Opinion
The final round of the home-and-away season each year is always filled with excitement, anticipation, sadness, disappointment and nostalgia and this year – more than ever – that is the case.
The AFL deserves to be congratulated on their ability to put on a full season of 23 rounds that provided plenty of close matches and an exciting and meaningful last round (albeit with little or no crowds).
(Photo by Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images)
Friday night’s game was a perfect example of how close the season has been. After the game one team was on top of the ladder and the other was fourth.
One of the small and generally under-appreciated advantages than can make a difference in a really close contest is a player’s familiarity with his teammates.
This is built up over the season and a player’s confidence in knowing the habits and abilities of those around him grows game by game to such an extent that a game like Friday night’s pressure event can turn on a hurried knock on or searching handball.
Such confidence is built on the number of recent games shared by the players, and an interesting statistic is look at the number of players who have played every game of the season together.
The average across the 18 teams is five per club and the only teams that exceed this number by a significant number are all top five on the ladder: Melbourne (ten if first-year player James Jordon gets picked as the medi-sub), Brisbane (nine) and Port Adelaide (eight).
(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
This may have been a factor in Friday night’s two-point win by the Power. The Western Bulldogs had only four 22-game-players, including Jack Macrae, whose game took him level with turn-of-the 21st century player Mitch Hahn on the Bulldogs’ top 100 game players list.
For Port Adelaide, the two most experienced 22-game players Tom Jonas and Ollie Wines are climbing up the top 100 list at Port in tandem, and they joined former player and currently under-the-pump Suns coach Stuart Dew in 13th place.
In the Hawthorn-Richmond game, departing coach Alastair Clarkson added another chapter to his CV with more good season-ending form even without the late withdrawal of AFL top 100 goal kicker Luke Breust and the (almost) season-long absence of the club’s other top 100 goal kicker, Jack Gunston.
One player we won’t see again is the amazing ‘Silk’ Shaun Burgoyne, who played his 250th game for Hawthorn on his way to 407 AFL games – the third greatest number by any player.
In the same game, Hawthorn’s Tom Mitchell played his 150th AFL game and Ben Miller debuted for Richmond.
In the other early game, Lance Franklin gave us all something to look forward to in the finals, and Sydney gave their percentage a good boost in a rather forlorn attempt to finish in the top four.
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