Gently turning in the right direction

Finally some good news from a week when things went so badly I expected P. Diddy to announce he was a lifelong Dees man. The W can no longer beat the top sides or the middle sides, but we're still marginally ahead of the bottom group. I hoped this was the case, but given that the Giants were half a game and about 50% percentage points better than us nothing was certain.

The ongoing injury drama finally made Rent-A-Player a reality, and it might be a bit cynical but I preferred adding a veteran with nearly 50 games of league experience than force feeding games into another rookie. Not sure if there were many fit rookies left anyway, but we did finally get a look at Delany Madigan after weeks of hanging out in the emergencies. Took a nice intercept mark, kicked it straight to the opposition and was never sighted again, but worth a try given that the other inclusion automatically knew what she was doing.

I did intend to support games at proper venues by attending, before waking up on Thursday morning feeling like my muscles has been replaced by jelly and an elephant was standing on my face. The situation didn't get any better, and I eventually watched this on delay in the middle of the night. There was one great moment of clarity mid-afternoon when I woke up a sweaty mess and thought the final score would be 29-25. Got half of it right, but even in normal circumstances I wouldn't have guessed that GWS was going to get that much when they were sitting on a sad 0.5 in the third quarter.

For once we were on the right side of a team playing well but not taking their opportunities, with GWS doing a lot right in the early stages but failing to convert shots to goals. Cue the big pisstake when we plucked a goal directly from the arse, as Bannan returned to eastern seaboard goalkicking with a cover version of that winning goal against North at the MCG. Maybe she's just got an issue with Casey Fields? That makes two of us. Then Pisano did an only slightly less fun goal and things were looking up for the first time since halfway through the Freo game.

You've got to be careful about celebrating great Melbourne double acts in case they both end up wanting to be traded, but for the first time this year the ultimate W combination of Hore and Hanks both fired at the same time and it was ace. Given that I'm still crocked however many days it is later you'll forgive not going into detail, but there were some centre clearances where Hanks looked like she'd been fired through the contest by a ballistic missile. Without West, Purcell, or midfield Paxman she's had way too much to do this year so it's nice that the Giants gave her space to go through like the Roadrunner.

GWS were better value than the scoreboard indicated, but were heading towards half time goalless and without a score in the second quarter so it seemed like a job very much well done. Then in an obvious Demontime scenario they ended up with a shot after the siren from pretty much straight in front and not particularly far out. I assuned it would go through and refused to participate, but on my second press of the +15 second button saw the last, sad moments of the ball fading away from goal and we had indeed got to the break four goals to nil up. I'd say what could possibly go wrong, but it hadn't been total domination so there was still a window open for them to make it interesting.

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas when Gall won a free and kicked a delightful set shot 90 seconds into the second half, but in a scenario familiar to fans of the male and female games alike, we missed the opportunity to put them away. Gall is still a long way off but she can certainly belt a set shot, which bodes well for when she gets more experience and learns how to get the ball more often.

Rhi Watt must be the first player to be getting better at nearly 37-years-old, and while she's no Lauren Pearce, the last couple of weeks have been as good a holding of the fort as possible. She also did one of the most pleasantly wacky mid-game interviews during the third quarter, opening with gags about not knowing what day it was and referring to the first Giants goal as "a bugger". These segments are usually death because you can tell the player has no interest but she fully embraced novelty and the coverage was better for it. Speaking of making the telecast look better, note how putting a minuscule crowd opposite the camera makes it look half decent.

GWS barely had the ball inside 50 all quarter before their first goal, and a second followed closely behind. Suddenly we were on the run, albeit starting with the cushion of a five goal lead. At three-quarter time the GWS coach told his players that we were "cooked", and he wasn't far off. After back-to-back scoreless fourth quarters (+ scoreless second and third quarters last week) he wasn't wrong, and we spent this one desperately trying to stop them getting within range. It would have been a massive cockup to lose from 35-5 up, but by the time it got to less than two goals with a couple of minutes left the shambles alarm was ringing. I was half tempted to skip to the end and make sure we'd held on, but persisted at god-knows-what AM and did it the right way. We might have defended our way out of trouble anyway, especially with Chaplin intercepting everything that went near their goal.

Time eventually ran down to the point where it would have taken an all-time shemozzle to beat us, before the result was made safe via a swift handball from Hore, and a neat snap by Fitzsimon. Cue the largest number of first time winners we've ever had in the circle (given that you couldn't have had an in/out circle after R1, 2017 because everyone had just played in their first victory), and a much needed break from the agony of defeat. Does it translate to getting anything out of this season? Probably not, but certainly better than being thrashed by record margins.

2024 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Kate Hore
4 - Tyla Hanks
3 - Maeve Chaplin
2 - Alyssa Bannan
1 - Lily Mithen

Apologies to Fitzsimon, Goldrick, Heath, Lampard and Watt

Leaderboard
14 - Tahlia Gillard (LEADER: Defender of the Year)
13 - Maeve Chaplin, Kate Hore
10 - Eliza McNamara
9 - Sinead Goldrick
8 - Kate Hore, Blaithin Mackin
4 - Tyla Hanks, Lily Mithen, Paxy Paxman
3 - Lauren Pearce (LEADER: Ruck of the Year)
2 - Alyssa Bannan, Megan Fitzsimon, Shelley Heath, Sarah Lampard
1 - Rhiannon Watt

Goal of the Week
Back after it would have been sarcastic to hold this segment last week, your winner is Bannan's opener with apologies to Pisano.

Next Week
I'm still expecting to be walloped by Adelaide, but this has given me some hope of keeping it close. Sounds like McNamara is the only senior player expected back, so does that mean we lose our spot in the Rent-A-Player scheme and have to give D'Arcy back to C'Asey? Probably worth somebody fake tripping down the stairs so we can keep her for the experience. Otherwise there's potential debuts for Jemma Rigoni and Saraid Taylor, as we continue the quest to give every fit player on the list a game at some point this year.

Final thoughts
Technically we could still make finals but I'm just happy to see a pulse.