The Tackle: Mark Robinson’s likes and dislikes from round 1
There’s a midfield selection squeeze brewing at Essendon which is set to leave two key names on the outer. MARK ROBINSON names his likes and dislikes from round 1.
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It’s been a huge round 1 with plenty of talking points to take us through the next week.
Mark Robinson sets the agenda with his hits and misses from the weekend’s action.
Check it out below.
Dislikes
1. Same old Dogs need a new trick
That was disappointing. Aaron Naughton would be disappointed. He had six touches and took one mark and was targeted by teammates just twice inside the forward 50. Jamarra Ugle-Hagan was the target 10 times, Cody Weightman was five times and Rory Lobb was four times. If his teammates don’t kick it to Naughton, the $900,000 forward, what’s the point of him being there? The discussion must be about whether he is best suited for the team to play in defence. As Ugle-Hagan was developing, Naughton was needed forward. Now that Ugle-Hagan is a bona fide star, and Sam Darcy kicked six goals in a VFL game at the weekend and is craving selection, Naughton can easily be redeployed.
Certainly, they need to stiffen the defence. The Bulldogs made too many mistakes between the arcs which put way too much pressure on the defensive group. Buku Khamis was okay but the Dogs needed another interceptor to help Liam Jones. Dare we say it, they once again gave up a five-goal stretch, coming late in the first quarter and until the sixth minute of the second quarter. And they gave up 16 scores from turnover. It’s a familiar tale for the Dogs which needs to be challenged. Naughton to the defensive 50 is a trigger that can only help.
2. Brisbane’s mind lapses
When the Lions are in fifth gear, they are in overdrive.
Think the first quarter-and-a-half against Carlton in the opening round.
Think the first 20 minutes of the first quarter at Perth Stadium on Sunday night.
Yet, when the opposition steps up its game, mainly around the contest, the Lions don’t adjust their own game style quickly enough.
The Dockers kicked eight unanswered goals through the first, second and third quarters and completely swiped all momentum from the Lions.
It’s an issue when their bundle drops so dramatically.
It has to be mental.
After the Blues loss, skipper Lachie Neale spoke of selfish footy. On Sunday night, it was hurried and haphazard footy in the face of Fremantle’s pressure and ball movement.
Questions are being asked of the coaching box and of big-name players such as Cam Rayner, Hugh McCluggage, Lincoln McCarthy, Oscar McInerney and Zac Bailey.
The Lions are 0-2 and Collinwood is 0-2. The Lions have the bye next week. The Pies play St Kilda.
Then the Pies and Lions play on Easter Thursday and the loser of that game will be playing catch-up football for the first half of the season.
3. Fall from grace
West Coast veteran Andrew Gaff was subbed out during the third quarter on Sunday with four touches beside his name. He earns roughly $800,000 and his career has been in free fall for at least a year. But this was a new kind of low. To be subbed out at round 1 of the new season would be embarrassing for him, as is the form of Jack Darling. He had four disposals. With that sort of output, why play them?
4. What to do with Mr Jones?
Harrison Jones had four disposals. He might’ve created contests and also space for Peter Wright, Jake Stringer and Kyle Langford (in the final quarter), but it was four disposals and one mark. He is a pure footballer, in that he sees the ball and jumps for the ball. However, key forwards spend three quarters of their lives jostling and bustling under high balls, and try to pluck contested marks. That’s not Jones’ go, he doesn’t have the body for it. His immediate future is under threat. Coach Brad Scott will likely give him another opportunity because a whole summer of planning isn’t thrown out after one game. But Jones desperately needs a better return. He needs a nine-mark, three-goal performance to avoid VFL relegation. Not sure he has it in him, though. Draftee Nate Caddy will get a game soon enough and the only spot up for grabs is the one that Jones currently holds. The other issue is key defender Zach Reid. After four years in the system – and nine games overall – his hamstrings continue to fail him. Mentally, it must be crushing to do the work and the rehab, only to break down time and again. You have to wonder if his body is capable of holding up.
5. A good Perkins problem
That was his most influential game for the Bombers. He won the ball, applied pressure and set up scores. It was reminiscent of his Round 1 game v Hawthorn last year. That was his highest-rated game of the season. On Saturday, he was the highest-rated player on the ground. He could be Isaac Heeney, coach Brad Scott said, which means exactly what? A player who can play midfield and dominate as Heeney has done across in the first two games, or play forward with a stint in the middle? It’s a “nice” problem. The circumstance at Essendon is that Darcy Parish will return and he is generally a 95 per cent midfield player. On Saturday, Perkins took Parish’s minutes in the midfield. Make no mistake, Parish will get his position back, but perhaps he could play more forward minutes if Scott decides to go high rotation with his midfielders. He has Zach Merrett, Parish, Will Setterfield, Perkins, Sam Durham, Jye Caldwell, possibly Dylan Shiel and Ben Hobbs, and Tsatas and Duursma on the wings. If there’s no injuries, Hobbs and Shiel better enjoy playing VFL because there isn’t a spot in the ones for them.
6. The curious case of the Giants
The week before they laid 13 tackles in the first half and this week against North Melbourne it was a paltry nine tackles in the first half. Nine in a half is the lowest a team has registered since Richmond in Round 20, 2015. Strangely, the Tigers won the match by 83 points. On Saturday, North Melbourne had 179 possessions in the first two quarters, so it wasn’t as though they were starved of the ball. It’s either a style of play, or the game is more about uncontested footy, or the Giants have a flaw: They don’t make tackles and they don’t stick tackles when they do tackle. Of the nine tackles by the Giants, Tom Green had three of them, and 16 of his teammates didn’t register a single tackle. You can assume coach Adam Kingsley baked them at the long break – he should’ve if he didn’t – because they landed 36 in the second half. The Giants are all the rage and many believe they are Grand Final bound. And that might prove to be true, but they won’t get a shoddy Collingwood or a young North Melbourne every week, two teams who didn’t take advantage of the Giants’ sloppy attitude. Comparatively, former skipper Joel Selwood in the commentary box put Geelong on notice when he said, at the third minute of the second quarter, that the Cats’ tackle count of 14 was far from ideal.
7. Please, no excuses Adelaide
In 2023, it was poor old Adelaide. They should’ve played finals save for a dumb umpire decision. They could’ve beaten Collingwood twice (they lost by one point and two points). They could’ve beaten Melbourne (lost by four points). They could’ve beaten Brisbane (lost by six points). And they should’ve beaten Sydney (lost by one point). On Saturday, they could’ve beaten Gold Coast, but they didn’t. The Crows have to shake the “could’ve and should’ve” tag. It’s a cop out. They lost by six points to the Suns after kicking a paltry three goals in the first three quarters. The absence of Tex Walker and Riley Thilthorpe didn’t help, but that wasn’t the issue in the final quarter when the Crows kicked 5.2 to 1.3 which turned a certain loss into an exciting finish. Gallantry is for Richmond losing three players with injury and pushing the Blues to the limit. Where were the Crows for three quarters?
8. We like the umpires …
But: Why wasn’t Gryan Miers paid a free against for tossing Rowan Marshall’s boot? Why didn’t the umpires see the ball hit TV wires on Friday night? Why are we stopping games for injured players to make their way to the bench? Why are goal umpires wasting time by calling for reviews when the ball has been clearly touched? More to the point, what will remain the most contentious part of umpiring is the determination of prior opportunity. Time and again, players are tackled as they try to kick the ball and miss the ball altogether, and the umpire often calls play-on. It’s a fine line between having and not having prior. Is it one step with the ball in hand, two steps? We have this strange interpretation where “he tried” to get rid of the ball is an acceptable part of the game.
Likes
1. Amazing Pat
Back at the start of the 2022 season, a good-natured Patrick Dangerfield fired off a text message after having 33 disposals and kicking a goal against the Bombers in Round 1. He had been named at No. 16 in the pre-season Top 50 and the monstrous game and playful text message was a reminder that the ol’ boy still had what it takes to be a top five player in the competition. This year, he didn’t make the Top 50, not because his talent was in question, but a belief rather his body and age (he is 34 in April) wouldn’t allow him to dominate games like had for the previous decade or so. My bad. On Saturday night, he had 25 disposals, eight clearances, a team-high nine score involvements and kicked the closer. There was no text message this time round – not yet anyway. Maybe the absolute carnage he creates in the contest is waning, but he still has the explosion from contests and several times ran away from St Kilda opponents. His goal at the end from 50m swung left to right, but it’s not about how it got there, as long as it got there. Late in the game, tired body, result up for grabs, it was the quintessential captain’s goal. If he stays injury free-ish, the lack of Top 50 recognition will prove to be a dreadful decision. What wasn’t a dreadful decision was Geelong taking Ollie Dempsey in the rookie draft in 2021. He shapes as another Cats draft special. He kicked three goals in the first half in a forward line that had Tom Hawkins and Jeremy Cameron. His ability to lose his opponent stood out.
2. Ivan is the man
Ivan Soldo was never the number one ruckman at Richmond, with Toby Nankervis comfortably holding that position since he was recruited to the Tigers in 2017. It looms as a great move for Soldo. He beat Jordon Sweet out for the spot on Sunday, and rewarded coach Ken Hinkley with the second highest ranked game of his career. He had 14 disposals, kicked two goals and had 11 score involvements. It’s difficult to judge Port Adelaide overall because it was against West Coast and although the numbers are blazing green, are they really an indication of how good Port will be this season? No. They have Richmond (MCG), Melbourne (Adelaide Oval) and Essendon (Adelaide Oval) over the next three weeks, and that’s when it’s fair to judge them. Sunday was boring. At least there was no serious injury.
3. Dockers in love
If any club wants to dispute accusations of player-coach unrest, they can’t leave it to simple words.
The response is best delivered by actions, and Fremantle would be buzzing right now after beating last year’s grand finalist.
After giving up the first four goals, they then forced the Lions to roll over in the face of the heat and speed they put on the game.
Boring Dockers? No way.
It was a night of celebration and carnage, having lost Karl Worner (concussion), Oscar McDonald (knee) and Brennan Cox with a serious hamstring injury.
Still, they had Caleb Serong playing high-level football in the midfield – he’s a jet – and Alex Pearce and Luke Ryan influential at the back.
A sign of maturity was the Dockers repelling Brisbane’s belated surge in the final quarter. Maturity in the fact that Fremantle kicked the goals when they were needed, and Brisbane failed to do the same – for the second week in a row.
3. The professionals
That is the Melbourne team which is widely respected. Tough around the contest, fierce in defence, multiple straight-kicking forwards and a quartet of leaders - Max Gawn, Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca and Jack Viney - who dictated the attitude. The Demons scored a goal once in every three entries which was nice. They took 141 marks which is unlike Melbourne and that number can suggest plenty of stop-mark footy. But it wasn’t boring. It was up-tempo ball movement: quick and controlled. Gee, Oliver is a freak. His work rate around the ball is a sight, and so was the standing ovation he received when he departed for the bench late in the fourth quarter. Footy loves redemption stories, and the footy world is in his corner. Ticks for Jack Billings on a high forward flank, to Tom McDonald in defence, and Kade Chandler was kicking for your life, you wouldn’t drop a bead of sweat with worry. Read or saw a comment during the week that Melbourne doesn’t like wet weather conditions. There might be something on the watch list.
4. Guelfi on Sicily
All the hoopla was about Archie Perkins, the spring in Jake Stringer and the leadership of Zach Merrett and Andy McGrath. Don’t forget Matt Guelfi. He had two jobs. One, try to keep James Sicily occupied and two, try to kick goals at the same time. Big tick to Guelfi for both. In roughly three quarters, he had eight disposals and kicked one of his two goals and Sicily had five disposals and didn’t take a mark. It was a huge win for the Bombers and you’d think a similar plan would be adopted by all teams throughout the season. So, can we expect the defensive forward role to become more and more the norm? Teams rebound from half-back. Think Jack Sinclair, Max Holmes, Lachie Whitfield, Nic Martin and Nic Newman. And the very best key defenders are also interceptors and playmakers. Think Sicily, Darcy Moore, Sam Taylor and even Mitch McGovern. Guelfi’s job required constant vigilance and he should be rewarded with coach votes come Monday.
5. A tale of two midfielders
One is Isaac Heeney and the other is Matt Rowell. Both of them could have six Brownlow Medal votes after two rounds. Which one would you take if they were up against the wall? Heeney is like the poured chocolate in those Cadbury adverts, all silky and smooth. Rowell could be the front man in the Hard Yakka adverts, forever dirty and beaten up. Both are outstanding players with their particular skill sets. In the first two weeks, Rowell has had 62 disposals (46 contested), 29 clearances and 16 score involvements. Heeney has compiled 55 disposals (31 contested), 17 clearances, 22 score involvements and kicked three goals. It’s a good debate: White collar v blue collar? I am with Rowell at this stage, just.
6. So close for St Kilda
Max King threatens, but threatening performances don’t win games. He kicked 2.4 and burnt teammate Lance Collard another time, a moment he knew he was in the wrong. In a match decided by eight points, the missed goals and lack of awareness were costly. The plus was once again St Kilda’s ball movement. The Saints were the number one ball movement team last year and they will be even better at it this year, and have added Liam Henry (he was wasteful by foot) and Darcy Wilson to that mix. The other plus was Tim Membrey. He pulled out of the team’s final last year with wellbeing issues, and his first game back was very encouraging. He kicked 3.1 and was agile and dangerous.
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