After rescuing our season from death row, there was always a surprise loss as favourites lurking somewhere in the future. Even with my vivid imagination for disaster and 35+ years of historical precedent for Melbourne blowing games in strange ways, I didn't expect it to come via one of the great self-sabotages. We kicked 7.21, had set shots from 20 metres out that didn't score, let the opposition go five goals up before getting serious, and the one in our second half 1.10 came from a distance even our players couldn't miss from. If Pakistan lost a cricket match in equivalent circumstances you'd call the regulators.
This wasn't the first step towards a partnership with Western United, it was just another edition of us not being able to hit the side of a barn with a nuclear warhead. It only just missed our all-time worst list accuracy list because players of the early 1900s were more worried about dying of Tuberculosis than aiming straight. Yet somehow, despite kicking like (choose from these previous used descriptions of wonkiness) ice addicts on a three day bender/the deranged/drunks/old people/Heather Mills-McCartney/Pegleg Pete the Pirate we were still in the game early in the final quarter.
There was no landslide finish a'la the Gabba, and after a day of spurning chances then letting St Kilda transfer the ball from defence to attack faster than the space shuttle there's no doubt the right team won. It ended with our players thinking about whether they were supposed to put the bins out on Sunday night and running out the clock in the most contractually obligated fashion possible. The way their day was going they'd have left it in front of the wrong house, if not the middle of the road.
In an alternative universe we may have done enough to scare the Saints into choking and allowing a thieving win, or come flying back from five goals to piss it in like Alice 2017 but the price was paid for choosing slapstick. By the end it was so silly that I couldn't even get angry, and was just left irritated at a return to thinking 'imagine if we had a forward line?'
You've got to do something righ to kick 21 points, but there's a big difference between regularly going back to the middle after goals, and piling them up in an uncouth heap while the opposition tries their best to facilitate a 7, 8, 9, or more point play. Eventually they'd get sick of pissfarting around and bounce down the other end in three or four kicks, where inevitably somebody would be either standing on their own or taking advantage of a mismatch because there was no chance for the big defenders to get in position when the ball transitioned so quickly.
Saints fans should be happy to win, but temper your expectations for the future a bit because you're not going to be handed premiership points in a giftwrapped box like this every week. But they got them and we just got renewed self-doubt, so congratulations to Ross Lyon for finally regaining the joy of tormenting us, and to his next door neighbour in the coaches' box Jared Rivers who I'd like to think is the real brains behind the operation.
If you're into omens and mysticism, the pre-match hype video was an early sign of things going tits up. It was 99.9% about our resurgence and foolishly raised the prospect of a Brisbane-esque run to the flag. Steady on. The opposition finally got a mention with an off-hand "and they'll be playing St Kilda" at the end. This didn't make a difference to the final result, but I hope the people who could impact the result treated the Saints more seriously than Fox Footy. Despite going all-in, somebody on one of their many throwaway filler shows (including the famous TikTok ladder update) will undoubtedly say something like "Melbourne got ahead of themselves" with absolutely no sense of irony.
This was a pox result, but I don't think it was a case of excess bathwater consumption. After falling in that massive hole in the first quarter the game was pretty similar to last week, only without the killer instinct that made sinking the boot into the Swans such fun. Quoth Love Theme From Finey's Final Siren, sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked. And sometimes you look like total wankers by kicking seven goals from about 35 shots.
I wasted far too much time scrolling AFL Tables to work out the last time we kicked 21 behinds and lost, and the answer was Round 11, 2000 when we brought an extra level of stink to Football Park with 8.22. Extra goal aside, I'd say that's worse because the forward line had Farmer, Neitz, Robertson and Schwarz. Our most behinds with fewer than 10 goals was 8.25 against Hawthorn in 1979, but I assume nobody minded because it was better than losing by 190 points a fortnight earlier. The reigning champion is Round 14, 1976 as we rewarded fans for carting themselves to Waverley with 6.22. And on the other side of the ledger, because this up is more enjoyable than talking about our most recent game, spare a posthumous thought for the Round 16, 1913 team who scored a very sensible 4.2 but lost to Geelong's 4.23.
That's all the distracting content I've got, so unfortunately it's back to the present day. We'd recently pulled ahead of the Saints in the all-important, and surprisingly competitive, race to avoid being Victoria's worst team, and hadn't lost to them since a fed-up woman offered crucial post-goal feedback to Nick Hind, but they're a team of wild mood swings so who could definitively rule out an upset win here? Sure, they suffered a tragic loss to a putrid West Coast side but who hasn't done that recently? (Answer - everyone else except us and North).
You're nuts to ever expect a Melbourne win, but on the balance of things I thought we'd get through this before suffering a violent reality check on King's Birthday. As we've failed to reach par all golf references are cancelled, except to say that there was a noticeably savage dip in the ground at the left corner of the centre square that made it look like a mini golf course. Surprisingly, nobody got injured stumbling up or down the hill, much to the disappointment of everyone who wants to immediately tear up our contract with the Northern Territory.
I'd rather not play there either, but next time we hit rock bottom fans will be leaping over the side like passengers on the Titanic so we'd better not give up several hundred thousand dollars until making sure tin ratting's not required. If they started a 'stay at home fund' to make up the difference I'd bang an extra $50 on my membership every year to help (and why not, I'm already wasting money on reserved seats that never get used, and a guaranteed Grand Final ticket that has been relevant once for somebody else), but assuming we'd simply have played better at the MCG because it's the MCG is optimistic when we've done 6.15, 7.14 and 8.14 there in the last two years.
If you're good enough you'll win anywhere. The travel certainly didn't seem to get in the way of St Kilda's plans. There's an argument that the opposition sides fly in like any regular interstate team while we're there all week and the players probably just want to go home, but that didn't do us much harm the day we poleaxed Adelaide and sent Don Pyke bonkers.
After two weeks of renewed Kingsley activity, I knew we were vulnerable to being fixed up by a novelty player, but the only problem was picking which one because I had even less idea who their fringe players were than Sydney. With players like H. Boxshall and I. Keeler, the rest of their list may as well have looked like this:
They sure had the last laugh, and by the time it was over we certainly knew who Keeler was. As for Boxshall, I found it odd that his name was apparently pronounced Bok-Shall like Bok Choi, and not Box-hall like Box Hill. Maybe it was a Dwayne Russell thing, who I only endured because the alternative was Brian Taylor waffling on about why you can't commentate from a studio while simultaneously proving that some people can't do it from anywhere.
By the time Dwayne's Big Book O'Corny Gags hda delivered Turner having "the springs in Alice Springs" and a goal (obviously not to us) being described as "dead centre in the red centre" I was tempted by the commercial and Chopper Read options. Lucky I stuck with Foxtel or I'd have missed Gerard Healy saying he spent half time in "The Crack Lab", which is apparently a reference to another program and not a New Jack City theme room in their offices. Would explain some of the commentary.
There were more portents of evil in the pre-match ceremonies, with Russell Robertson (he of a 3.3 contribution to that 2000 game) cheerfully making announcements with no idea that the microphone was broken. It sparked into life for a couple of seconds, then died again as players were shown wondering if a surprise minutes' silence had been declared. I once did the reverse of this at a local soccer game, loudly mocking the tape that was supposed to play the national anthem for breaking down only to find out that somebody prominent had died. Insert Curb Your Enthusiam music.
As they panned across the players looking baffled, somebody snuck in a replacement microphone and the rest of the festivities went off as expected. If it was a true representation of what was about to happen the backup mic would have started blaring out Shoop Shoop Diddy Wop Cumma Cumma Wang Dang at ear-splitting volume with nobody knowing how to turn it off.
There was nothing for fans of Monte Video and the Cassettes, but 'Melbourne Dominate Early For Little Reward' fanatics were in heaven. Last year we looked unstoppable in this game for the first 10 minutes then nearly lost by a hundred so I wasn't falling for any early good signs, but the setup for the first goal was yet another in a long list of 2025 false alarms. Petracca dragged the ball in on the ground in a way that usually ends in holding the ball, but he stood up and powered out of the congestion, allowing Oliver to find Fritsch in his preferred miles of space. Fritsch mastered the wind to convert the set shot, temporarily putting us one goal ahead of points before we started to treat shots on goal like kicking into the wake vortex of a jumbo jet.
If you're kidnapped by militants and forced to watch the replay at gunpoint this is the bit where you should give up and ask them to get it over with quickly. There's no point seeing us threaten more goals for no reward. Melksham recovered from seemingly blowing his shoulder to bits to kicking a point 10 seconds later, before Johnson did perhaps the worst around-the-corner set shot ever to leave us 1.1 + an OOF from three shots. It never got much better, and like the early stages last week what's the bloody point dominating if you don't convert? That got fixed in time to go home happy, albeit with the help of woeful opposition.
Another key difference between this and the Sydney game was that Ross The Boss And Friends realised that you can't just sit back and enjoy Pickett running riot in all parts of the ground. They sent our old friend Marcus Windjammer to tag him, and though Pickett still had more centre clearances than anyone else on our side that says more about the rest of them than him. He didn't take the tagging particularly well, eventually biffing Windjammer in the guts at a stoppage directly in front of goal.
Maybe it wouldn't have descended into gut punch mayhem if he'd just booted the cover off a set shot from 20 metres out instead of trying to delicately nine iron (oi, no golf chat - editor) it through. Unlike most of the shots that followed it was going right through the middle, but he failed to account for the St Kilda player standing on the line and marking it. Even worse, his teammates had already marked it down as a behind at the very least and started to rotate, which allowed St Kilda to fang down the other end untouched for a two goal turnaround.
When you've got a player who does crazy things for a living you've got to accept that it will occasionally go wrong, and this was the kind of off-chops manoeuvre that made his performance last week so thrilling but by the time the Saints were kicking their fifth goal in a row and we were still waiting for the second it seemed a lot worse than his unnecessary full speed play-on from 20 metres out against Sydney. I expected him to balance the ledger with some zany over the head goal from the pocket later (spoiler - nope), but it went from a momentum killer to a momentum slaughterer.
By the time I. Keeler got his second he was on the verge of becoming I. Kingsley, and we might have been rorted out of a free in the build-up, but good luck to teams that create loose ball contests in front of goal. We were back to panic thumping the ball inside 50 and watching it come straight back. The farce level went into overdrive when Petracca was given the ball running into an open goal, but aimed like he was trying to land his kick in that truck parked behind the goal.
Our much-anticipated second goal finally arrived about 15 minutes late, when one-armed man Melksham converted a free against the backdrop of the siren operator leaning on the button as if he'd dropped dead on it. That reduced the margin to a gettable 24 points, leaving it feeling a little less like a replay of the Fremantle debacle. Not much changed after quarter time, and Melk's goal had to survive a couple of early St Kilda shots.
Evil Nathan Jones missed another set shot, even if I still vehemently dispute that Johnson is a serious part of our future I'm warming to the cult figure potential of his unbridled enthusiasm. If you're only going to have four kicks a game they may as well be 75% on goal. He also brings a lot of contests that won't be reflected in the stats. There was also the clobbering of the opposition's most influential player, but we can't condone that. Any chance of genetically splicing his attack on the ball with van Rooyen's natural talents?
It didn't take long to concede again, even if McVee desperately tried to claim he'd marked a ball that went half a metre over the line. I'll assume the video review system was in play, because it would be ridiculous if not available at every ground in the country, but they didn't bother to humour him by watching it again. I'd be suspicious that the TV didn't show a replay but Channel 7 probably won't give them access to show it.
After those hot opening minutes we were back to early season impotency inside forward 50. The cause wasn't helped by giving away frees in front of goal, before Petracca made up for his first quarter howler with a set shot. For everyone who thinks we'd have magically kicked straight at the MCG I bet he'd have kicked this into the behind post there.
Things were briefly going our way, with four umpires missing Johnson leaping off the deck to whack Wanganeen-Milera in the head, and Chandler making a game of it again by cutting the margin to 17. Johnson almost got the third toepoke goal out of three for his career, then that might have become a seven point play when a defender stuck the ball down Chandler's throat. He hit the post, but we had the Saints rattled again instead of letting them carrying on like the 1989 Victorian State of Origin team. It got all the way to a three point play after Gawn's miss, before shock horror, this failure to convert ended in St Kilda kicking a goal from the square. So a minus three point play then. I'd have got the shits if there hadn't already been a total evacuation during the first quarter.
After we conceded another slingshot goal from close range I couldn't even blame Pickett's set shit for beginning the rot because we'd done so many stupid things since. Petracca kept it interesting by lobbing one from distance through almost straight after, but we were second best in this contest by some distance. Sharp might have chipped a bit more off the lead but his snap hit almost as high up the post as it's possible to go. It still felt like we might get a run on, and when Johnson got away with a good old fashioned shove to the back and finally kicked a set shot we were back to a more respectable 13 points behind.
I had some faith that everything would turn out alright if we got to half time without doing anything insane. Like, for instance, Gawn's dinky kick in defence with seconds left being cut off by the returning Keeler. We only survived conceding a goal in the final seconds when Jack Higgins' headfirst human cannonball dive into a pack somehow didn't end in his head being partially ripped off.
It was back to the good old days of getting the ball forward a lot but not looking like regularly breaking through. Once Pickett was removed as a factor there was nobody else who could conjure goals out of nothing, and turns out we weren't going to win it through the traditional method of converting shots. The Saints did their best to keep us alive with a pair of colossal fuckups while walking into open goals on the break. Petty hadn't done much, but he did set up a chance for Chandler. The only problem was that the last kick drifted unnecessarily towards the boundary, forcing him to kick from a ridiculous angle.
The nominal visitors weren't going to need many chances to kick a score we'd be unable to cover, and we contributed by a) not turning possession into regular scoring opportunities, b) missing the ones we did create, then c) allowing them to chip the ball around to unattended players before setting up the type of set shot we'd have converted about once every 10 tries. After yet another end-to-end move they nuked a third golden chance for the quarter, but guess what happened when we had the chance to make them pay for it?
Our tally was now 6.12, only a point worse than the inaccurate point last week. After missing his first chance at #7, Petty got the second after tackling a player who was not taking us at all seriously while holding the ball in front of goal. He got a handball off at the last minute but was still pinged, which was better than earlier in the quarter when Johnson got away with holding the ball as much as it's possible for one man to do. None of this helped, but there was a moment right after Petty's goal when Lindsay legged it inside 50 but sprayed a chance to make the margin one straight kick. Alternatively, in our case, six not straight kicks.
For a moment it looked like we were about to take off, including another forward pelting that was only broken up by a leaping interception of Sharp's handball. Then we found out why other clubs are mad for Wanganeen-Milera, who avoided concussion in the Johnson 'collision' and returned to take the piss out of us without anyone legally trying to stop him. He set up a shot with a wonderful kick, only for Jack Higgins to randomly kick the ball straight up in the air. We reacted to this spot of good luck by conceding anyway, and on the occasion of Dan Butler's fourth goal it was OUT: Kingsley, IN: The Brent Harvey Society For One More Great Game Before I Go.*
(* I didn't check his age before writing this, and bullshit he's only 28)
We had a last chance to bring the margin into single figures and give the opposition something to think about at the last break. For once this didn't die with a missed shot, and we got nothing at all when Sparrow tried to pull his kick at the last minute to somebody who wasn't just not on the same page, but not reading in the same language. I respect that Sparrow isn't getting a lot of stats because he's doing defensive jobs, but whatever his defensive job was here it didn't stop the Saints from teleporting the ball from one end to the other so unless you can convince me otherwise I'd like to try something else.
After a couple of decent four quarters in a row, this was going to require another. The problem is that we could do everything right and just not score enough. It was back to the Essendon/Geelong experience of going behind, and threatening a comeback for a few minutes before going back to having no idea how to smash through brute force goals. We gave Johnson the hook and swapped Turner for Petty, trying the same reasonable gamble that went badly wrong against Hawthorn. Respectfully, St Kilda is no Hawthorn so it didn't go as badly.
When he marked the first kick out of the middle in the last quarter it looked like the move could make a difference. Naturally he missed, as did Melksham from a much more gettable set shot straight after. . Readers from the future, you will not be surprised to find out that St Kilda went down the other end where a guy was standing on his own 20 metres out. He uncharitably opted to kick straight instead of spraying it wildly and I was pretty sure we wouldn't score another 22 points (in any combination). But I didn't expect to get a run on against Brisbane either.
Alas there was no exciting finish this time, and we just ebbed away to a half-arsed, low intensity death. The commentators got morally outaged about whatever their stupid pressure gauge was saying, but it looked as half-arsed as the rest of the game to me. By the last couple of minutes I didn't want to ruin things by kicking another goal and was hoping the point count would climb to even more ridiculous levels. We stood on 21, which was a putrid 25% conversion rate. Don't factor in the ones that missed or you'll end up in state care.
It was shite, but that's where we're at. We'll pull out some crazy wins and lose random games. This is officially what mid-table mediocrity looks like. Better than being 0-5.
2025 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Daniel Turner
4 - Christian Petracca
3 - Steven May
2 - Max Gawn
1 - Kade Chandler
Apologies to McVee and Johnson just for being a madman.
Leaderboard
Petracca slices a couple from Max's lead, but still trails by 3.5 BOGs. Still more than half a season to go so it's not over yet, but you'd want to get a run on soon. No change in the minor awards, but Turner and May are now on the board in the Seecamp.
35 - Max Gawn (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
19 - Kysaiah Pickett
17 - Jake Bowey (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Christian Petracca
13 - Clayton Oliver
10 - Harvey Langford (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Jake Melksham
9 - Kade Chandler
8 - Ed Langdon
7 - Xavier Lindsay, Tom McDonald
6 - Jack Viney
5 - Daniel Turner
4 - Tom Sparrow
3 - Steven May, Christian Salem
2 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
1 - Trent Rivers, Harry Sharp
Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
This feels like the most sarcastic awarding since those AFLW games where we only kicked one. It should go to somebody who converted a set shot just to encourage the rest of them but Petracca from distance gets the nod. Chandler vs West Coast still leads.
This took a lot of the air out of the King's Birthday balloon, which may be a good resetting of expectations before what I assume will be an unpleasant result. We'll never know if the result of this week's game would change if played at the 'G, but if we could rip out a great performance next week I'd be pleased to retrospectively pretend it would've changed.
OUT: Johnson (susp), Sparrow (omit)
LUCKY: Petty, Sharp, Windsor
UNLUCKY: Campbell, Howes, Jefferson, McDonald
Final thoughts
I was almost roped into the prospect of a wild ride into the finals before this, but am back to lying int he middle of the road waiting to be crushed by the Reality Bus. There may be a period with competing Spitebury and Bradbury plans but I will dead-set cease to exist if we can avoid doing silly stuff long enough to challenge the top eight from here. It'll be easier on your emotions to go back to thinking about ways we can disadvantage Essendon.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Crack the sads here... (to keep out nuffies, comments will show after approval by the Demonblog ARC)