Source :- THE AGE NEWS
Do not let the ladder be an alibi, North Melbourne should have beaten Collingwood. That they didn’t will be met, yet again, with a resigned shrug.
That North didn’t win this match and surrendered so tiredly in the last quarter was lamentable. Collingwood started the game without at least seven of their best 23 players then lost Brayden Maynard early in the game.
North Melbourne skipper tries to inspire his team against Collingwood.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
North came in with an ambitious, but ultimately failed, game plan of keepings-off that didn’t really get them anywhere.
This team drew with Brisbane in a game they could have and should have won. This team suffered losses to Port and Essendon before that when they played like a side that didn’t know how to win. On Saturday night they played like a side that knew they wouldn’t win.
Tristan Xerri is probably behind only Max Gawn as the best ruck in the competition this year. He was playing against Darcy Cameron, another of the form rucks of the season, and Xerri shaded him.
George Wardlaw was excellent when he wasn’t bleeding, Jy Simpkin, Harry Sheezel and Luke Parker were willing, and they had enough firepower forward, with Nick Larkey, Jack Darling, Cam Zurhaar and Paul Curtis to stretch an undermanned defence. And yet they capitulated.
This was a depleted top side playing a side that was good enough to draw with Brisbane. Man for man, the Roos had sufficient talent and experience to beat Collingwood on Saturday. Having been in the match for three quarters their last quarter was nonsense. They looked physically spent but played with a fatalist resignation that was more troubling.
It’s hard to know where the kick-and-catch keepings-off game of the first half really got them. Were they exhausted by the demands of running to pace constantly to take uncontested marks? It was disciplined in execution but lacked adventure, dare and any sense of speed, which was evidently the plan for they feared speed on the game would play to Collingwood’s strengths. But without speed on the ball, they played into the hands of Collingwood’s mature albeit undermanned defence.
It’s too easy to look at this game as second-last losing to the top team and say “oh well, what do you expect?” That is what North has been doing for too long. What you might expect is that the side that drew with Brisbane could press in the last quarter.
Look closer at who was out there and the way they played. North laid 42 fewer tackles for the match, and had half the number of tackles (10-20) as Collingwood did inside their forward 50 metres.
This was the sort of match where the sugar hit recruitments of Darling, Parker and Caleb Daniel should have been beneficial.
Culturally, that trio are doubtless good for training standards, but what teams are looking for when they recruit players of their age is that they demonstrate the advantage of their experience in important moments within games. Of course, for a veteran recruit to do, they must still have the ability to influence the game as they once did.
Without a Will, it wasn’t Hawks’ day
The difference is as stark as night and day. Or as Day and loss.
Since the start of last season, Hawthorn has won seven games and lost 10 without Will Day. Those seven wins were against North (twice) and the Dogs last year, and GWS, West Coast, Richmond and Melbourne this year. When any team loses their best player it’s going to have an impact, but it has been more pronounced at Hawthorn than for others.
Their losses without him this year have been to Port, Geelong, the Suns on a five-day break in Darwin and now Brisbane at the MCG. All of those, with the exception of Port, were against very good, top-eight teams, so there was no terrible shame in those losses.
Against the Giants the Hawks were good, but Geelong, Gold Coast and Brisbane all beat them around the ball, where the absence of Day was clear. All three teams outscored them from clearances – Brisbane by 33 points. The Lions small forwards exploited the defence for leg speed and class.
The midfield drop has caused a commensurate drop-off in attack. The small forwards are all down on last year, Mabior Chol isn’t a reliable target, Calsher Dear played one game back from injury and was dropped, and Jack Gunston is having the sort of inconsistency you expect of a forward target of his age.
Will Day’s importance to Hawthorn becomes even clearer in his absence.Credit: via Getty Images
James Sicily had one of those games that used to be more common early in his career but we thought had gone out of his game; where he intersperses clever passages with bafflingly clumsy errors.
To lose to the reigning premier with your best player out of the side is not calamitous, but it prompts a broader question of Hawthorn’s form against other top-eight teams – they have only beaten GWS and lost to the other three top-eight teams they have played.
That form can partly be explained by Day missing, but more importantly is a reminder that as outstanding as the Hawks rise was last year, they were also a bottom-six side the two seasons before that, and they don’t yet have the depth of talent across their list when form drops or good players, such as Day, are missing.
Lions’ hunger returns
Brisbane are playing like a reigning premier who needs new challenges to get themselves up. It’s not a hangover, its more desire management. It’s finding motivation in moments where it previously wasn’t needed.
Noah Answerth of the Lions marks over Blake Hardwick of the Hawks.Credit: Getty Images
They grumbled through the early season, winning but not playing well. They unexpectedly dropped points in Tasmania, but playing North in Hobart is not the game to get the competitive juices flowing.
When they followed it up with a loss to Melbourne at home it was perhaps the sobering slap in the face they needed to snap them out of the idea they could continue to play badly and win.
Hawthorn on Saturday at the MCG – a ground they wanted to happily reacquaint with and a team that has troubled them – brought out the hunger. This was as good as the Lions have looked for the season, which is not a bad thing given they sit second and have only lost two (and a half) games.
Although the jumpers were striking in appearance, it was difficult for some followers to identify which team was which on Thursday night when Geelong played the Western Bulldogs.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Crazy clash
The jumpers designed for Sir Doug Nicholls round as individual pieces of art are almost without exception excellent. Creative and innovative, they tell stories, and there are stories behind who and how each jumper was created.
Geelong’s jumper on Thursday night was a beaut. So too was the Bulldogs guernsey. The only problem was that the Geelong jumper was unsuitable for a game against the Bulldogs. Against almost any other team, the Cats could have worn that jumper, but against the Western Bulldogs, they ran out looking more Dog than Cat.
No, this is not the biggest footy issue, but it was oddly distracting to spend the game reminding yourself that the team in a blue jumper with red and white on it was not the Bulldogs but Geelong. It was also begged the question of who is ticking these guernseys off at the AFL.
It was utterly avoidable. Again, this is not said to diminish the Cats jumper, they just shouldn’t have worn it against the Dogs – Sir Doug Nicholls round does run for a couple of weeks. And if it was unavoidable that a jumper of Indigenous design be worn against the Dogs, then someone should have known that long enough ago to tell the designers not to use red in the design.
To that end, Brisbane’s orangey-red jumper was not ideal against the Hawks’ gold.
Yes, creative latitude is given to teams to come up with alternative jumpers, but for a league that demands clubs have different strips to avoid clashes in regular home and away games, some of these redesigns created clashes where there wasn’t one beforehand.
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