AFL Finals – Week 2: The View From Shepparton

So the home teams won. Fair enough so they should have. I bet that if these games had been held in Perth, Adelaide would have most likely been beaten but in fairness to the Pies, given their extremely impressive away record, just possibly.

 

I make this point because I reckon that whilst it is fair enough that the top teams get a home game as a reward for their record over the season if this were a really mature competition the Grand Final would be held at a neutral venue. I suppose that this will be the case in the Sydney Crow’s Grand Final. I wish, I dream!

 

I know that that this is not going to happen but should either Adelaide or Sydney make the finals then they will effectively give a start up advantage of say 3 goals to Hawthorn or Collingwood.

 

OK well give credit where it is due. Adelaide came back from the dead to beat the Dockers with that fantastic goal of Taylor Walker   after the siren at half time being an act of sheer brilliance. Rutten held Pavlich pretty well, all the same that goal of Matthew’s  in the last quarter which gave Freo an eleven point lead, seemingly impenetrable at the time, kicked under the pressure of a must get, showed again what a player, what a leader, what a champion he is.  Mayne really got going in the first quarter for Freo, he is already and out champion but he is so young yet. What a team Freo could be next year. Adelaide had a great win though really good to come back from that eleven point deficit given the flow of play immediately after three quarter time, pity that there weren’t more there to see it. Perhaps either ticket prices or the fact that no one believes that the Crows can win important games had something to do with it. Also there would have been about 100 Freo supporters in the crowd.

 

Guess what? I went to the Australian National Piano Award 2012 held here at Shepparton, saw three out and out champions in action. I was constantly hankering after the score! but I even forgot that when the last bloke was playing. A twenty one year old, literally came bounding out on to the stage and hit the keys running almost. Remember the name Nicholas Young. You read it here first. One of the three items he played was a composition by Beethoven “Sonata in C minor Opus 111” with which I am reasonably familiar and he really aced it. For some reason he came second but the bloke who won it was really good as one could expect.

 

This meant that I had no idea about the result of that second tier activity but I fervently hoped, nay prayed, that the Perth Eagles had got up. Got four goals ahead and lost or at least that is my understanding of what happened.

 

This gets me to then next point, was reminded at church by our pastor about the evils of a bad tongue when say (my construct on the applications of this) either say criticising umpires for missing holding the ball decisions when the player with the ball has been swung around 360 degrees, twice, or players for doing dumb things for example running into an open goal and hitting the post from  3 metres out, or hearing bad games results.  Thus could not repeat what I said when I heard that the Pies had got up and even more so when becoming aware that the Eagles had kicked the first four goals and it could well be that for the rest of this major round I could well be made either out and out silent or screamingly incoherent should the Crows lose a close one next Saturday night.

 

Back to the Pies and Eagles. Always good when a player who has been kicked in the head for a previous lack lustre performance finds form. Certainly Dale Thomas did that, or at last according to the wireless he did. And even though I have canned Buck’s, I am not the only one, Mr Malthouse has been sniping away as well so it must give friend Nathan an immense amount of satisfaction to have go this far. But you have gone far enough Pies, hope that Sydney wallop you in a close one, say 45 points. But you do travel well, you really do, besides which you have had Sydney’s measure for yonks so the reality is that I expect you to get up by 25.

 

High Point. Taylor Walker’s Goal. Low Light. Either Jared Petrenko getting season ending injury forty seconds out or Tippett’s lack of form.

 

 

 

About Peter Schumacher

Wannabe footy commentator and writer, used to be a wannabe footballer

Leave a Comment

*