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Round 23 – Sydney v Carlton: A Cameo of Twenty-One

 

A Cameo of Twenty-One.

Lance Franklin v Carlton
4:35 pm, Saturday, 26 August 2017
The G Minor, Sydney

Dan Hansen

 

My wife was going out to a fancy charity ball leaving Dexter and I to have a boys night in. Well that was the plan anyway. Then I realised the Swans vs Carlton game was a 4:35 pm start and “the boys” may have the opportunity to go to the game instead. The week Dexter was born I bought him an AFL membership and I can’t wait to take him to his first AFL Grand Final. Unfortunately, two years on he still hasn’t been to a live AFL game. Not because I haven’t wanted to but because the time slots haven’t matched his sleeping routine.

 

We dropped Daria off in Camperdown to enjoy her pre-event Bollinger and head off to the G-Minor. We arrive just in time to watch Franklin kick his first goal. I assumed the usual position in front of the Ladies Stand where Dexter sat on the brickwork in front of the railing. There were two young twenty-something couples standing next to me and the two girls were slightly smitten by Dexter. The guys seemed a bit worried as the girls were behaving a tad clucky. One of the girls showed Dexter how to use the cardboard clappers which are handed out at every SCG game. Dexter enjoyed this as every time the crowd erupted into applause it gave him an opportunity to start banging the thing on the top of my scone. It may have been because he was excited, however a few of the times he had a look in his eyes as if he was saying “and that’s for turning off Paw Patrol when I asked for more”.

 

By quarter time, the game is even and surprisingly Dexter is showing a lot more interest than I thought a two-year-old could muster. He watched intently when the play was in front of us, however when the ball was on the other side of the oval he drifted off as if he was listening to a David King post-game analysis. Several times he looked at me as if to say, “Carlton have no answer to Franklin, so why are we here?”. He seemed to see something that I was missing as at halftime Carlton were giving it a red hot go and there wasn’t much between the two opponents.

 

We decided to share an angus burger at halftime. We spent most of the long break arguing over who gets the beef patty and bread and who gets the lettuce and tomato. The two-year-old looked at me as if to say, “do I look like a bloody hippy vegan” and, as a result, I had nothing but chlorophyll for dinner. We return to watch the start of the third quarter and at the eight-minute mark Franklin kicks a goal and Dexter looks at me as if to say, “that’s the sealer Dad, let’s go home”. So off we trudged.

 

I listen to the radio as we drive home and to my surprise Carlton are thirteen points up at three quarter time. I get home and turn on the television. It’s about the half way through the final quarter and Carlton are eleven points up. Then, in the next five minutes, Franklin kicks two goals and Carlton find themselves a point behind. Shortly after Nick Graham kicks a point for Carlton to even the scores. Franklin then kicks his tenth goal for the day and Carlton are six points behind. In the next intense seven or eight minutes Carlton has a couple of opportunities to take back the lead but manage to mess it up worse than the drafting of a Stephen O’Reilly contract. In the dying seconds Franklin kicks another point to take his total to 10.2 (62) and to defeat Carlton 8.9 (57) in a cliff hanger.

 

Franklin was exceptional on the day and, by the way, there were another twenty-one Swans players who put in a serviceable cameo.

 

LANCE FRANKLIN 1.0 3.0 6.1 10.2 (62)
CARLTON 1.0 5.1 8.4 8.9 (57)

 

GOALS
Sydney: Franklin 10
Carlton: Boekhorst 3, Curnow 2, Pickett, Kreuzer, Casboult

BEST
Sydney: Franklin
Carlton: Weitering, Simpson, Murphy, Gibbs, Kreuzer

Umpires: Chamberlain, Gavine, Mitchell Crowd: 38,965

OUR VOTES 3 Lance Franklin (Sydney), 2 Jacob Weitering (Carlton), 1 Kade Simpson (Carlton)

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