Don't cancel your alternative September plans yet, but for now the time to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo has passed. We're no longer the worst team in Victoria, and even if it's probably just the eye of the storm, I have a dream that if we can just beat one more dud team next week the door is open for a return to mid-table mediocrity. And because there's nothing else left to play for, at that point we we will say to Essendon:
I'm still not willing to think about this season beyond a) avoiding humiliation, and b) ruining the value of pre-traded first round selections, but at the moment there's no such thing as a shit win so I'm prepared to take this result as a good thing and get on with trying to finish in the top 13. We've had wonkier wins in this fixture that meant nothing for the future (e.g. the 3.12 first half snoozefest of 2022), but I still don't see us beating enough top sides to make this year interesting. Other than being spiteful towards the Bombers, the best we can hope for is to be the case study for bored journos to try and introduce a wildcard round when they're scrambling for mid-season content. Don't be fooled into thinking this would be a good idea just because it might benefit us, if you start 0-5 and can't turn it around in 18 games then bad luck, try again next year.
After the elation of an alleged premiership contender letting us do whatever we wanted last week, this was a return to core values of toil and slog. Which is fine when you win, but until half time it was a lot like the North game. We'd been on the verge of kicking away a couple of times, were holding onto a suspect lead, and had to rely on the idea that the underdogs didn't have four quarters in them.
This time we played it safe and killed the game off in the third quarter, which was important protection for another final term that had all the energy of somebody coming out of a long-term coma. For once the fade was partly self-imposed and we never remotely looked like losing, but it's still concerning that we're averaging one goal per last quarter. And the only game in six with multiples was against Gold Coast, who were gleefully caving our skulls in at the other end. The BurgessBall era is long gone - and may have been a myth anyway - but I wouldn't bet five Zimbabwean dollars on us winning from a three quarter time deficit anytime soon.
Now that the Anzac Day eve game is established (unlike the concept of an actual 'Anzac Day Eve' which is not now, and will never be a thing) and unlikely to go anywhere, all it's lacking is a close game. For not having to hang around with Pies and Essendon fans it shits on the actual Anzac game, but they've had plenty of drama over the years, while the nearest thing to a thriller in this fixture has been Richmond winning by 13, and us by 17. Stiff shit neutrals, we've still had some memorable moments - the birth of Hulkamania, the Bugg shhhing incident, Nathan Jones' 300th, on the night I really started to believe we were good, and Disco Demolition Night livening up an otherwise putrid game last year. In this time they've also won three flags so I'm sure they'd have a few fond memories too, but refer to Tigerblog for that sort of thing.
Another advantage the actual Anzac game has is that no matter how shit the competing clubs are, it will always draw a big crowd. This has had a couple of random spikes above 80k, but has settled in the low 70s for the last couple of years. Lucky both sides won last week, or we'd have been subjected to the usual demands from clubs not interesting enough to have a 'blockbuster' game that we hand over one of ours. I was hoping that we'd get the unique situation of our fourth home crowd single-handedly outdrawing the first three combined but it just fell short. By the state of the crowd during the post-match presentations I think opposition fans did a lot of the heavy lifting in the 71k total.
I missed the pre-match commemorations due to watching on a savage delay that left me eight minutes behind at the final siren after skipping all the breaks, but it's safe to assume there was another round of gushing about how good the New Zealand anthem is. It might be better than ours because it never says 'girt', but at the risk of being expelled from the Melbourne Football Club for going full commo, the top anthem from the winning side of either World War belonged to the Soviet Union. Anthems only really work if the people are mad with self-belief for the system, you can change our song to anything you like and it'll always seem cringe to a country of cynical bastards like us.
In a week dedicated to honouring brave people who put their lives on the line, the big controversy of the week was over somebody not being allowed to play footy at night after beating the suitcase out of somebody in a pub carpark. Instead of being pleased that Noah Balta isn't spending the rest of the season making licence plates, some Richmond fans invoked the 'I only feel this way because he plays for my club' rule and went full nuff. One wanted to pick Balta, sub him off at 3/4 time, and send him to a nearby apartment to beat the court-imposed 10pm curfew. Somehow this was supposed to spite the Victorian Premier, whose unconvincing 'tough on crime' gimmick required having an opinion. Her poll numbers suggest bigger problems to worry about, but I wish they'd gone full cooker and done this then had an injury in the opening minutes and played the last quarter two men down.
I'm glad Balta didn't play, but not because of his off-field shitblokery. I'd just get extreme cultural cringe seeing our fans lustily booing him when the same people would tear a hammy off the bone trying to argue why one of our players was hard done by in the same circumstances. I can see the arguments for putting him in the side last week when sentencing was imminent, but it's the stiffest of legal shit for player and club once the verdict is in. And if they can pin anything substantial on the MFC player allegedly involved in pub shenanigans over summer then he can also wear whatever the judge hands out. You don't get a moral discount for being a good guy at sports, and by not being the first team to play against this guy post-sentence, we've been saved from reacting in a way that will look massively hypocritical in the future.
But who gives a continental about social issues when the 'mons are unbeaten in consecutive weeks. Shame about the five games before that, but you can only beat who they put in front of you. After the joy of breaking through against Freo, my biggest worry was that we'd revert to making goalkicking look harder than climbing Mt. Everest. I'm sure it was an advantage for Adem Yze to have coached a lot of our players, and alongside Goodwin, but even with a team full of kids they were never going to let us get away with the same sort of free range antics that Freo did. It's not much of a spoiler to say Gawn gets the five votes this week, but there was an obvious plan to stop him from doing the old pluck 'n kick at stoppages, and Pickett was never allowed to reach peak electrical mode. We got there in the end, but I hope the coaches consider this a stepping stone and not a revolutionary moment in our development.
The early stages looked familiar, with multiple inside 50s generating stuff all good chances. In recent years Richmond has been dominated by unheralded goalkickers Weideman, Petty and Turner so I was open to the prospect of Tom Fullarton having the day of his life but alas no, this time we had to rely on a range of obvious goalkickers rather than a zany wildcard option.
As a middle-aged man I've obviously become interested in Steely Dan, and was disappointed to find that Richmond hasn't moved heaven and earth to get the player technically named after a steam-powered strap-on dildo into #19. Sorry Tom Lynch, thanks for the flags but we're doing a gimmick here. Steely (good thing his parents weren't mad for certain other bands) did us a couple of solids in the opening minutes, giving away two 50 metre penalties. The second allowed Langdon to kick a settler, but I'd prefer to create goals off our own bat rather than relying on assistance from overwhelmed opposition players.
In a scenario we've seen many times before, relentless attack for little reward was fine, but eventually you'll have to deal with the other side getting the ball. After blowing their first few attacks by booting it down Gawn's throat, I was a bit nervous when they finally moved with some speed and went from one end to the other untouched, before Lynch beat his old Suns co-captain May all ends up. He missed, but looked more capable of putting a poor team on his back and carrying them to victory than any forward we've had recently.
Once it was clear we'd win you had to have some sympathy for Lynch, who was trying his heart out to try and make a difference for his team. The pressure of being their only decent forward was obviously weighing on him, and it was a shame that they didn't force him out for another kid because if he could generate three opportunities (including one from the same spot where he nearly beat us after the siren in 2016) from some of the slop delivered by his teammates, he'd have definitely have made a difference in our forward line.
Now that everyone knows we're probably heading down the gurgler in the next few years, it's probably too late to fill our list by ramraiding the list of truly underperforming teams (though paging Nick Larkey if he gets sick of losing against everyone except us and wants to risk a surprise reversal of fortunes like The Other Nathan Brown), and we're stuck with what we've got. So far so good on Langford, Lindsay and Windsor (though the latter had a bit of an issue with punting the ball straight to Richmond players here), and I'm still hopeful on van Rooyen even though he's recently been Melbourned. I'm still terrified by the gaps that will be left when Gawn, May etc... retire or fall apart, but that's something for future me to worry about.
When we got to three goals in front via a lovely snap by Chandler (followed by a much more convincing heart sign to his loved ones than when May accidentally called for the Diamond Cutter last year) I started having sick thoughts about an easy win. This is pure madness when watching us, but literally every other team in the competition seems to smash somebody else occasionally so when do we get a chance again? My reward for optimism was for things to go temporarily tits up.
Conceding one goal was understandable, but the second annoyed me because the free happened about one second before the siren. Not that the players were to know that, but watching the clock tick down with the ball at the opposition end is like seeing Jason pop up behind Expendable Teenager #11 with a chainsaw and holding your breath waiting for them to be cut in half. I'd be annoyed with Viney holding onto Tim Taranto at the stoppage for dear life if he hadn't also done 15 legal tackles (just one short of his own club record) and a solid tagging job. His kicking is getting more butcherous with age, but I'm willing to trade some of that for animal defensive efforts like this.
For now it just looked like we'd blown half a quarter of dominance by not taking advantage of our chances, and when a couple of misses at both ends to start the second finally turned into Richmond taking the lead I saw a grim future of losing 57-49 and plunging back into the pre-Freo misery. We were briefly back in front via a charitable off-the-ball decking of Bowey that gifted Petty a downfield free and goal, but it looked like this was going to be a live game well into the last quarter.
Enter Nick Vlaustin, who may have personally won as many flags as we have in total since 1964 but had a couple of truly naff moments here. Richmond premiership players have done worse on camera in the last few months, but his kick-in straight down the throat of Petty was the ultimate gift-wrapped goal, just when we really needed something positive to focus on at half time. Vlaustin would later get mowed down holding the ball in front of goal, and we thank him for his service.
As expected, Petty's performance lacked the same surprise value as last week but even if both his goals came on a silver platter he played his role. I still think his long term future is in goal, but when our tall forward stocks otherwise are Jefferson (undersized), JVR (out of form) and Fullarton (out of depth), I'll concede that he's done more as a forward in two games than anyone (including himself) since van Rooyen looked on the verge of something massive in the first quarter against West Coast last year.
The best thing about belatedly turning up in the third quarter this time is that we did it before going five goals behind. We started to win clearances, Oliver appeared out of nowhere to play a great quarter, and in the space of a few minutes it was goodbye Richmond, who were unable to cope with us playing like the actual finals-ish team we could be. The three goals all had something to recommend them. The first was born from a dodgy free kick in the middle, which is nice, then Chandler created a goal for Petracca with solid attack on the ball, before Fritsch kicked a sick snap which gave the impression that we were about to run away with it. And we were, but not before Lynch briefly stemmed the tide as part of his one-man show.
A 37 point lead wasn't quite the Chris Sullivan Line, but adjusted for the opposition and what we'd seen in the first three quarters I was reasonably confident that they weren't going to catch us. Last week they set up an unassailable lead then put the feet up and let the other side kick a bunch of pointless late goals, so I was hoping we might go on to crush them and make some sort of futile statement to the rest of the competition. We raised hopes of a landslide with the first goal, before but that turned out to be our traditional only goal of the final term. There was another overturned on the flimsiest review footage of all time, after being cleared by field and goal umpires, and with the teams back to the middle and waiting to restart before Mr. ARC woke up and realised he had something to do. I think they just made up a decision because everyone was waiting to restart the game and they knew it would have no bearing on the result.
Sadly we didn't piss it in, but I'll settle for premiership points as a consolation prize. There was a lot of 'cue in rack' about the end of this, including Gawn sitting on the bench for the last 16 minutes. No argument there, it's about time we started protecting the man instead of running him into the ground every week.
Even if it cost us three or four goals on the margin it's worth it to keep him upright for as long as possible, just in case the end of the year does get spicy (NB: It will not, but I'm prepared to humour the idea to make this point) and we need him at peak fitness. In an ideal world you'd 'manage' him for a couple of random games, but we haven't got that luxury yet. Later in the year, when finals are well and truly off the agenda, we might hit the Tom Campbell 'break in case of emergency' button and try and preserve Maximum's body for the future but right now he's too important to leave out.
Answers on a postcard PO Box 999 in your capital city for the "What did Gawn say to Goodwin at the final siren?" competition. Maybe a quick reminder not to make unfortunate panicky comments about his private life at the press conference? It didn't cost him the BOG medal, with the voters/awarders sensibly realising that he'd done his best work when the game was in the balance so it would be bonkers to hold it against him for avoiding some of the junkiest junk time on record.
Not much else to say, this was a welcome result but it doesn't mean anything medium/long term unless we go on with it. I'm not expecting to beat the top sides - and am already cringing at the prospect of being rooted sideways in front of a national audience on King's Birthday - but I'd like to think if we played North again next week there'd be no repeat of that afternoon's white flag debacle. So we've got that going for us.
2025 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Max Gawn
4 - Jake Bowey
3 - Tom Sparrow
2 - Jack Viney
1 - Kade Chandler
Apologies to Petracca, Langdon, Langford, May, McDonald, Oliver, Petty, Pickett, and Salem.
Leaderboard
What looked like a potential battle royale for the main prize has been nuked by back-to-back Gawn gold. I'm mad for the Bowey campaign but can't see him keeping up with Max for the rest of the year. Speaking of Max, I've seen enough to provisionally declare the Stynes over. The only other ruckmen who have ever scored 19+ in a season are White 2007, Jamar 2009-2010 and Jackson 2021, so fat chance of catching him.
There's also Gawn Watch on the all-time Jakovich Medal leader. He's now up to 367, trailing only N. Jones on 379, and Clayton Oliver on 390 so that race should provide some token late season entertainment value. With three players polling for the first time this year, we've now had 142 people in the votes at some point since R1, 2005.
19 - Max Gawn (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
15 - Jake Bowey (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
9 - Clayton Oliver, Kysaiah Pickett
8 - Ed Langdon
7 - Xavier Lindsay (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Christian Petracca
6 - Kade Chandler
5 - Harvey Langford, Tom McDonald
4 - Tom Sparrow
3 - Jack Viney
2 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty, Christian Salem
1 - Jake Melksham, Harry Sharp
Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
Fritsch's snap gets the 'welcome back from exile' nomination, but Windsor maintains the overall lead.
IN: Laurie, van Rooyen + Melksham (sub)
OUT: Fullarton, Sharp (omit)
LUCKY: Nil
UNLUCKY: Johnson, Turner
Final thoughts
I'm still not sure how many degrees things are looking 'up' on the 1-90 scale, but it's better than the gigantic flashing DOWN arrow that was hanging over us after the Essendon game.
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