The Tackle: Jon Ralph’s likes and dislikes from semi final week
Lance Franklin is an all-time AFL superstar, but numbers over the past decade show Tom Hawkins is the best forward in the game, writes Jon Ralph.
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It was the remarkable one-point result that put the Western Bulldogs into a preliminary final and left the heat on the Brisbane Lions and coach Chris Fagan.
There were so many small and big moments that left Jon Ralph believing it was the game of the season.
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Ralphy breaks down the incredible clash, asks if Tom Hawkins is the best key forward of the past decade lauds a trio of unheralded Demons in this weeks special finals edition of The Tackle.
The Blues’ botched chase of Ross Lyon and the AFL tribunal are also under Ralphy’s microscope in his likes and dislikes below.
LIKES
1. Shane Biggs Never Forget
It was the internet cult sensation that encapsulated the Bulldogs’ historic charge in 2016.
It celebrated five incredible back-to-back efforts within 45 seconds from Dogs role player Shane Biggs as Sydney eventually wilted under that never-say-die assault.
Biggs’ twin grand final smothers and relentless tackling pressure of Sydney opponents led to a Liam Picken goal.
It has been feted by Dogs true believers as much as Tom Boyd’s defining goal.
On Saturday night, a Bulldogs defender stood tall in a passage of play the Dogs might one day look back on as Taylor Duryea Never Forget.
Duryea was on the last line with 80 metres of space around him and only a red-hot Charlie Cameron as company.
It is football’s version of Tiger Woods on the back nine in match play.
Or facing Dale Steyn with that murderous look in his eyes as he holds a new pill with 10 overs left in a day’s play.
As the Bulldogs attempted to protect a one-point lead with 49 seconds on the clock, Daniel Rich’s quick long kick out to the centre square was bashed forward by Linc McCarthy.
The ball squirted into space, and Duryea was surely cooked.
He buffeted Cameron as they charged forward 40m from goal, then Cameron headed him by two or three metres.
Game over.
And yet somehow that Sherrin tumbled right instead of left and he was able to bundle the ball out of bounds.
Across their living rooms, those heroes of the 2016 flag – junkyard dog Picken, Biggs and Dale Morris, whose chase-down tackle of Lance Franklin set up Boyd’s transcendent goal – must have been standing up to applaud their man.
That spirit could yet take the Dogs all the way to the flag.
2. Method in apparent madness
Luke Beveridge is a weird cat.
He makes selection and positional changes like Lewis Young as a starting ruckman that at times can be hard to fathom.
Bevo, take a bow.
At half time against the Lions, Beveridge made two moves that ended up coming up big.
Easton Wood had given up three goals on Cameron and four score involvements.
Enter Duryea.
In their match-up in the second half, Duryea allowed Cameron a single behind and not a single touch after the four-minute mark of the term.
Duryea’s past five weeks – he kept Will Snelling goalless, Ollie Hanrahan goalless, kept Connor Rozee to only one of his two round 23 goals and then kept Archie Perkins to six touches in last week’s final.
The Dogs also finally backed in Tim English as a bona fide ruck in the second half.
In the first half, as the Dogs lost clearances by four and conceded four goals from stoppages (3.1 from the centre bounce), Lewis Young was at 27 ruck contests to English’s 21.
In the second half, it was rip-tear-bust time given Oscar McInerney’s dominance.
End result after English was at 45 ruck contests to Young’s 10?
A ruck platform that allowed the Dogs a plus-14 clearance differential as they conceded only 0.3 from stoppages.
3. The game of the year
The best finals are an assault on the senses.
A relentless onslaught of did-that-just-happen, WTF, where-do-I-look now incidents so tightly clustered that they leave you exhausted in their wake.
The Dogs’ victory over Brisbane was clearly the game of the year, combining massive stakes with a million key moments with umpiring controversy, injury fallout, a last-quarter hero and maybe 20 late contests that felt like match-turning moments.
The final was significantly over-umpired.
Caleb Daniel’s mid-air soccer with Charlie Cameron literally tackling him was as bad a decision as we have seen this year.
Just like Angus Brayshaw’s similar insufficient-intent call in round 23 against Geelong, it betrayed a total lack of feel for the game.
But you must take your moment.
Lachie Neale’s snap from the resultant free kick didn’t hit the mark.
Last-term hero Bailey Smith twice seized the day after the Dogs’ secured the rub of the green.
Bailey Dale blatantly dived on the ball with 2.28m on the clock and scores locked at 10.12 (72) yet wasn’t penalised.
“It’s just a free kick if you dive on it and don’t get it out,” Justin Leppitsch said in commentary.
From the next throw-up Smith’s opponent Hugh McCluggage took two steps into the contest as the Dogs wingman took off forward and McCluggage never made up the ground.
Smith’s left-foot goal might yet become a part of Dogs folklore.
Then after Zac Bailey’s instant replay, ruck McInerney’s blocking free with 65 seconds left gave the Dogs their chance.
Smith was resting forward on the wonderful Keidean Coleman, who gave him a 10m leg-rope.
Smith hit the pack with such ferocity the ball spilt to Laitham Vandermeer (another Bevo favourite).
His opponent, 2021 All Australian Daniel Rich, didn’t pay him much respect as he skirted the pack and somehow jumbled the ball forward for the winning score.
4. Hawk stands and delivers
Tom Hawkins only needs one more magical final to make the case that he is the best key position forward of the past decade.
It’s hard to beat Lance Franklin’s nearly 1000 career goals and five All-Australian jumpers since 2012 – some kind of resume for footy’s most watchable player.
But of the four key forwards on footy’s Mount Rushmore – Buddy, Hawkins, Josh Kennedy and Jack Riewoldt – none are more dependable, more impactful than Hawkins.
Let me at least make the case for Hawkins, who turned the course of the 2011 grand final in his breakout contest.
From 2012 onwards, he has 557 goals to Franklin’s 544, Kennedy’s 537, Riewoldt’s 518 and Jeremy Cameron’s 464.
He has the most score assists of any key forward – 90 more than Franklin (306 to 216) and third in that time to only Luke Breust and Eddie Betts.
And he has missed only seven games in six years (one through injury, six to suspension).
He has only a single Coleman Medal (2020) but he has four All-Australian jumpers in the decade (2012, 2019, 2020 and 2021).
And his final against an opponent that had smacked him around earlier in the year (Sam Taylor) was sublime – 19 possessions, 5.1, 12 score involvements, four contested marks.
Nice stats, but what really mattered?
Every time GWS threatened, he came up big with those pinpoint leads and flawless set shots that bend fractionally left-to-right like a Dustin Johnson power fade.
One more big final on the way to a third flag might help make an irresistible case.
Is he the best key position forward of the decade?
Put it this way, no Geelong fan is swapping him for Buddy.
5. Spargo, Sparrow and Petty
Sounds like a Travelling Wilburys-style rock group on a nostalgia tour.
Instead that trio are part of a bottom six for Melbourne who display almost no weak links, no passengers hanging on for a farewell flag.
So often it is the strength of a team’s bottom six that will define their grand final chances, given a single terrible match-up can expose a team in ways star power cannot compensate for.
In Melbourne’s bottom six, Harrison Petty keeps holding firm despite big jobs; Charlie Spargo has played every game this year as a small-forward revelation and Tom Sparrow has the goods.
Harry Petty kept Tom Fullarton quite last week and kept Josh Bruce to only on goal in round 19 and Jack Darling goalless in round 21.
Six times an unused sub this year, Sparrow kicked a key goal to go with his career-high 21 possessions and six score involvements against Brisbane and is peaking at the right time.
The one query: can a small forward get hot on Joel Smith as Charlie Cameron (three of his five goals) did last week? Or is there room for Michael Hibberd in the backline instead?
6. Mumford’s giant impact
Shane Mumford was the Last of the Mohicans.
He will retire – again – because, as football boss Jason McCartney told the Herald Sun this weekend, he cannot continue to sacrifice the long-term health of his body for the next 50 years just to eke out another season of footy.
Mumford did drop his knees into players too much and was sometimes guilty of some of the cheap hits that he could have avoided.
But is there another player left in football who so perfected the legalised brutality that still wins so many games of football?
Because the guilty secret of football is for all the tactics in the world, the team that is tougher for longer almost always wins.
The stat that sums up how smart Mumford was when the critics believed he was a cheap enforcer?
He missed a single game of football through suspension this past decade (a one-week ban for rough conduct on Max Gawn) and was suspended for only five games his entire 14-season career.
DISLIKES
1. Scenes footy fans can only dream of
Did those jaw-dropping scenes of US college football this weekend brighten your lockdown mood, as fans went nuts celebrating their rituals like Virginia Tech’s Enter Sandman and Wisconsin’s Jump Around for the first time in nearly two years?
Hope you enjoyed your timed trip to the playground with only one carer while watching vision of 80,000 fans going crazy in a packed-out stadium.
It is another reminder that the only path ahead for football is through vaccination, and the only choice for Gillon McLachlan is to mandate player vaccination.
After all the social stances the league has taken in recent years and criticism for the AFL’s overreach, how could they stop short of a stance that will help save lives?
McLachlan will likely duck and weave and barter and negotiate, allowing clubs like North Melbourne to make leadership stances with 92 per cent of its football department already having at least one dose.
But there is no leadership stance more symbolic and emphatic than McLachlan standing up for mandatory vaccination given it is the right policy and it is the only policy that will safeguard the league.
The league will run into the roadblock of an AFLPA, which will echo player unions across the world who believe players can decide what they put into their bodies.
And some clubs have already dealt with staffers who have had relatives dealing with blood clots under the one-in-a-million chance at an adverse reaction.
So create a panel that might grant exemptions under the most extraordinary and compelling circumstances.
Then for everyone else stand up behind a policy for vaccines that are safe and our only path out of this ongoing nightmare.
2. Heat on Fagan
Imagine the reaction if Chris Scott had lost five of the past six finals with a battle-hardened list, with five of those six finals at the fortress-like GMHBA Stadium?
It is why the heat must come on Chris Fagan to explain what he is going to do about the Lions’ post-season struggles.
For Brisbane, a pair of straight sets departures and a 1-5 overall finals record since 2019 was bad enough before Sunday night’s bombshell news Lachie Neale might request a trade home after three brilliant seasons.
But here is the bare reality even despite the perfect storm of injuries to Cam Rayner, Eric Hipwood and Dan McStay — the Lions have played five of those six games at the Gabba and still won only one of them in total.
And after that 15-point win over Richmond in last year’s qualifying final they let slip their only chance in history to progress to a Gabba Grand Final.
For all the fanfare over Joe Daniher he registered two scores for a single goal in two finals (Alex Keath was excellent on Saturday), didn’t take a contested mark in either game and had only total three inside-50 marks.
If Neale did leave, and him leaving now as a 28-year-old probably maximises his worth, the Lions would expect Carlton’s pick six (via the Adam Cerra trade) as the minimum return.
They would then have pick six and two late first-rounders (their own and Melbourne’s first-rounder) to do some serious damage in the trade period.
There are plenty of inside mids on the market but none anywhere near the calibre of Brownlow Medallist Neale.
Eric Hipwood’s Round 17 ACL tear means he might only be back mid-year at the earliest.
Jack Gunston makes so much sense as a win-win for the Hawks and Lions as a dangerous weapon with links to Chris Fagan who if his body holds up is the perfect foil to Joe Daniher.
But suddenly the Lions would have significant holes in the midfield and up forward just at the time their list is in the sweet spot and having already burnt two great chances.
The window isn’t shut — the Lions have only five plus-30s, including Daniel Rich and Dayne Zorko — but if they lose Neale they will have to prove their best chance at a premiership isn’t gone.
3. Tribunal must change
It is possible to spend 15 minutes arguing the toss about the difference in Toby Greene’s elbow to Patrick Dangerfield’s throat and Joel Selwood’s forearm fend-off on Josh Kelly.
Greene’s action was initially handed a two-week ban while Selwood wasn’t cited at all.
You could argue Selwood was less forceful, used his forearm instead of elbow, didn’t injure Kelly, had a greater duty of care.
But as the punters would rightfully say, they bloody look identical.
So in the AFL’s review of its judiciary, which must make it much harder to take cases to the tribunal, it also needs to provide absolute clarity on what players can and cannot do using high elbows and forearms.
It is still impossible to fathom why Lance Franklin was able to elbow Luke Ryan in the head and face no suspension in yet another head-scratching tribunal moment.
4. Blues blew it, but what’s next?
How do the Blues extricate themselves from the current disaster with Ross Lyon scared off by a panel that likely had two of six figures unlikely to give him any support?
Justin Leppitsch as senior coach makes a heck of a lot of sense, and not just because he has spent a season impressing on multiple media platforms.
Ironically for a coach who admitted on the Sacked podcast he lost his job for a total reliance on offence, his mate Craig McRae’s endorsement was powerful last week.
He said he was the best coach of defensive systems he has worked with, and we know the elite coaches McRae has been blessed to be around.
Leppitsch has learned from his failures, has exactly the kind of tactical gifts the Blues desire, has long ago lost his training wheels, is a gifted communicator.
In short, he not only has what it takes but could sell significant hope to a Blues fanbase even more disconsolate about its fortunes than in the past few seasons.
And who would have thought that was possible.
5. Don’t @ me
On a weekend when tennis player Sloane Stephens revealed she had received 2000 abusive messages on social media after a single loss, when Toby Greene was subjected to the most vile personal abuse, it is apparent the war over internet trolling of players is lost.
Why?
It is detailed in Essendon’s official response to racial abuse of Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti last week, where it stated: “The club has attempted to contact the individual on several occasions on Monday morning and the individual has ignored our attempts to discuss the matter.”
When football clubs and leagues have so little power to pursue anonymous trolls that they hope the abusers might take a phone call or direct message to engage, what hope do we have?
The message couldn’t be clearer to all athletes _ monetise your social media accounts with posts or blogs, but any account that allows access to you with replies or DMs is a recipe for disaster.
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