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Gather Round is done!
For the first time since, well, COVID, the AFL was a distinctly non-Victorian entity, as the league packed up and shifted across the border into South Australia. But while the location was different, the thrills and spills of a weekend of footy stayed the same.
Harry Himmelberg produced two of the year’s clutchest plays – at either end of the ground – to steal GWS a victory. Adelaide and Port Adelaide marked their round with significant wins in vastly different ways, the Crows steamrolling Carlton in a finals statement and the Power outmuscling the Western Bulldogs in the wet to keep the monkey off their back for another week.
St Kilda met their match in Collingwood – just – while Geelong’s climb up the ladder continued. Then, of course, there was Essendon, who went from plucky upstarts with a new coach to a legitimate force to be reckoned with when they stormed through Melbourne. Anzac Day next week is going to be epic.
So let’s not waste any time, and dive straight in!
Here’s a take that’s probably going to get me lynched if I ever visit South Australia: Gather Round was fine.
It’s controversial because there seems to be an agreement everywhere else that Gather Round was the greatest thing since sliced bread, an ingenious choice by the AFL, perfectly organised by the SA government, and the only question remaining is whether the state keeps it for the years to come.
For me, there was certainly plenty to like – the atmosphere around Adelaide was, by all accounts, fantastic, and I’m a sucker for the local footy vibe Fremantle’s thrilling win over Gold Coast at Norwood Oval had.
But there were also the problems staging a whole round in a single state was always going to present. I’d be a bit miffed if I were an Essendon fan and unable to see my team’s most significant home-and-away win in six or seven years because it was played in front of a half-empty stadium 700 kilometres to the west. Or a Carlton or Western Bulldogs fan getting an extra full away game foisted on them because we’re in a league that puts money over competition integrity at every turn.
Given the well-deserved vitriol directed at Damian Barrett for his bonkers idea the Showdown should be played at the MCG, it’s perplexing to see matches between the Bombers and Demons, as well as Collingwood and St Kilda, played interstate to nothing but fanfare.
Keep in mind I’m a Victorian accustomed to having footy at the centre of my universe, and clearly the reported extra $14 million into the AFL’s coffers from the SA government, and the record profits South Australia have generated in hospitality and accommodation from Gather Round, makes any criticism irrelevant. It’s here to stay, and even after the current contract for the next three seasons expires, should probably remain in Adelaide for the foreseeable future.
But at the very least, the love fest over it from every corner from the league and the media needs to be tempered with criticism, however light. Like every idea, it has drawbacks, and that’s fine – but let’s not pretend this is a flawless exercise.
Gather Round is a phenomenal boon for South Australia, and a substantial cash injection for the AFL. But good for the game? I’d argue less so.
It’s not panic stations for Carlton just yet – they’re 3-1-1 after five games, for heaven’s sake – but there’s definitely cause for alarm around Patrick Cripps.
Cripps will probably never reach the heights of his start to 2022, when he was basically Superman, again – but he’s covering the ground like the broken athlete he was at times during 2021.
Teams are noticing, too – Jordan Dawson was directly opposite him at virtually every stoppage on Thursday night, and given licence to run off him and be an offensive threat. The results of that speak for themselves.
It’s one thing for Cripps to not be as huge a strength as he was last season – but his lack of pace is now being cruelly exposed, and in 2022, that’s a big problem.
The game has never moved faster than it has now, and the reigning Brownlow Medallist is in real danger of being left behind. With nine clearances and 12 contested possessions, Cripps still had a decent night – but there was no question his opposite captain was the best man afield.
Can Cripps adjust his game to the new order? If not, well… the Blues had best find a way to stop opposition teams tearing them apart with speed like the Crows did.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
I’m not sure what the plan is for Trent Cotchin at Richmond this season, but it needs to change.
Cotchin has been involved in both substitutions for the Tigers in the last fortnight, first coming on as the sub against the Western Bulldogs and then being taken out of the game in their loss to Sydney. In neither match did he have anywhere near the impact of even the Cotchin of last year.
We see around the competition that veterans are still playing crucial roles for their teams well into the twilight of their careers. Scott Pendlebury has had a phenomenal season, Travis Boak was critical in Port Adelaide’s win over the Western Bulldogs, Isaac Smith might just be the All-Australian wingman right now… the list goes on and on.
If the plan for Cotchin is to not have him play every week and keep him fresh, then why name him sub? Cotchin looked weary on Friday night at the Adelaide Oval, and proved incapable of running out the match – surely he would have benefitted from having the extra week off.
And what happened to trialling him as a forward? It always seemed a dubious move, and after five rounds, Cotchin has just one goal to his name.
It’s a bewildering series of events that, in many ways, sums up the Tigers’ current problems. At the moment, one of their greatest champions is dying on the vine. One way or another, they need to decide what Trent Cotchin is to them right now.
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It’s a real shame that the best umpiring of 2023 was followed instantly by the worst.
Umpire Simon Meredith’s decision to not pay a high contact free kick to Melbourne’s Charlie Spargo from Mason Redman’s tackle was superb. Spargo ducks his head into the oncoming Redman, who has no hope of reacting in time, and as a result has his head lined up perfectly with the Bomber’s hip.
Concussion is such an enormous issue in the game, and it’s critical that we stamp out acts that lead to it on both sides. In this case, Spargo, unfortunately, was wholly responsible for what happened, and hopefully paying a free kick against him helps send a message that ducking like he did is no longer an option.
Unfortunately, Meredith’s fellow umpire Matthew Young turned sublime into ridiculous. With Spargo clearly in Disneyland and hardly able to stay on his feet, Young insisted he stand the mark, and even (I really hope I’m wrong about this) appeared to tell Clayton Oliver to leave the protected area after he came in to check on his distressed teammate.
If Spargo’s head had been split open, or his leg been broken, then there’s no way Young wouldn’t have immediately stopped the game to remove them from the field. Even a drop of blood would have been sufficient. We see it time and time again.
This isn’t just about Young, either – it’s a problem the game needs to fix. Just a week ago, Bulldog Hayden Crozier, who’d just had his back blown to smithereens in a contest, was slowly escorted from the field with play continuing around here. Last year, Dion Prestia and Richmond’s trainers had to make his way from one side of the ground to the other after being knocked into next week by Tom Stewart, and at no point did any umpire think it might be time to halt play until he could get safely off the ground. You know, like they do the second the stretcher medi-cab comes on the field, whether it’s used or not.
It’s ridiculous to have concussed players standing the mark. It’s ridiculous that a game can continue with a player still in the thick of the action and obviously in a bad way. It’s a miracle nothing disastrous has happened yet.
The solution isn’t a simple fix – we don’t want players to stay down with intent to halt the game. A common sense approach needs to be taken with this, just like it was for Meredith when he pinged Spargo for holding the ball in the first place.
Regardless, Spargo standing the mark while hardly able to stand at all was a disgraceful look for the league. Let’s learn from it.
Charlie Spargo of the Demons and Mason Redman of the Bombers compete for the ball. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
In Round 1’s Six Points, I promised I wouldn’t be talking about a certain Port Adelaide midfielder anymore. I’ll be sticking to that, but it’ll be difficult, because this point kind of involves him a lot.
Let’s start with this self-evident fact: Kane Cornes is footy’s biggest hypocrite, and it’s totally deliberate. His entire shtick is to say polarising things and get everyone up in arms against him, all while clinging to the faintest vestige of reasonableness to prevent people from tuning out.
It’s a tactic that works extremely well for him – and I won’t pretend that The Roar hasn’t benefitted enormously from his hot takes over the years. Hell, I’m doing it now.
There’s a point, though, where it becomes about more than just Kane, and we’ve reached it now. The mob drummed up by his relentless pursuit of clicks, content and headlines is now booing teenage footballers because of his summer of over-the-top, almost mocking adulation.
It’s a rubbish analogy, but it reminds me a bit of the abuse Candice Warner cops, for no other reason than that she’s married to the broadly unpopular David Warner. People lay into her because they dislike her husband and think that by bringing her down, they bring him down – it’s pretty much that simple.
The same thing is happening right now – and it just plain sucks.
We can point to Cornes letting the genie out of the bottle all we like, but at some point we as footy fans, particularly those who booed at the Adelaide Oval on Saturday night, need to reckon with our own conduct.
Cornes certainly isn’t going to change, so it’s up to us to do so. It’s not Jason Horne-Francis’ fault (okay, fine, I said his name), that Cornes spent the summer pumping him up, mocking North Melbourne for his departure.
It’s not Jason Horne-Francis’ fault Cornes has a go at people for booing a teenager, while simultaneously insinuating that another teenager in Harry Sheezel is a kick-in merchant.
It’s not Jason Horne-Francis’ fault Cornes savaged every star player’s long-term contract, then tried to wriggle his way out of that when a Port Adelaide player got one.
If we want to go hard at someone, we should go hard at Kane Cornes. Maybe, just maybe, we should start by depriving him of the one thing he craves above all: attention.
So I’ll start here. I’m not going to mention Kane Cornes in these pages again. Or, y’know, the other guy, the one he really likes.
Sometimes an elephant gets too big to fit inside the room, and it’s no longer safe or helpful to ignore.
We’ve reached that point with Kelli Underwood’s commentary on Fox Footy, and more specifically, the vitriol that comes her way every time she’s behind the mic.
With Underwood these days, there seems to be two camps: one where she’s the worst commentator in the history of time, a blight on the game and deserves to be sacked, and one where any criticism of her is sexist and disgraceful.
Let’s begin with this: Kelli Underwood is not a good commentator. No doubt it’s a far more difficult job than us keyboard warriors assume from our couches, but it’s hard to defend mixing up Hugh McCluggage with Charlie Cameron when you’re getting paid to make that distinction.
And that’s just the most egregious of a number of mistakes she made during Saturday’s North Melbourne-Brisbane match.
It’s also fine to criticise commentators: I have a go at Brian Taylor every second week (please no one tell Tom Browne). Just as we have a go at players for mistakes in the heat of the moment – I’d like to apologise in advance to Tim O’Brien’s family and friends in case audio of Saturday night at my house ever leaks – so too is it a natural part of being a public figure in a relatively high-profile job to need to be better than some quite basic mistakes.
At the same time, Underwood’s commentary gets micro-analysed in a way no other commentator receives. At times it’s the equivalent of those North Melbourne fans who pick out footage of a single poor Jason Horne-Francis effort across an entire match and share it with the world (as an aside, I’m expecting those people to be pretty quiet this week).
She has copped it for nearly 12 months for referring to GWS as ‘the orange team’ once, to the point where it’s now a footy in-joke. Yeah, it was a blunder… but on Saturday night I heard Hamish McLachlan say young Bulldog Arthur Jones had a ‘five-goal debut’ when in fact he’d actually had a five-DISPOSAL debut, and didn’t see a single Tweet calling for him to get the sack.
Women in sports media tend to be judged to a far harsher standard than their male counterparts. People wonder how Brian Taylor and Dwayne Russell, to name a couple, have their jobs with every passing week – but no one ever accuses them of being a diversity hire picked for the job for reasons other than merit.
Then there are the critics of Underwood’s voice and tone, which I find… problematic, at best. Daisy Pearce gets similar backlash at times for having the gall to sound like a human woman, and that sucks too. It’s at that point where a legitimate critique of a commentator’s flaws and mistakes gets lost in the ugly rhetoric of ‘women commentators bad’.
There’s a difference between, say, not liking what Kane Cornes or Damian Barrett or Craig Hutchison has to say and calling them out on their BS, and the kind of criticism that leads a group of high-profile media people to think it’s fine and dandy to happily discuss trying to drown Caroline Wilson live on air like Eddie McGuire and friends did on Triple M in 2016.
Commentators are always going to make mistakes – even the greats stuffed up occasionally. No doubt Kelli Underwood makes plenty.
This isn’t about defending her from legitimate criticism – it’s about us all needing to make sure that criticism doesn’t devolve into something more sinister. At the moment, that line is getting crossed far too much.
Random thoughts
– It’s Harry Sheezel then Will Ashcroft for the Rising Star so far, but Max Michalanney is a far closer third than he’s been given credit for yet.
– Haven’t seen a better small forward game than Tom Papley’s on Friday night since the time Stephen Milne kicked 11.
– I’m still adamant Shai Bolton is a top-10 player in the game, but good grief he must be annoying to barrack for.
– Have thoroughly enjoyed Dyson Heppell’s last game and a half. Huge fightback when his career looked just about shot.
– I hope North’s post-quarter time fadeout gets contextualised with the fact that Jy Simpkin was best on ground to that point before busting a finger.
– Four goals one game back from a groin injury on a wet night is pretty remarkable from Cody Weightman.
– Got a sneaking suspicion Zach Merrett will get off at the Tribunal this week for his dangerous tackle. But in all honesty, I wouldn’t have a clue. It’s broken.
– And one from last week to finish off – Will Day getting a week more than Gary Rohan was a joke, but it would have been even worse if he’d got off at the Tribunal. Deserved a week, and Rohan’s deserved two.
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