Mid-Morning Misery

In the days when a national women's competition was as fanciful as Melbourne winning flags, I thought our regular 1.10pm games weren't early enough. All it took to finally get our AM test case was the AFL losing interest in this competition after a week when the men came back from their break, but as it obviously wasn't done for the right reasons I'll wait for more evidence before bringing down a verdict.

The process of jamming games in anywhere they fit landed us with the ultimate in "you're not really taking this seriously are you?" fixture of recent premiers at 11.05am Saturday morning. I'm not suggesting going head to head with finals, but scheduling a game at this time was severe extraction of piss. There were five games on Sunday but none in prime time, and if the CBA allows it how about an emergency Monday night game. Anything that looks more professional than the spot usually reserved for Auskick games.

Speaking of presenting your product in a way that makes it look credible, the only upside to the (presumed) end of the Fortress Casey era is that people can stop pretending it's good just because we win there. Maybe I'm just anti because Cranbourne is about as far from my house as Shepparton, but just in case Brad Green asserts his newfound Presidential authority by revoking my membership, this is a good time to remind you that the views expressed on this page are not representative of the Melbourne Football Club. My view is that they should clear civilians then attack with helicopters like Apocalypse Now. When one of the benches displayed a petrol can sign I thought it might be the not-so-subtle secret code to do an insurance job.

I agree, burn the place down. pic.twitter.com/aDSKSt3KsX

— Adam 1.0 (@Demonblog) September 7, 2024

The club is desperate to get the name 'Field of Dreams' over, but that's only valid if you're a player, or dream about being trapped in a windy outer suburban park with a Chemist Warehouse truck in the forward pocket. Nobody official will admit these are rotten places to play but well done to the Hawthorn player who went delightfully off-script and basically said "stuff Frankston, giz stadiums". Nobody wants to put money in Carlton's pocket, but the Victorian match of the round should be played at Princes Park. Or Punt Road, or Victoria Park. Anywhere central that has at least one end protected from the wind.

Anti-Casey sentiment is one thing, but I doubt we'd have won this game at any venue in Australia. Regardless of Brisbane stinking it up last week, our depth has gone from 'fish pond' to 'Kalahari Desert' and things are looking a bit dire. On top of everyone who did a runner in the off-season and Purcell's pre-season injury, it's goodbye Tayla Harris for the year with a shoulder injury we knew about, and Lauren Pearce for what sounds like a long time after nuking her wrist at training.

Harris blazed the trail for Harris(on Petty) by playing forward all last year for just three goals, but in this case I'll accept she's more benefit to the structure than any available alternatives. This was best demonstrated by them bringing in Georgia Campbell as a replacement, even though we still had (at the time) Pearce and Watt as rucks. Campbell is the new Spencil, athletic and enthusiastic but miles off the pace. Let's see if the story is followed faithfully and she finally looks like making it just as future multiple-time All-Australian storms past and takes over. 

No matter how long Pearce is out for, that's a massive loss. There are a lot of worse teams than Brisbane to test ourselves against, but despite the good vibes from last week I'm nearly ready to write us off as a serious premiership chance and start thinking about the Ms. Bradbury Plan just to get into the top eight. Going off the injury reports I think we're down to four available players (Gall, Johnson, Madigan and D. Taylor), so when they cut to Zanker on the bench looking wrecked I thought we were on the verge of dialling Rent-A-Player for the first time since the Tex Perkins era.

Team selection chaos opened the door for our top draft pick Alyssia Pisano to debut. Giving top prospects experience and trying a different type of player to our spluttering attack were both good things, but parachuting an emerging forward into this side is like sending yachting's Rising Star nominees to Outer Mongolia. She helped set up and kick the same goal but otherwise it was pretty much just one big development opportunity, because even the regular forwards couldn't get near it. Brisbane made sure Kate Hore couldn't single-handedly rescue the side this time and down we went.

There was much fanfare about Bannan becoming the youngest player to 50 games but this is two games in a row where she's done sod all. Young player, plenty of upside, no other options etc... so happy to play her and hope for the best but since the start of last year her goalkicking is 3, 3, 0, 1, 0, 0, 5, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 - and the five was against a practically invisible West Coast. She's not alone, our scoring has coming to a screaming halt since the glory days of tonking rotten teams last year. In a situation familiar to fans of the male game, I'll punch on to protect the reputation of the backline but they can only do so much if we're not scoring at the other end.

This was a great day for fans of our defenders, because they spent 95% of the game stopping Brisbane from kicking a massive score. The rest of the side could barely get their hands on it early, while the only similarity to beating Brisbane in a Grand Final was Gillard doing a fantastic, unheralded job of keeping them out. If I wait long enough to publish this the coaches' votes will show whether I'm barking up the wrong tree (if we get any), but her not even getting a mention in our best players on the AFL website is a triumph for judging them on disposal count alone.

The early minutes looked just like last week, grim defensive struggle and complete inability to convincingly move the ball beyond halfway. This time there wasn't even the token presence of Harris, and Hore had an opponent hanging off her all day, leaving us no chance of kicking a goal. Zanker is just kind of there without being particularly dangerous, and with the delivery reduced to panicky quick kicks, Brisbane played in extended training drill mode. 

Our first decent build-up of the quarter fell apart on the last kick, then went the other way for a goal. Double farce rewards points for it coming from a speculative long shot that bounced over everybody's head. This led to the only entertaining bit of the opening half, as my kid walked past and shrieked in delight thinking the Lions had a player called Taylor Swift. I had to make her stay until the post-goal graphic to confirm it was actually Taylor Smith. After that brief outbreak of joy, it was back to watching us trailing around behind the opposition in an ironic flashback to all the times we were the bigger and better team taking advantage of the misfortune of others.

Everything was going against us, including Brisbane players successfully hoodwinking the umpires by signalling their own free kicks like it was the 1870s. One was for a last touch that I'm sure - and god knows no review will be done to check - came off one of their players, but the same people who couldn't spot a holding the ball if their lives depended on it said "well, that's good enough for me". What would we have done with the ball anyway?

Maybe Christian Petracca saw the bit last week where I said he wouldn't get another mention during AFLW season and thought he'd stitch me up by making a cameo appearance. Either that or he and Tayla Harris were holding a 'building your brand' workshop that just happened to coincide with the game. Or they were discussing a class action for Melbourne players who kept going after injury before discovering something was seriously wrong with them.      

Considering Brisbane's early domination, there's some credit in keeping the final margin to 18 points. We've done so well over the years that we've only ever lost four games by more. But keeping that part of the damage down is one thing, there's no point losing by that much after kicking 0.1. When we finished the opening quarter with that much, I was straight to the record books for our all-time lowest score. The 'winner' is 1.2.8 against Adelaide in 2019, and I had no faith in matching it by adding the required 1. to our quarter time score of .2. 

We've previously won four times after scoring nowt in the first term but there was no obvious path to recovery here. Then things got a bit weird, as we held the opposition scoreless but reached half time looking no more likely to win due to only adding a point of our own - and even that was right at the end. Everyone was having a good old fashioned crack but it's probably a good thing that only the most enthusiastic enthusiasts were watching. It was a good defensive effort on our behalf, but ultimately about as useful as keeping one of their players to zero disposals while another was on her way to an all-time record of 43. 

There was a temporary outbreak of fun and frivolity in the third quarter when Pisano kicked her first goal, but otherwise the only thing to look forward to was reaching the final siren without anyone else getting hurt. Cut to Eden Zanker on the bench looking like she'd seriously hurt her arm and I was about to join the other 99.99% of the community and go do something else. Zanker randomly appeared again in the last quarter so I assume all is well, but what's another player who comes back after being hurt before never being seen again? If all goes wrong she could be #3 in the Petracca-Harris vs MFC lawsuit. I'm sure there was a game against Richmond where President Green was carried off on a stretcher before returning to the field but can't find any mention of it in the archives so maybe not. There goes the "yeah, but look at how well I've done?" legal option.

And really, what else is there to say? It's hard to describe a game in any detail when most of it was just the opposition doing what they liked. The effort from our side was there but they were collectively so far behind the Lions that the final margin could be considered some sort of triumph. I'm settling in for a big year of enjoying my favourite defenders keeping us afloat. I'd say more of the good stuff, less of the bad stuff but it might be a case of 'more of the shit teams, less of the good teams'. Here's to our first ever 18 team version of AFLW look at mid-table mediocrity.

2024 Daisy Pearce Medal for Player of the Year
5 - Tahlia Gillard
4 - Blaithin Mackin
3 - Kate Hore
2 - Sarah Lampard
1 - Maeve Chaplin

Apologies to Beasley, Goldrick, Hanks and McNamara

Leaderboard
8 - Kate Hore, Blaithin Mackin
5 - Tahlia Gillard (LEADER: Defender of the Year)
3 - Lauren Pearce (LEADER: Ruck of the Year)
2 - Shelley Heath, Sarah Lampard
1 - Maeve Chaplin, Sinead Goldrick

Goal of the Week
It's Hore by default, but the goal wasn't as good as last week so that one is still in the lead.

Next Week
If you strictly follow Footy Maths, North massacred Brisbane who comfortably beat us, so all signs point to a dead-set tonking. Then again, they just drew with a Geelong side we matched up well against, so god knows what's going to happen. A better guide might be last year's final, where we made kicking goals look like finding the cure for Smallpox. They haven't gotten any worse, while we've been stripped bare from multiple angles. It's back to Casey again, so here's to either a great backs to the wall victory, or the Mt. Variable Weather conditions helpfully completely stuffing North up. On recent evidence this could be the first time we kick zero goals, but I'll be watching through my fingers and hoping for the best.    

Final thoughts
Turns out this league isn't as much fun when you go from bullies to bullied. There's a life lesson for all of us in that.