The Early Tackle AFL Round 12: Glenn McFarlane names his likes and dislikes
The floating fixture was meant to give us the best of the best in prime time, but the AFL has fixtured Essendon on three Friday nights in a row. See the schedule plus round 12 hot topics.
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Herald Sun football writer Glenn McFarlane gives his take on Round 12 with the Dees’ stumble, Tex’s future, the Roos struggles and Bailey Smith’s headbutt the main talking points.
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What’s next Tex?
Taylor Walker said he planned to have a couple of “pigs’ ears” (beers) in his bye break after he helped Adelaide snap a five-game losing streak with a win over West Coast.
But will the Crows’ break fast-track contract discussions with their former skipper?
The 32-year-old’s form – evidenced by his three-goal, 22-disposal, 10-score-involvement game, which proved crucial against the Eagles – warrants going on again.
The complicating factor is the interest that has come from elsewhere, including Brisbane, who are seen as a potential suitor with a two-year offer, but only if Dan McStay knocks back the Lions’ five-year offer.
Walker is an unrestricted free agent. He said on radio this week: “I’m just worried about trying to get a kick at the moment.
“Number one is, ‘do I want to stay in Adelaide?’. Yes, I do. Is there a contract on the table at the moment? No, there’s not.”
Could be an interesting couple of weeks.
Red-time Swans
For the second week in a row, Sydney dragged itself off the canvas to take a big scalp.
Last week it was Richmond, this week it was reigning premiers Melbourne – both after the Swans clawed their way back from big deficits.
They did it in the old-style South Melbourne heritage jumper, turning what was at one stage a 26-point deficit into a stunning 12-point win.
They did it without a banned Buddy Franklin, which opened it up for Logan McDonald to play his best AFL game in combination with Sam Reid, as the Swans head into the bye a serious challenger at 8-4.
Jez too good
There were more than a few critics lining up to question the Cats’ trade to secure Jeremy Cameron when the forward was struck down with hamstring injuries at stages of last year.
Not anymore.
Cameron’s six-goal, 18-disposal, 11-scoring involvement performance to sink the Bulldogs on Friday night further emphasised why he is proving his weight in gold in 2022.
He kicked 39 goals in an interrupted 15 games last season; he has 38 goals from 12 games already this year. A second Coleman Medal is now a very strong possibility.
Cameron is in rare form at the moment and is working in perfect unison with Tom Hawkins, making the Cats very hard to match up for opposition teams,
He kicked three opening term goals against the Dogs to give his team a big early advantage then closed out the game as good players do.
If he maintains that form, and remains fit, he could be the difference come September.
The Cats have a welter of players under consideration to come back after the bye, including Patrick Dangerfield, Jack Henry, Max Holmes, Jake Kolodjashnij, Jon Ceglar and Shaun Higgins.
Geelong has turned at 8-4 and has given itself every chance to lock in a top four berth with a relatively good draw in the run home that includes West Coast (twice) and North Melbourne and five of the last 10 matches at GMHBA Stadium.
DK’s world
Patrick Dangerfield tweeted soon after the final siren:
DK’s world. We just living in it.
— Patrick Dangerfield (@dangerfield35) June 3, 2022
He was referencing the rise and rise of young Geelong key defender Sam De Koning, who had just beaten Aaron Naughton, one of the most dangerous forwards in the competition.
Can it really be that this 21-year-old was $101 to win the Rising Star award before the start of the season? That was off the back of him playing only one game last year and being up against some elite draftees including Collingwood’s Nick Daicos and North Melbourne’s Jason Horne-Francis, among others.
But De Koning is coming and coming fast.
After his performance to keep Naughton to only one goal, De Koning is into $7 with TAB to win the Rising Star, behind Hawthorn’s Jai Newcombe ($2.75), Daicos ($3.25) and Essendon’s Nic Martin ($4).
De Koning’s performance on Friday had even more merit given the absence of Tom Stewart for most of the night after he was subbed out with concussion.
Return of the roam
Pizzas, pronunciations, Geelong’s ‘Prime Minister’ and a blast from BT’s past … ‘Roaming Brian’ is back after a long, Covid-enforced hibernation.
"Good to have you back in the rooms...this is fantastic."
— 7AFL (@7AFL) June 3, 2022
-Tomahawk a bonafide fan of #RoamingBrian 👌 pic.twitter.com/ZSHStGTXed
This could be a like or a dislike, depending on your viewpoint.
Love it or hate it, Brian Taylor with a microphone in the winning rooms without a script is awkwardly unpredictable.
In this first version of 2022, BT asked Tom Hawkins everything from cattle prices to who would be the player most likely to become Geelong’s first Prime Minister if it went to a vote.
For the record, Tomahawk said his forward partner Jeremy Cameron would trump Patrick Dangerfield and Joel Selwood for PM honours, courtesy of his laid-back attitude.
“I reckon there would be a few more public holidays and a few more days where it would be a very relaxed country style (if Cameron was up for a vote),” Hawkins told Channel 7.
Then Taylor proceeded to present in-form Cat Tom Atkins with the ‘Flying Under the Radar’ award, suggesting to him that there were ‘a few little grumpy people around’ in what was a feisty contest.
Atkins cryptically offered back: “You know all about … being grumpy BT!” to which Taylor answered back: ‘What do you mean I know all about being grumpy?’
Atkins added: “It’s all right mate, I’ve heard stories about you back in the Prahran days”.
He may or may not have been referring to an alleged ‘difference of opinion’ between BT and Atkins’ father Mick, when the pair played VFL footy at Prahran back in the early ‘90s.
Taylor and Matthew Richardson then interviewed Jackie and Terry De Koning, parents of Geelong’s rising young defender Sam and Carlton’s ruckman Tom.
We got some clarity about the De Koning surname pronunciation, with Jackie detailing it was “ De Koning, like an ice-cream cone …”
Jackie and Terry had a big family of 10 (seven boys and three girls) with Terry saying he was “a teacher with a second job” to help feed the growing brood when they were young.
“We’ve only got one at home now,” Jackie said. “We can actually eat steak now.”
Taylor, the man once nicknamed ‘Barge’, even barged ever so quietly into Luke Beveridge’s post-game press conference midstream before making a hasty exit.
Libba, Mr Peripheral
It’s hard to believe there was a time earlier this season where Tom Liberatore was seemingly playing anywhere but the middle.
His performance to breathe life into the struggling Bulldogs when they were 40 points down early in Friday night’s second term was nothing short of sensational.
If you ever needed the perfect example of midfield extraction, rewind the tape to the four-minute-mark of the final term when a Libba grab in traffic resulted in the perfect look-away handball to Marcus Bontempelli.
It set up a much needed goal to Naughton – courtesy of a Bont pass – to cut the difference back to five points before the Cats steadied.
Libba’s peripheral vision is almost as good as anyone else in the AFL.
Suns in September?
Gold Coast is making a 2022 charge towards its maiden finals appearance.
Stuart Dew and the Suns go to the bye at 6-6 after a successful two-week trip to Darwin. They have a relatively positive run home – Adelaide, Port Adelaide, Collingwood, Richmond, Essendon, Brisbane, West Coast, Hawthorn, Geelong and North Melbourne.
The Suns seemingly have plenty of upside if they can shake those second-half jitters that previously halted any hopes of a finals berth.
This time they look like a different side – pressure is their DNA.
When the Kangaroos outplayed the Suns in the first term, they responded with swift efficiency in a second quarter blitz, kicking 7.7 off the back of 28 inside 50s.
The negative was a knee injury suffered by Lachie Weller.
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Gawn? No way, but Demons have some work to do
Part of the focus will centre on late free kicks to Errol Gulden and Tom Papley that resulted in the Swans’ last two goals, but Melbourne collectively has some work to do after a tough past fortnight.
This was the Demons’ first back-to-back losses since Rounds 15 and 16 in 2020.
Max Gawn produced one of the great individual AFL games (check his SuperCoach score) and the Demons had what looked like a game-winning break early in the game. Yet they couldn’t close the deal.
And if it wasn’t for Maxy, the final margin would have been bigger.
Losses to Freo and the Swans in successive weeks have flipped the script in terms of the premiership race, with a few Demons looking a little banged up and a handful of others needing to regain some form.
Simon Goodwin’s team is 10-2, so it is far from panic stations, but these past two weeks might be the kick in the backside they need.
Smith gave MRO no choice
It was out of character and almost hard to fathom, but Bailey Smith now has two matches on the sidelines to ponder how he let his Western Bulldogs teammates down with his bizarre headbutt on Geelong’s Zach Tuohy on Friday night.
Smith will miss matches against Greater Western Sydney and Hawthorn – two games critical in the club’s finals quest – if the Bulldogs decide not to challenge the medium impact ruling.
Match review officer Michael Christian deemed the incident as intentional contact, medium impact and high contact, which graded the sanction as two weeks for a first offence with an early plea.
Christian and AFL footy boss Brad Scott had the discretion to send the offence directly to a tribunal, but the MRO ban of two matches is likely what the tribunal would have settled on.
Tuohy also was charged with misconduct against Smith in the same incident and can accept a $1000 fine with an early plea.
Tuohy typically played down the incident after the match, saying: “Nah, emotions were getting the better of both of us. I was pulling and dragging at him as much as he was me.
“There was not much in it.”
But, on the vision alone, there was … and that’s why the AFL needed to make a tough call.
Smith will be back in Round 16 against Brisbane Lions at the Gabba, eager to make up for his costly mistake.
Northern exposure
Ten losses in a row; eight consecutive defeats by 47 points or more; and injuries to Jason Horne-Francis and Ben McKay … It was yet another tough day for North Melbourne.
Playing in 33 degree heat and in humidity above 60 per cent, the Roos were always going to struggle against Gold Coast in difficult conditions.
David King said on Fox Footy: “I guess the conversation shifts to what is acceptable in a rebuild phase … How many heavy losses is too many and are these the development hours you need?
He said earlier: “I don’t know whether David Noble is the man or not? All we can judge is what we see of the weekend and what we see today is well short of that.”
It was perplexing that the Roos chose to start two of their best young players — Horne-Francis and Tarryn Thomas – on the bench at the start of the third term.
Horne-Francis hurt his foot late in the game and attempted to come back, but the medicos called his day over.
McKay copped a heavy knock in his first game back and was subbed out of the contest.
Was this the quarter that damned the dogs?
Sometimes quarters can make or break seasons.
If the Western Bulldogs’ 2022 season ends up amounting to nothing, we might look back on the first term of Friday’s clash with Geelong as the one that cost them dearly.
In a game in which they dominated for more than a half, the Bulldogs had to do too much to retrieve their position after a disastrous first quarter Cats’ blitz.
The Bulldogs’ start proved their undoing and has now left them vulnerable on the ladder at 6-6, providing Collingwood and Richmond with the chance to leapfrog them into the eight.
A relentless Geelong – and a dominant Jeremy Cameron – owned the first quarter, kicking seven goals to one – the Cats’ best opening term return against the Dogs since 2017.
The Bulldogs were beaten to the ball and had to play catch up for the rest of the game.
In the first three minutes alone of the game the Dogs bombed the ball forward without thinking, resulting in four intercept marks – two apiece to Tom Stewart and Sam De Koning.
After three weeks of contested possession dominance, the Dogs were smashed in that area in the first term, being -10 at the first break, resulting in a 33-point deficit at quarter-time.
The Dogs still have plenty of time left to lock in a finals berth, but the second half of the year isn’t easy.
Take a look at the road ahead – GWS (away), Hawthorn, Brisbane Lions (away), Sydney (away), St Kilda, Melbourne, Geelong (GMHBA), Fremantle, GWS and Hawthorn (Launceston).
They can ill afford to give away big early deficits if they want to play finals footy this season.
Friday fright night?
Hope you enjoyed the Dogs-Cats’ spite night as the next three Friday nights have all the hallmarks of being lightweight encounters instead of heavyweight contests.
In a time when the floating fixture was meant to give us the ‘best of the best’ in prime time, we’ve now been dished up three Friday nights in a row involving third-bottom Essendon.
OK, we can cop next week’s 150th birthday match for the Bombers against a resurgent Carlton, as there is a lot of feeling between the two old adversaries and Essendon’s proud history deserves to celebrated in prime time.
But how does a team that sits 2-9 – and has performed so poorly in 2022 that it is in the midst of a review you have when you are not really having a review – get two more Friday nights in succession after that against St Kilda and West Coast.
Thankfully, the last one against the Eagles is part of a double-header Friday night. The remote might be needed.
Let’s hope the Bombers prove us wrong, but a floating fixture – as vexed as many people think it is – should give us much more than this.
Eagles on track for worst season
Leaving aside a woeful first term against the Crows, West Coast was marginally better across the last three quarters on Saturday.
But that’s still being kind to a team that could be — and should be — better.
Adam Simpson’s team sits down the bottom of the ladder with only one win from 12 games.
Statistically, the Eagles’ two worst seasons — 2010 and 2008 — yielded four wins each, but it is hard to see where win No.2 is coming in 2022.
The run home looks tough — Geelong (home), Essendon (home), Richmond, Carlton (home), Hawthorn, St Kilda (home), Gold Coast, Adelaide (home), Fremantle (home) and Geelong.
Perhaps the Round 15 clash with the Bombers might be their best option.
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