Ten most disrespectful goals from the 2020 AFL season (Part 2)

Footy is firmly back in the focus of most red-blooded sporting supporters in Australia.

Following on from Part 1 of this list, here in chronological order is a handful of the most disrespectful goals of the 2020 season.

Jack Newnes
Round 12 against Fremantle
There was extraordinarily little to get excited about in this game, let’s be honest. There’s dour, there’s eye-watering and then there’s this Round 12 clash.

For those who’ve forgotten, Fremantle jumped out to an early three-goal lead and promptly forgot how to score for the remainder of the match. Carlton then spent the entire match playing slow-motion catch-up. The entire last quarter – up the last nine seconds – had just four behinds between the two sides. You could write tomes about the ineptitude of it all. But I digress.

With just seconds remaining following a downfield hit Jack Newnes was handed the ball on the boundary line 50 metres out. This was a moment of truly blissful deceit as he was not even close to being the man who should’ve taken the kick. Nonetheless, after delivering some truly stone-faced glares at the cameraman and security guard who dared to be close to him and after taking some frustrations out on nearby cables, Newnes took precisely three seconds at the top of his mark to think about the gravity of the situation before sticking several metaphorical fingers up at the seven Fremantle players guarding the mark and 24,114 Dockers fans in attendance as he slammed his set-shot through the goals.

It was filthy enough to nearly cause James Brayshaw an aneurysm. I rest my case.

Charlie Dixon
Round 14 against Sydney
No offence to Charlie – and I do mean this, because as I’m about to imply Charlie is terrifyingly large – but when my mind drifts off and begins to equate humans with vehicles, as is the accepted form of comparison in 2021, I tend to picture steamrollers, tunnel-borers or heavy-duty iron ore-bearing mining equipment like the Bucyrus RH400.

So when Chaz wrong-footed Lewis Melican with relative ease, it appeared as though there’d been a glitch in the matrix. Dixon is 200 centimetres and 108 kilos. Melican is 195 centimetres and 98 kilos. That’s admittedly not a monumental difference, but it’s enough that Melican should have a slight edge in agility.

However, after expectedly out-bodying the Swan stopper, Dixon seemingly paused time, proceeded through his half-mile turning circle, adjusted the angle suitably, hot-stepped his way out of Melican’s grasp and nailed the snap.

And didn’t he love it.

Charlie Dixon (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Harry Perryman
Round 15 against Carlton
A genuine crime occurred in Carlton’s match-up with the Giants in Round 15. Grand larceny of the highest order, and in more ways than one. And boy was it heart-wrenching and hilarious.

The Blues had proved too good for their opponents for the vast majority of the game and entered the final stanza holding a 15-point lead over the inaccurate Giants. Yet with 11 minutes remaining and with the Blues staunchly defending a three-point margin a scrubbed kick forward on the left wing from Jeremy Cameron looked set to land comfortably in the lap of Carlton’s Tom Williamson. He’d read the flight of the ball with aplomb and sat positioned centimetre-perfect awaiting the intercept mark.

As far as he was concerned he was the epitome of organisation. He’d patiently waited in line, secured a ticket to his favourite Broadway show and was readily awaiting the first act. However, Perryman snatched the ticket, burned it in front of him, snorted the ashes and punched the ball away from his grasp deep inside 50.

The GWS handyman then had the audacity to awkwardly semi-fumble the ball to give Matthew Cottrell hope before calmly collecting the Sherrin and snapping the goal, which put the Giants in front and gleefully launched GWS to a nine-point victory.

Patrick Cripps
Round 17 against Adelaide
As has been previously discussed on this page, Cripps is a footballing minotaur – and closer to bull than human. Naturally being a labyrinth-bound mythical hybrid creature who dines on the flesh of Athenian youths comes with certain advantages. So when the Carlton skipper gathered the ball of the far wing against Adelaide in the third quarter of their late-season clash there was no realistic way the Crows had of stopping him from exerting his will upon the contest.

After a typically scrappy scrimmage Cripps decided enough was enough. Literally tearing the ball away from the grasp of Rory Laird, he waltzed past Elliott Himmelberg – clearly not a matador going by the ineptitude of the tackle – handballed off so as not to completely hog the ball, casually received it back and not once, not twice but thrice wrong-footed Luke Brown.

Roosting the ball from 45 metres out, I struggle to think of goals that were surer a thing or as disrespectful as this.

Dustin Martin
Grand final against Geelong
There really was no other way this article could end. Having torn the heart and soul out of Geelong in the second half of the grand final, leaving an eviscerated headless cat corpse in the middle of the Gabba, Martin waited until the very end to deliver an inevitable and utterly dominant act of braggadocio.

Late in the piece he gathered the ball deep in the pocket and looked around to see who dared attempt to bring him to ground. Who else was there to guard him but Patrick Dangerfield, a fierce rival who might match him in talent but who has never reached the premiership heights Martin has.

Dusty brushed off his rival like he was a mere gnat, bundling him over the boundary line. He found space that shouldn’t have existed, swivelled on the boundary and snapped truly over his shoulder, bending the Sherrin through the uprights.

Cue tongue-wagging celebrations and one hell of a PTSD moment for Cats fans around Australia.

To deliver a dagger of such magnitude on the biggest stage in this sport, having flat-out embarrassed one of your biggest rivals – therapists have years of work locked in ahead of them.