Tag: Tigers

Round 1 Preview: Get over it Richmond, move on

Richmond’s Nathan Broad didn’t have quite the same level of fun as his teammates, this off-season.

It is finally here, Round 1, marking the official end of the off-season, dominated by one team, guess who?

Yes, if you’re a fan of any of the other 17 teams, you’ve no doubt enjoyed the last six-months, a Tigers lovefest across all forms of media. Damien Hardwick recounting on a daily basis how he had to change his methods after the 2016 disaster. Dustin Martin suddenly becoming a marketable face of the league, and for some reason, Bonds underwear. Alex Rance again trying to drum up some publicity with a faux retirement. Jack Riewoldt’s wedding. Brendon Gale being Brendon Gale, etc. etc.

After the Bulldogs broke their premiership drought in 2016, I didn’t think the level of coverage on a single team could be topped, that the media could spend more time focusing on a single team, but alas they have. And I get that there will be a greater focus on the reigning premiers, it makes sense. You’re going to hear about the Tigers more than say, North Melbourne, who no one ever has any interest in, particularly this year. However, at some point, enough is enough, surely.

The entire 2018 season has been built on Richmond, from the marketing by the league, to the marketing by major TV networks, to which players are constantly being promoted. And I pray and hope, it all falls apart and quickly.

Richmond have eight marque games on either Thursday or Friday night, with the ANZAC Day eve game against Melbourne on a Tuesday night thrown in for good measure. Can you imagine if the Tigers put up a Bulldogs-like premiership defence? Wouldn’t it be glorious. A slow start, in-fighting, injuries, turmoil and the return of supporters threatening to microwave memberships and burning down Punt Road, the good old days.

Anyway, what else has been going on outside of Richmond? Well the AFL has botched Tasmania and how to handle sex scandals inside AFL House. Collingwood are still a dumpster fire. Jeff Kennett is back, that’s just what we need. And some Melbourne players didn’t want to go on a pre-season camp, which means according to some meatheads in the media, we should write off their entire season before it even begins.

I do enjoy the likes of Wayne Carey and Cam Mooney calling Melbourne players soft for going to the AFLPA to voice their concerns regarding training habits at the clubs. It’s not like that’s the reason the AFLPA exists and I mean they don’t even go around king hitting opponents off the ball, now that’s toughness.

So, the season begins tonight, which means it’s still prediction season. Some general thoughts for the 2018 season. Sydney’s midfield will return to being a powerhouse. I don’t like the Port Adelaide hype but it’s more deserved than the Essendon hype. Free agent and trade acquisitions seem to guarantee success in the eyes of some, the Bombers have major holes. The Dees will play finals and are the best chance at replicating the Dogs and Tigers of years before. For some reason, I’m bullish on Fremantle, I like what they’re building despite their deficiencies up forward. Gold Coast not having a home ground for half a season is an absolute travesty, although Stuart Dew seems like a competent coach. Geelong will do what they do every year under Chris Scott and fall short in the finals and North will be irrelevant, again.

Some major predictions;

Premiers – Sydney
Runners Up – Adelaide
Wooden Spoon – North Melbourne
Brownlow – Bryce Gibbs

Ladder

  1. Sydney
  2. GWS Giants
  3. Adelaide
  4. Richmond
  5. Melbourne
  6. Geelong
  7. Port Adelaide
  8. Hawthorn
  9. Collingwood
  10. Fremantle
  11. St. Kilda
  12. Essendon
  13. Western Bulldogs
  14. Gold Coast
  15. West Coast
  16. Brisbane
  17. Carlton
  18. North Melbourne

Season Wins Over/Under

Adelaide (15.5) – Over
Brisbane (6.5) – Under
Carlton (6.5) – Under
Collingwood (10.5) – Under
Essendon (12.5) – Under
Fremantle (9.5) – Over
Geelong (14.5) – Under
Gold Coast (5.5) – Over
GWS Giants (14.5) – Over
Hawthorn (10.5) – Over
Melbourne (12.5) – Over
North Melbourne (6.5) – Under
Port Adelaide (13.5) – Under
Richmond (13.5) – Over
St. Kilda (9.5) – Over
Sydney (15.5) – Over
West Coast (10.5) – Under
Western Bulldogs (11.5) – Under

And now, onwards to Round 1;

Richmond (-30.5) vs Carlton

The Tigers coronation in front of 80,000 insufferable Richmond supporters with 10,000 Carlton supporters asking themselves why they bothered to turn up and be surrounded by these people. Despite all the optimism around Brendon Bolton and this improving Carlton list, they only won six-games in 2017 and went 1-9 from Round 14, giving Bolton a 2-18 record between Rounds 14 and 23 across his first two-seasons. They’ve also lost two of their best five players from last year with Gibbs at Adelaide and Sam Docherty being lost for the season with an ACL tear. Hopefully the Blues will stick with Richmond for a half or longer, but a six to seven goal loss is on the cards.

Adelaide (-2.5) vs Essendon

It’s probably no different to any other season, but there seems to be a lot of injuries on the eve of the year. Adelaide haven’t escaped the injury bug with captain Taylor Walker being ruled out of their opener and Brad Crouch looking at almost two months on the sidelines with groin soreness. The Bombers lost Marty Gleeson in the JLT series with a serious ankle injury and small forward Orazio Fantasia will miss several games. These odds are much closer than they should be and the Crows will cruise.

Brisbane (+24.5) vs St. Kilda

The Saints are a strange case, in the words of Damo Barrett, “where are they at?” St. Kilda are stuck in no man’s land, sort of good enough to sneak into the finals, but won’t do any damage. As all clubs seem to love doing, the Saints went and re-signed Alan Richardson despite him not having achieved a thing. Even with this extension, the heat will be on if they’re sitting at home in September once again. They have an easy start against the Lions, who are still a year away from being competitive.

Fremantle (+26.5) vs Port Adelaide

The pre-season buzz team finally gets to roll out their star studded new recruits. Rockliff, Watts, Motlop, Thomas, McKenzie, the assembling of a new dream team at Alberton Oval. If I was making a premiership push off the back of a free agency/trade spending spree, I wouldn’t have picked the two flakiest players in the game. Jack Watts hasn’t played at a consistent level at any point across his entire career and Motlop’s best football was four-years ago. I say bring back Aaron Young, a victim of the modern game where kicking goals as a forward is seen as a negative.

Hawthorn (-1.5) vs Collingwood

Another year begins with Nathan Buckley in charge of a team with no key position talent, injuries and little chance of doing anything. It’s going to fun putting up with another year of a media circus at the Westpac Centre when Collingwood start 2-6 for about the 5th year in a row and journalists are calling for Buckley’s head. At least Cyril Rioli is supposedly going to be back for this game, yay everyone celebrate, Cywil is back!

Gold Coast (Push) vs North Melbourne

It’s hard to find a game so irrelevant in Round 1, but here we go. Fitting that the game is being played in Cairns.

GWS Giants (-17.5) vs Western Bulldogs

There’s been a lot of buzz around the Giants with many believing they’re a legit premiership chance. I do like the Giants and they’ll be up there again, but what exactly have they done to get better? The Giants were a long way off last season, despite their preliminary final finish. In the final month of their season, including Round 23, they lost to the other three preliminary finalists by an average of 39-points and none of those losses were particularly competitive. They did face their fair share of injury issues last year and a fit Stephen Coniglio is a big plus, but their improvement rests on the next group of youngsters from the more recent drafts and how quickly will they get better, if at all?

Melbourne (Push) vs Geelong

I have no idea who will win this game and being a pessimistic supporter, I assume the Cats will be jumped by a hungry side who are surely desperate for finals. Geelong has an injury list the length of your arm and even with Gary Ablett seemingly making his return, Paddy Dangerfield won’t play. He won’t even be there biggest loss for the Round 1, Lachie Henderson’s injury is disastrous for Geelong. They had two legendary defenders retire and have done nothing to replace them. Good luck relying on Harry Taylor as your number one key defender.

Sydney (-17.5) vs West Coast

Short of Geelong’s dominance at GMHBA Stadium, no team had a greater advantage at home than the Eagles at Subiaco. That’s now gone, with the dimensions of their new stadium being closer to Etihad Stadium. They will still no doubt have their ridiculous advantage from umpires each home game, but they’ll be facing a similar challenge to visiting teams, becoming accustomed to the new ground. They don’t get an easy opening against the Swans who will be locked in from Round 1 after the calamity in 2017. An away win first up.

Season Record

0/0 (N/A)

One last note, the over hit on every game in Round 1 last year. The first round generally sees a lot of high scoring, just something to remember.

JLT Series Week 1 Musings: The beginning of a competitive pre-season

Port Adelaide’s Dom Barry had an impressive game against the Eagles.

We had our first taste of pre-season football with four games across the country. Thanks to the league’s bizarre fixturing, the first week isn’t even technically over with Carlton to host St. Kilda on Wednesday night at Ikon Park.

However, we got four solid games, a look at both of last year’s Grand Finalists and two of the biggest players in free agency, Essendon and Port Adelaide, unveiled some of their new toys. Enough to make a few assertions from the beginning of the JLT series.

Teams are taking it seriously, meaning better football

The AFL may have lucked out with the addition of the AFLX. Cutting the pre-season down to just two full games has suddenly prompted coaches and teams to give a damn. Two-games appears to be the minimum players need before the home-and-away stuff begins so clubs have loaded up with teams vaguely resembling their best 22. And with better teams on the field, it meant better games. Richmond looked dominant with a near full strength line-up and Adelaide flexed their muscles for a half. It’s no coincidence three of the four favourites won on the opening weekend and even the Power were within a late game collapse of making it a sweep for the favourites.

Essendon and Port Adelaide’s recruiting sprees got off to a slow start

The Bombers and Power loaded up in the off-season and neither teams would have been overly impressed by what their new additions produced. Essendon were blown off the field after the 10-minute mark of the first quarter, right around the time Jake Stringer was sent off with a nasty looking head gash. The enigmatic forward/midfielder returned periodically from then on, finishing with just the nine-disposals. Adam Saad started brightly with a trademark goal, but went in-and-out from that point. Devon Smith was one positive from the day, the former Giant had a strong outing with 26-disposals and one-goal.

It was an even bleaker picture for the Power who unfurled four of their six new experienced recruits, including Jack Watts and Steven Motlop. Watts was serviceable early with a goal, but only finished with nine-disposals. Motlop was barely sighted, finishing with eight-disposals and even more worryingly, headed to the bench late with a calf strain that could require further time off. Throw in Lindsay Thomas’ four-disposals and Jack Trengove’s 11 and the new boys combined for just 32-disposals on the day.

Melbourne’s hype will continue to grow

Richmond’s demolition of Essendon aside, the Dees’ big win over North Melbourne was the highlight of the weekend. Melbourne looked clinical, organised in defence, produced quick transition off half back and had a host of different goalkickers, including highly touted first year player Bayley Fritsch who kicked three. Jake Lever’s ability to free up their better ball users in defence will be so vital and the likes of Michael Hibberd and Jayden Hunt had a field day releasing off half back. It was interesting to note Christian Petracca spent most of the time at half forward as a move into the centre may be on the cards at some point this season.

Draftees show signs

We only got a glimpse of a few top picks from the National Draft, with three first rounders running around for their respective clubs. Of that trio, Andrew Brayshaw was the most impressive for the Dockers. He only finished with the 14-disposals, but went at 89% efficiency and looked really clean, decisive and intelligent. North Melbourne’s Luke Davis-Uniacke found the going a little tougher, but showed enough with 12-disposals, nine by hand and eight being contested. The other was Jack Higgins who played less than half of the match and seems a longshot to debut early this year. Outside of those highly touted recruits, some other youngster to impress included Port’s Dom Barry whose second stint at the top level saw him shine with 20-disposals and a goal. Adelaide’s Lachlan Murphy looked really lively in the forward pocket, kicking three goals and if the Eagle’s Liam Ryan every holds onto one, he’ll take mark of the year at some point in his career.

We have reached peak Robbo

Few, if anyone, could have predicted the remarkable transformation of the Richmond Football Club in 2017 under coach Damien Hardwick.

There is good reason for that, seeing as the last time we saw the Tigers in 2016, they were suffering an embarrassing 113-point loss against Sydney at the SCG. They seemed as far away from a Grand Final as any team in the league, only clairvoyants and the most optimistic Tigers supporters could have sensed this turnaround.

Hardwick loomed as the key scapegoat if Richmond didn’t improve on their eight-win total. Herald Sun Chief Football Writer Mark Robinson made this prediction at the beginning of the year;

It wasn’t an awful prediction, Hardwick had barely survived an extensive club review at the end of the 2016 season and even with the additions of Dion Prestia and Josh Caddy, the coach entered his eighth year on thin ice and a slow start could definitely have seen him fired by mid-season.

It’s easy to pick on Robbo, his prediction just happened to appear across Twitter today, you can guess there’s other predictions on Richmond along those lines from so-called experts either on record or not. So, who saw the revival coming, anyone?

There was one man who foresaw the return of the Tigers to September and the Grand Final, one journalist brave enough to stand by Hardwick and back him in to turn his coaching career and Richmond’s fortune around. That journalist was the same man who had Hardwick sacked by mid-year, Mark Robinson.

Back in April last year, a full 17-months ago when all of the AFL world had given up on Richmond and Hardwick, Robinson put all his chips into the middle of the table and backed Hardwick in. The Tigers had started 1-5, the coach and the club were done, yet Robbo still believed.

Now you may be asking why an old article from April, 2016 is relevant now. So much has changed since then, particularly Mark Robinson’s opinion of the Grand Final coach, Damien Hardwick. Well, in the middle of Grand Final week, as the yellow and black army ready themselves to descend on the MCG this Saturday for this first time since 1982, someone wanted to remind the football public of his prediction, why it was Robbo himself of course.

That’s why an article written an eternity ago appeared on the front page of the Superfooty website and was splashed across Twitter timelines.

Mark Robinson has had many golden moments of self-aggrandising. He’s had beers with almost every premiership player in AFL history, has AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan on speed dial, was apparently thanked by Jordan Lewis’ mother for helping him win three of his four premierships and was the moral conscious after Leigh Montagna was suspended during the season.

This latest stunt has to take the cake, not only to even remember he had even written the article, not only to feel it necessary to remind everyone, not only to ignore how he swung the other way a year later, no, it’s none of that, it’s the finer details.

Putting his own name in the headline proclaiming his support of Hardwick, the fact that at first glance it seems as if he has written a fresh article discussing his own past article and the coup de gras, this delicious intro;

“RICHMOND was in a world of pain in April last season, but when Mark Robinson assessed the Tigers he came to a surprising conclusion. Read the column here.”

The analysis of a football savant, right there.

If Robbo wasn’t so devoid of irony and the least self-aware person on the planet, you could have assumed he was doing it for a laugh, or thinking cynically, just doing it as clickbait to get fans riled up, and sure enough there were plenty reminding him of his backflip.

Yet nothing Robbo does has any deeper meaning, it’s all right there on the surface, he believes everything he says without a hint of modesty or sarcasm.

So, when Richmond enter the coliseum of the MCG this Saturday, remember, one man saw it coming the whole time.