For
the all-inclusive Australian football follower this past week was a joy, and it
was a slog. Australia’s two biggest sporting leagues – the Australian Football League and
the National Rugby League –
both had their first week of finals. Each league has eight finalists, meaning
four finals each during this week and eight finals in all.[1]
You can’t hope to watch all of them live in their entirety – particularly if
you actually attend one or two of them – but you can still fairly well gorge
yourself on men chasing cowhide. Of course, if you think that one or other of
the codes is rubbish then you can watch and tweet and shout at your TV (and
shout at Twitter) through all four finals without interruption.
I’m
not one of those people. For me it would be slightly more helpful if one of the
codes moved their finals schedule by a week, particularly since the second week
of the AFL finals is usually a yawn and can often be skipped. (The second week
of finals in NRL, which has more upsets, is generally more interesting.) If
anyone’s fault it’s probably the AFL’s, as the NRL has established its Grand
Final on the night before the October Labour Day public holiday in its
heartland of New South Wales. For the past couple of years the AFL has departed
from its iconic ‘one
day in September’ phrase, holding its Grand Final on an October
date.
Still,
I get a jingle of excitement before the first finals weekend. Compared to most
regular season matches the finals matter.
This may seem an obvious point, but the point may be obscured a bit by the commentary
and hype around some of the regular season outings. Most regular season matches,
contrary to the message of many pre-match build-ups, aren’t going to change a
team’s premiership chances by all that much. In finals your premiership chances
can plummet to zero in a single afternoon. Regular season matches are mainly
there to fill out the journey. Finals are rare and significant – they make up
1/23 of the season in AFL and 3/67 of the season in NRL – they are the big
pay-off to the months of football you followed before it.
This
year’s first week of finals also had a vast geographical spread – each
Australian state and territory which has a team in at least one of the leagues
got to host a final or two. In the 1990s – soon after the leagues had expanded
from being state competitions of Victoria (AFL) and New South Wales (NRL) –
this may have seemed more significant, but in 2016 the nationality of the two leagues
is now well established. East, west, north, south, day, night, it doesn’t faze
us now; for our first final of the week, we started out west …
AFL: West Coast Eagles (6) v Western
Bulldogs (7)
Domain
Stadium, Western Australia, Thursday 8 September, 6:10pm
A
final on a school night, aided by the AFL’s decision to take a week off before
the finals series started. Last year’s runners-up the Eagles had gained some form
in the last few matches of the regular season, handily beating three-time
reigning premier Hawthorn, and putting
about as much of a dent in Adelaide’s premiership chances as a team can in a
non-finals match. The Dogs meanwhile were limping towards the
season’s end, missing captain Bob Murphy for most of the season, and several
important players for decent chunks of it, though most had returned for this
match.
Yes,
finals were here … But I soon found, after waking up that morning, that not
everyone in my family had the same jingle of excitement I had at this time of
year.
I
shall not forget this familial betrayal.
The
Bulldogs stayed pretty much where they were in terms of ladder position this
season but, thanks to comedian Danny McGinlay, they have really taken the lead
in terms of the banners that each AFL team runs through before a match. The
Dogs’ banner
when travelling to play the Sydney Swans, which made fun of Sydney’s
alcohol ‘lockout’ laws, was a bona fide classic. Once again, out in
resource-rich Western Australia, they started the match off right.
The
Bulldogs started the better of the two sides in general play, but they missed
their first three shots at goal, including a couple of relatively easy attempts.
Meanwhile the Eagles converted their first couple of shots on goal, and it
seemed like the Dogs may have missed their chance. But they soon re-established
their dominance in play and within the first half had moved a few goals clear.
The
Eagles fell further away as the match went on, as the Bulldogs seemed to keep
going over the top of their defence. It was clear nearing the end of the third
quarter that the Eagles – once clear favourites – were
now unlikely to win. Bulldog midfielder/forward Liam Picken popped
up with several useful plays. High-priced Bulldog recruit Tom Boyd had what
seemed like his best match yet, roaming the ground as a quasi-ruckman. Though
when you actually look back over Boyd’s statistics – 14
disposals, 5 marks, no goals – they actually weren’t all
that remarkable. I think role players get more notice in finals and playoffs,
as it seems like they have come through in vital moments, even though a team’s
most productive players are probably still driving its performance. In this
match I remember Boyd, but it was probably a player like Luke Dahlhaus that was
much more important to the Bulldogs’ win.
When
the final siren went the Bulldogs, remarkably, were eight goals in front of a
club that had won 73 per cent of its matches (16 out of 22) during the regular
season, on its home ground. I had planned on saying that for the Dogs, losing
on a Thursday night about 3,000 kilometres away, that the finals would have
felt like they were over before they even really started. Instead they had
their best win for several years, and now have another final back in Melbourne
next week.
Western Bulldogs 99 defeated West Coast
Eagles 52.
AFL: Geelong Cats (2) v Hawthorn (3)
Melbourne
Cricket Ground, Victoria, Friday 9 September, 7:50pm
Was
this the best AFL match I have ever attended? Two big, bitter Victorian rivals,
and the two most successful AFL clubs of the past ten years, in a significant
final that was decided by a shot for goal after the siren? I was not there for
the great
run of Grand Finals the AFL had from 2005 to 2012, so
it has to be up there … In the end, after the excitement had faded, I think I’d
still go for the 2007
Preliminary Final between Geelong and Collingwood – the
combination of a then-premiership-starved Cats side (they had not won the flag
for 44 years), and a finals-starved Melbourne crowd (no Preliminary Final
between two big Victorian rivals for six years) gave that match an atmosphere
that will not soon be replicated. But this one set a new
benchmark for first week AFL finals that will be hard to beat.
My
sister and I went along together to this match, and we definitely had a
pro-Cats/anti-Hawks sentiment. Hawthorn has won four of the past ten
premierships, including the past three, though the Cats have won three of the
past ten themselves. So from the standpoint of ‘I’m sick of watching this team
win’ there isn’t that much between them based on recent years. However those
three premierships are Geelong’s only three in the past 50 years, while the Hawks
have won nine – freaking heck, NINE! – premierships in our 30+ years of life.
Further, when we think of Geelong we think of players like the lovable Jimmy
Bartel and the charming, fantastic Patrick Dangerfield. When we think of
Hawthorn we think of roughhouses like Luke Hodge and Jordan Lewis, and the over-exuberant
commentating man-love for Cyril Rioli.[2] Plus, we just find Geelong more fun to watch.
Hawthorn has basically ‘solved’ Australian Rules football with their emphasis
on short, accurate kicks, which may be hugely effective but it’s not as
exciting as Geelong’s more open approach.
The
match itself didn’t really take off until halfway through the third quarter.
That was when the Cats pulled back the lead Hawthorn had opened up with three
quick goals to put the match basically back on even terms, and it felt like
this was on. From then on the two clubs essentially traded goals, with no side
able to get more than a goal ahead. The Hawks held a one goal lead for a fair
share of the final quarter, but then Geelong’s Josh Caddy kicked a goal to put
his team up on points with a few minutes left. For the last two minutes the
Cats tried to work their way to kicking a goal to seal the victory, while they
and everyone else was mindful that one bad kick and Hawthorn might sweep it
down the ground to win the match.
Which
is kind of what happened – Cat Steven Motlop attempted a difficult shot with
about a minute left which only scored a behind and gave possession back to the
Hawks. A few well-placed kicks and the ball entered Hawthorn’s forward line –
Hawk Luke Breust got the ball, had his kick smothered, retrieved it, and then
unerringly kicked it over to teammate Isaac Smith for a shot at goal from
inside 50 metres. The final siren blew – a goal by Smith would win it.
I
thought that Smith was a really good chance of making the shot. It turns out he
only had a slightly better-than-even chance of kicking a goal based on
long-term conversion rates from that spot.
As the
kick went towards us fans stood up and cheered but at first I couldn’t tell
which fans they were. I thought it was probably the Hawks’ fans. Then I
realised it was the Cats’ fans. Then I saw the Cats’ players celebrating. The
Cats had won…!!!
‘Tough
luck Hawthorn!’ I shouted, unsporting. Truthfully though they had put in a good
performance in what was a great game.
Geelong Cats 85 defeated Hawthorn 83.
NRL: Brisbane Broncos (5) v Gold Coast
Titans (8)
Suncorp
Stadium, Queensland, Friday 9 September, 7:55pm
Attending
Geelong-Hawthorn meant that I could only catch the Broncos-Titans match on
replay, and I only watched the five-minute highlights, but this was one of the
matches I was less interested in anyway. I expected that the Broncos would
comfortably win this, with the Titans not widely expected to even be in the
finals, and winning less than half of their regular season matches. This means
I have spent far more time writing about this match than I did actually
watching it, but isn’t that often the case with sports coverage…?
This
was the first time that all three NRL sides from Queensland – Brisbane, North
Queensland, and Gold Coast – had made the same finals series. I think this was
sort of a big deal for Queenslanders. Flicking through Queensland’s Sunday Mail
newspaper when I was up in Noosa Heads last week they had even gone as far as
to shout ‘C’MON
YOU RAIDERS’ on the front of the sports section, when a
Canberra Raiders win was needed to ensure a finals berth for the Titans. Coming
from Melbourne I am used to the rivalries being quite bitter, and some AFL fans
including myself would sometimes take a perverse joy in a big Victorian club
missing the finals. Even when the North Queensland Cowboys beat the Broncos in last
year’s NRL Grand Final in just about the most devastating way possible some Brisbane
fans seemed to be reasonably OK with a fellow Queensland side winning it.
Perhaps Queensland v New South Wales trumps all else when it comes to rugby
league.
Anyway,
most of the tweets I read back over regarding the match complained about some
of the decisions that had been made by the ‘Bunker’ – the NRL’s
centralised video review room which isn’t well-loved by fans in any case – and that
those decisions had all gone against the Titans. Looking back over the
highlights the decisions, taken collectively, didn’t seem to me quite as bad as
they had been made out to be, though I can understand that fans’ anger would
build up in real-time as these occurred.
One
controversial call was the penalty try awarded to Brisbane after Titans player
Konrad Hurrell kicked the ball out of Jordan Kahu’s hands as he was reaching
for the try line. But it did actually look to me like Kahu would have scored if
Hurrell hadn’t deliberately lashed out with his leg, and it
sounds like the Titans’ coach Neil Henry kind of agreed with
that particular decision. More
dubious to me were: a) the non-call against Brisbane’s James
Roberts when he kicked a Titans player during a passage of play that resulted
in a Broncos try; and b) the decision that Broncos’ winger Corey Oates had been
put in a dangerous position as he leaped to catch a kick, when it looked to me
like Oates was the one to put himself in danger.
Did
these possible referee mistakes ultimately change who won? Probably not. Still
it’s a shame that one team got the worst of it.
The
good part about the result though was that it potentially set up another
Cowboys v Broncos final. These two teams played two of the greatest rugby
league matches you will ever see in last year’s finals series, making another
final between them a mouth-watering prospect. For that to happen I had to hope
that another result, which I had the most investment in over this weekend, fell
the way I wanted it to.
Broncos 44 defeated Titans 26.
AFL: Sydney Swans (1) v Greater Western
Sydney Giants (4)
ANZ
Stadium, New South Wales, Saturday 10 September, 3:20pm
Four
of the eight finals were on the Saturday, starting with AFL minor premiers the
Sydney Swans playing their ‘younger brother’ the Greater Western Sydney (GWS)
Giants. This was the Giants’ first ever final in their five years in the AFL.
GWS
had been the most remarkable improver of the 2016 season. Their first four
seasons had been: awful, awful, slightly less awful, merely bad, and then
suddenly they were a really good side. Generous draft concessions given to them
by the AFL in their first few years meant that they had stockpiled a bunch of
talented young players who had now picked up as they moved towards their peak
years. But they had also been a bit smarter about the assistance they had been
given than fellow ‘expansion’ side the Gold Coast Suns. Unlike the Suns they had
used their special recruitment entitlements when they were first established to
target younger players – co-captains Callan Ward and Phil Davis, and former
number one draft pick Tom Scully. While this meant they got belted by even more
to start with these players have effectively functioned as additional high
draft picks when the rest of their list matured. They have also topped up well
with productive players that for various reasons had been pushed out of other
clubs – Heath Shaw, Shane Mumford, and Steve Johnson, two of which would
increase their notoriety during this match.
The
first half of this match was pretty brutal. Johnson hit star Sydney midfielder
Josh Kennedy with his shoulder and Kennedy had to leave the field for a
concussion test, though he later returned. Nevertheless Johnson was booed by
Swans fans at every opportunity. Mumford meanwhile laid a tough tackle on Sydney
forward/ruckman Kurt Tippett in the second quarter. Even putting those incidents
aside it was a hard-fought match. It was almost even at half time, and GWS
looked to be in every bit as good as shape as their cross-city rivals.
That
turned out to be the least of it. My memories of the second half are somewhat
vague as Ms Wheatley was out for the afternoon and the night, leaving me in
sole care of our Little Miss. My daughter is a delight, but at about two years
of age can be rightly classified as a household pest. In between shooing her
away from items she knows not to touch I saw GWS take control of the match,
with forward Jeremy Cameron kicking three goals in the third quarter. Soon it
was clear that the Giants were going to win this one and move straight into a
preliminary final on their home ground.
GWS Giants 91 defeated Sydney Swans 55.
NRL: Canberra Raiders (2) v Cronulla
Sharks (3)
GIO
Stadium, Australian Capital Territory, Saturday 10 September, 5:35pm
After
the Giants’ theme song had finished I flicked the TV over to Raiders-Sharks,
which meant that I missed the awesome (if appropriated from Iceland football) Viking
Clap that the Raider fans did before their boys came out
for their first final in several years. When I turned it on the Raiders had
built up a 6-0 lead, and scored another try soon thereafter. Their wingers and
centres that had torn up the league over the second half of the season looked
to be burning past the Sharks’ defenders, and I thought that they could be on
their way to putting 30 or 40 points on the board before the match’s end.
Admittedly,
I was also a bit distracted watching this – I was getting ready to go to the
Storm-Cowboys NRL final in Melbourne that evening, and getting Little Miss
Wheatley ready for her adoring grandparents to look after her for the night. I
did catch Cronulla get a handy try back just before the half time break. I then
put Little Miss Wheatley in her pyjamas, handed her over, and walked out into
the Melbourne rain while listening to the second half on radio, thinking about
the match I was about to see and about not getting my ticket wet in my jacket
pocket.
But Canberra
couldn’t seem to score. And then I heard there was just over ten minutes left
and the scores were still tied. Then with five minutes left Cronulla got a
penalty goal, which put them two points up with time for only a few more
possessions. The Sharks, who had won 15 straight matches during the regular
season but had sputtered in the final weeks, were going to beat the league’s
hottest team.
I felt
like this result lifted some of the pressure from the night’s match. If my team
the Melbourne Storm lost they would be on the side of the ‘draw’ in which Cronulla
would host a final. Given recent form, and how handily the Storm had beaten the
Sharks last week, I feared a preliminary final against the Sharks less than I
feared one against the Raiders’ backs. Still the Sharks had just beaten the
Raiders. And I still wanted a home preliminary final for the Storm. I still wanted
to win.
Sharks 16 defeated Raiders 14.
AFL: Adelaide Crows (5) v North Melbourne
(8)
Adelaide
Oval, South Australia, Saturday 10 September, 7:10pm
Attending
Storm-Cowboys meant that I could only catch this match on replay, and I only
watched the seven-minute highlights. But I expected that North Melbourne, who
lost 10 of its last 13 matches in the regular season, didn’t stand much of a
chance against a very
good Crows side on their home track. Since this went pretty
much as expected, unlike the Broncos-Titans match, I’m going to summarise this
game in a way that is more commensurate with the actual time I spent watching
it.
Crows
got first goal. Crowd was fired up. Adelaide forward Eddie Betts did something
spectacular. North Melbourne stayed in it for first quarter and a bit. Betts
did something spectacular again. Adelaide ran away with the match in the second
half. Eddie did something spectacular again, to put the icing on the cake. Four
North Melbourne veterans, including AFL games record holder Brent Harvey,
exited among tears.
(Actually
before we move on let’s dwell on Harvey for a
moment. He played 432 matches over 21 seasons in what is a fairly physical
sport. The NRL games record holder, Darren Lockyer, played 355 matches over 17
seasons. If you split Harvey’s career in half he would have made the AFL team
of the year twice in both careers, and won two club champion awards during his
first career and three during his second. He averaged well over 20 possessions
per match over the second half of his career. In other words Brent Harvey had
two pretty good careers in one career. That’s worth a little reflection at
least.)
Adelaide Crows 141 defeated North
Melbourne 79.
NRL: Melbourne Storm (1) v North
Queensland Cowboys (4)
AAMI
Park, Victoria, Saturday 10 September, 7:55pm
A few
minutes after the Raiders-Sharks match finished I joined up, sans Ms Wheatley,
with my in-laws in our usual seats at the Storm’s home ground. For big matches
the NRL make it generally worth getting there before kick-off, with fireworks
and other pyrotechnics aplenty. But one of my favourite parts of attending a Storm
match is the few minutes before the team, adopting the AFL tradition, runs
through their banner onto the ground. In those minutes AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ plays
at high volume over the speakers, with Angus Young’s wonderful, high-speed
guitar riff repeating over and over again, along with the boom of the phrase
‘THUNDER!’, right up until the moment that captain Cameron Smith and his team
burst through the banner. Then the last line of the chorus – ‘You’ve been …
THUNDERSTRUCK!’ – blasts out, the guitar riff ends, and the two teams get into
position for kick-off. It’s a great nod to the Storm logo, which is itself (in
my potentially biased opinion) a clever nod to the city of Melbourne and its
weather patterns.[3]
There
was some trepidation going into this match, as the Cowboys had beaten the Storm
when Melbourne hosted them in a preliminary final last year, though the Storm
had won both matches against the Cowboys this season. The Cowboys also have
probably the league’s best player, Johnathan Thurston. But the Storm had
performed better than expected this year, particularly after losing superstar
fullback Billy Slater. Slater had been ably replaced by the wonderfully-named
Cameron Munster, while the Storm’s other superstars Smith and Cooper Cronk had
been well supported by Melbourne’s seemingly never-ending supply of talented
recruits. Once again the Storm were minor premiers, about three or four years
after most people assumed their run of success was ending.
There
is another part of my regular Storm-watching experience that I want to convey.
About a block of seats away sits a large, bald-headed, bearded man. Several
times a match this man will yell out the following, in a rough, throaty,
foghorn voice:
‘STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!'
One time,
going to the bathroom, I could hear him out in the corridors. For a few moments
I thought he may be just wandering the corridors, yelling out ‘STOOOOOOOORRRRRRRMMMMM!!!!’
as he wandered about. I was disappointed to work out that he was not indeed
haunting the area; it was just that I could still hear him in his seat.
For
the first twenty minutes or so he was a bit quiet, with neither team scoring a
point. The Storm got close to their try-line a few times in a row. Then the
Cowboys had four consecutive dropouts (thus getting another set of six tackles
each time), which were each stopped by the Storm’s terrific defence. The first
score was actually a penalty goal to the Storm – Smith just looking to get some
points on the board, which given how often tries are scored in league, seemed a
wise move.
Around
this point in this game we were introduced to the decibel meter on the
scoreboard, which asked you to ‘SCREAM FOR YOUR TEAM’. I did wonder how the
meter was able to differentiate the screams of Storm supporters from those of
Cowboys supporters. Perhaps a microphone had been situated near the largest block
of supporters for each team (there was an identifiable patch of Cowboys fans
near one goal end), in which case the screams of most supporters were
effectively useless. And why wasn’t our very loud neighbour joining in? I also wondered
what NRL fragrances, being advertised on the sideline boards for $19.95, smelt
like – the sweat of a front rower?
There
are two things you could perhaps point to as driving the six-point difference
in scores at the end. One of them is that the Storm were awarded, and
converted, three penalty goals. The other is that Storm rookie Suliasi Vunivalu
scored an unlikely try by intercepting a Cowboys pass and running half the
length of the field (although I think Smith missed that particular conversion).
Vunivalu, a tall Fijian-born
player who has been playing for two years, is another example of the Storm’s
ability to pluck stars out of seemingly nowhere. His intercept lent further
support to my theory that the aim of rugby league is primarily not to stuff up.
It was
a nervous final few minutes even with a six-point lead that meant, if the
Cowboys scored late, the Storm at least could not lose in regular time. There
was a couple of ‘heart-in-mouth’ moments where the ball fell loose, but the
Storm didn’t stuff up and generally looked rock solid.
‘STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!'
When
the siren went we were happy and relieved, and looked forward to a home
preliminary final in two weeks.
Storm 16 defeated Cowboys 10.
NRL: Penrith Panthers (6) v
Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs (7)
Allianz
Stadium, New South Wales, Sunday 11 September, 4:10pm
For
the past three years the Sunday of the first week of the AFL finals had been
occupied with me going off to watch the AFL club I support – Richmond – play
off in an elimination final. This year there was no Richmond in the AFL finals
on Sunday, and no AFL finals at all. Instead I got to sit comfortably in my
armchair and watch this coda to the first week of Australian football finals in
the NRL’s usual free-to-air TV timeslot late on a Sunday afternoon.
For
the first half hour neither team could find a way to break through. Three times
in a row the Panthers were stopped on their set of six tackles without putting
up a kick. Amongst the inaction Ms Wheatley commented a couple of times on how
the stadium was only half full. Then quietly Bulldogs half back Moses Mbye
found a gap and scored the first try of the game against the general flow of
play. The Panthers got a try back but still trailed 6-4 at the half time
break.
However
in the second half the young Panthers – including fullback and captain Matt
Moylan, winger Josh Mansour, and centre Tyrone Peachey – broke loose. Some
observers, including one of the commentators on the broadcast, reckon that Moylan
is currently in better form than any player in the competition. Penrith was
regularly running for long gains in metres and the Dogs looked like a team
whose time had come and gone.
The
Panthers’ win now sets up an encounter with another team with a bunch of
in-form backs: the Canberra Raiders. The Bulldogs and their fans, their season
over, were left to trudge off into the Sunday dusk.
Panthers 28 defeated Bulldogs 12.
In each of those past three years of September Sundays
Richmond were eliminated from the finals in the first week. As was probably the
case for those Bulldogs fans, in each year there was a definite sense of an
ending, of a season being over. Last year I began the first finals week jumping
around my lounge room as the Melbourne Storm upset top-placed NRL team the
Sydney Roosters. I ended it in disappointment as Richmond lost to eighth-placed
North Melbourne by a couple of goals. In contrast there was nothing this year
to give me that sense of closure.
Endings feel rarer in sport nowadays. Both sets of finals
will continue next week, and my team the Melbourne Storm will be playing again
in a couple of weeks. The next morning I would get up early to watch Cowboys
and Giants of a different kind – Dallas and New York in America’s National
Football League. The Major League Baseball playoffs will be on next month. When
I came home from the Storm-Cowboys match I switched on the Manchester
United-Manchester City derby in the English Premier League. The European
football league seasons will go on for several more months, if indeed
association football/soccer ever really stops. And before those end the Australian
football leagues will start up again for 2017.
With access to almost every
sport in some form or another, and media coverage of the major sports
continuing throughout their off-seasons, nothing really ends nowadays. Unless
perhaps you are the type of person who just watches your footy team on the
weekend. Maybe in that case if your team was already out for the season you left
the TV off, didn’t check your Twitter feed, opened up your front door, and went
and did something else instead.
[1] There is a top four and
a bottom four – the losers of the bottom four in the first week go out, the
winners of the top four earn a bye, and we are essentially left with a six-team
knockout tournament to play out over the remaining three weeks.
[2] Though given I just
called Dangerfield charming and fantastic you might say I’ve shown some
man-love too.
[3] My favourite NRL team
names: Melbourne Storm, Brisbane Broncos (a fearsome bit of alliteration), and
for its uniqueness South Sydney Rabbitohs.
