Opinion
The last two rounds of footy have shown that the finals race is well and truly on with only Melbourne certain of a spot, and only North Melbourne, Essendon and West Coast seemingly out of the race.
With Essendon falling so far from grace, there is certain to be at least one new member of the eight and – if the scenarios of the past decade are followed – one or two other new members should make it as well.
Fremantle (11th last year) and St Kilda (tenth) have shown the most consistency and improvement to pencil in their names to be two of new clubs while Collingwood, Richmond and Carlton also have ambition at the expense of the Western Bulldogs, Greater Western Sydney and Port Adelaide.
Five new clubs to make the final eight would be a most unusual occurrence, and it appears likely that one or more on these three clubs will return to the eight before the season progresses much further.
Next week’s game between Richmond and Collingwood will see the winner entrenched in the top eight and make the loser’s task just that little bit more difficult.
(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The results in the Port Adelaide-Western Bulldogs and Greater Western Sydney-Geelong games will also make the position a lot clearer.
All other games of Round 8 appear straight forward, but as we have seen in all the previous rounds, upsets frequently occur and continue to keep the season interesting.
Meanwhile, for the statistical buffs among us, the last two weeks have brought up many significant milestones.
It started in Round 7, when Taylor Walker became the 61st player to kick 500 goals. He took his total to 503 goals in Round 8 and now sits only eight goals behind North Melbourne’s John Longmire, the current coach of Sydney.
Richmond’s Tom Lynch, in his 200th game, became the 100th player to kick 400 goals or more. Or did he?
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Depending which set of stats you read, Geelong’s Cliff Rankin kicked either 399 goals or 400 goals during his career that ended in 1928.
The son of former Geelong champion Teddy Rankin, and brother of teammate Bert, Cliff ‘Ticker’ Rankin was one of the last goal sneaks in the VFL to specialise in the place kick.
He made his league debut late in the 1915 season, having arrived at Geelong from Chilwell, but then missed the better part of four years on war service, before returning to Geelong in 1919.
In two publications he is credited with 400 goals, and in two others 399 goals.
No matter which total was right, Lynch kicked seven goals to finish the round on 405 goals and take over 100th place on the VFL/AFL all-time goal kickers list.
All of the ten elite goal kickers played in Round 8 with West Coast’s Josh Kennedy kicking the four goals he needed to join Fremantle’s Matthew Pavlich on 700 goals.
All of the ten – with the exception of the injured Jeremy Cameron – scored goals, including the 1000-goals scorer Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin, who scored six and took his total to 1013.
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