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We’ve had action, drama, controversy and talking points to spare – and the round is barely half over!
Anzac Round is always one of the most keenly anticipated of the AFL season, and this year has been no exception – and with an Anzac Day blockbuster to salivate over still to come, I for one can’t wait to see what the next two days will bring.
But from Tribunal discussion to reinvented guns and everything in between, there’s more than enough to discuss already. Let’s dive in.
You only needed to look at social media in the minutes after Callan Ward’s dangerous tackle on Lachie Neale on Saturday afternoon to realise just how divisive this debate has become.
Even the media are unsure how to process this latest incident. “I think Lachie Neale contributed to that more than the tackler,” Garry Lyon said on Fox Footy at the time, before amending his stance after seeing a replay to “not contributed, but didn’t do everything he could to work his way through this”.
Here’s my take: Ward wrapped Neale up, had him dead to rights, and then ruined it by deliberately taking him to ground. He lowers his body, he locks Neale’s legs with his own, and left him unprotected.
He well and truly earned his one-week suspension – if anything, it probably should have been two.
Spare me the argument that Neale had an arm free – it was the opposite arm to the side of the body that hit the ground, meaning he’d need to reach across his body, and probably risk a popped shoulder, to successfully break his fall.
You can tell by how high his head ricocheted after hitting the ground how vulnerable he was: it’s a miracle he avoided a concussion. Had he been knocked out, Ward would be looking at a four-week ban similar to Nathan Broad’s from Round 2, which is extremely similar if slightly worse.
Spare me also the notion that Neale went limp to milk the free kick, as Lyon insinuated. Yes, Neale gave up – but he had no way of predicting Ward would sling him to ground. He’s given up because he’s been caught stone cold holding the ball by one of the game’s best tacklers.
I’m honestly baffled by this notion Neale was playing for a free – and even if he had been, Ward still has a duty of care. Comments like Lyon’s on the official television broadcast, especially in the current concussion client, are borderline irresponsible.
Lastly, spare me the idea that this could have been avoided by the umpire blowing his whistle earlier, as Taylor Adams – currently serving a one-match ban for his own dangerous tackle – called for on Twitter.
For starters, I don’t think any of us want to open the can of worms pinging players for holding the ball the instant they’re tackled would create. It’s part of the rules that players need time to dispose of the footy – all we’ll see from more trigger-happy umpires is fewer holding the balls, quicker ball-ups, and more congestion.
Adding to that, Ward had Neale dead to rights, and didn’t need to take him to ground to win the free kick. The umpire was in the process of paying holding the ball as he made the motion that cost him a week.
There’s nothing malicious about what Ward did – players are taught to prevent any escape with tackles, and the most effective way to do that is taking players to ground. As recently as five years ago, not only is the Giants veteran in the clear, but he wins the free for holding the ball too.
The NRL is currently undergoing a reckoning on hip-drop tackles, and the damage they’re causing from players ‘dropping anchor’ during tackles. The AFL must do the same on Ward’s leg-lock, which more and more players are adding to their tackling technique to prevent a quick kick away.
It’s slowly happening, but we as a footy public probably also need to change our thinking around dangerous tackles. Prevailing opinion last week on Zach Merrett and Adams’ suspensions seemed to exonerate that pair for no other reason than the players they tackled were unhurt, and had their opposite arm free.
The MRO have been wildly inconsistent on this all year – Will Day and Gary Rohan’s two- and one-match Easter Monday suspensions when Rohan’s was clearly worse the most egregious example – but to their credit, the message has now been sent. If you take a player to ground, and their head hits the turf, it’s a week at least.
Forget making it easier for players – they just need to improve their tackle technique. It’ll happen if we give it time, as long as in the now, those that err must pay the price.
I was certain Mitch Duncan’s bump on Robbie Fox would sum up how difficult being an AFL footballer is these days.
The duty of care is so incredibly high, and instinctive, split-second decisions with no malice behind them are getting put under the microscope on a weekly basis. Players are getting rubbed out for acts that they’d have been praised for all their lives.
I’m glad Duncan ended up with no case to answer – but at the same time, clearing him feels inconsistent with the message the AFL clearly wants to send.
It’s true Fox runs over the ball, but on the super slow-mo, you can see Duncan readying to bump even while the footy is in dispute. At the point of contact, the ball is behind him, but by that point, it’s too late to change his path.
The rules of the game are clear: if you choose to bump, and catch someone high, you can expect to pay the price. And you can’t really dispute that Duncan chose to bump.
The problem in Duncan’s case is the choices he had weren’t great. He has a right to contest the footy – no one wants to see a game where players back out when the ball is in dispute for fear of causing injury.
Duncan couldn’t possibly predict Fox going to ground – the Swan was still on his feet when he tucks his shoulder in for the bump. In the split seconds between Duncan bracing and the contact, there’s no time to adjust or to react, even for a gifted athlete with reflexes the rest of us can’t come close to.
If Duncan doesn’t bump, then Fox likely takes his legs out, which we know can cause serious damage. Or if they both reach the ball at the same time, which Duncan was probably expecting before Fox overran it, there’s a real risk of a nasty head clash like the infamous one between Troy Selwood and Alex Rance in 2009.
Unlike with Ward, I’m not sure there was a reasonable alternative for the Cats veteran. There’s a difference between his bump and Tom Jonas’ on Jai Culley earlier on Saturday, where Jonas chose to target the player instead of trying to smother, made head contact – yes, a head clash counts as head contact – and deserved a ban for it.
I can’t shake the feeling that had Fox been concussed, we might be looking at a very different scenario. Which is a problem. Can an outcome be right for the wrong reasons?
For 18 months now, Marcus Bontempelli has been a victim of his own extraordinary standards.
Carrying niggling injuries all season long in 2022, he was still good enough to average 23.5 disposals, more than a goal a game and finish fourth in the league for average inside 50s per game – yet because it wasn’t a patch on his incredible 2021, he’d miss out on a fourth consecutive All-Australian selection to lesser players rising to new levels.
We’re seeing something similar to start 2023 – because the Western Bulldogs have been up and down and because he’s Marcus Bontempelli, the impact he’s having has gone under the radar. Even after Friday night’s Herculean performance against Fremantle, the Fox Footy panel somehow tried to turn best-afield honours into a debate between the Dogs captain and Adam Treloar (who was also excellent, by the way).
I’ve obviously got a dog in this fight, but just as criticism of Bontempelli’s higher than expected number of clangers in a similarly dominant outing against Brisbane a few weeks ago was off the mark, so was this. The Dogs number four was the best man on Optus Stadium by the length of the strait.
For this season alone, only Jeremy Cameron is having a better year – and even then, there’s not a lot in it. Bontempelli was a one-man band in the Dogs’ two dismal performances to start the year, and has since strapped his teammates on his back and carried them over the line in at least two of their three wins. Against Port Adelaide, it was only when he inexplicably spent lengthy periods resting forward in the crucial final term when the Power made their decisive break.
Bontempelli does it all. He’s a wonderful user of the ball, going at 75.6 per cent disposal efficiency per year, and just about every single one benefits his team. He hits the scoreboard. He wins his own ball, and tackles ferociously without it. He makes desperate defensive 50 spoils to save goals, and takes contested marks inside attacking 50.
That’s without mentioning the innumerable times over the years that he has saved the Dogs with a clutch final quarter goal when it has mattered most. No one in the last 20 years has been a better big-moment player than Marcus Bontempelli.
No player in the game, not even Cameron, does as many things as well as him. At the time of writing (Sunday evening of Round 6), he’s in the top three in the AFL for both clearances and tackles this year. That’s absurd.
I’m going to make a bold statement: I was too young to remember anything but the twilight of their careers, but I refuse to believe Nathan Buckley, James Hird and Michael Voss could possibly be better than this bloke. Of his contemporaries, I’d only put Gary Ablett and September Dustin Martin ahead of him, with Patrick Dangerfield and Scott Pendlebury neck in neck. If he can be going as well into his 30s as those two, he’ll move into outright second.
The Bont is six rounds into an extraordinarily good season, one which he is singularly responsible for more of his team’s wins than anyone in the AFL. He’s well overdue for some serious acclaim.
(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Once or twice every year, a whole bunch of people absolutely lose their minds over a dodgy Mark of the Round nomination.
So it was this week, when Harry Himmelberg’s epic, game-winning speccy against Hawthorn failed to win the nod for Gather Round, with a decent but far inferior Cody Weightman mark thus honoured.
Himmelberg’s snub got everything from polite befuddlement, to genuine outrage, to some good old-fashioned #Vicbias accusations from South Australian icon Graham Cornes.
Here’s the thing, though: this just doesn’t matter. Okay, Himmelberg’s was clearly the better mark and should have been rewarded – but a popular vote, which is how Marks of the Round are determined, will always throw up peculiariies like this. Hell, two years ago Shai Bolton’s actual Mark of the Year didn’t win its round vote, all because Collingwood successfully lobbied its Twitter base into getting Brody Mihocek comfortably ahead.
There are no prizes for Mark of the Round (though it’d be nice if the player’s grassroots footy team got a cheeky grand splashed their way – a free idea for you, AFL), and the criteria for picking the year’s best mark at the end of the season gives only the smallest of weightings to that popular vote.
All it is is a bit of harmless fun where members of the public get the chance to vote for their favourite players or teams. Yes, comedy situations can ensue out of that – the Bulldogs should frame Dwayne Russell’s SEN comments calling them a ‘big club’ with a stronger voting bloc than the Giants over the Weightman-Himmelberg fiasco – but surely we’ve all got better things to be upset about?
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It has become common in recent years for struggling forwards to be thrown into the defence to revive their careers. Liam Jones, Darcy Moore, Jayden Laverde and Brennan Cox are just a few current backline mainstays who have made the switch permanent.
It’s far rarer to see the opposite happen – a long-time defender switch to the forward line with success. Aaron Naughton has made the conversion successful after dominating as a junior intercept king, while Brody Mihocek has superbly grown into his role as Collingwood’s main spearhead having been recruited from the VFL as a key back. And now we can add Darcy Byrne-Jones to those ranks.
A 2020 All-Australian half-back, Byrne-Jones’ career seemed at the crossroads when he was demoted to the sub role against Sydney, after an indifferent start to 2023 (and, in truth, an indifferent two years) in defence. But replacing the ineffectual Junior Rioli late in the game, the 27-year old was crucial in the Power’s final-quarter comeback, with his forward line pressure and clean ball use playing a huge role in a famous win.
Since then, Byrne-Jones has gone from strength to strength: vital with two goals in the wet against the Western Bulldogs while also putting the clamps on Bailey Dale, he was one of the best afield against West Coast on Saturday. He finished with eight score involvements, equal second-most on the ground, while laying a game-best three tackles inside 50 and kicking two goals of his own.
Sydney’s Ryan Clarke revived his own career as a defensive forward locking down on the opposition’s best rebounder last year. Byrne-Jones has that knack, but with some extra perks: he has genuine goal sense, presents well for the ball, and reads the play better than most, a trait clearly honed from his experience down back.
You don’t often see established players reinvent themselves in a new role so late in their careers, and after three weeks and three wins, Byrne-Jones is well and truly entrenched back in the Power’s best 22. Ahead of their clash with St Kilda on Friday night, you’d have to expect Saints star Jack Sinclair will be in his sights.
I don’t hate any hot take from AFL talking heads with quite as much passion as I do the ‘he’s not in their next premiership team’ take.
Every year, a struggling team with a bunch of old players is urged by someone to tear everything down and start anew, send anyone over the age of 30 to the knackery, and invest in youth.
Not only have we seen countless examples of that not working – Melbourne throughout the 2010s, for just one example – but Adelaide surely proved once and for all on Sunday that experience is still the most crucial trait in footy.
The two best Crows on the ground in their thrilling win over Hawthorn were Taylor Walker and Rory Sloane, both of whom appeared over the hill back in Matthew Nicks’ first year in 2020. There were many calls for one or both to be moved on in the name of youth back then; had they done it, they’d have lost this game by five goals.
Walker remains the Crows’ number one forward target, simultaneously taking pressure off Darcy Fogarty and Riley Thilthorpe while also still kicking goals by the bucketload. Along with his four major against the Hawks came eight marks and 20 disposals as he pushed up to the wings to help his team.
33 on Tuesday, he’s still as good as every – and importantly, he’s wiser. Countless times he found his way into space not even the Hawks defenders knew was there. It was mentioned on Fox Footy’s broadcast that the Crows are among the best teams in the AFL at delivering inside 50, but I reckon a big part of that is how easy Walker makes passing it to him.
Sloane was just as significant: with the Crows getting well beaten around the ball by the Hawks’ underrated midfield brigade, the veteran’s bullocking second half was critical. With five clearances, 30 disposals and 12 contested possessions, the bash and crash nature of a hard-fought match in Tasmania suited him down to a tee. It was the best match I’ve seen him play since at least 2019.
The Crows dodged a massive bullet in Tasmania, against a Hawks outfit whose brand of kamikaze footy will see them annihilated more than a few times this year, but cannot be underestimated because of it. They’ll cause a few upsets this year.
Geelong won a premiership with the oldest team in footy history last year. Hopefully they, plus Walker and Sloane’s Sunday heroics, can end the talk that players in rebuilding sides instantly lose all value the moment they hit 30.
Random thoughts
– I’m officially worried about Alex Pearce.
– St Kilda’s transition defending is next level. How many times in the last quarter did the Blues have no one to kick to when they needed to move it quickly?
– He’d be a nightmare to barrack for, but as a neutral, I love watching Sam Frost to death.
– Reckon we could have done without mentioning Rhett Bazzo’s family tragedy multiple times during his AFL return, Kelli Underwood.
– I feel like the only people that really get behind Thursday night footy in the media. Anyone else in the ‘it’s fine except when it’s my team playing’ camp?
– Adam Kingsley needing a stress ball is adorable.
– Genuine question: is Todd Goldstein a top-20 player in North Melbourne’s history? He’s got to be at least close.
– Consolation for the Blues – Patrick Cripps might just be back.
– Brent Daniels’ return from a million injuries last year has flown under the radar. He’s been elite.
– Why is it seen as worse for Harry McKay to spray a snap than it would be for him to shank a set shot?
– Poor Xavier O’Neill – imagine getting dropped when your team has 24 fit blokes to choose from. Wasn’t even the sub!
– So flat about Touk Miller. Hope it isn’t serious.
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