Round 2

What with landscaping, church working bees and the like I now find that it is Tuesday and I haven’t yet got together my mish mash of thoughts re round 2.

The two stand outs to me were on the one hand Dean Laidley praising his team after their performance against the Bulldogs. How refreshing this is, instead of the usual litany to the effect that, “We were not hard enough at the ball”, “We lacked the intensity”, We didn’t come here to lose” et al. The other stand out was Nathan Bock’s reported indiscretion. As has been observed before, a coach has a hard enough job trying to get the best out of his team without having to encounter and deal with boof heads, particularly when any one of those boof heads are seen to be one of the team’s senior “core” group.

Talking about Neil Craig, and by the way good on him too for the praise he gave regarding  St Kilda’s intensity,  according to The Age’s “Real Footy Newsletter of 3 April “Craig (was) shameless about  pinching Viney” so that the latter could share the good news regarding Hawthorn’s zoning tactics. I don’t know how helpful this info was to Adelaide but I rather thought that they were beaten by the better team who as pointed out before were more intense, and had better big players, i.e  King, Koschitzke, and Gardiner. Also Adelaide lost Henschel pretty early on just when he was starting to show something. In fact I reckon Adelaide came to a thud a few years back when they lost Biglands and Henschel near the finals.

I was surprised at Sydney beating Hawthorn, but a combination of the home ground advantage and the fact that Hawthorn had so many out proved fatal for the latter. Also, that Hawthorn had no effective ruckmen also helped in their downfall. Once again all the knowledge of zoning that they are reputed to have was to no effect if they didn’t have the cattle on the field in the first place. I was really glad that Sydney got up. Many, including myself had decided that they were old and hopeless.

Brisbane as has been their  habit  in latter years played hot and cold in the one match.Honestly I was reasonably happy with their performance as I reckon that Carlton are the mob to watch this year. Nice to see Bryce Gibbs hitting his straps I thought that he copped a fair amount of criticism last year in respect of his position in the draft pick viz z viz his actual on field results. An interesting philosophical point became apparent having read details of the game. Apparently Bradshaw missed an easy shot for goal early in the last quarter but he scored 6 goals in the game, so is he a hero or a heel?

Richmond gave Geelong a real go, but again Matty missed an easy shot as well, one ABC commentator whilst giving Richo 3 points for the game had said resignedly earlier on the commentary, “Well, that’s Richo”. Well, if I were a Richmond follower I would be totally fed up. I am looking forward to going to the Geelong Collingwood game this week.

Collingwood looked good against Melbourne as will everyone. My main take away of this game was the loneliness of a losing coach as Dean Bailey sat in the coaches box for a long time after the finish pondering as to how he could make his mob play a decent game.

West Coast beat Port Adelaide. This was a surprise as well, but it goes to underline the point that interstate sides in particular must win their home games, because no matter how ordinary any side looks on a given week, play them at home and suddenly they seem to be “more intense” at the ball.

The WB looked pretty good, wish that Brisbane still had Acker.

Fremantle will come second last, This is bad luck for Pavlich as he will never get to play in a premiership side. The form of Lucas and Lloyd has to be a worry even if so far they have been covered by the youngsters.

About Peter Schumacher

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

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