footy

For my long weekend, I mostly watched football. Specifically, I bought a season pass from Telstra for access to game replays for matches from this season, the last two seasons, and a bunch of games back to 1995. For $60, that's a lotta games.

Anyway, I wound up watching the first 5 games of the round. Brisbane vs St Kilda was the pick of them, although the coverage was the worst. I've defended Eddie McGuire in the past, but his commentary was shocking. Overtly biased against Brisbane, obviously pimping Channel 9 for the upcoming TV deal bid war, the worst of all was his ridiculous claim that Chris Scott injured shoulder, based on some implication from their "expert" doctor, but in the face of pretty bloody clear evidence that it was either the Charman bump or, more likely, the attempted diving mark, that had done it. This is big news this week and, though I'm certainly biased being a Brisbane supporter, my view is that it might not be sportsmanlike, but there's no basis for the outbreak of outrage. Riewoldt took the decision to rejoin play (yes, going back and standing your mark is rejoining play), and the bumping was by no means beyond what would be expected for the side's best player in a close and important match.

As for the game itself, it's still impressive to see how Brisbane continually finds these nobodies, in this case the Selwood, Corrie, Joel McDonald and Adcock types, that run, deliver well by hand, and are constantly hard at the footy. Starting with 21 AFL games between them, they were good for 45 possessions, 9 marks and 15 tackles against St Kilda, without doubt one of the top 3 sides in the competition. Selwood's tap-on to Pike before being smashed was the sort of thing you expect from a veteran, not a first-gamer. The depth of hard, creative running players is just obscene with Voss, Lappin, and Power through the middle, Johnson from the back, Akermanis and McGrath up front, and then others like the young kids and the Scotts where needed. And that's after losing Hart and McRae, and with Black and Hadley out. Just obscene.

Of the other matches, Freo vs Port was good, Carlton vs Roos and Dees vs Dons were OK, and Swans vs Hawthorn was bloody awful. Hawthorn stood out like a sore thumb in terms of quality amongst the 10 teams I saw. No hand skills, poor disposal, no real targets up forward or answers down back. Maybe I've still gotta check out Adelaide, Richmond and other pretenders, but I'd happily back the Hawks for the spoon on their Sunday showing.