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The byes are done, nine games a weekend are back, and an already extraordinary 2023 season just continues to twist and turn with every passing day.
Last week’s heroes in Richmond and Fremantle have come crashing back to earth, Port Adelaide kept pace with Collingwood atop the ladder in the most dramatic way possible, and the less said about how St Kilda escaped with four points against West Coast the better.
For surely the first time in AFL history, we are legitimately at a point where the gap between fourth and 15th on the ladder is just about nonexistent – any team from Melbourne down to the Tigers can take down anyone else in that massive bracket, and it’s pretty much impossible to predict any of it.
Have fun, tipsters. Let’s dive in.
Collingwood are probably going to win the premiership this year.
It’s always risky to say that with eight rounds still to go for the home-and-away season, plus four more weeks of finals. A lot can happen in a week, never mind two months.
But on a balance of odds, given their incredible form, dashing play and – and this is key – the fact they’re all but locked in for a top-two berth that means they won’t have to leave the MCG in September… this is probably the Magpies’ year. Best start preparing for doomsday, my fellow Victorians.
And if they do, it will probably be Nick Daicos, and Scott Pendlebury, and Darcy Moore, and maybe even Brayden Maynard, who get all the credit. But it’s bigger than that.
I have genuinely never seen a team get more out of its players 16-22 than the Pies are this year. Week after week, there is scarcely a weak link to cover for – and it has never been more apparent than in their 78-point demolition of Gold Coast?
Daicos’ 36 disposals and a goal – and 13 contested possessions, for all you detractors out there – will probably win him the three Brownlow votes; but while the stats sheet won’t show it, I thought John Noble was just as good if not better.
Six days on from his heroic pair of tackles to save the day for the Magpies against the Crows, Noble, the best mid-season recruit we’ve yet seen (with apologies to Marlion Pickett and Jai Newcombe) was again superb across half-back, winning a stack of ball, driving the Pies forward with dash and dare, and even snagging a goal for his troubles.
Speed from defence is a cornerstone of the Magpies’ march to premiership favouritism, and while Daicos engineers it through his lightning footy brain and sharp skills, Noble’s is sheer, pacy gut-running. And it’s awesome to watch.
You can put Oleg Markov into that category, too – has there ever been a fringe player more perfectly suited to a good team? Moved on by Gold Coast at the end of last year, whose contested game style clashed with his outside pace and flair, he must be thanking his lucky stars the Pies swooped on him in the supplementary selection period, otherwise he’d likely be playing in the twos for Carlton.
When the game was there to be won, it was the mustachioed Magpie in the thick of everything, burning his way down the wing time and time again, and even bagging a goal in the second half as well. Incidentally, I’m not sure a team has ever had such a swathe of attacking half-backs as the Pies do.
You can throw in a dozen other names like Noble and Markov into the ‘underrated star’ category. Isaac Quaynor has a claim on being the best pure small defender in the game, and should be making the All-Australian squad at least; Nathan Murphy battles manfully above his weight time and again as a key defender as courageous as the day is long; Beau McCreery tackles like a demon and does all the things that coaches love from pressure smalls.
Even the much-maligned Will Hoskin-Elliott got in on the fun against the Suns, though many Pies fans would argue he’s the one player in their perfectly humming team they could probably be without, especially with the upping of intensity that comes with finals.
If the Pies do salute on the last day of September, it’ll probably be Nick Daicos, or his brother Josh, or maybe even a Darcy Moore or Jamie Elliott, who wins the Norm Smith Medal.
But Craig McRae’s team is more than just its stars.
Oleg Markov celebrates. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
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West Coast’s lionhearted performance against St Kilda on Sunday evening was as far removed from their horrific showings over the past month as it is possible to be.
Up by 25 points at half time, the Eagles were always in danger of being overrun, as threadbare and inexperienced as their team is. So it proved – but after four losses by 100 points or more this season and last week’s 171-point humiliation, to see such heart, effort and intensity was a huge step in the right direction.
For the first time, it looked like the Eagles actually cared – even with their best player in Tim Kelly a late withdrawal due to illness, a trio of experienced players in Luke Shuey, Dom Sheed and even Andrew Gaff lifted accordingly, setting the standard as they should have been doing all season long.
It will all count for nought, however, if it proves just a one-week bounce and it’s back to getting walloped for the rest of the season. If anything, the performance showed what I’ve thought all season long – that it hasn’t been injuries that have caused the Eagles’ historically bad run of form, but an utter lack of effort.
The Eagles will still cop their fair share of hidings in the last eight weeks – their team still flat out sucks. But if they can repeat their efforts against a St Kilda outfit which came within a whisker of the most embarrassing loss in our game’s history a few more times, then they can at least head into the future with dignity intact (or at least, no more damaged than it already has been).
This is the bare minimum. It’s up to West Coast to decide whether the praise they’ll get for improving a week on from their darkest hour will spur them to new heights, or see them drop back now that the pressure dial has been ever so slightly turned down.
A big part of the reason draws are so fun and I’m religiously against anyone who says otherwise are the permutations that they open up in the run for finals.
Friday night’s tie between Geelong and Sydney has opened up an almighty can of worms right in the middle of the ever-growing logjam between fourth and 15th – and means, remarkably, four teams came out of it significantly worse off.
Of course, two of them were the two combatants themselves – fittingly, given neither side deserve to win, a draw is as good as a defeat for the Swans and Cats, whose excellent percentages loomed as being a crucial point of difference in the race for the eight.
Geelong’s percentage gap on the likes of the Western Bulldogs, Essendon, St Kilda and even GWS and Fremantle is now meaningless – they’ll still need to win one extra game to feature in September. Ditto the Swans, whose running up of the score against West Coast the week prior now might as well have been a regulation six-goal win.
But the even bigger losers are the two other holders of a draw this season – Carlton and Richmond.
The Tigers’ percentage took a huge hit with their 81-point loss to Brisbane on Thursday night, but until 24 hours later it didn’t matter at all.
Now, it does – as if it wasn’t going to be tough enough already for them to rise from 15th into the eight, they’ve now got to make sure they win at least one more game than Geelong or Sydney.
Carlton, too, are in the midst of a surge, back up to 14th with a season-defining game against Fremantle next week. They, too, will now need to ensure they win enough games to qualify for finals, lest they risk missing out on percentage for the second season running.
There was a widespread belief that the loser of Friday night’s clash at the SCG would be all but gone in 2023 (ridiculous in my book – I refuse to believe for a second Geelong won’t make it).
As it happens, the Swans and Cats are still in the mix – but the path into finals for half of the vying candidates outside the eight just got a whole lot tougher.
The general consensus a fortnight ago was that we had a pretty clear top four in Collingwood, Port Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne, and then a stack of teams vying to be next-best in the queue.
Well, you can change that to a clear top THREE now, because the Demons are well and truly back in the pack. With two losses, the latest a truly disheartening one to GWS, and the looming absence of Bayley Fritsch to a foot injury, the Dees are in serious strife now.
Regardless of the conditions, to score five goals from 73 inside 50s in Alice Springs is unforgiveable. Yes, they kicked 15 behinds, but it wasn’t as if they were like Sydney on Friday night and spraying every set shot they had. They’re just incapable of generating high-quality shots at goal anywhere near enough.
The Dees proved their quality when they held off Collingwood on King’s birthday, but with back-to-back losses to Geelong and now the Giants, they’ve been exposed badly up forward – as has been the case at crucial stages for the last 12 months.
God knows why Simon Goodwin thought Jacob van Rooyen was the problem, but after dropping the young gun for Ben Brown, Fritsch’s likely absence will surely be enough to be worth trying the two talls together for the first proper time all season (Brown got injured midway through van Rooyen’s Round 3 debut) – especially given neither Brodie Grundy nor Max Gawn are close to good enough as key forward targets.
Clayton Oliver’s return isn’t going to be the windfall it might otherwise be – the Dees have had no shortage of contested ball-winners in the last fortnight, with Jack Viney and Christian Petracca superb in his absence.
As for the chasing pack, the Bulldogs and Saints are equal with them on wins after the former held off Fremantle and the latter dodged the mother of all bullets in the west.
Remarkably, next week’s clash with the Saints is now must-win for the Dees; lose, and not only will the Saints leapfrog them, but one of Adelaide or Essendon will inch closer, as will in all likelihood Geelong, Fremantle and even Sydney.
Fourth is right there for the taking for anyone who wants it. Its still the Demons’ to lose, but the way they’re playing, a remarkable fall out of the eight is far from inconceivable. And with Fritsch gone, it remains to be seen who will kick the goals.
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It’s often lazy to treat Gold Coast and GWS as almost one entity, a collective, mediocre thought experiment by the AFL doomed to fail in rugby league heartlands.
It’s also incorrect – because from the minute the two clubs were born, only one has shown the requisite shrewdness, spirit and culture to survive in a cutthroat business, let alone thrive.
You couldn’t watch the Giants’ stirring two-point win over Melbourne in Alice Springs, a match they clung to by their bootlaces throughout despite getting dominated in virtually every key stat, and not see a team brimming with heart.
It was in Toby Bedford’s desperate repeat tackles and remarkable work rate – a pair of pressure acts after getting clobbered running back with the flight were simply inspirational. It was in Connor Idun repeatedly forcing draws against players of all shapes and sizes, from the significantly larger Ben Brown to the more mobile James Harmes.
It’s in every Tom Green contested possession, every Jack Buckley intercept mark, and all the way to the acts of brilliance, like Josh Kelly’s epic 65 metre winning goal at the death.
It’s even more noteworthy for the contrast to the north, where the Suns, for the second time in three weeks, turned up their toes with an insipid horror show of a performance against a rampant Collingwood.
It’s hard to escape the notion that the Suns still feel like a fake footy team. There are stars aplenty in all regions of the ground, and they have regularly shown this year that at their best, they can trouble just about anyone.
This is a team that can beat Adelaide in a shootout, can outhunt the Western Bulldogs for the hard ball, and push Melbourne to their absolute limits. Yet when the going gets tough, too often these Suns still turn up their toes.
Both the Giants and the Suns have haemorrhaged talent across their history, repeatedly losing stars both established and emerging to bigger rivals, especially in Victoria. The Giants look set to be hit again come season’s end with the looming departure of Harry Himmelberg, maybe even across to Sydney.
But the Giants, through a combination of smart recruiting and exceptional player development, can surely recover: after losing Jeremy Cameron, they played Moneyball with the then-troubled Jesse Hogan, while despite losing Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper in the 2022 off-season, they have found a go-getter in Bedford.
Adam Kingsley has them playing to all conditions – rapid and relentless in the dry against Fremantle a fortnight ago, then gritty and willing in the wet in the red centre. It’s why, with eight weeks to go, they’re a game and percentage out of finals, have Hawthorn next week, and are in the mix for finals up to their eyeballs.
Stuart Dew has been at the helm of the Suns for five and two-thirds seasons now. It is inexcusable for this team to still be as staggeringly bad as it has been at times this year.
The Giants weren’t prepared to deal with mediocrity when they and Leon Cameron collectively decided that the jig was up midway through last season. 2023 was meant to be ground zero for Kingsley – instead, they seem to have done in six months what it’s taken the Suns six years.
What the Giants have done in their history, with many odds stacked against them, has been remarkable, even taking into account the swathe of first-round draft picks they were given in their formative years. The Suns had the same advantage, and look how that’s turned out for them.
Talent means nothing without heart, spirit, and gumption. The Giants have that in spades; Gold Coast, somehow, are still searching for it.
When Fremantle kicked two quick goals to start the final term at Marvel Stadium, it wasn’t too extreme to say the Western Bulldogs’ season was on the line.
In an eight-point game against another top-eight hopeful amid the serious logjam between fifth and 15th on the ladder, a loss here, having controlled most of the game and led for a comfortable majority, would have been a hammer blow, and risked the Dogs falling out of the eight entirely ahead of a clash with Collingwood next week.
Enter Rhylee West.
In and out of the Bulldogs’ best 22 since making his debut in 2019, the son of a gun, more than anyone else on the ground, would win his team the match.
In just 21 per cent game time, having been injected in at three-quarter time, West might have only had five disposals and two tackles, but his impact was stunning.
First, he hit a spillage inside 50 at bull-at-a-gate pace, slicing through the contest to gather and give a sharp handball to Cody Weightman, who did the rest to give the Dogs some breathing space.
30 seconds later, there West was again, bringing a ball to ground against Hayden Young, then the quickest man to recover, gathering, kicking quickly forward and weighting it perfectly for Aaron Naughton to mark.
He’d goal as well. In the space of a minute, West had had as many goal assists as any player on the ground all day.
Moments later, West would stand strong in the middle to grab an intercept mark and spark a turnover in the middle, leading to a Jamarra Ugle-Hagan shot at goal.
And just for good measure, while it was Jack Macrae who’d be credited with this holding the ball-winning tackle on Ethan Hughes to bring about his match-sealing goal, you’ll never guess who the other Dog was bringing it to ground.
All up, in his five disposals, West had two goal assists, three score involvements, and a critical role in another Bulldogs goal. That’s four game-turning moments in the space of the Dogs’ most crucial quarter of the year.
It’s clearly, in my view, the best performance by a sub this season, and a perfect encapsulation of that role as it is meant to be performed.
Thus far, 2023 has been a disappointing one for West, but that match-winning final quarter should be enough to earn him a recall to the starting 22 under the Friday night lights against the Magpies.
The Dogs lack a pressure forward with his smarts, and he’s clearly a better option for that than the likes of Mitch Hannan and Lachie McNeil. Hopefully for his team’s sake, West grabs the opportunity with both hands like he did on Saturday.
Random thoughts
– Kane Cornes reckoned Dan Houston’s goal was the best of the year, but honestly, Josh Kelly’s was twice as good.
– Love the thought of Dante Visentini’s dad absolutely screaming out of the house when he learned five minutes before game time that his son was going to debut.
– Elijah Hewett is going to be the guy all opposition fans love as long as the Eagles suck but will grow to despise the minute they get good, isn’t he?
– I just can’t have Jarrod Witts only getting fined for ironing out Taylor Adams. Absolute fluke he didn’t concuss him.
– The Saints’ fans reaction to being 24 points down to West Coast at half time is *chef’s kiss*.
– I’m convinced Sam Frost is the dumbest footballer to ever draw breath.
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