Quick question about the Sydney hubs – Given they’re having to live in Sydney, do the Hawks and Demons get the Cost Of Living Allowance?

What a captivating 10 days for Collingwood – Jeremy Howe gone for the year in a tough loss to GWS, Steele Sidebottom goes on an All-Syrup Super Squishy bender (An on – I think I did too) and gets rubbed out for 4 games for several dozen COVID breaches, they get punched between the eyes by Essendon after looking set to give them a royal pasting, and the next day, Jordan De Goey gets charged with indecent assault…

Just sit back and enjoy Eddie’s immensely superb display of backpedaling, courtesy of triplewafer’s latest work of art.

St Kilda 11.7-73 defeated Carlton 8.7-55 at Marvel Stadium

Examples of famous sports calls:

“But a CHAMPION, becomes a LEGEND!”

“Nick Davis, NICK DAVIS! I DON’T BELIEVE IT! I SEE IT! BUT I DON’T BELIEVE IT!”

“They’ve got about 15 metres to swim, THROPE IS OVERHAULING HIM, HALL AND THORPE, THROPE’S IN FRONT, THROPE AND HALL, THORPE GOES IN – AUSTRALIA WIN!”

“That’s not a try – THAT’S A MIRACLE!”

“DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER BUTLER BUTLER BUTLER BUTLER BUTLER BUTLER”

I haven’t heard BT.exe malfunction like that since the Wellinghaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam goal in the 2015 Prelim.

It was a shame David Cunningham didn’t kick a goal on the run…. BT would’ve exploded like Johnny Tapp at Rosehill in 1987.

And it’s also a shame that the hub change came a week early… St Kilda were going to play Geelong in Round 6, so we literally could’ve had DANGER DANGER DANGER up against BUTLER BUTLER BUTLER.

Brett Ratten didn’t waste his only chance to sock one on his former employers in 2020, as Jack Steele became the latest Man of Steele to end up in the news, this time for giving Patrick Cripps a bath in the 1st Half, which coincided with the Saints running and gunning the Bluebaggers back into their familiar habit of sleepwalking through the start of games.

12 marks Inside 50 IN THE 1ST HALF…. even Jarryn Geary took one.

Who the hell is Jarryn Geary?

Cripps got into the game in the 2nd Half, and by some funny coincidence, the Blues managed to at least break even in general play and fought back within 3 goals, but I would contend that the Saints were always on top.

A couple of other highlights:

Benny Long going up like WINMARRRRRRRR, and flying First Class up to Queensland.

And Marc Murphy getting reported for this piece of thuggery on Jake Carlisle.

Marc deserved to be reported – He could’ve broken Carlisle’s ribs and busted his lung with that hit.

Anyway, the Saints got a well-earned win, and once again, they made it look half-entertaining by taking the game on, in a true joy for thrillseekers, and what about this run the Sainters are going on.

First, the game was moved from the MCG to Marvel, and survived another attempt by Melbourne’s security scene to ruin our fun.

Now, they slip under everyone’s noses and get a 5-week trip to Noosa in the middle of a Melbourne winter.

Essendon 10.3-63 defeated Collingwood 7.6-48 at the MCG

After that performance from the Dons, somewhere in Victoria, I hope this guy is safe and happy at the Dons sticking a big dog up Collingwood.

It’s a shame nobody ever turned that into a soundbyte:

12 minutes in, the Pies looked like they were going to win by an easy 8 goals, given the Bombers had barely touched the ball.

For the next 90 minutes, they played like someone who was half-naked after downing a couple of scotches at an ex-teammates house.

Once the Dons smuggled that goal to Darcy Parish against the run of play, it was all systems go, and if you ask me, it was another great team performance from the Planes.

Johnny Worsfold playing Aaron Francis in the ruck and calling him Andrew Phillips was an inspired change to take on Brodie Grundy, and it worked, Dylan Shiel was the star of a young midfield, capped off by kicking the sealer, and Jake Stringer with 3 goals as he seemingly dry licked Jordan de Goey, but I suppose the big shame about Stringer was his serious ankle injury late in the game, which will see him out for 3 months because of ankle….

WAIT FOR IT….

SYNDESMOSIS.

Cracking word.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the night of Brayden Ham jokes, to go with a very nice performance from the pork-based player.

“Ham cut off”

“Ham in a sandwich”

“Ham isn’t Kosher”

“They call him Brayden Ham, despite the fact he is obviously grilled.”

Apparently it’s a regional dialect.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been a Collingwood-Essendon game featuring ANZAC Day jumpers without questionable umpiring moments.

The first was the goal umpire getting absolutely bamboozled by de Goey’s shot at goal in the 3rd quarter, which somehow pitched at right angles on the goal line, and had us questioning if it was going to go through for a goal or smack the post.

Rock n’ roll that one please.

Pitching in line, impact in line – Nigel, I’ll ask you to change your on-field decision to ‘behind.’

Plus, that wasn’t even the worst moment for an umpire.

That goes to the numpty 50m away from the play who paid a dangerous tackle on the Will Snelling tackle on Callum Brown in the last quarter that led to Collingwood getting another goal in their final term comeback.

Fancy that –  No sling, no second action, head doesn’t hit the ground, that was a textbook tackle.

And the other was the blatant Treloar throw deep in Essendon’s forward 50 minutes from time, but if you ask me, life evened itself out, because Shiel ended up snapping the sealer seconds later.

Still, it was a shame that Collingwood didn’t complete the comeback, because if this was an alternate universe where crowds were at games, the scenes after ANZAC Day 2019 would’ve had a worthy sequel.

Well deserved win for the Dons, and just when things couldn’t get any better at Victoria Park, Jordan de Goey was charged with indecent assault, and can’t travel interstate until he completes two COVID tests.

It’s probably best that I leave it at that.

West Coast 11.11-77 defeated Sydney 6.7-43 at Metricon Stadium

Josh J Kennedy > Josh P Kennedy

Ironically, neither of them kicked a goal – In fact, West Coast Josh managed to deny Nic Nat a goal with a falcon, which was confirmed on a Score Review .

Fancy that, West Coast get around to focusing on playing on footy instead of daring to mention being stuck on the Gold Coast….. and they string a 4 quarter performance together.

It also helped that compared to some of their recent opposition, the Swans aren’t exactly a Top 8 team.

Not necessarily by design, but with Naismith done for the year, plus Sinclair and Mick Knoll (No relation to Mick Nolan) out injured, the Swans best chance of competing with Nic Nat was Aliir Aliir.

If you to want to know how it went, I’ll simply say that Nic Nat will poll at least 2 Brownlow votes.

Strangely though, Isaac Heeney did have the edge head to head.

Nic Nat’s dominance in the ruck pretty much made me forget that Luke Shuey was finished very early into the game when the Eagles were up against it, and combined with Josh Kennedy going goalless, the Eagles would normally be in a hole the size of the Super Pit.

Fortunately, this was also the day for Jake Waterman to play his randomly brilliant game.

But, the moment of the game – Tommy Barrass sitting on Jordan Dawson’s head and taking the Mark of the Round.

Backing up a cracking bit of hang time, that mark sparked a chain that ended with Jamie Cripps kicking his second goal to push the lead beyond 2 scores, and having regained the momentum, the Eagles went on to kick the next 5 unanswered goals, and built a game-winning lead.

Not only did Tommy get a huge lift, but it looked like his teammates did too.

What a wild turnaround – One week Tommy gets toweled up by Charlie Dixon, the next he’s sitting on bloke’s heads while Charlie goes goalless.

Now the Eagles are 2-3, they’ve got the Crows nex week, then it’s back home for the next 2 months on end.

And all it took was a win to change their outlook.

Geelong 13.11-89 defeated Gold Coast 8.4-52 at GMHBA Stadium

July 5, 2014 – Gary Ablett suffers a major shoulder injury playing for the Gold Coast

July 4, 2020 – Matt Rowell suffers a major shoulder injury playing for the Gold Coast

And with Gazza in the general area, nonetheless.

It was a moment that was just 2020 in a nutshell – One of the few things that brought us joy was abruptly crushed before our eyes by fate.

UP YOURS 2020.

Without the best player in the game, the Suns did pretty well to hand it up to a clearly superior Cats team, even taking a 2 score lead early in the 2nd Half, but the mojo from Joel Selwood’s 300th and Gary Ablett’s 350th game was simply too strong to ignore, and the Cats did exactly what everyone expected – Storm home to win well, which was capped off by Gazza launching a monster goal from the runway.

The comparison between Rowell’s injury and Gazza’s history with shoulder problems was clearly brought up with Junior, and he’s offered to help Matty out with his recovery based on experiences.

“Obviously I’ve had a couple of shoulder reconstructions myself so I just asked him how his shoulder was.”

“He doesn’t know at the moment and is going to have to get a scan so [I’m] hoping it’s not too bad. “

“But I said to him once he gets the results if he wants to give me a call and talk through things I can let him know what worked for me and what didn’t.”

The Catters recorded back to back wins for the first time in 13 months, I have a musical tribute from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

“Dalhaus, is a very very very fine haus, with one goal and five marks, life used to be so hard, now everything is easy ’cause of yoooooou”

If only he’d kicked 2 goals… it would’ve worked better.

Brisbane Lions 12.13-85 defeated Port Adelaide 6.12-48 at Fagan’s Fortress

Yes We Ken?

Lord Fagan says – No, you Ken’t.

Port kicked themselves out of the game in the 1st Quarter, and the Lions for once didn’t waste a majority of their chances, and methodically destroyed the old Pear in the 2nd Quarter, even with Eric Hipwood going limp in front of goal.

It was deadset brilliant Fagan-inspired footy against the previously only unbeaten team, and was unquestionably Brsbane’s best performance since the Geelong game last year, and you could go as far as appointing the Lions a premiership favourite in the most even season in living memory, for reasons other than footy.

This is the kind of play I’m talking about – This started at half back, right as Port were on the attack in the 1st Quarter.

Bloody brilliant one touch footy.

After last week’s crummy effort in front of the sticks, Daniel McStay went from Daniel McSpray to Daniel McSlay, and a week after kicking 6 goals, Charlie Dixon turned in to Charlie Dixoff, getting a mauling from Harris Andrews, who showed big Charlie what an All-Australian looks like in holding the Coleman leader goalless.

Still, he was unlucky to at least have a crack at another shot at goal, given he was pretty blatantly blocked off the ball in a ruck contest in Port’s forward 50 that last quarter.

With the way he kicked, it probably would’ve smacked into the post.

Port Adelaide have lost 120.5% in their last 3 games #SackHinkley

Western Bulldogs 13.9-87 defeated North Melbourne 5.8-38 defeated Josh Bruce 6.0-36 at Marvel Stadium

It was a big effort by Josh Bruce Almighty, but a last quarter goal to Cam Zurhaar proved to be enough to give the Roos a narrow 2 point victory.

I’ve still got no idea why they call Brucey the Urban Cowboy.

With that moustache, he looks like a Pool Boy, which would explain how he cleaned out North so easily.

Aside from the carnage the Doggies inflicted on the scoreboard, there was plenty of injuries to boot.

Ben Cunnington was nowhere near fit enough, meaning North were effecitvely one down from the opening bounce, Bailey Smith was knocked out, Laitham Vandemeer was knocked out, Tarryn Thomas was knocked out, and he was clearly still showing concussion symptoms on the bench, when he thought he could converse with Cunnington.

Everyone of sound mind would know Cunners never says anything other than a muffled grunt.

Another big positive from yet another Dogs win was Timmy English taking more positive strides forward, especially going up against the All-Australian Hebrew in Goldstein, and all in all, I think Tommy lifted his game to new heights.

Literally, to new heights.

Fremantle 8.6-54 defeated Adelaide 4.10-34 at Metricon Stadium

In what was possibly a mistake, this game was beamed back to the USA on Fox Sports 1, in prime time, on the 4th of July, further sating the hunger of American sports fans, who were probably feeling hungry after watching Joey Chestnut smash the Hot Dog-Eating Contest record again.

In a case of convenient timing, The Age dropped Sam McLure’s edition of the latest inside story about Adelaide’s Collective Mind camp, detailing some pretty eye-opening crap, including detailing players’ traumatic personal experiences in the form of personal insults, in some apparent attempt to build mental toughness and team bonding.

“As the nine others pulled the player away from the knife, facilitators encouraged them to hurl abuse at him. At first, it was relatively harmless; “Come on, mate. You’re weak, you’ll give up!” But as the struggle increased, the insults became more personal.“

“Episodes of childhood trauma, relationships with partners and incidents of domestic abuse were among the subjects referenced as players tried to crawl across the mud. In some cases, the information was so sensitive that players hadn’t even shared it with their partners. Players are certain sensitive information confided to club staff had been handed on to (Amon) Woulfe and (Derek) Leddie before the camp.”

Once again, if there was one thing the Crows needed after the death of an assistant coach and the murder of their own coach, it definitely WASN’T mental toughness.

Still, that feature story was far more entertaining to pour my eyes over than watching the current Crows play footy, because by god, if they were a horse, you’d sell them to a knackery and willingly take on the activists.

Their goalkicking could be summed up by one quote from Dwayne Russell watching Shane McAdam kick at goal from no worse than 20 out almost in front.

“Never in dou—– My goodness!”

NEVER GO THE EARLY CROW, DWAYNE PIPE.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Freo led for most of the day thanks to kicking well in front of goal, the Crows couldn’t even kick the chair out from underneath, save for a 7 minute burst in the 3rd where they somehow tied the scores, but after David Mundy gave them a slender 3/4 time lead, the Dockers got the crucial opening 4th Quarter goal thanks to Taberner getting himself into the game, and they got the second when Sonny Walters added to the hangers highlight reel:

Tucker got the final goal, and in all, Justin Longmuir got his first win in charge, and Freo added a Spoon Bowl trophy to their trophy cabinet, and it’ll sit right next to that 2015 Minor Premiership.

The Dockers lived up to their awful club song – They rolled them and they rocked them, and they sent them to the bottom.

Richmond 12.7-79 defeated Melbourne 8.4-52 at the MCG

Great to see Channel 7 have a great grasp on crowd noise… the cheers were enormous for the inside 50s, and comparative crickets for things like ya know, goals.

It was the AFL’s farewell to Victoria, and the debut of Jake Aarts for the Tigers, sparking cries for the Government to #DefundTheAarts.

While the Tigers fired out to a very handy 6 goal lead in a performance that was a simultaneous Richmond return to form and Melbourne being crappy old Melbourne., the Injuryapocalypse began as Nathan Broad’s left pinky finger made Nigel Owens look straight.

Ian Healy probably looked at that finger and thought “Yeah, and?”

Then there was Tom Lynch also breaking his finger and playing on with a Michael Jackson glove, then ‘Nank The Tank’ Nankervis suffered the latest SYNDESMOSIS injury, which vindicated the selection of Mabior Chol, the man known worldwide as ‘Two Phones’, as a second ruckman over Ivan Soldo.

One phone for business, the other for pleasure.

The back up ruckman was Kamdyn McIntosh, the Prince of Pinjarra, and calling him a ruckman would almost be an insult to Premiership ruckman like Shaun Grigg, because all Maccer did was stand there and let Max Gawn thump the ball.

It got even worse for the Tiges when Dion Prestia, Best and Fairest in a Premiership team, looked like he’d had his left leg shattered in a tackle, which is officially another SYNDESMOSIS injury, and Trent Cotchin finished the game in a tracksuit because of his hamstring, his fourth soft issue injury in recent years.

Deadset, next week they could be without 7 first choice players, when you throw in Bachar Houli and Shane Edwards not going to the Gold Coast hub for childbirth reasons.

Still, Richmond were as safe as houses for one major reason.

They had a lead against Melbourne.

Fancy making a documentary called ‘To Hell And Back’… the ‘And Back’ part clearly never happened.

GWS 13.5-83 defeated Hawthorn 7.7-49 at GIANTS Stadium

And let’s take a look at how asking umpires to pay holding the ball went:

GWS – 10, Hawthorn – 2

Clearly Clarko’s comments worked – The Hawks got 2 more free kicks from tackles than last week.

Still, you could tell the umpires were having a laugh at him, because even Toby Greene got a free kick.

Turns out the spectacle of the game wasn’t anything to do with not paying holding the ball decisions, the common theme is that the Hawks are just a decisively below average team who occasionally punch above their weight.

And to most of you, that isn’t exactly a startling reality.

That 1st Half was like watching the footballing definition of insanity:

Set up defensively.

Take the intercept mark, then waste a minute chipping the ball around in your defensive half waiting for an opening.

Eventually kick the ball forward, and immediately give up an intercept mark to the opposition.

It took the Giants kicking 4 goals to none to force some change, and even then, it didn’t go well for the Hawks.

For a team that once prided itself on nailing fundamental skills of the game, the fact that Clarko as the head coach has allowed the Hawks’ ball use to fall to such a piss poor level is an annoying indictment, bordering on a stain, and that beloved jumper has a considerable number of stains.

Anyway, I haven’t got much else to add, other than I noticed the Hawks are now staying in Coogee for their hub.

Obviously they wanted to substitute the Eastern Suburbs wankers of Melbourne with the Eastern Suburbs wankers of Sydney.

Another funny trend also continued again:

Hawthorn have never defeated GWS in Sydney, and GWS have never defeated Hawthorn in Melbourne.

Perfect balance.