Jun 23, 2014

AFL

The Monday Knee Jerk Reaction: AFL Round Fourteen

1 Comment

Footy is a passion, not some cold hearted, spread sheet dominated rational exercise.

On a Monday you want irrational reaction. You want emotion to trump reason.

What you really want is idiotic hysteria.

You’ve come to the right place.

Richmond (51) v Sydney (62)

It's a heartwarming story when the most expensive recruit goes to one of the best teams in the league and helps them edge out a perennial loser.

Where's the Disney movie about this?

I felt sorry for Damien Hardwick. This game started out so well, but Longmire started with those pesky adjustments.

Hardwick must have wished that he too could make changes during the game to his team's tactics.

Port Adelaide (128) v Western Bulldogs (56)

Remember when David Parkin said Ollie Wines was a C+ player about a week ago?

So Wines had a lazy 30 possessions and six tackles. Parkin must rate Gary Ablett a B- player.

With Jay Schulz kicking eight goals made it feel like Richmond lost two games this week.

Normal programming resumed for the Doggies. Word is playing in front of a crowd really spooked them.

Last week’s win won’t buy much more goodwill after performances like this.

Hawthorn (115) v Collingwood (86)

Collingwood is missing Nick Maxwell. There, I said it. Let's move on quickly.

The only thing that leaks more than Collingwood's defence is an ASADA investigation.

It was good to see Nathan Buckley address Jarrod Witts on the boundary. It was the hardest tackle the Pies landed all day.

Hawthorn is improving, as injured players return and that work experience kid gets the hang of coaching.

Gold Coast (118) v Geelong (78)

Let me be very clear, Geelong can't win the Premiership, unless of course they do.

It seems the weakness in this dominant Geelong side over the past few years, is when their best player goes to another team and is surrounded by the best young talent in the draft for a few years in a row.

Gold Coast now draws bigger crowds than the Lions, which must mean at least ten people go to games.

Fremantle (105) v Brisbane (22)

Don't let the heading fool you, this was really Fremantle versus Tom Rockliff.

Rockliff had 44 possessions and 12 tackles, which was extraordinary considering he got zero help from his teammates.

I decided to watch a bit of this game, but it was so terrible, I said to myself 'self, let's just watch until Brisbane score.'

It meant I only had to watch until the third quarter, with the only score for the Lions in the first half being a rushed behind.

Freo dominated and it was embarrassing to watch the inept fight from the Lions.

Hard to take much out of this for the Dockers except to say they were ruthless against inferior opponents.

Essendon (101) v Adelaide (92)

This game showed that even with a ton of stressful off-field activity, teams can still beat Adelaide.

Essendon were rampant in the early stages and Adelaide was left to wonder what might have been if they'd adjusted their clocks to Eastern Standard Time.

Greater Western Sydney (100) v Carlton (92)

Poor Carlton. Those mean teenagers pushed them around all day. Carlton thought about fighting back but it was just too much effort.

Mick said this week there wasn’t a need for a big list cull at the end of the year and it looked like his players took that as a challenge to prove him wrong.

For GWS, this was a sweet victory with both Tom Scully and Jeremy Cameron missing.

Luckily for the Giants though, this was offset by every Carlton player going missing.

St Kilda (70) v West Coast (103)

This was a terrible game. It actually hurt my eyes to watch a really bad team play a not very good team.

For St Kilda, it was a good sign that they challenged at times and then didn’t let this become a blowout.

This would have been a disaster for the Eagles to lose but in winning it the way they did, they showed why they have disappointed all year.

Melbourne (66) v North Melbourne (107)

There were moments of this game where you wondered if either side had played AFL before.

This game contained turnover after turnover, missed tackles, dropped marks and Robin Nahas.

For Melbourne, it appeared they had forgot everything Paul Roos had taught them, like running and trying.

North Melbourne seemed to be doing a ‘North Melbourne’ by only being a few goals up despite a slew of opportunities to break away.

Finally, North worked it out in the third quarter, although calling it the Premiership quarter in this instance would be laughable.

COMMENTS

Nathan

Jun 23, 2014

Perhaps more focus on Nahas would give Hardwick a warm feeling after the Schultz bag!