AFL 2012

[Troy]

I agree, it is nice to see a very even competition and lots of close 50/50 games each week. Should make for an awesome run to the finals series since nothing is even close to be set.

 

[Troy]

Melbourne have picked Liam Jurrah to play this weekend even though today the court added four more charges of aggravated assault against four other people to take his tally to six charges. Ridiculous that they are letting him play considering what he has been charge with, nearly killing someone with a machete and attacking four others with the machete. Only reason Melbourne have picked him is it is Indigenous Round.

 

[Aniking]

I hate to say this for your sake, Troy, but holy shit! What an absolutely amazing comeback by Port Adelaide! It says on the AFL site that they came back from 27 points down in the 4th quarter to win, but in fact they came from 32 points down to snatch a 2 point win with the final scoring shot of the match. They kicked 5.4 to absolutely nothing to steal a morale boosting win, which sees them overtake Brisbane by percentage. On the other side of the scale, hugely disappointing for North as they've now lost to two teams that sit below them - the Bulldogs and now Port.

Hawthorn smashed Fremantle by 56 points and never really looked like losing. I haven't been able to watch any games today, but based off the Live Updates on the AFL site, it was a close 1st quarter, Hawthorn blitzed Fremantle in the 2nd, Fremantle mounted a slight comeback in the 3rd, but then Hawthorn took over again in the 4th.

As it stands at the SCG, it's quarter time and Sydney are crushing Melbourne by 40 points already. The scores are 7.1 (43) to 0.3 (3). Not looking good for the Demons at all.


EDIT: Oh yeah! Collingwood managed to hold on to beat Geelong by 12 points. The last 10 minutes of the game the ball was camped inside Collingwood's defensive 50, resulting in Geelong cutting Collingwood's lead from something like 4 goals to an even game with 2 minutes to go. Goals from Alex Fasolo and Scott Pendlebury got Collingwood home after they were down to one interchange player after subbing Alan Didak off in the 3rd quarter and watching Dane Swan and Ben Reid (AGAIN) leave the ground injured. Pendlebury also had a problem but he managed to still dominate with what's apparently just a corky.

 

[Troy]

It was a great fightback by Port, I just wish it wasn't against my team. So frustrating following North at the moment, we keep dropping matches that we should be winning and we have lost that form we had against Geelong. Our defence is leaking too many points and our midfield needs to push back more to help out. We have had the same problem for the last five or six years where we can't finish teams, we get ahead by a few goals and then ease up rather than putting the knife to them and winning by 10+ goals.

Can't believe that Melbourne are still bottom, 101 point loss to Sydney is bad since they were missing a couple of top players and Melbourne supposedly had their best team on the park. Don't know how they went backwards after last year.

Adelaide continue to perform, this time beating Carlton in Melbourne, before this they hadn't won in Melbourne for three years.

Who would have predicted that Adelaide, Essendon and Sydney would all be top four at the moment?

 

[Aniking]

Last night Geelong managed to beat the Western Bulldogs by 20 points. The match wasn't really the best to watch, but I give real credit to myself for sitting there and watching it from start to finish. The skills of both teams were sloppy, but overall it was quite a close contest. I think Geelong lead for the entire game or at least most of it, but they never had a big lead at all. The Doggies kicked 3 goals in less than 3 minutes to nearly tie the game up in the last quarter, but Geelong managed to kick away. Tom Hawkins has become a great player and was one of Geelong's shining lights for me, but Steve Johnson was brilliant playing off half-back to gather a career best 35/36 disposals. He was the big difference.

Richmond played absolutely amazing today against Hawthorn, leading for the entire match and winning every quarter. They won the 1st by 19, 2nd by 4 (23 points), 3rd by 6 (29 points) and the 4th & final by a whopping 33 (62 points). They actually got the lead out to a massive 71 points after crushing the Hawks in that final quarter, but Roughead managed to kick two in a row to pull the score back a bit. There is really nothing else to say about the match. Richmond were by far the better team from start to finish and thoroughly deserved the win.

Port Adelaide beat Gold Coast by 48 points at the Metricon Stadium. I flicked over here and there for this match and at one point it was very close in the 2nd quarter, a scoreline of 50-57 to Port. The next time I flicked over was some time in the 3rd quarter and the scoreline sat at 50-97, so it sounds to me as if the game was close until half-time, then Gold Coast had their usual fade out and Port held that lead to win. That's two wins in a row for Port, so that's encouraging for them.

The match between St Kilda and Sydney has just hit quarter time and the scoreline is 19-28, a 9 point lead to Sydney.

 

[Andrew]

Fuck my football tips this week.

Hawthorn are just shit! Richmond looks to be final contenders with the way they are going now

 

[Heisenberg]

C'mon Pies! Keep the lead and please keep bagging goals! Good, pretty close game of footy so far.

Hope Lachlan Keeffe injury isn't too bad. He's been one of our improving backmen lately. Collingwood has had a bad injury list this year.

 

[Heisenberg]

Buckley on Lachlan Keeffe: "We're very disappointed for Lachie to go down. It's a suspected ACL - our fourth for the year".

Damn.

 

[Troy]

Richmond were fantastic yesterday, I didnt think that they would be able to keep up that effort for four quarters but they got better as the game went on. Hawthorn looked dismal against them and this again shows how wide open the finals race is. When Keefe went down I thought that Collingwood were done but they rebounded and kicked away in the final term of what was a really close game. Collingwood are now without their three or four best tall defenders and yet they still manage to win.

North were okay today, great first half but we did fade away in the second. Thankfully our lead was big enough that we weren't in trouble of losing. It was nice seeing Aaron Black perform well at CHF in his second game with three goals. Our defenders still need some work, Firrito needs a brain transplant, and we need to do something about scores against on the rebound. One thing that baffled me was near the end of the game Merrett smothered a ball on the mark, picked it up and kicked it along the ground for a goal yet the goal umpire wasn't sure and so they video reviewed it. In the review it clearly hit the padding since the padding moved as the ball hit it yet the umpires gave it as a goal. Eddie McGuire on commentary couldn't believe it either, to me and my Port supporting mate it clearly hit the post. Anyone else see it?

 

[Troy]

Now that was a great match to watch. Richmond and St Kilda both gave their all and it was nice to see a high scoring back and forth battle. Richmond should have been up by a lot more earlier but were wasteful and St Kilda came back to take the lead late in the game. Richmond stood up when it mattered and Jack Riewoldt finished with eight goals.

 

[Andrew]

Yes! I tipped Richmond and had credits on them!

Sensational game!

 

[Heisenberg]

‎1/4 time: Scores are .... level! Cats 4.2 (26) - GWS 4.2 (26). Giants kicked first three goals. Cats looked flat after disappointment of VFL game when Menzel did his ACL and Christensen was taken off with neck brace after a head clash. Missing experience of late withdrawals Corey and Enright. Taylor playing forward in Hawkins absence. GWS winning the contest and putting up a fight. Cameron up forward looks very lively.

Wow, GWS actually are keeping up but don't see it lasting long especially at Geelongs home ground. They'll start to drop off shortly as they can't go the 4 quarters unlike Geelong.

 

[Andrew]

GWS has been playing well, Geelong has a bunch of rookies playing today.

Stevie J and Chapman are playing well so far, hoping GWS can hold on and cause an upset. Could only imagine the atmosphere in Geelong then haha.

 

[Aniking]

Richmond were very very good last night, but the Saints played well too. The commentators kept constantly saying Richmond were dominating the game, but they only did at times. Saints had periods where they were on top, so it's something I've noticed about commentators that I don't like. One team (Richmond) has a fantastic opening quarter, then when they're on top in other periods of the game they've apparently dominated the entire game. Not the case, but they did deserve the win. Awesome game though, high scoring and exciting, with Jack Riewoldt kicking 8 goals.

The Giants' first half was great against a Geelong side who had never quite clicked together. Who knows if it had anything to do with Daniel Menzel (poor guy) going down with a suspected ACL on his opposite knee this time, combined with the late exclusions of Corey Enright, Steven Motlop and another top player who's name I can't remember. After half-time it all came together for Geelong, but Simonds Stadium sounded very quiet in the first half. Another encouraging game by GWS, who again manage to keep the final margin in the area of 50-70 points. Anything less is awesome, anything more is disappointing, but they've had a better first season than the Gold Coast Suns. Here's a fact for you all - this match was the 12th in VFL/AFL history to have scores tied at both quarter and half-time.

Then we go down to Tasmania, where Hawthorn absolutely crushed North Melbourne (sorry Troy) by 115 points, amassing a huge score of 174. Apparently Hawthorn's first quarter started slow but they kicked 3 goals in the final 3 minutes to snatch a 7 point lead. After quarter time, they kicked 22.10 (142) to 5.4 (34). That's absolutely huge, and North Melbourne have some serious problems that they need to fix immediately because their Finals chances are quickly evaporating. On the other hand, Hawthorn erased what happened last week and are entrenched in the Top 8. Oh, and did I mention Lance Franklin kicked 13 goals? Yeah, fucking amazing!

As it stands, over in Perth, the scores sit at 62-78 in Adelaide's favour over Fremantle. Adelaide began to really dominate the 2nd quarter and managed to amass a lead of 30 points, but Fremantle have worked their way back into it and are playing well. That lead came in the first half of the second quarter, with the game sitting at just under 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter.


EDIT: Score is now 69-78 to Adelaide at 3/4 time. Fremantle well on top, apparently have come back from a 36 point deficit. Should be an interesting final quarter.

 

[Troy]

Holy crap what a bad day. North kept in touch for a quarter and then Hawthorn destroyed us. Our defence has been shocking all season and we desperately need to address that and also our midfield pressure. We need the midfielders running back to help the defence, it is too easy to score on the rebound against us. Seems like we keep switching game plans, at the start of the year it was handball happy and now we almost always kick. We got Franklin back in form as well, before this week he couldn't kick straight and then he has to kick 13.4 against us. Still I did enjoy watching a key forward kicking a bag, would have been better against another team though.

I do have to thank Melbourne though, for the entire season we have escaped a lot of media scrunity because Melbourne have been so bad. Well tonight they beat Essendon by 6 points. Last beats second place and this has to be the shock win of the season. Once again North will escape scrunity because of this match. Port also smashed Carlton at home just to add another twist for this round.