Round 8 – North Melbourne v Collingwood

I’m a bit odd, and so you would appear if you were examined too closely. I don’t envy these wonderful young men who we spend our weekends wondering why they played on or went short or etc. etc.. Can anyone reading actually claim that they would like the scrutiny that an AFL footballer receives today when they were twenty two? Now one of the odd things I do is take out memberships of two AFL clubs and being a North member meant on Saturday I left my conference at Jeff’s Shed and fronted up to Marvel to watch the North Collingwood game.

 

I love going to sport. I am a North Member because when I was a student living in North Melbourne a kindly bloke used to let me into Arden Street games just after half time. I played for the Reds (Uni Reds) a bit, but watching the North sides of the Seventies, for free, was a blast. Why memorize the 15 branches of the maxillary artery when you could watch Keith Grieg run down the wing at Arden Street. One of my son’s shares the same genetic abnormality of loving live sport and so we used to be members of the Brisbane and North Cheer squads’ simultaneously.

 

But the footy is not the same.

 

When you go to any sport nowadays you are assaulted, and insulted, by noise. The failure to appreciate silence is creeping into all life today. My wife and I have breakie with a Rotary mate of ours, most Thursdays. He is a breakfast junkie and goes out for breakfast every morning and so we have the Steven Downes or James Halliday of breakfasts as our guide. I eat a simple tea, toast and raspberry jam but he and my wife are more adventurous. What gets on my goat is the loud music the cafes all play.

 

I ask you; Do you want to eat your eggs to Skyhooks?

 

Its even worse at the Adelaide Test match. I go every year and all the regulars catch up at the same spot in the members stand and chat away happily until that appalling James Sherry starts up and destroys the lovely atmosphere of the Adelaide CRICKET Ground.

 

We get this before every AFL game now. It reached a farcical point before one North game when the commentator mispronounced many of the North players names. This amused me greatly but the North supporters online were quite pis..d off. North supporters will need to develop a sense of the ridiculous to get them through the next two years. “Make some noise”, the imbecilic intones incessantly.

 

But eventually the umps bounce the ball and the noise stops.

 

North have a list comparable to the Fitzroy list of ’96 so I thought a win unlikely but I wanted to see some evidence that some of the young blokes have a future. Were Collingwood the Freo of ’96?

 

Collingwood won comfortably in the end but there was plenty of interest in the match. Jordan De Goey was by far the most important player on the ground. It took North until some time in the third quarter to catch up with his score and here is where I have to start to get critical. Everyone before the game thought De Goey was the Collingwood trump card. The North captain, Zeibel, picked him up after half time, and quietened him somewhat, but the horse had bolted.  McKay, as North’s premier defender should have stood beside him from the start. I think Noble picked the wrong horse, was too slow to make a change and then made the wrong one.

 

North have two players, Zurharr and LDU (I call him UDL) who have some talent. UDL sometimes carves his way through traffic like the young Voss. Zurharr takes pack species but neither player can be trusted to kick over the man on the mark. They are both wonderfully appalling and may not get a game in the better North teams on the way. North supporters need to adopt a Zen pose and appreciate that not all footballers can be Boomers, who never looked out of his depth.

 

Hall had another great game and I wonder if he would do well under the Martin Pike contract term. Brissie used to give Pike only one year contracts so he had to keep to the straight and narrow. Hall should be an elite AFL player but has wasted his talent to this stage of his career but gee he looked elite today.

 

There were some swings in the game. Collingwood got out to a five goal lead at half time, which North reeled in during the third quarter. Collingwood came again, established a buffer, but the young North side never gave up and closed the gap by the end.

 

Young Noble, son of the North’s coach, should have received more attention as he showed the North team what one touch footy is all about. Imagine his Dad saying to a North player,”Go out and stand on that Noble’s foot. Get his face and make his night a misery”.

 

I do not like the amount of vitriol that comes Nathan Buckley’s way. Most of it is envy of someone who is better than they. I have spoken to team mates of his from his young days and he wasn’t the most likeable bloke back then, but the brains of young men have a far way to go before they mature. I bumped into Bucks at a cricket match a few years ago when I was the umpire of the game. He was playing a game in his son’s team, enjoying the game and his presence was enjoyed by all present. I did give him not out LBW just before a break and mentioned to Bucks at the break that many of my mates would not have been so impartial and I may experience some heat from my mates if the incident leaked out.

 

Young Daicos played well but I am hopelessly biased. His parents are the original glamour couple but are so unassuming, natural and good people. Young Josh is the sort of young fellow any man would be proud of so how could he not figure in the Derrinalphil votes?

 

Derrinalphil Votes

3 De Goey

2 Hall

1 Daicos

 

NORTH MELBOURNE    2.2   3.6    8.7      11.10 (76)
COLLINGWOOD            3.2   8.6   12.10    14.10 (94) 

 

GOALS
North Melbourne: Stephenson 2, Thomas 2, Mahony 2, Zurhaar 2, Campbell, Lazzaro, Turner
Collingwood: De Goey 6, Cameron 3, Pendlebury 2, Mihocek 2, Hoskin-Elliott

 

BEST
North Melbourne: Ziebell, Hall, Stephenson, Thomas, Menadue     
Collingwood: De Goey, Moore, Pendlebury, Cameron, Maynard

 

INJURIES
North Melbourne: Bonar (ankle)
Collingwood: Murphy (concussion) Roughead (head knock)

 

SUBSTITUTES
North Melbourne: Will Phillips (replaced Bonar)
Collingwood: Callum Brown (replaced Murphy)   

 

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