Round 2, 2008

 

 

It was a round of massacres in the second week of the season, as even Hannibal Lecter would have winced at the some of the brutal treatment dealt out to the likes of Melbourne and Essendon this round.

 

Against the reigning premiers, Essendon adopted the 'novel' game plan of not tagging Geelong's star midfielders and letting them roam free all day. Ablett and Bartel responded by doing their best Burke and Wills impersonation as they wondered in open space with no one within cooee. Bartel in particular spent more time in space than the Starship Enterprise, notching up a lazy 38 possessions and one magnificent hanger:

 

 

It was also a week of paradoxes, as Geelong’s two key forwards (Hawkins and Mooney) did their best Matthew Lloyd impersonations by being held (almost) goalless, yet the smallest man on the ground Matthew Stokes – took 13 marks – more than even Plugger Brown.

 

There was an unusual sound on SEN radio on Monday morning.  Silence.  Not one Essendon caller ringing up about the club or its new coach. How times change from the week before.  To fill this gap, Football Invective brings you the first statement of the man overlooked for the Essendon coaching job, Damien Hardwick.

 

A Statement from Essendon Coach-in-Exile Damien Hardwick

 

I admit that after the win against North Melbourne I thought maybe I was wrong in my condemnation of the appointment of Mathew Knights.

 

Sometimes events cause me to re-consider my beliefs - a mark in the goalsquare from Ilja Grigic, a long goal from Jonathon Robran, seeing Ty Zantuck crash tackle a patron in a city bar - but each of these was revealed as a false dawn.

 

It was a tough but important ant decision to remove Sheedy.  By the end, the man was coaching like a man that would have dominated in 1992, but the game had passed him by.  The choice of a new coach was the most important decision the club has faced in almost 30 years.  Rather than appoint a tough coach to give the club a clean-out and start a proper rebuild, the club took the soft option and appointed an insider who, in the manner of a perfect prom date, told them everything they wanted to hear – “Don’t worry, it all looks fine. No, don’t change anything. It’s all good”.

 

Our club has bet everything on an untested and unlikely leader, and now, like the enthusiastic doctor in a prostate exam - we're in too deep and it’s all turning to sh*t.

 

Keen followers of form just might have seen the result against Geelong coming.  As uncovered by Footballinvective.com’s full-time research department:

·    During his Richmond career, Knight's team was beaten by Geelong by 10 goals or more on 11 separate occasions

·    His winning percentage in his one season as coach of Port Adelaide Magpies was 35%

·    His winning percentage in his two seasons coaching Bendigo Bombers was 36%

 

Predictable as the result against Geelong might have been, who could have predicted the Essendon game day strategy whereby no Essendon midfielder was given an opponent, thus allowing a "shootout" between the two respective midfields.  Dyson v Bartel, Houli v Ablett - this coaching strategy was madness (made all the more frustrating by Mark Thompson’s effective tag of Ling on Watson). Insisting on a one-on-one shoutout with the Geelong midfield is like throwing down your gun and challenging the Terminator to a wrestle.

 

Seeing Mathew (not in Sheehan's top 50) Lloyd kept goalless whilst trying to carry a forward line still reeling from the loss of Essendon forward pocket-in-exile Damien Cupido was almost too much to bear.

 

Now every Essendon fan in Melbourne is dreading Saturday night against a Judd-fuelled Carlton, who despite losing 13 in a row, have a Bradmanesque record against the Dons.  If Knights can pull off a win, this will be no small vindication of his appointment and a clean break with the past.  If not, don't expect SEN to be quiet for a second Monday in a row - expect the "Poach Dean Bailey 08” (Essendon Homecoming) campaign to begin.

 

I don’t hate to say it, in fact, I love saying it – I Told You So.

 

The poor old Dees copped it again, and must have felt like Freddy Flintoff's bowling attack in the 06-07 Ashes series, as yet another century was scored against them. Even normally mild-mannered Demon fans reached breaking point, with a Richmond-style turn against their team:

 

 

The news keeps getting worse for the Dees, as former club leader and once fearsome hard-man David Neitz now wanders ground the ground looking about has hard-hitting or fast-moving as the StayPuft marshmallow man. Yet the team still needs him to provide leadership, as the coach certainly can’t and the president is struggling to motivate the masses. Whilst supporters turned on the team, club president Paul Gardner turned on the supporters:

 

Demons boss hits out at critics

 

Gardner labelled “pathetic” supporters of the club who criticised while not contributing anything themselves.

Gardner even took the unprecedented step for a Melbourne president of encouraging his club’s fans to attend matches, including its next game against Geelong. For the average Demon fan though, a trip in the Volvo to Geelong to face the Cats next week is about as appealing as a holiday to Darfur (with Geelong likely to be the scene of the bigger massacre).

 

The massacres continued in Sydney, as the Swans put Port Power to the sword. Footballinvective.com's second-favourite South Australian (after Stormy Summers) Teal Coloured Glasses was there, and is now ready to turn:

 

Only two rounds of the infant season have been completed but already TCG has decided it’s time for the gloves to come off. Sunday’s 68 point battering at the hands of Sydney confirmed what had been obvious throughout the pre-season – Port Adelaide FC plays negative football.

 

Mark Williams’ oft-repeated mantra through late Summer and early Autumn was thus: “We like to play fast, attacking, direct football and aim to kick 20 goals a game”

A season of fast, fluid football exploiting the undoubted skills and speed of the lightly-built Power midfield beckoned; a tantalising prospect to be sure. Perhaps that’s the reason the lie was so eagerly and unquestioningly accepted by those of us that indeed view the world through Teal Coloured Glasses.

 

Responding to going two goals down in the first quarter by immediately throwing 3 loose men behind the ball and sabotaging your own already-struggling forward line in the process does not constitute attacking football. Instructing a Power player in possession just outside the forward 50 to ‘ice the clock’ by kicking backwards for the last minute of the half is not conducive to scores of 20 goals plus. Abandoning the centre corridor and using the flanks for fear of a turnover and intentionally kicking out of bounds in the forward to force a stoppage instead of aiming for a key forward is not what direct football is about.

 

Rubbing salt into the already gaping wound was the sight of the Swans, the pioneers of this kind of anti-football (and coming off a game in which they kicked 6 goals for the match) showing the world how it should be done. Running defenders using the middle of the ground and picking out leading forward targets at will. Another similarly timid and reticent performance by the Power against the hated Crows this week will not go unpunished by ‘genius’ Neil Craig and Fruit Tingles FC.

 

The Sydney Swamp this week turned into a proverbial torrent, as the metaphorical flood gates opened at the SCG. Sydney kicked 24 goals after their anti-football match against St Kilda last week, which just goes to show that the Saints are now the biggest culprit of anti-football in the AFL. Fraser Gehrig, meanwhile, has obviously been reading Footballinvective.com and clearly took exception to last week's labeling of his club as the “Pretty Boy” team. This week he was single-handedly doing his best to repudiate this image:

 

 

But even Gehrig was outdone by Nathan Carroll, who is attempting to model the latest fashion for young metrosexual males who like to look like they've stapled a squashed gerbil to the back of their head:

 

 

 

Hero of the Week: Jed Adcock - Won the game for the Lions with a magnificent last quarter lairising goal in what were not exactly lair-friendly conditions. 

On a related note, wasn't it great to see the return of a centre square gluepot in the non-drop-in centre wicket area of the Gabba. This magnificent gluepot in turn precipitated a return to old-fashioned style football in which players slide in for the ball and kick long down the guts with wobbly torpedo and mongrel punts. Instead of the usual ‘heritage round’ this year with the old jumpers, why not have a heritage ground which goes back to basics. Leave the sprinklers on at the MCG and the roof open at the Dome during the week to create a heritage gluepot. We're all meant to be doing our bit to combat the scourge of climate change, so let's have a return to old-style footy ground climates. Bugger 'Earth Hour' - let's have Gluepot Week.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: Matthew Stokes - 13 marks from the Pocket Terminator in an amazing performance for a designated crumber. Instead of the crumbs, Stokes at the whole cake this week.

 

Clanger of the Week: Bruce McAvaney gets his first nomination for this season, with his comments after an impressive Alan Didak goal on Friday night: 

"Imagine putting Alan Didak and Steve Johnson in a room. What would happen I wonder? - They're both so intelligent."

Footballinvective.com is not sure what would happen if they were put in a room together, but put them in a car together or send them to a nudie bar together and it wouldn’t be pretty. “Intelligent” would not be the first word to spring to mind to describe what might happen if they got together outside of a football field.