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With Melbourne, Richmond, Collingwood and Essendon having just played on Tuesday and Wednesday, all four teams will face very short turnarounds before their matches on Sunday.
It is for this reason that the AFL have scheduled Essendon to face Melbourne at Etihad Stadium in the early match, while across the road, the Pies and Tigers will square off in what now shapes as a genuine MCG blockbuster.
After being thrashed by Hawthorn in Round 4, the Dees hung in for three quarters against the Tigers but capitulated in the final quarter to go down by 46 points, while the Bombers were anything but dismal in their 49-point loss to the Pies in the annual Anzac Day blockbuster.
Thus, both the Bombers and Dees will have a point to prove when they face off at Docklands for the second consecutive year in the match scheduled to start at 1:10pm this Sunday afternoon.
No one will know exactly what to expect when the two sides meet, with all but one match dating back to 2010 being won by the underdog (that came in 2013, when Essendon won by a whopping 148 points).
In the corresponding match last year, Melbourne won by 38 points despite having lost to Richmond six days earlier, while the Bombers had come off an impressive win over Collingwood five days beforehand.
They also pulled off an upset six-point win in Round 10, 2012, registering their first victory for that season at the expense of the Bombers, who entered that match second on the ladder with an 8-1 record (with the loss being by a solitary point against the Pies in the Anzac Day clash).
Most notably, however, the Bombers scored an against-the-odds 13-point win early in the 2016 season in a result which proved that, even with half of their best side missing due to doping suspensions arising from the ASADA scandal, they would not be a side to be messed around with.
They also upset the Dees by nine points midway through the 2015 season, six days after being thrashed by St Kilda by 110 points.
Thus, in what could prove to be an ominous sign for the Dees, those two said wins for the Bombers in 2015 and 2016 have come after they suffered heavy defeats the week beforehand.
But while the Dees will have a 20-hour advantage on their opponents, their injury list continues to grow, with defender Dean Kent set to miss up to a month after suffering a hamstring injury in the loss to the Tigers.
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/AFL Media/Getty Images)
Co-captain Jack Viney and defender Tom McDonald remain a fair bit away from returning, while Jordan Lewis remains a slight chance to face the Bombers after suffering a hand injury in the Round 4 humiliation against his old side, Hawthorn.
The potential mockbuster that could unfold at Etihad Stadium is nothing compared to what is expected across the road at the MCG, where the Pies and Tigers will meet in a genuine blockbuster likely to attract more than 70,000 fans.
The Pies’ 49-point win over the Bombers was their third straight win, following on from wins over Carlton and the Adelaide Crows, and has somewhat vindicated the board’s decision to reappoint Nathan Buckley as head coach at the end of last season.
In his third season at the club, Adam Treloar has proven his worth to the club, winning the Anzac Day Medal for his best-on-ground efforts which included 34 possessions and two goals.
(Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)
While he was a regular in the emerging GWS Giants side between 2012 and 2015, the lure of playing in front of large crowds on a regular basis was what drew him to Collingwood at the end of the 2015 season.
When it came to which club he preferred to join, he chose the Pies over the Tigers, citing the fact that they had a better playing list at the time.
Neither club reached the finals in 2016, but perhaps Treloar must have regretted his decision to join his current club, especially after the Tigers took out last year’s premiership.
Five rounds into their premiership defence and Damien Hardwick’s men are continuing to prove why they will be hard to beat in 2018, with a seven-goal final quarter seeing them home over the Dees by 46 points.
Their victory was once again masterminded by you-know-who – Dustin Martin – while Jack Higgins impressed with two majors in just his second game of AFL football.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
While their progress this season is good news for their fans, the bad news for the rest of the competition is that they have the potential to get even better.
They finished Round 5 on top of the ladder for the first time since Round 12, 1995; to put that into perspective, Martin was only weeks away from turning four and Higgins wasn’t even born yet.
While they should start favourites to beat Collingwood on Sunday, they’ll be aware of a side that is starting to play to their potential after season-opening losses to Hawthorn and GWS left their fans questioning whether the decision to retain Nathan Buckley as coach was the right one.
In contrast to the Sunday afternoon match at the MCG, which will be televised by the Seven Network, tomorrow night’s clash between the Western Bulldogs and Carlton threatens to turn very ugly for a variety of reasons.
One of them is the fact that Carlton anchors the ladder after Round 5, having lost each of their first five matches of a season for the first time since 1989 and have been uncompetitive in at least two of those losses.
Another is the fall from grace the Western Bulldogs have endured since claiming the 2016 premiership, one which the AFL world didn’t even see coming at the time.
(Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)
It therefore has the potential to be the lowest-attended Friday night match at Etihad Stadium in recent years, with a crowd of no more than 25,000 expected for the clash of the cellar-dwellers.
There also hasn’t been a clash between two badly struggling teams on a Friday night since 2003, when the Bulldogs, that year’s wooden spooners, registered their third win for that season against Melbourne, which finished 14th with five wins.
That match attracted 20,714 fans to what was then known as Telstra Dome.
Another lopsided result in front of a low crowd may force the AFL to rethink which teams deserve to play in the premium Friday night timeslot, and, more to the point, how often.
For example, the GWS Giants, preliminary finalists for each of the last two seasons, get just one Friday night match this season (down from three last year), and it’s against the Geelong Cats at Kardinia Park in Round 7.
One reason for this is their low-drawing power outside of Sydney; their recently drawn clash against St Kilda attracted just under 15,000 fans to Etihad Stadium on a Saturday afternoon.
On the flipside, the AFL fixturing department copped a lot of criticism for scheduling perennial underachievers, Carlton, several times in the premium timeslot this season.
This includes what could potentially be an ugly clash against the Sydney Swans, a mainstay in the top half of the AFL ladder for over two decades, at the SCG in round eleven.
All the AFL can do now is sit back and hope for, at the very least, a competitive performance by the Blues this Friday night.
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