If you look beyond the latest round of serious injury drama and an after-the-siren goal that left our season on life support a month in, it's not all bad news. After a fortnight of being gently dispatched by the top sides it turns out that under the right circumstances we can still score enough against the rest to set up a disposable three goal lead. And that's your lot for positivity, because we'll need to climb out of a Grand Canyon-size ditch to escape 2024 with anything other than quality draft picks.
It would be time to play the kids, but we're already doing that. And the veterans. And a few players who might secretly admit they have no place in a national competition. That's the nature of this league (and any team who started after year one will be pointing and laughing), but we were already looking at a mini-rebuild before injuries have dumped 10 tons of concrete on the place. The latest victim was Grace Beasley, who survived years on the college basketball circuit and showed good signs in her first three games being being felled by a knee injury at training. It came at the same time of the week as Lauren Pearce's wrist detonation so refer previous comments about Casey being cursed.
We haven't triggered Rent-A-Player yet, but the football department must be scouring the regulations to see how it works. There's been a shitload of teams added since we did it last so the free agent field would hardly be heaving, but there must be a VFL player somewhere worth looking at. Make it fun (for fans anyway) by selecting somebody who is a completely unpredictable lunatic, regardless of whether they can play footy. Paxy might come back next week, but only to replace the newly-crocked Mackin. In one of the great upsets that's not a huge step up, but still better a five-time All Australian at the tail end of a glorious career than some of the other filler options.
Over the years there's always been players filling spots, but to deviate from the traditional proverb a lowering tide has dropped all boats and they stand out more. Bring back Round 1 when it looked like we might just pull this off and Kate Hore was heading towards finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the league B&F. Ahh the glory days of late August. Since then we've definitely lost two players for the year, Pearce may be heading the same way, and Purcell is still TBD after her last-minute pre-season injury.
After all this we were three goals in front during the last quarter and on the verge of returning to comfortable mid-table mediocrity. It may be a three team league, but that doesn't mean you can't finish 4th - 8th and still have a ticket in the lottery. It's just harder with a pot luck draw that makes the men's competition look fair and equitable. Who knows what the solution is when nine years on we're still arguing about scheduling games at 5pm Friday, but with much love to the 1000 plus players, coaches, and support people working their arse off for the competition, the organisation is trending Mickey Mouse in a way that might see the next broadcast rights sold to Disney.
I feel bad for the ex-coach of Collingwood who respectfully asked the reasonable question of how teams can still kick zero goals after all these years (which didn't happen once until the fourth season) and got treated like he'd said it dressed as Harvey Weinstein. Obviously you've got to give it time to develop, but angrily going on about how the University men kicked 0.6.6 in 1913 isn't much help. There's still limited time for two divisions of nine without ruining the space/time continuum, but teams would rather kick one goal or under every week than agree to that. I'm happy to enjoy it for what it is but the AFL should be forced to admit in court that they're just funding it for PR purposes and aren't interested in the day-to-day grind of competition management.
That's your mandatory 'state of the game' discussion for the week, and as there's no chance to hang shit on Casey Fields (leading to counter-propaganda featuring Australia's most likeable people) I suppose it's on with losing in sad and dramatic circumstances. It would be rude to call this a choke, more of a gradual descent into madness. We'd got everything possible out of an understrength travelling team for three and a bit quarters, then just failed to hold on against the wind. Once we get to play a bottom side - and the current 13th, 10th and 17th placed teams are on the way - it will confirm that we're too good for them, not good enough for the premiership contenders, and everything in the middle will be a toss-up.
We might come back from two games and a shitload of percentage behind to end the year with Ms. Bradbury Plan final round drama. Then we'll get the chance to fall flat on our faces in humiliating fashion against Collingwood's women for once instead of the men. Probably not, but we've had a good run and once players started going down like nine pins the excuse of a transitional season was ready to roll out. Would still have been nice to win here.
Even if it's almost impossible to think of a spark that could vault us back into flag contention, I'd be happy to hang around the eight like an unflushable nugget. Forget the 10 minutes on the ropes trying to survive, we were one horribly shanked kick from halving the points, and I'd have felt plenty more likely to come out of this season with something if we had. The commentators offered false hope by speculating that she might not make the distance before a flawless set shot went five points beyond what was required. Game over in all senses of the word I fear.
By the end we were a metaphorical petrol light furiously flashing empty, but it was about as good as you'll get until then. We just don't have the players left - our old friend Delaney is still kicking her heels in the emergencies, leaving this week's debutant to be somebody who'd played a bit for Geelong several years ago before they were good. And considering her time away the first Denby ever to play for Melbourne did ok. Most of what used to be our fringe players were fine, but nobody looks like breaking out of the pack so we're relying on individual stars to get us out of jail. The problem is that some of the stars have struggled to get going so far so you can have the chicken vs egg debate on what's to blame. Either way we're in all sorts.
In a hate crime against Melbourne fans, Fox reunited as much of the commentary team as possible from the day King Harley Race went boonta on us. Pav is too famous for 12.05WST starts, but Will Schofield was back to chair the Western Australian Broadcasting Commission. There's no money in shameless secessionist commentary in this league so he wound it back a bit in favour of complaining about umpires then immediately apologising so he doesn't get blackballed by the AFL. With the viewing audience for this he could survived doing George Carlin's 'Seven Words You Can't Say On TV'.
While the call was slightly restrained from the usual local madness, they were desperate to pin the mysterious early demise of a Freo player on a behind-the-play assassination. I stupidly expected they may have evidence of it and started wondering if a player absent with suspension still counted towards our Rent-A-Player quota. The replay came in too late to prove anything, they never bothered rolling it back further to find contact, and it seems the injury came completely at random. Not like Western Australians to fit somebody up for a crime they didn't commit.
Our first goal kicked off some long-term storytelling, as Hore got away with one of the most blatant holding the balls of all time in pretty much the same spot that the game was decided. The piss was further extracted from Freo as she was almost immediately given the free and set shot. At this stage we still didn't know if their injured player had been taken out by cynical violence or not, so it was all looking a bit Conspiracy Corner for the home side.
From there it all went very well for a while, except for the obligatory injury drama featuring Blaithin Mackin's calf and the premature departure of one of our best ball movers. Still, back in mid-table company our better players looked far more likely to create havoc. Meanwhile in defence your old friend and mine Gillard was stopping everything that came near her. It wasn't perfect, but with the wind we had our most effective attacking quarter of the year. Bannan finally got another goal, and because of the quality finish we won't dwell on the mark coming from a hopeful, aim-free kick that she just happened to be in the right spot for. They all count, and by quarter time you could genuinely have been having fun watching a Melbourne game. That was your first mistake.
Of the handful of players to improve while the season burns down around them, Eliza McNamara was racking up touches left, right and centre. This is good, but it only partially covers teammates going at roughly one disposal a quarter. Freo was in a similar boat so it was a 50/50 game where we were better at converting than any time since monstering the shit teams last year. There was even a goal created by attempted pack marking, which was a step up from a fortnight of whacking the ball straight into the waiting arms of a defender. Georgia Gall didn't do much else, but she helped give us some presence in the air and got her first goal courtesy of the umpire flat-out guessing at a 'mark' which clearly hit the ground.
Who knows if the game would have ended the same way, but we could have done ourselves a favour not giving away a free in the last few seconds before half time. Insert more dramatic foreshadowing as Freo converted after the siren despite somebody in the crowd making weird bird noises. The effects mics were picking up snippets of conversations from the crowd all day and I was listening closely for scandalous gossip. Sadly they were drowned out by the special comments man talking about umpires like idiots then doing politically correct disclaimers about what a hard job they've got.
Regular readers will know that I'm not into simplistic "if they'd kicked goals instead of behinds" analysis, but in a low scoring format converting one of our many chances would have helped. After starting with a nearly unprecedented five goals straight, there were a lot of waste. Twice the player thought they'd kicked it only to be denied by the goal umpire, with no suggestion of busting out that allegedly razzle dazzle digital ball technology. The way this competition is run they probably forgot to plug the system in before the game. It meant no inaugural goal for Wotherspoon - who is now in increasing danger of playing in a wooden spoon - before Hore missed out on her second in similar circumstances. Our failure to land a killer blow left the door open, with a giant flashing sign over it reading *this way for premiership points*.
You can't really argue with the decision that cost the game, because it came after Goldrick was caught in another blatant holding the ball, only to get out of it on a fanciful sling tackle technicality. Then she got a bonus administrative 50 because a player she didn't even know was there approached at the wrong angle, and everything looked like it was heading in the right direction. Alas it was not, but even with the wind against us in the final quarter I had faith that we could do as per the second term and hold them out long enough to defend an 18 point lead. That was my first mistake. Regardless of how we lost, the last minute was trying to hold on grimly for a draw so it's not like we even nearly made it.
At the start of the last term everything was Freo, but they couldn't turn territory domination into scores. Then somebody with one the longest and most complicated double-barrel name outside of a European royal family goalled and it was regrettably on for young and old. The next followed quickly behind and we were wobbling like a poorly constructed office block. The last line of defence was holding up alright, but inability to get the ball over halfway and keep it there didn't bode well. There was a tremendous Chaplin tackle that relieved the pressure for about nine seconds, but we were down to relying on Freo kicking themselves out of it.
Somewhere in all this Zanker also departed with an injury, because why not, and the chances of us retaining the ball forward of centre were reduced to a statistical anomaly. We did get a centre clearance after they tied the scores, but our one decent aerial contest inside 50 happened two quarters earlier and boing, off went the ball down the other end.
Here's where the dramatic foreshadowing from our first goal pays off. All they needed was a score to win, and it looked on the way when Colvin flung herself into what deserved to be a match winning (well, more like saving by this point) tackle. Which was good, and better than when the ball returned straight back to the front of their goal, where Kate Hore grabbed it in much the same spot she'd goalled from earlier, and thought "I'll take a few steps then..." before being rudely interrupted by a tackle. She's won us enough games, one unfortunate incident isn't going to ruin the experience.
It was certainly holding the ball, maybe the first they'd got right all day, but while watching this in a room full of people while waiting for my kid's gymnastics lesson to finish I may not have said "oh for fuck's sake" far enough under my breath. By the time you're hoping for somebody to shank a kick just to get out with a draw it's already morally a loss but I was absolutely certain we were beaten. Players have missed everything from better spots than this, but it felt inevitable that she'd score something. And indeed she did, doing it in style and finally delivering us the after the siren misery twice avoided by the same Brisbane player missing. It meant more then because we were neck deep in the finals race, now we're playing to be also rans anyway so it was shit finish and I hated it but probably not any serious long-term harm done. Would be nice to score something in a last quarter though.
2024 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Eliza McNamara
4 - Sinead Goldrick
3 - Maeve Chaplin
2 - Tahlia Gillard
1 - Lily Mithen
Apologies to Colvin and Lampard.
Leaderboard
Last week I initially had Gillard in the votes twice and somebody called "Inead" on the leaderboard so you may choose to treat these numbers with contempt. Otherwise, bet you didn't think this would be the leading pair after four games.
10 - Tahlia Gillard (LEADER: Defender of the Year), Eliza McNamara
8 - Kate Hore, Blaithin Mackin
6 - Sinead Goldrick
5 - Maeve Chaplin
4 - Paxy Paxman
3 - Lily Mithen, Lauren Pearce (LEADER: Ruck of the Year)
2 - Shelley Heath, Sarah Lampard
Next Week
We've been tonked by top sides and narrowly fallen short against fellow mid-tablists, so a game against bog ordinary Essendon will confirm whether there's anything to be salvaged from this season or if it's time to evacuate. A 2.05pm Friday game is extraordinarily inconvenient for me, but it's a step above those of you in states without the worst excuse for a public holiday since Show Day. I'll be watching on severe delay, but if you're watching live or will be attending our long-awaited comeback to Windy Hill and want to join the guest reporter club let me know via the usual channels.
I assume Paxman replaces Mackin, but if Zanker is out then we'll be one step from ringing Casey players to see if they'll be away for the long weekend. Let's stay slightly positive and assume a win, because the alternative is too miserable to consider. It won't take much to make me crack the shits with footy and not watching the Saturday game so this could be the tipping point needed to do something more useful with my time.
Final thoughts
I don't like being ordinary again, kick roughly 10 sides out of the competition.
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