AFL Round 23 – GWS Giants v North Melbourne: A result most unexpected

A beautiful day begins with a trip to the library and the grower’s markets. My wife has to work so will miss the last game of the year. Wayne is moving house, I should be helping, but the footy, gotta take the little fella to the footy (and besides – I hate moving house), so it’s just me and young master off to see a flogging.

North sit on a percentage of 111.58 Freo on 112.36 – a big win by Freo over the hapless and hopeless Melbourne at home will see Norf travel to Perth in week one of the finals. That is, unless North can manufacture an even bigger win over us. Then they get to stay home. In round two they tuned us up by 129 points so I expect it to get very ugly on the scoreboard.

Thankfully this year we have not measured our performance by what is on the scoreboard at the end of each game.

This has been a good week for the club, not only will the master coach be staying with us, we have also re-signed a number of our young guns to extended contracts. All seven of our Rising Star nominees will be at the club long term. So much for the southern clubs raiding all our players who don’t want to be here and who will hate Western Sydney.

Before the game, the wind picks up with a real bight to it and the temperature drops, I’m glad we bought extra jumpers.

We start well, as we do most weeks and as time gets on North is a long way behind, just not on the scoreboard. In general play we are actually dominating and the game is being played predominantly in our forward line. We just can’t convert it into points. They get close and take the lead late in the quarter, and quite frankly don’t deserve it, but a late lucky snap to Toby Greene puts us 1 point up at qtr time. We could have been up by a lot more, but we are up and nobody was expecting that, you gotta be happy with that.

The second quarter is more of the same, except for the last few minutes when North kicks away with three late goals. The highlight of the quarter for us in the stands comes at the 25 minute mark with Izzy’s mark and goal. The boys rally around him and the crowd goes off. We don’t care what anybody else is saying – we like him. He does some good things in defence and in the third quarter takes a beautiful intercept mark in the centre of the ground and places it on the Chest of Rhys Palmer who calmly slots it on the run. Eat your words Cam Mooney.

The wind dies down a bit after the sun goes down for the second half, and while it is still pretty cold, it’s not too bad.

North’s win is predictable but the margin is not. We have put in a pretty consistent four quarter effort and it shows on the scoreboard. There was no thumping here today, and for a large part of it we outplayed North and the final margin of only 28 points probably flattered them a bit. An honourable way to finish a long first season.

38 touches – tell me again why Toby Greene is not this year’s Rising Star? I still think Jeremy Cameron should win it, but it will probably go to a guy who has been at Adelaide for three years now.

After the game there was a bit of confusion with the North players leaving the ground. There were a number of Giants fans led out to form what looked like a guard of honour, the North players, led by Boomer Harvey, thought it must have been a guard of honour for the retiring McDonald and Brogan, so they lined up too to show their respect – a classy thing to do, so props for them – however when they found out the fans were just there to receive signed Giants guernseys they had won by re-signing as members, they happily made their way to the rooms.

The chaos of kick-to-kick followed, and for once I wasn’t sconned by an errant Sherrin, did a lot of ducking though. The rock band played on and the queue for players autographs grew, but we had a train to catch and young master was getting tired so we headed home, tired, cold, but pretty happy with what we saw.

I am so glad I can go to the footy with my son, and not have to travel all the way to Moore Park and watch the Swans. Footy has finally arrived in my own back yard and I cannot wait until next season.

Go the Giants!

About steve duffy

is in no particular order....writer, artist, graphic designer, library technician, Giants fan, dad, husband, friend, brother, son, reader, lover of music, resident of Penrith, Canberra boy, Raider fan, Brumbies fan, Cats fan, right handed, white with two (coffee) black with two (tea), left of centre.....

Comments

  1. Pamela Sherpa says

    I enjoyed watching the Giants game on TV Steve. Like you , I think there is a lot to look forward to next year. Toby Greene is a gutsy little ball magnet. He would be my pick for the Rising Star although I won’t object if Jeremy Cameron wins it! I was pleased to see Izzy getting the hang of things -he was certainly impressive when he got the ball. Can’t wait til he clicks right into gear.

  2. A tale of two cities Pamela. Sydney and Essendon. Sounds like Sydney is winning.

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