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Opinion
When the first Carlton practice match took place last week, not having access to Kayo, I went to desperate measures to try and keep abreast of the goings on at Princes Park and went to a football blog on the wrong side of the tracks, lets just call it ‘schmig schmooty’.
While on this site I couldn’t help but be struck with the strange and conflicting posts regarding a a long-time whipping boy of the Blues faithful, Lochie O’Brien.
There were a number of posts that praising O’Brien’s foot skills and hard running but plenty abusing (and I mean abusing) every missed target, every fumble, every perceived half-step.
In a game where the unofficial stats have O’Brien racking up 27 possessions (a career high by some margin) on a wing, the sheer number of Carlton supporters who declared him a certain non-starter for Round 1 was gobsmacking (at best he got a “jury’s out”).
Now, it should be observed that these negative comments about O’Brien are hardly out of the ordinary – he does, after all, have all the traits of the classic AFL whipping boy. He firstly is a classic wingman, a largely outside player who feeds off the ‘real men’ getting it on the inside.
These players, who regularly clock up around 15 kilometres a game, are always deemed soft by those ‘hard men’ who get winded going from the couch to the fridge. He is also a top-ten draft pick who didn’t dominate the game from his first game, so is quickly labelled a bust and to top it all off, he plays for Carlton.
However, even with all this knowledge I just couldn’t reconcile the dramatic chasm between the opinions. How could one person see a career-best game and the next have proof positive that he would never play for Carlton again?
It was this mystifying intrigue that fed my excitement for finding the full game on YouTube that night and drove me to watch it, even though I knew I should have long been in bed.
I just had to see what sort of game O’Brien had played and try to match the timing of the vitriolic comments up to the act, as much as possible from memory.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
As I watched the game unfold, it became clearer and clearer that once the whipping boy title has been acquired it is almost impossible to shrug off. People only see things that reinforce their pre-conceived opinions.
The backing back into an out coming pack was ignored but the ‘short step’ to lay a bump on ruckman Tom Campbell in the defensive goal square was pathetic and weak (ignoring the running it took for a wingman to be in the defensive goal square) because he should have dived head first on the loose ball as Campbell kicked it.
The dropped uncontested mark at centre half back (where he spent the ball before he got it) was a clear indication that he heard footsteps but Adam Cerra committing the same sin the next quarter was overlooked.
Missing a target by a foot in the first competitive hit-out for the year was evidence his ‘one wood’ wasn’t as good as advertised, despite teammates continually looking for him to be the designated kicker where he regularly found his man.
The errant handball as he was tackled was just more evidence he wasn’t strong enough of mind and body to be Patrick Cripps.
The sad thing for O’Brien, who was overplayed under Brendan Bolton and underplayed under David Teague (in an environment where he was asked to earn his spot where VFL games didn’t exist), is that he will probably never be more than one mistake away from being abused by his own supporters, despite the fact that I am becoming increasingly convinced he will be a very important part of the Blues’ success or failure.
Carlton are desperate for a wingman who can use the ball. In recent years where the game plan only wanted wingmen to be defensively limited players like Matthew Cottrell and Jack Newnes but they did nothing to help Cripps be the damaging clearance player he could be and everything to help him become the pale imitation of himself trying to do too much.
Watching the pre-season match, it became clear that Michael Voss has much greater appreciation for the offensive weapon a quality wingman could be. O’Brien (and Zac Williams) were set up well off the stoppage and held their space as their opponents were drawn like moths to a flame to Cripps’ big body before he released a creative handball to the hard-running outside players and the Blues were away.
This strategy not only made O’Brien look good but made Cripps the best player on the ground.
It seems to me that the environment at Carlton is finally right, at the right time, for O’Brien to finally deliver on his clear talent and be a talisman for the Blues – unfortunately he will have to do it without the respect of the majority of the Carlton faithful.
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