It’s back – and it was awesome!
Men’s footy returned with a bang for 2022, with high-scoring, free-flowing footy the order of the day.
From a new-look Geelong to Sydney and GWS’s Saturday afternoon epic, it was a great weekend for all fans of the game… unless, of course, your team lost.
Here’s what we learned from the return of men’s footy.
1. Embrace the chaos! Long may free-flowing footy reign
Round 1 is always good for a story, but this year, the biggest of all was the footy itself.
High-scoring (well, by modern standards at any rate), free-flowing and with players willing to take risks at just about every turn – it was a world apart from the short-kicking, possession-heavy style that has come to define the game in the last few years.
Repeat stoppages have been on the decline for a number of years – just look at the hitout numbers compared to, say, 2015 – but it has taken until now for teams to use the rule changes made by the AFL in recent years and turn them into full-blown attacking weapons.
Perhaps Melbourne’s famous onslaught of goals in last year’s grand final did the trick: we all know copycatting the premiers is a tried and true tradition. At last, teams seemed willing to run the gauntlet from the centre bounce and try to put defences under pressure with the 6-6-6 starting rule, instead of piling numbers around the ball to prevent from conceding.
Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury spoke on Friday night after the Pies’ win about their desire to ’embrace the chaos’ under new coach Craig McRae. That they kicked 15 goals and broke the hundred mark, something Nathan Buckley and Robert Harvey combined managed just once in 2021, is proof that risky, attacking football backed up by suffocating pressure gets results.
Even Geelong, long the most dour side going around, had a new attacking bent, slicing through the Bombers like a guillotine through Marie Antoinette’s neck, and with just as messy results for Essendon’s backline. And ask any Carlton fan about their centre square dominance in the last quarter of their drought-breaking win over Richmond, and they’ll be more than happy to give you a play-by-play rundown.
Fast footy suits the best players in the game down to a T – Christian Petracca was every bit as good on Wednesday night as when he won the Norm Smith Medal, while I’ll argue Patrick Dangerfield had his most influential game since at least 2019 on Saturday afternoon. The forwards, from talls Tom Hawkins, Joe Daniher and Ben Brown to the crumbers in Tyson Stengle, Lincoln McCarthy and Luke Parker, looked just as lethal.
And we haven’t even got into the game of the round yet. The highlights package from Sydney’s battle with GWS on Saturday evening doesn’t do it justice – it was relentless, brutal, edge-of-your-seat footy for the entirety.
There was a finals-like pressure, yes, but it didn’t impact on the quality of the game as it has in recent years, for the simple reason that both sides embraced it, busted their guts to find space, and – and here’s the clincher – kicked superbly.
Look at how many times both teams took the risky, central option when passing, rather than go along the boundary line and slow the game down. Watch with delight how regularly they exploded from the centre bounce, capitalised on the acres of space in the square and launched the ball deep into attack.
Who knows whether this will continue – 2021’s Round 1 was similarly open before being locked down in following weeks – but not since that famous round of thrillers in late 2018 have we had a week of footy as thrilling as this one.
2. The Dees (and the Dogs) were done dirty by the AFL
Wednesday night’s grand final rematch at the MCG had many things going for it. The atmosphere was electric, the footy of a high standard, and the game was well and truly in the balance until the final few minutes.
The key thing wrong with it, though, was that it was on a Wednesday night at all.
The overall crowd of 58,002 was a major disappointment, especially given the AFL had publically anticipated a crowd of 80,000 little over a month ago, and at least 65,000 in days leading up to it. Crowds were down across the weekend, with COVID fears and a newfound appetite for watching games on TV triggered by Melbourne’s regular lockdowns contributing; but Wednesday night was an own goal of the AFL’s own making.
Putting the game on Wednesday night, at a neither-here-nor-there time of 7:10pm that both finished too late for young kids to be brought along on a school night and too early for adults to avoid coming straight from work, was a disservice to the match’s status as a grand final rematch, and especially to Melbourne fans who deserved the chance to see the flag unfurled at a more suitable time.
The AFL and its media partners repeatedly talk about ‘earning’ prime time slots – we hear about it when North Melbourne get thumped on Good Friday, or when the Demons were being pumped on Queen’s Birthday. Neither the Dees nor the Dogs could have done more to ‘earn’ prime time by, y’know, actually making the grand final last year… but the AFL saw fit to use them as nothing more than lab rats to see whether Wednesday night footy was a viable product. Spoiler alert – it ain’t.
Put it this way: if Collingwood took on Hawthorn in last year’s grand final, do you think the AFL would have saddled them with a Wednesday night? No chance. That the Pies were able to play in the much more family-friendly Friday night slot, a true footy time, despite neither they nor their opponents St Kilda playing finals last season, speaks to my point.
The AFL had two options when putting together the fixture: either bin the idea of a grand final rematch to start the season, open like always with Carlton and Richmond and have the Dees and Dogs do battle under the Friday night lights; or put the grand finalists on the Thursday night and advise the Blues and Tigers that they’d have to earn that slot back.
That they chose another option at the expense of the two best clubs from 2021 was disappointing. The Dees (and the Dogs) both deserved better.
3. AFLW finals disaster should be the league’s priority number one
Unlike the last point, I’m not going to have a crack at the AFL here. The COVID cases that ran through Collingwood’s AFLW side, leaving barely half their squad able to play their qualifying final against Brisbane, was a matter completely out of their own control, and postponing the game was the only viable option.
However, with COVID not going anywhere anytime soon – though case numbers have been encouragingly starting to decline – the powers that be need to ensure that the Pies’ situation is a one-off, especially with the next season reportedly due to begin as early as August. Any and all possibilities need to be explored to maintain the integrity of a competition that has too easily been dumped in the ‘too-hard basket’ since the start of the pandemic.
The men’s competition has the failsafe option of a back-up pool of reinforcement players – West Coast have already had to dip into it to have a full squad available for their Round 1 match, with Declan Mountford named after Liam Ryan was ruled out. That exists in the AFLW, too, but at a far more limited capacity, and increasing that pool any further would likely not be viable.
Hubs are probably out of the question, too, given both the far, far lower salaries of AFLW players compared to their men’s counterparts, their ability to get out of their day jobs for days or even weeks at a time, and the fact that short of playing it on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific there’s not a COVID-free place to hub in.
It’s such a perilous situation for all involved, but the AFL has been nothing but resourceful and resilient since the beginning of the pandemic. Getting completed seasons away in 2020 and 2021 in the men’s competition was a Herculean effort from the league – here’s hoping now that the women’s competition is in a similarly parlous state, they work just as hard in keeping its head above water.
4. SSP superstars show recruiters need to change their ways
If the feelgood story of the week was Sam Docherty’s return from cancer – and it was – the performance of St Kilda and Essendon debutants Jack Hayes and Nick Martin ran a close second.
Forget easing into your first game at the highest level, Hayes and Martin were both nothing short of superb, albeit in considerably different outcomes for their teams.
Martin’s five-goal haul, three of which came in the last term to help the Bombers save about a millimetre of face, stole all the headlines, but his 27 disposals and game-high 10 marks were a more accurate reflection of his whole game. One of the few Dons who avoided being suffocated by the Cats’ immaculate performance, he ran hard all day off a wing, gave his teammates options, and then cashed in big time at the end.
Martin’s 88 per cent disposal efficiency isn’t as elite as it seems – many of his kicks were low-risk chips, which were part of the reason the Dons were so mercilessly pounded. But he was still far and away his side’s best, and has gone from shock debutant to an integral part of their best 22 in two hours flat.
Even more impressive was Hayes, who sparked the Saints to life after falling nearly six goals behind Collingwood with a third quarter for the ages.
Marking everything that came his way, pinch-hitting well in the ruck and kicking goals – his second snap in that term was just sublime for a man of his size – only Rowan Marshall had claims on Hayes’ best-Saint-afield standing by the end. Had he been given a free kick for high contact near goal late in the game, Brownlow votes could have easily been on the cards, too.
Jack Hayes of the Saints celebrates a goal. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
As brilliant as Martin and Hayes were, the question must be asked how two undoubted AFL-calibre talents had spent so long in the wilderness before opportunity came knocking. Particularly for Hayes – big-marking, athletic talls are absolute gold dust in the AFL, and many teams go years without fully developing one.
It’s a common story in modern AFL – if, for whatever reason, you fall off the junior pathways system that identifies talent up to a decade before their first games in the big time, it’s hard to get back on. Hayes and Martin are just the latest examples of a growing trend: given opportunity, there is untapped talent in bucketloads dotted around the country’s state leagues.
Occasionally, it is found – Martin and Hayes this week, James Podsiadly by Geelong a decade ago after years dominating the VFL, Dayne Zorko after winning best and fairests for fun at Southport and then doing the same at Brisbane… even premiership Bulldog Tory Dickson had to bag a truckload of goals for Noble Park before given the chance to become the most accurate goalkicker in competition history at 24. But for every identified talent, it stands to reason there are one or two more that never get the chance.
Perhaps it’s time for recruiters to start taking state leagues just as seriously as a talent hunting ground as they do the NAB League – and not just to watch Jason Horne-Francises play against men in the SANFL. And then choose to take a punt on them with later (or heck, even earlier!) picks rather than the low-risk option of a rookie spot or supplementary pre-season spot.
There’s opportunity for clubs to improve, as well, particularly in Victoria. The VFL has slowly become a feeder competition in every sense of the word, with teams now running what are effectively reserves sides designed to improve players on the fringes of their best AFL 22. Stars do emerge on occasion, but the likes of Michael Barlow or Sam Mitchell getting a crack at a midfield spot in a team with an AFL counterpart are slim to none.
And don’t get me started on the current state of the rookie list, where clubs are choosing to use spots on ageing veterans to become virtual assistant coaches, instead of giving untapped talent its chance to shine.
Mark my words: the first team to get this right will win a flag because of it.
5. No excuse for TV commentary cost-cutting anymore
2020’s COVID pandemic, and the state border closures that ensued, forced TV and radio stations to think outside the box – literally.
For the first time, commentators were forced to call the game off screens in studios half a country away from the action, in so doing losing the feel and vibe of the game only possible to get a sense of live.
Veteran commentator Gerard Whateley spoke to Ashley Browne in his book, AFL 2020: A season like no other, describing the situation as ‘unfulfilling’.
“You were hostage to what was on screen,” Whateley said.
“If it wasn’t on screen you couldn’t call it, you couldn’t pre-empt it, and there was less to work with. It was unfulfilling to be honest.”
Yet two years on, and with no border closures to speak of, Fox Footy look to be regularly choosing to broadcast games with a commentary team based in a Melbourne studio – and it stinks.
It was most apparent in Adelaide’s clash with Fremantle on Sunday afternoon. Say what you will about Kelli Underwood’s commentary, but not even Dennis Cometti could have dealt with that situation and produced his best work. Little wonder Michael Frederick’s wonder goal wasn’t given a call to match.
I can understand the penny-pinching, given the world – and presumably Fox too – are still recovering from the financial hit of the pandemic. But you can’t tell me there aren’t a group of South Australia-based commentators free and willing to step in.
Equally, if Channel Seven can send a full team up to Brisbane to cover their game – and as a side note, Alistair Nicholson made an excellent debut as a TV AFL caller on Saturday night – then the onus is on Fox to do likewise.
To stick with what is currently being served up is an insult to fans of interstate clubs, who deserve to have their games brought to them with the same quality and devotion to coverage as Melbourne fans get.
6. Blues fans should try and keep the lid on… for now
Geelong might have been the most impressive winners out of Round 1, but Carlton’s last-quarter dismantling of Richmond made for the biggest story of the opening weekend.
+38 in contested possessions. +18 in clearances. +24 inside 50s. And most importantly of all, seven goals to one. It was an utter demolition of a side which had won three of the last five premierships, and many had tipped for a quick bounce-back in 2022.
If you’re a Carlton fan now, you’ve probably been on cloud nine all weekend. I don’t blame you in the least. But for your own wellbeing, please at least try and keep the lid firmly screwed on, at least for another few days.
As good as the Blues were, Richmond’s midfield was ripe for the picking. It was noticeable that the Carlton domination came after Dion Prestia, the Tigers’ best pure mid, limped from the field with his latest hamstring injury. With a clearly hampered Jack Graham forced to play far more time than they’d bargained for, and Trent Cotchin looking frighteningly close to being cooked, there was simply no one capable of stopping the Blues’ run – remember, Dustin Martin’s best work has never been done defensively.
This week against the Western Bulldogs provides the perfect litmus test as to where Carlton really sit. The Dogs possess, if not the best, then certainly the deepest midfield in the game, even with Marcus Bontempelli in doubt with an ankle issue. The likes of Jack Macrae, Josh Dunkley, Bailey Smith and Adam Treloar saw the Bulldogs dominate clearances in defeat to reigning premiers Melbourne. They don’t get beaten often.
Patrick Cripps celebrates with his Carlton teammates. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
But if the Blues can even hold their own in the centre, then their backline, which looked far more sound against the Tigers but still has work to do, will have a chance at stopping the Dogs’ Aaron Naughton or bust approach. And the Dogs’ defence, which was regularly split open by the Blues even under David Teague, can capitalise.
One week, Blues fans. That’s all I ask.
Random thoughts
-Kyle Langford has the rare feat of more blown hamstrings than touches in 2022. Get well soon.
-Tom Green has arrived. Start panicking now, non-GWS fans.
-If Aaron Naughton can kick for goal every week like he did on Wednesday… there’s a 70-goal season with his name on it.
-It wasn’t the best debut I’ve seen, but Josh Rachele had the smartest debut I’ve seen. The Crows have a jet.
-We should probably all steel ourselves now for BT calling Buddy’s 1000th goal, and having to hear it once a week for the rest of our lives.
-Seeing the red footy at the MCG on Saturday afternoon was a massive vibe. More of that and less of Wednesday night please.
-Izak Rankine looks like he might have cracked it as a footballer. His best ever game against the Eagles.