By Michael Gleeson
This is Charlie Curnow’s time to deliver. He might be injured, but his team too is patched-up and out of form. He might be underdone, but ditto his side. While Carlton needs Curnow firing to have any hope of being a danger in the finals, Curnow needs the Blues on song this September. More to the point, Curnow craves September.
Curnow wants to be back in finals and show that he can do in the biggest games what he does in the lesser games. Good players play well in finals, but as yet Curnow hasn’t done that. Sure, the sample size is small at just three games, but it’s all we have.
Charlie Curnow trains at the weekend as he pushes to return to Carlton’s team for the elimination final.Credit: Getty Images
In last year’s preliminary final against Brisbane at the Gabba – the identical opponent and venue as this year’s elimination final – Curnow had a bad day. He kicked one goal and had just the six kicks and four marks as the Blues lost by 16 points. Games like that can happen, but it came after he booted just one goal in each of the elimination and semi-final.
Those three finals do not point to a flaw in his game. They do not suggest he is not as good a player as we thought. They only suggest he hasn’t done it yet. Because he will do it. He is too good not to.
Jeremy Cameron had the same problem in his early finals. From three of his first five finals he had a combined total of just one goal. He was a dominant home-and-away forward, but come September, he struggled. That was as much about his club – the Giants at the time – maturing as a finals players as his performance as a finals player.
Eventually, both player and team matured and got it right. No one can question Cameron as a finals player now. And given time, no one will question Curnow either.
He is a huge competitor. That, as much as his athleticism, is what makes him such a great forward. He has a belief that he can beat any opponent and knows his physical gifts mean he is a chance to get the ball from almost any position. Players with those attributes are never subdued for long, and that is why he looms mong the most dangerous players of this finals series.
It might sound counter-intuitive to talk of a player who has yet to play a good final as being the player to watch out for in the finals, but it is the very fact that he has yet to do it that makes him so dangerous. Call it the glass-half-full approach.
Curnow’s attitude to the elimination final has to be akin to Carlton’s more broadly. After the late reprieve to get into the eight – the Fremantle repechage, as Jake Niall put it – the Blues head to this year’s Brisbane final almost sheepishly, as opposed to the “we’re back, baby” swagger of last year. Anyone with a free throw at the stumps is a chance to hit them.
Selectors go rogue
The Brownlow Medal carries its gravitas not only from history but because the men and women on the field judging the medal have a unique and quirky perspective.
It’s why the players who dominate the awards judged by media, coaches or other players might never win a Brownlow. It’s not uncommon for players to be judged the best player in the competition by the umpires but not be considered the best player at their club by their coaches. For example, Lachie Neale last year won the Brownlow Medal but was only runner-up in the Lions best and fairest award.
In a similar vein, the All-Australian selectors this year continued with their own version of “they like it when we go rogue”.
Their dilemma is partly the inevitable consequence of trying to fit a squad of 44 players into a final team of 22, and partly a consequence of the fact that their task is to pick the best team the possibly can to play no one.
So, while pretty much every team plays two ruckmen on match day, the All-Australian selectors thought, “stuff that, we’ll pick one”. Of course, it was Max Gawn. His was the easiest selection of the night after Marcus Bontempelli.
But given this team did not include a key forward who also spends time in the ruck, the selectors should have chosen a second ruckman, either Tristan Xerri or Darcy Cameron from the shortlist they’d created.
Jake Waterman was chosen as a versatile third tall forward. Sure, he had a better season than most thought him capable of while playing for the third-worst team in the league, but you can’t convince me any coach in the AFL would seriously choose him over Charlie Curnow. Then, there’s the selection of Jeremy McGovern over James Sicily or Harris Andrews. Spare me.
The selectors also took the oft-used option of considering the wings tantamount to the bench, and shoving whoever they damn well pleased there. Nick Daicos on a wing? Please. Even Errol Gulden had the good humour to mention that Daicos only dropped in for a visit on a wing in the last game of the year. Massimo D’Ambrosio was one of the finds of the year and should have been chosen.
The question is not whether D’Ambrosio should have been there ahead of Daicos, it is how was Caleb Serong picked as a first-choice onballer ahead of Daicos? No coach in the league, not even Serong’s coach, would do that.
And then there was the bigger annual nonsense award; the Rising Star. This is an award that doesn’t know what it is. Is it there to acknowledge the best young player, the best season by a young player or the best season by a young player while also casting an eye towards how good that player will one day be? (The latter of those three options was how it started out).
But what possible relevance is there in considering whether a player had been suspended or not? The award is supposed to be partly about crystal-balling the rest of each contender’s career, careers for which a minor suspension in their first two seasons will be utterly inconsequential.
Ollie Dempsey at least had the good humour to thank the tribunal for suspending Harley Reid and Sam Darcy.
Dempsey – and certainly Jeremy Cameron who told him to use the line thanking the tribunal – knows where he sits in the pecking order behind Harley Reid and Sam Darcy.
He should have thanked the AFL for the absurd rules as well.
Early call was right call by Hawks
Hawthorn made the disappointing early call on Will Day. The call was disappointing, the fact that it was early was not.
Declaring Day unfit a week before their elimination final against the Western Bulldogs removed the cloud of uncertainty, and the circus of hyperbaric chambers and unnecessary speculation.
Will Day, of the Hawks, evades an attempted tackle by Richmond’s Dustin Martin earlier this season.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Even with the pre-finals week of rest, the Hawks knew Day was not going to play pretty much from the moment he did his shoulder in round 23, so the Hawks rightly chose not to try to carry on charade.
The transparency reflects a mature, modern approach of coaches recognising that the ducks-and-drakes games at selection that supposedly toy with the opposition don’t really work.
The Bulldogs would have known Day wasn’t playing, so if the Hawks had kept on pretending he was a chance there was a greater they would have ended up toying with their own players’ emotions. So, well done to them.
The Hawks are playing with a system as much as personnel at the moment. They are not playing a game reliant on individual brilliance, even though they have some brilliant players. Theoretically, this will help them cover for missing a player, such as Day. Theoretically.
Sam De Koning, left, emerged as a ruck option for Geelong this season before missing games through injury. Credit: AFL Photos
Cats need SDK and a tagger
Sam De Koning did what he had to in the VFL and is a certainty to play for the Cats against Port Adelaide.
He played against Werribee at the weekend and was among the Cats’ better players. He had 18 touches and 23 hitouts in his game first back from injury, and should find himself rucking in the qualifying final.
De Koning’s flexibility to play as a key defender, means he should come into the team. But it isn’t really a question of where he plays. He should ruck in place of Rhys Stanley.
Stanley played the last four games of the season, but remember it was against Port Adelaide in Geelong when Stanley was subbed out before half-time after being soundly beaten in the ruck as his team lost to the Power at home for the first time in 17 years.
Now the Cats have to find a way to beat Port in a qualifying final in Adelaide.
In that same game earlier this year, it was Oisin Mullin who was brought on to replace Stanley. He tagged Jason Horne-Francis and shut him down after half-time. Will Scott send Mullin straight to Horne-Francis or Zak Butters on Thursday night? He should.
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