Alex Rance wins heavyweight duel against Lance Franklin but Sydney claims four points against Richmond
IN THE yellow and black corner was Alex Rance. In the other was Lance Franklin. The two superstars staged a battle for the ages for the next two hours. Rance won, but Buddy didn’t care.
Richmond
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AS SPORADIC spotfires broke out before the start of the Richmond and Sydney clash at the MCG, the game’s two biggest protagonists sized each other up as if they were prize-fighters at the peak of their powers.
In the yellow and black corner was the competition’s best defender, Alex ‘The Human Glove’ Rance. In the other was one of the most dynamic forwards of all time, Lance ‘Big Buddy’ Franklin.
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Four quarters later, or perhaps more appropriately, 15 rounds later, there was a clear winner on points. It wasn’t quite a knockout blow, but Rance was the most influential — and best — player on the ground.
The only problem was that the winner of this incredible individual duel ended up being a loser on the day, at least in a team sense.
In many ways though, it was the football public who was the real winner, witnessing an intriguing game-within-a-game that was a blast from the past in terms of one-on-one match-ups.
For those old enough to remember them, think Wayne Carey and Glen Jakovich. Or further back Peter Knights and Paul Vander Haar.
In an age when head-to-head duels between two champions of the game are very much a thing from a bygone age, footy purists can at least be thankful for they saw at the MCG.
They played on each other for 83 minutes of the match and Rance kept Franklin to only one goal for the day — four fewer than he had kicked in each of his two encounters against the All-Australian backman last season.
Franklin had 16 disposals (only nine when on his direct opponent); Rance had 21 himself, and it’s a fair bet to say that if the Tiger defender hadn’t been out there, the Swans would have won by considerably more than nine points.
The Tigers gave up another big lead again, and will once more be lamenting what went wrong, even if it at least in part had much to do with the Swans’ sheer desperation.
Richmond led by six goals midway through the second term and missed a host of chances to make it a more significant margin. Instead, Sydney managed to keep their stop-start, sometimes stuttering season alive by kicking eight of the last nine goals to steal a win late in the final term.
Who said coaches don’t have a sense of theatre? Damien Hardwick allowed for the match-up that we have drooled about all week.
A minute into the second term it seemed as if Rance was going to do something that Franklin hadn’t done to that stage — kick a goal. He loomed at half-forward with the ball in his hands and with his opponent unsighted, but his 50m barrel was marked in the square by Dane Rampe.
Buddy made him pay — momentarily — within the next five minutes, kicking a goal out of a passage created from nothing. He had missed an earlier one, but grasped his next chance with a left-foot snap that finally got the Swans on the board.
Soon after another show of strength saw Franklin reported for rough conduct when he crashed into Connor Menadue. Rance came in to remonstrate and the prize-fighters pushed and shoved and gripped each other’s jumpers with full force.
Franklin’s sheer power yanked his opponent to the ground, to the boos of the Tigers’ crowd. .
The angst lasted all game, so did the boos every time Franklin went near the ball.
There is history here and it is seared into the psyche of long-suffering Tigers’ fans, who have never forgotten how the club chose Richard Tambling over a young Franklin with pick four in the 2004 national draft.
Franklin acknowledged on Fox Footy after the game that Rance had the better of him, but that he didn’t care. The Swans won the real prize — the four premiership points — even if Rance had won the individual duel.
GLENN McFARLANE’S BEST
Sydney: Newman, Lloyd, Jones, Heeney, Hannebery, Mills, Reid, Kennedy.
Richmond: Rance, Houli, Cotchin, Astbury, Martin, Ellis.
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