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Opinion
This week’s games – spread over only four days – provided a welcome rest point late in a frenetic season that has thrown up many challenges to the eighteen clubs.
It also was a round that separated the wheat from the chaff in terms of the teams likely to make up the final eight.
However, the final finishing order at the end of the home-and-away series in 26 days time is still far from certain with six of the top seven teams having only four games remaining, while teams from position 9 to 13 still have five games left.
Friday night’s game resulted in the biggest margin of the round and confirmed Carlton as still a strong chance and Gold Coast as an also ran.
While a far better team than in 2019, the Suns now have only four games remaining to inflict some misery on neighbour Brisbane or now outsider Collingwood.
A win against Brisbane would seem highly unlikely while Collingwood continue to struggle and may be vulnerable. The same killjoy scenario applies to the other also rans below the Suns on the ladder: Hawthorn, Sydney, North Melbourne and Adelaide who – if able to score an upset victory or two – can still have an impact on final eight placings.
In terms of final eight placings, Port Adelaide, Brisbane, Geelong, West Coast and Richmond are secure. St Kilda should be also as their two-point loss to the Lions showed they are worthy finalists, which leaves only two spots up for grabs.
Western Bulldogs, Melbourne and Carlton all play teams above them on the ladder next week, while the Giants versus Fremantle game will eliminate one of these.
Essendon should be able to keep their hopes alive by beating Hawthorn. while Richmond and the Eagles will go some way to sorting out the double chance.
In a week where only one team scored more than ten goals and over 100 different players scored, it is not surprising that the current seven Top 100 goal scorers out on the park each week are not making much headway up the list.
The most consistent of these has been Geelong’s Tom Hawkins who leads the league goal kicking with 33 goals by a fair margin over Josh Kennedy (West Coast).
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
The only other elite goalkicker in the current Top 10 is Jack Riewoldt (Richmond) who bought up his 650th career goal on the weekend and shares ninth place with Bulldog Mitch Wallis.
Wallis, who has already equalled his PB season tally of 20 goals, was the best goal scorer of the week with four goals.
A milestone of 50 goals was reached by Geelong’s Rhys Stanley, the exciting Bomber Irving Mosquito bought up two goals in his debut game, overshadowing teammate Dylan Clarke who also scored his first.
Giant Jake Ricciardi also scored his first two goals while Eagle Xavier O’Neill, Crow Harry Schoenberg, Lion Tom Fullerton and Magpie Flynn Appleby all started the long journey up the list with their first goals.
At the other end of the scale, Eagle Jack Darling’s three goals catapulted him into the AFL Top 100 goal scorers of all time.
He leapt past Horrie Clover of Carlton (396 goals) to join Sydney’s Tony Morwood on 397 goals in 99th position.
Clover was one of the Blues’ great forwards who kicked most of his goals from centre half forward including four in his first game and 13 in a game against St Kilda in the same year.
Recruited from Maryborough his career started 100 years ago in 1920 and stretched through until 1931 although he missed all of the 1925 season with illness.
He won the league goal kicking in 1922 and Carlton’s goalkicking on six occasions. Clover still sits at Number 5 on Carlton’s all time Top 100 goal scorers list, and Number 81 on the Blues all time games played list.
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