Round 1, 2016

The footy's back, and with 8 of the 9 games played of Round 1, we are already promised a cracker of a season!

Opening Bounce on Thursday Night had Richmond up against Carlton. The Tiges had it all against them: five injured, and they had to win against last year's wooden spooners; the Blues have a new coach and were debuting five themselves, including the No.1 draft pick. Carlton led at half-time but only lost by nine at the end. Their performance was very promising indeed.

GWS and Melbourne met up here in Sydney on Easter Saturday and for all intents and purposes it was a dead rubber. But the Giants are growing with every outing and the Dees are a wild card. I backed GWS but the outcome could have been further from anyone's tipping, with the Melbourne Football Club getting the chocolates by a mere 2 points.

Gold Coast took on the once-mighty Bombers at home at Metricon on Saturday afternoon and with the blight of the ASADA saga behind them the Same Olds had much to prove. But Gary Ablett jr was back and had as much to prove, and the Dons were comprehensively thrashed by ten goals. Pundits have the Spoon torn between Carlton and Essendon: I think they might have to rethink those choices.

North Melbourne and Adelaide met at Etihad in a match I was not able to choose the outcome of. I backed the Roos with the toss of a coin and many in my social media network might have disagreed. At 3/4-time there was only a point in it, but Chris Scott's men took it by the bit and ran out winners by only ten, inaccuracy being the let-down for the Pride of SA.

I learned, on Saturday night from the SCG, that I hate Collingwood more than I hate Sydney. By half-time the Pies had only managed 1.4 to the Swans' 10.12, and only managed 7 by the end of the game. The final score 18.25 to 7.11 suggested that things aren't quite right at Victoria Park, and rumours of drug-abuse have been alleged to have put them off their game. Dane Swan's multiple leg-fractures probably didn't help either, putting him out of action for the foreseeable future. The drug-allegations will be interesting to follow over the next foreseeable-future!

Port took on St Kilda at Football Park on Sunday in another match that really could have gone either way. They were neck-and-neck going into the main break with just a goal separating them, but the locals surged ahead in the third and took the match by 5.3.

The biggest upset of the round came from Etihad when the Sons of the West took on, and trounced the Dockers by ten goals. I venture to guess that no one saw that coming! Jake Stringer scooped 5.1 with ten other goal-kickers (six with 1.1) for the Dogs; Freo managed five goal-kickers, none of them multiples.

And the biggest surprise came from Subi on Sunday night with an aggregate score of 268 between the Eagles and Lions. Kennedy booted 8.2, with Cripps and Hill (3.1), Bennell (2.1), Darling, LeCras, and Nic Nat (2.0), Yeo, Ellis, McGovern, and Redden keeping the scorers busy for the home side, and Christensen (3.2), Taylor (3.1), Rich, Rockliff, Schache, Walker (2.1) and Hanley (1.0) chipping in for the Blions,

Hawthorn take on Geelong at the G tomorrow for what could well be the Grand Final precursor. The way these other games have panned out, anything could happen!

peterg
27 Mar 16

Ouch

West Coast v North Melbourne in the 2012 First Elimination Final at Patersons Stadium, Subiaco, from 13:15 09Sep12.

Oi! Pick on someone your own size!
And age!! Adam Selwood and Brent
"Boomer" Harvey size up at Subi. 

North has not been in a finals series since 2008 so it was time for the Shinboners to step up. But it appears that this was not to be their year.Slow out of the blocks (2.8 for the first half, vs 11.8 from the home-side) they bounced back in the third with 6.2 to 4.3, but the Eagles put that all behind them, with a staggering 9.7 to 1.2 in the last.

Arden Street will be left to assess the ruins of their finals campaign for another year, a little earlier in the year than they would have wanted, but later than some other clubs which should have been in there but simply capitulated... Half of the league has started trimming the fat, but North aren't one of them .. just yet.

Final Scores
West Coast 7.4 11.8 15.11 24.18 (162).
Scorers Kennedy, Darling, Embley 4; Lynch 3; Hill, MacKenzie,  Hurn, Kerr, Nasten, Natanui, Shuey, McGinnty, Cox.

North Melbourne 0.3 2.8 8.10 9.12 (66)

Scorers Campbell, Harvey 3; Petrie, Hansen, Cunnington.

The  Weagles  travel to Melbourne next week to face the Magpies in a do-or-die battle to see who plays Sydney at the Olympic Stadium in the qualifying finals the following week. It's all shaping up to be an excellent Finals Series!

#AFLCrowsEagles - Results and Report

As requested, rather than make this a larger tweet with a deck.ly compressed post, I thought I’d make this report a blog entry. But I’m going to make some comment about it; that I wouldn’t have done on Twitter.

Final results from this afternoon’s clash of the birds are not a surprise, but if you had taken the final result from the opening quarter, maybe they are. 6th played 14th at AAMI Stadium on a cool and cloudy afternoon; the punters were backing the Crows fairly publicly, with one punter’s $10K bet on them within the last half-hour before play, but the market said otherwise at the outset, with Betfair offering $2.26 for the Crows to win here.

Starting strongly, probably urged by that large bet, the score at the break was Adelaide 3.1 (19), West Coast 1.3 (9), with majors to Wright (2.1), Gunston (1.0) [Adelaide], and  Lecras (1.0).

But that was it for the Crows for that half: the Weagles jumped out of the gates for the second stanza with five unanswered goals to two points. At the main break, the visitors had a commanding lead: Adelaide 3.3 (21), West Coast 8.7 (55).

And the shoe was firmly on the other foot for the third quarter, with the visitors stepping up to the plate for the last in this see-saw event. At ¾-time the locals had scored 5.2 to 1.3, but the visitors increased their lead with another 6.6 to 2.2 by the final siren.

Scores

Adelaide Crows       3.1   3.3   8.5   10.7  (67)

West Coast Eagles  1.3   8.7   9.10   15.16  (106)

Scorers for the locals

Richard Douglas & Matthew Wright, 2.1

Rory Sloane & Jack Gunston, 2.0

Bernie Vince & Patrick Dangerfield, 1.0

Chris Knights, 0.3

Nathan Van Berlo, 0.1

Scorers for the visitors

Mark Lecras, 5.2

Mark Nicoski, 3.1

Matthew Rosa, 2.1

Joshua Kennedy, 1.2

Nicholas Naitanui, 1.1

Luke Shuey, Matthew Priddis, & Dean Cox, 1.0

Quinten Lynch, 0.2

Scott Selwood & Brad Ebert, 0.1

Next week, Adelaide (now 14th) have the Bulldogs at Etihad on Friday night #AFLDogsCrows, and the Eagles (now 5th) have another gimme: this one at home with the so-called Power on Sunday arv #AFLEaglesPower.