Six Points: Calling out Daicos' dog act, and the commonsense alternative to 'interchange-gate'

Round 10’s come and gone – awesome news if you’re a Swan,

Pies on top, Dogs are hot, Butters kicked a bomb.

Blunders on the North bench, Eagles have a mighty stench,

Harley Reid’s heading west, Bombers passed their biggest test.

Hunter copped a dodgy week, Lions’ seven-win streak,

Curtis scored, Darcy Moore, now let’s talk about it all!

We didn’t start the fire…

1. There’s a commonsense alternative to ‘interchange-gate’

I can’t be the only one who thought the dramatic scenes at the end of North Melbourne’s loss to Sydney took plenty of the gloss off what had up until then been a fantastic match.

No one wants to see games decided by administrative blunders, and seeing a team win a free kick and 50m penalty for the match-winning goal in the final minute is about as administrative as it gets.

Yes, the umpires handled the situation perfectly; yes, the Kangaroos stuffed up; yes, by the letter of the law everything was above board, notwithstanding the alleged 77th interchange the Roos made a minute later which has since been dubiously ticked off by the AFL.

But all the same, it’s like seeing a cricket World Cup decided on boundary countback; a dodgy way to end things. It’s yet another example of the punishment not fitting the crime.

Here is my alternate proposal: instead of awarding a free kick and 50m penalty for interchange cap indiscretions, the offending player is simply ordered to come immediately back off. It was known within a matter of seconds of Liam Shiels coming off that the mistake had been made, so it should be fairly easy for the respective interchange steward to inform club and player of the error, and forcibly bring them back off.

If that player gets involved in the play in the meantime, then sure, pay a free kick and a 50. But this was an honest mistake which did nothing to hinder Sydney’s chances of winning. North Melbourne certainly didn’t mean to get their sums wrong.

The bottom line is this: as fun as it is to debate, it doesn’t pass the grand final test: would you be satisfied seeing your team cost a premiership in this manner on the last Saturday in September?

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North Melbourne players. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

2. Why this Bulldog is the recruit of the year

2023 has seen no shortage of players switching clubs instantly becoming crucial cogs.

Tom Mitchell has proved a crucial piece of the puzzle in the Collingwood juggernaut, Josh Dunkley has put together a scintillating run of form at Brisbane, Lachie Hunter has excelled on the wing against Melbourne, and even Jaeger O’Meara is putting together a solid patch after a down start to the season.

But no recruit is having anywhere near the impact Liam Jones is on the Western Bulldogs.

Jones was recruited at the end of last year, in somewhat bizarre circumstances given his retirement from the game 12 months prior due to the AFL’s vaccination stance, for one thing alone: to fix the Bulldogs’ leaky defence. In 2022, the Dogs were incredibly easy to score on, their goals per inside 50 conceded stats rivalling cellar dwellers North Melbourne and West Coast. It was grim.

Fast forward 12 months, and only St Kilda and Collingwood have conceded fewer points than the Dogs. And in restricting an Adelaide forward line with weapons to spare to only five goals on Saturday in Ballarat, Jones was central in it all.

Yes, there was no Taylor Walker to contend with – a bizarre resting decision by the Crows – but Jones’ reading of the play was a treat. Bringing down a game-high four intercept marks to go with six spoils, Darcy Fogarty, Lachie Gollant and Elliott Himmelberg barely got a look in.

With Jones the quarterback behind the ball, the Dogs are now able to safely press higher, putting enough pressure on the opposition ball-carrier to force long, high kicks with minimal accuracy. Jones eats those for breakfast.

There’s plenty of competition for the All-Australian key defensive posts – Darcy Moore and Callum Wilkie have been the standouts so far in my eyes – but Jones is coming with a wet sail.

Liam Jones at Bulldogs training. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

3. Freo’s system change is working a treat

The state of Fremantle’s ball movement was ghastly to behold in the early rounds.

Stodgy, uninspired and wayward to boot, the Dockers could hardly score – and worse still, were letting in turnovers by the score to leak points like they just hadn’t in their run to the finals in 2022.

The past month, though, has seen a drastic change: it started scrappily against Brisbane, but the Dockers are taking the game on with handball, bursting off half-back with speed, and delivering it into a forward line that suddenly looks ultra-dangerous. Helped by a remarkable stoppage domination against an undermanned Geelong on-ball brigade, Freo were unstoppable en route to a 29-point win that shoots them firmly back into the finals mix.

It seems Freo have realised that they have a bevy of pacy running backs, Jordan Clark and Hayden Young chief among them, as well as a foursome of damaging small forwards in Lachie Schultz, Michael Walters, Sam Switkowski and Michael Frederick. The game they are playing now suits all those assets to a tee.

It’s tremendously difficult to so radically change a style mid-season – usually, it means a caretaker coach has taken over, and has mixed at best results. But the Dockers are now on a three-game streak, and especially at home, I wouldn’t want to be playing them anytime soon.

4. What was Lachie Hunter meant to do?

Like with Jacob van Rooyen a fortnight ago, I’m struggling to work out exactly what Lachie Hunter’s alternative was in the contest with Connor Rozee that saw the Melbourne winger cop a one-week suspension.

Hunter arrives at the collision point with the ball still in dispute, gets over the ball, and braces for contact. Rozee, arriving at bull-at-a-gate pace and leading with the head, is as much to blame for the hit as Hunter.

For me, this is a less serious incident than the one which Mitch Duncan escaped sanction for a fortnight ago, when he at least led into the contest with his shoulder and made the choice to bump. There is no bumping motion in Hunter’s case; he’s merely doing what every footballer should be taught to do, and protecting his head and front from getting poleaxed.

The AFL is terrified of any contact to the head – not surprising, given the class action lawsuits emerging against them. But solving the concussion problem is far more complicated than just punishing anyone who makes contact with the head regardless of circumstance.

It starts with teaching players that leading with the head as Rozee did just can’t be encouraged anymore. Junior footballers are encouraged to put their head over the footy at all costs, but you can still do that without recklessly putting your head in danger.

That’s going to take time – years and decades time. Even then, you’ll never completely stamp out concussion from a contact sport which features big hits aplenty. But it would be more dangerous to penalise Hunter for doing the right thing and protecting himself than to acknowledge that: we don’t want the next player in his situation going in head-first as well, and knocking both out.

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5. Even stars have to be called out for dog acts

I’ve written enough this year in praise of Nick Daicos and his brilliant role in the Collingwood juggernaut, so it’s only fair to do the same when he does something… less good.

There’s next to no chance he cops a suspension for his gut-punch on Carlton’s Blake Acres. Jye Caldwell didn’t get one for a similar shot on Daicos himself on Anzac Day – it seems like tummy-taps are a way down the list of the AFL’s priorities on what is considered ‘suspendable’.

That doesn’t make it any less of a dog act. Regardless of the niggle Daicos had undoubtedly been copping from the Blues throughout Sunday’s match, punching a bloke in the guts, no matter what the force is, is piss poor from a bloke good enough to hold himself to a higher standard.

I would honestly rather see Daicos cop a week for this than for Hunter to go for an in-play act where he had little if any alternative. Gut-punches have been an issue in the AFL for a while now – Ben Cunnington is a master of it – and this sort of petty, cheap thuggery frankly sucks. At least an old-fashioned punch on has all parties as willing combatants.

Just as I wrote about Ben King a few weeks ago, when his own off the ball cheap shot gifted Melbourne a crucial goal in a narrow Gold Coast loss, this rubbish just has no place in the game. The AFL should really think about harsher punishments for it, to stamp it out for good.

Nick Daicos of the Magpies celebrates a goal. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

6. Clarko isn’t the only victim here

Something has gotten lost in the last few days of excessive coverage and debate over Alastair Clarkson’s stepping away as North Melbourne coach due to mental health concerns.

That there are two sides to this story.

I wrote on Thursday that Clarkson, as well as Chris Fagan, Jason Burt and the First Nations players and families who first made their allegations of racism public, have been failed first by the Hawthorn Football Club, and then the AFL, who couldn’t have handled things worse if they had tried.

We will probably never know the truth of the allegations levelled against the Hawthorn three, but too much of the debate, especially in the public forum, has centred on Clarkson being the victim of a vicious smear campaign to drag his name through the mud, and that he should have been supported from all corners immediately, and not just now.

There’s truth to that – but it’s also true that the allegations are yet to be properly tested in a court of law. Most likely, they never will. And the only thing protecting the First Nations former players who made the allegations from the same level or greater of public condemnation as Clarkson – or, say, Heritier Lumumba – is the very anonymity that has formed the basis of attacks against them from the get-go.

Good on the North Melbourne supporters who showed their support for Clarkson with a minute’s applause during their game against Sydney. Good on anyone who used the news to have an open discussion about mental health with a loved one.

But it’s important to remember Clarkson isn’t the only player in this terrible, terrible story. He isn’t the only one who has been denied justice.

Random thoughts

– I didn’t mention it in the intro here because I wanted to make a Billy Joel joke, but Indigenous Round gets better every year. Dreamtime, as always, one of the highlights of the year.

– This Jason Horne-Francis pick up, my goodness.

– Harry Sheezel and George Wardlaw got all the headlines, but I’m not sure Jy Simpkin has played a better game than on Saturday.

– Reckon Patrick Dangerfield’s reputation has grown with him out in the last fortnight. Cats utterly obliterated in the midfield twice in a row without him.

– Incredibly relieved that Mitch Owens didn’t do some serious damage in that incident. As nasty as I’ve seen in many a year.

– Is Hugh McCluggage back?

– I get that they’re fielding a WAFL team… but surely there are no excuses for an 116-point loss to the 18th-placed team. I honestly reckon Port Melbourne could have had a better result.

– Can only imagine Carlton fans are taking this from Steele Sidebottom well.