players had the same or more).

The Blues were always taking a risk trading Bryce Gibbs – the deal was so good they absolutely had to take it, but luck has not been kind to them, with the losses to injury of Sam Docherty and Matthew Kreuzer for this match leaving the cupboard close to bare in terms of mature onfield leadership.

I love the type of player Carlton has drafted in recent years. They’ve not been afraid to pick the skinny-but-talented guy like Zac Fisher, Sam Petrevski-Seton or Paddy Dow, even though they have less of an immediate impact than the big-bodied-ready-to-go type.

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It’s a wise decision to make because you are only going to get the chance to draft that kind of player very rarely, and too many clubs pass it up when the option is there.

Still, you can’t help but think a few of the big strapping lads who the Blues have overlooked would be handy to just to exert a bit more influence on the game right now.

One disappointing performance is by no means a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater and all things considered it’s one of very few that the side has had under Brendon Bolton.

Regardless… the club started its ’66-game rebuild’ after a wooden spoon in 2015. Say worst case scenario they finish it with another in 2018. What happens then? ‘Don’t judge us on wins and losses’ will only hold up so long.

Brendon Bolton

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Tom Lynch has every reason to re-sign with Gold Coast
If the footy media can be accused of anything (and we can be accused of plenty, really), one of our classic mistakes is to assume too quickly that an out-of-contract player is bound for a new club.

This is ten times more likely to be the case when the player being discussed is Victorian, but plays for one of the league’s northern states sides.

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We would do well to remember Jacob Hopper, who was widely thought of as being a slam dunk to request a trade to Victoria last year but instead quietly re-signed with GWS.

And now, I suspect, after so much talk about which Victorian clubs could be in the mix to sign Tom J Lynch, there’s a very good chance that he may take himself off the market.

It’s not possible to laud enough the start to the season that the Gold Coast Suns have had under new coach Stuart Dew. While they might not have the same dynamism and talent we saw them play with in 2014, they’ve never been as respectable as they are now.

Let’s be clear about one thing: yes this is a team that’s had a lot of high draft picks over the past few years, but the side they are putting on the park is quite the motley crew.

Jarryd Lyons, Darcy Macpherson, Jarrod Witts, Nick Holman and Aaron Young are all players that other clubs could have their hands on but chose to let slip by. The Suns have found them roles and watched them have an impact.

And it is these players rather than the laundry list of top ten draft selections available that have defined Gold Coast’s impressive 2-0 start to the season.

Just how much can we read into their form? On one hand they’re one of only four sides left undefeated. On the other hand, their scalps so far were both bottom four sides last year.

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At this stage you’d still have to think that higher-quality sides are going to blast them off the park. They play Fremantle, West Coast and Brisbane in the next three weeks, so we honestly might have to wait until Round 6 vs Adelaide to see them cop a medeciny dose of cold reality.

It’s entirely fair to be sceptical that they could at all be a finals side this year. But, they haven’t put a foot wrong so far.

That’s got to be some serious food for thought for Lynch. By all reports he’s looking for reasons to stay rather than reasons to go, and if the Suns continue to shine then that’s a big one. If they somehow snuck into finals, that’d be massive.

The fact he’s bound to get a bigger payday there than he would anywhere else in the league doesn’t hurt either. Watch this space.

Tom Lynch

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Seven teams it’s just too early to get a read on
Having a limited sample size of form to go on is almost worse than having absolutely no form to go on because it’s impossible to tell how much weight you should give to just one or two results.

Case in point: before Round 1, if doing my tips in advance I probably would’ve picked Fremantle to beat Essendon at Optus Stadium on the basis that I liked the look of them in the preseason and they had the home ground advantage.

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But, after the respective form of both sides in the first week – the Dockers playing flat, lifeless football, the Dons upsetting last year’s minor premiers – it was just too hard to justify a pick like that.

Oops. Fremantle impressed, Essendon floundered. C’est la vie.

They’re both in my group of seven teams who it is just too early to really judge what kind of form they’re in, based on the two rounds of footy we’ve seen so far.

All seven of these teams are 1-1 after two weeks, and they have all traveled interstate for at least one of their two matches.

Adelaide, Essendon, Fremantle, Richmond and Sydney all fit the bill of having put in one really good performance, and one that was a bit less good – ranging from okay, not great (Sydney) to just really, really bad (Fremantle).

The other two are Melbourne and West Coast, who have both arguably put in two fairly good performances, but find themselves with 1-1 ledgers all the same. Wouldn’t say either has delivered a four-quarter performance just yet either.

It’s been said a lot recently that the AFL is as even as we’ve ever seen it and the ladder after two rounds demonstrates this pretty well – only four teams are left undefeated and another four winless, while more than half the competition is 1-1.

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One of those undefeated sides is the one that finished 17th last year. One of the winless sides won a premiership 18 months ago.

I can’t tell you yet whether or not these teams are the real deal in 2018 and I won’t pretend otherwise. All I can say for certain is there’s going to be some intriguing, watchable footy coming up when they go head-to-head.

Matthew Taberner

(Photo by Daniel Carson/AFL Media/Getty Images)

AFL clubs have taken ‘stability’ too far
John Worsfold’s new two-year deal this week brought the league to a point where every senior coach – bar Brendon Bolton, who has a unique arrangement – is contracted until at least the end of the 2019 season.

I’d wager right now though that there are a few clubs wondering if that’s such a good idea, and St Kilda would have to be chief among them.

Alan Richardson is in his fifth year coaching the Saints. The club hasn’t played finals in six years. And if their lacklustre Good Friday performance is anything to go by, that’s not about to change any time soon.

Kudos to Ryan Buckland for digging out this March 2014 quote from St Kilda president Peter Summers, right at the beginning of Richardson’s tenure:

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“By 2018 we will be a top four side that is positioned to be a consistent premiership contender. By 2020 we will have our second premiership.”

Well, yeah, no. That was probably never realistic, but even ignoring those lofty goals, there’s no doubt the Saints are performing well below fan expectation.

Friday’s loss to North Melbourne was easily the most demoralising performance that they’ve put in under Richardson. They looked more dead than a parrot in a Monty Python sketch.

Call it schaudenfreude, but one of my guilty pleasures as a football fan is to check out the facebook comments and Big Footy reactions of a side that has just copped an unexpectly poor result.

Saints fans were almost universally calling for Richardson’s head on Friday evening. I even saw a few wounded souls crying out that it was time to approach Mick Malthouse – no, really – to replace him. That’s the level of desperation we’re looking at here.

Instead, St Kilda have Richardson signed up until the end of 2020 after gifting him a contract extension at the end of last year. If he’s the wrong person for the job, that’s far too long to persist with him.

And to be absolutely clear, I’m not saying that’s the case! He definitely has some questions over him, but I reckon the Saints’ drafting decisions are as much to blame as anything, and from outside the four walls it’s hard to tell how much of Richardson’s fingerprints could be found on those.

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The big issue here though is that if St Kilda decide Richardson is not the coach to take them forward, they have really backed themselves into a corner.

They’re one of the most deeply in-debt clubs in the league – reportedly $10 million in the red – and even copped a public warning from Gillon McLachlan last month that it’s time to get their finances in order.

If there’s a side in the league who could afford to sack a coach and pay out as much as two years worth of wages – or more – it ain’t them.

I’m aware the AFL clubs are big fans of stability these days and want to give coaches the confidence that comes from knowing their job is not under pressure.

Fair enough – we’ve seen how Geelong and Richmond have backed in under-the-pump coaches and been rewarded for it with premierships in the modern era.

But I do believe a little pressure is healthy. As I said when speaking in much the same manner on Brad Scott last week, it is what turns coal into diamonds. And especially when it comes to those who’ve had a decent number of years in the gig, sometimes you need it just to test if they are still up for the fight.

You’re not going to coach a team to a flag without learning how to perform under duress, and I suspect AFL clubs might benefit from, under the right circumstances, telling their coaches to sink or swim and finding out who can hack it who can’t.

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Alan Richardson

(AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy)

Time for a new wooden spoon favourite
When we asked readers to vote in their AFL ladder predictions at the start of the year, fully half of them tipped North Melbourne to win the spoon, and another 30 per cent or so picked Gold Coast.

Well, there’s plenty of football left this year, but two rounds in I just don’t think that’s going to happen. Neither is the most talented team in the league but both have shown they can play the kind of committed, clever footy that will snag them surprise wins here and there.

Who’s the leading candidate to be this year’s bottom side then? Two weeks into the season we have four teams sitting 0-2.

Carlton I’ve already talked about plenty so there’s no need to go into more detail here. Safe to say that yes, they are potentially a wooden spoon team if they play like they did this week on a regular basis.

Collingwood find themselves winless so far, but no, they won’t sink quite as low as winning the spoon. They’ve never heard the phrase “work smarter, not harder” in their lives, but they do work hard enough that they’re competitive and will win games.

Brisbane probably offer the most upside of the 0-2 teams at the moment. While they’ve lost to both St Kilda and Melbourne, in both games they’ve shown patches where they look capable of taking complete control of the match. Still be a spoon risk, but I’d be surprised.

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Instead the team who’d have to be leading the race for wooden spoon favouritism right now is, remarkably, 2016’s premiers the Western Bulldogs. No other team has performed so heinously in the first two rounds… we’ll talk more about them soon, too.

Luke Dahlhaus

(Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Buckley, Cameron must innovate in the wake of MCG carnage
Both Collingwood and GWS came out of their game at the MCG on Saturday with positives and negatives. Collingwood would’ve been reasonably happy that they pushed the Giants, GWS pleased to get the win, but both sides copped seriously problematic injuries.

Collingwood lost Ben Reid before the bounce as a late out and then Darcy Moore during the match (as well as Tim Broomhead). Moore will be out for a month. The Giants lost Tom Scully to a broken ankle – he’ll be out a while, possibly a long while.

These are about the worst injuries you could’ve inflicted either team with. Collingwood are already seriously struggling for tall players, while GWS’ biggest weapon – running power – continues to be curtailed by bad luck.

It can’t have been fun for the Giants to watch Nathan Wilson’s electric performance for Fremantle on Saturday night. Between him leaving and losing Zac Williams and now Scully to injury, it’s just been one punchy, dynamic player gone after the other.

There have long been questions over Buckley’s ability to coach and the occasional one has popped up about Leon Cameron too. They both now have a crisis on their hands, but they’ve also been given the opportunity to innovate.

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Do you reckon Damien Hardwick just decided out of the blue to create a one-tall forward line last year with a fleet of pressure-providing smalls? No – it was a work in progress throughout the year that never would’ve happened if the Tigers had better options.

He gave the likes of Todd Elton and Ivan Soldo a combined 13 games last year trying to find a second tall before he finally settled on it.

Buckley and Cameron would be wise to approach their current situations with the same attitude. The Pies actually did pretty good playing a small team on Saturday, after all, and as for the Giants, I’d love to see them take a more physical approach to the game.

Adapt. Evolve. Survive. Thrive! That’s what the greats do.

Leon Cameron

(Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Stop thinking of the Bulldogs as a premiership team
Another capitulation from the Bulldogs on Sunday had us all remarking on just what a strange downfall it’s been, going from perhaps the most memorable premiership in history in 2016 to, well, this.

We all have a tendency to get a bit carried away with things in footy and to be honest a more dispassionate anaylsis of their 2016 flag-winning list probably would’ve made it clear that something like this was very much on the cards.

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A huge part of the explanation for their poor form has to be the fact that they are playing a remarkably young team at the moment – it was the youngest put on a field in Round 1, and it got even younger this week.

The Bulldogs have three players 30 and over on their list at the moment but all of them are either injured or playing in the VFL. The only players 24 and older of any real consequence that they have in their best 22 at the moment are Luke Dahlhaus and Easton Wood.

Tom Liberatore, 25, was probably the worst player they could’ve lost to a season-long injury. He robs them of both mature-bodied presence and ball-winning ability, two things they badly need.

That 23-and-under group is still stacked. Lachie Hunter, Jack Macrae, Marcus Bontempelli, Tom Boyd, Toby McLean, Caleb Daniel, Bailey Dale, Josh Dunkley, Tim English, Josh Schache, Ed Richards, Aaron Naughton. You can build a side around that and the Bulldogs are right to focus on doing so.

There’s definitely some questions that could be asked right now around the mental space the club is in and some of the calls the coach has made.

But it’s important also to remember that the Dogs’ 2016 flag was a massive outlier. Think of them instead as a team who had a brief period of good footy based on a combination of talented veterans and talented kids, and now that the veterans have largely finished up, must wait for the kids to mature to rise again. That’s where they’re at.

Luke Beveridge

(Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)

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Quick and nasty
– Despite talk to the contrary, there’s still plenty of room for taggers in the game. Just check out Ben Jacobs on Friday. Spent time on Seb Ross and Jack Steven keeping either from having a big influence, while picking up 18 touches, ten tackles and a goal himself.

– Speaking of Good Friday, North deserve to retain the fixture going forward. Half a million was raised for charity, and while the crowd drawn wasn’t massive, it’s more than Collingwood got to the MCG the next day. But please don’t pair two small clubs together. Carlton has always been the logical opponent for this fixture.

– News that Shai Bolton will put off contract talks until the end of the year caught my attention during the week. It’s a classic Ralph Carr management move, but he is a WA boy by heart, and has the kind of attributes that both the Dockers and the Eagles would be licking their lips over. If his form picks up, bet Fremantle in particular will offer him a motza.

– I was pretty worried that Charlie Cameron would struggle to have an impact at Brisbane given he’s more of a finisher than a starter, but he has been an absolute star in the first two rounds, outstripped my expectations, and if anything gone to a new level. Six goals from two games for him, meanwhile former teammate Eddie Betts has zero.

– Who would want to be a number one draft pick? Paddy McCartin and Jacob Weitering both looked seriously out of their depth at AFL level this week and rightly or wrongly the media scrutiny on them is massive. Only two No.1 picks have won flags this millenium – Luke Hodge, who was a traded pick, and Tom Body, a traded player.

– Is there any sight more headscratching in football than watching Josh Jenkins make Alex Rance look like an amateur? There’s no denying that he’s the best backman the game has seen since Matthew Scarlett if not further back than that, but the man is still very much prone to the occasional baffler.

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