Round 5 - Geelong v Hawthorn

MCG, Monday 21 April 2014

Football Royalty

The Royal Tour continues to make its way inland with William, Kate and baby Prince George touring through Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Uluru.  The fact that they are not visiting in Melbourne is being seen in many circles as a snub, but with Hawthorn scheduled to play Geelong on Easter Monday, we had our own footy royalty in town. Between the two teams, that’s 10 or 12 of the best footballers in the country on the same field at the same time, and with Geelong’s Jimmy Bartel among them, there’s even someone as cute as the baby Prince.

You’ll note that aside from Adelaide, they are only visiting rugby cities, which simply confirms their lack of understanding of Australian culture and underlines the urgent need for us to become a republic. I saw footage of the couple at a rugby match, and it wasn’t hard to spot them in a crowd of about 500 people who are interested enough to watch rugby, unlike the droves that turn up to watch now traditional Easter Monday clash between the Hawks and the Cats.

As for the game it was nothing unexpected, at least as far as the result went, as again, we didn’t get the chocolates.

Football Royalty

WALKER!

Now I don’t want to be picky, but isn’t there a rule that dictates that only players who are named in the starting line-up can actually take the field? I know there’s a cut-off point, whether it is an hour before the bounce or 15 minutes I don’t know, but surely you can’t just bring on some new bloke for the final quarter.  Well that’s what Geelong did - some bloke wearing number 34 with the name ‘Walker’ stencilled across the back was pulling down marks and slotting goals from everywhere in the final quarter. Kyle Cheney battled well against Tom Hawkins for the first three quarters, but all of a sudden he had a new opponent with whom he was less able to quell.

Based on this I’ve been assuming that the AFL would reverse the result on a technicality - not that we necessarily want to win that way, but it might be the only way we can beat Geelong in a Home & Away game.

It transpired that ‘Walker’ was indeed Hawkins. He simply required a change of guernsey after Wil Langford ripped the original in a wardrobe malfunction incident similar to Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson - with the probable exception that people were less keen to see Hawkins’ exposed breast than Ms Jackson’s.

Magical Realism

The literary world was saddened during the week by the death of Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the father of ‘magical realism’.

Magical realism is a literary genre in which fantastical elements are introduced into a mundane, realistic environment in such a way that they appear perfectly natural. Characters, and by extension the audience, accept as normal magical events such as telepathy, levitation and telekinesis - sort of like watching Cyril Rioli tapping the ball through a pack of players and emerging on the other side with ball in hand to kick a goal.

The magical-realist world is an environment where the natural and the supernatural co-exist as equals. Marquez’s most well-known book, and arguably, the seminal work of magical realism is One Hundred Years of Solitude, which may sound like the story of the Western Bulldogs, but is not nearly so depressing.

Marquez’s death wasn’t an event that had football teams donning black armbands of respect, but I was hoping that the likes of Rioli, Suckling and Breust might add a magical overlay to the gritty realism provided by Mitchell, Hodge and Lewis in the centre.

As we now know, that didn’t come to pass, but it was a game that had a sprinkling of magical-realism aspects - Hawthorn’s outfit for a start. Dressing up big, rugged footballers in gold tops, white shorts and gold socks is an ensemble that even Marquez didn’t think would wash with the reading public.
There was a nice novelistic touch when Travis Varcoe kicked the first goal of the game from about the same distance as the shot he missed to tie the scores in the 2013 Preliminary final. Then there was the strange case of hapless Hawkins transforming himself into match-winner Walker simply by changing jumpers - and seemingly identity - at three quarter time. This scene could even have come from a magical-realist text; take a hulking duffer with a foppish hair style, give him a new jumper with someone else’s name on it and all of a sudden he turns into a gifted, athletic sharp-shooter.

Beyond these elements though, the match was almost noteworthy for lacking much magic at all. Cyril Rioli had only a handful of disposals; Matthew Suckling, the best kick in the competition, completely duffed his first three, even Brad Hill got caught with the ball. It was that sort of match: tough, intense and bruising. Geelong’s mercurial Stevie Johnson was best on ground, but even his performance owed more to gritty realism and doing normal things well than relying on his trademark magical touches.

Geelong seemed to hold the edge for much of the match and remained marginally in front throughout. They were a little more assured with the ball, they tackled well and blanketed Hawthorn’s potential match winners Rioli and Roughead. They also took a succession of strong contested marks throughout the game.  I even found myself involuntarily applauding some of them.

Despite this, Hawthorn was still within striking distance at the final break. Indeed, when Breust and Gunston kicked the opening goals of the final quarter, we were in front.  Gunston had another set shot minutes later to give us an even six point lead…but missed. And with that went our chances, as Geelong added three goals in the next five minutes to effectively end the match. Mitch Hallahan, playing his first game for Hawthorn and wearing no. 38 (the same number, incidentally, that Buddy wore when he first played), came on as a sub in the final quarter and even kicked a consolation goal towards the end of the game.

In the end a 19 point margin pretty much reflected the difference in the teams on the day. Observing the game in hindsight, most commentators agreed that Alastair Clarkson should have moved Cheney from Hawkins, given that Hawkins’ final quarter tally was pretty much the final margin, but the reality is that at three quarter time, Hawkins had just 2 goals and Cheney was playing quite well. Besides, to move him would have simply meant he would need to man someone even taller. Basically, with Brian Lake, Matt Spangher and Ryan Schoenamakers out injured, we were just lacking a tall defender. Even so, I thought young defender Taylor Duryea played one of his best games for the Hawks.



Final scores: Geelong 15 16 106 d Hawthorn 12 15 87

Ladder position - 3rd

Attendance 80,222



What we learned: that Julie Bishop is channelling Lady Di. Our Foreign Minister was waiting on the tarmac to greet the royal couple when they arrived in Canberra, and although I can’t lip-read, I can only assume that her subservient tittering was all part of her telling William about how she has kept alive his mother’s hair style for the past 25 years.

  

What we always knew: orange fluro boots and plain gold socks make as hideous a combination as you might expect. Add in white shorts and the all-gold back of the jumper and you have one of our least attractive outfits. There was a reason we brought back the hoops on our hose and the stripes on the back of the jumper – they look better. Hawthorn’s decision to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1988/89 back-to-back premierships by wearing the kit worn in the 80s days would have made more sense on a day when we were wearing brown shorts, as indeed we wore for both of those Grand Finals.

What we’re resorting to: Hawthorn’s desperation to defeat Geelong has reached alarming levels. My Hawk friend Jason pointed out to me a pre-match article on hawthorn.com titled, “Guns added to squad for Easter Monday.” Guns! I know we need all the armaments we can get, but isn’t that taking it a little too far?


Why we should be thankful for Geelong: Our inability to defeat Geelong annoys me as much as anyone. Naturally enough I transmute this exasperation into utter hatred for all things Geelong. It’s nothing personal; it’s just the way it is. In my more objective moments, however, I express secret gratitude for Geelong. Remember what football was like in 2005 and 2006, with the Swans and the Eagles turning every match into an exercise in backline flooding – when 10 goals would win you most games – when Paul Roos, Ross Lyon and John Worsfold tried to bore their way to premierships. It was only thanks to Geelong’s relentless play-on game that brought skill and athleticism back to the game. We’d be watching virtual rugby by now if it wasn’t for Mark Thompson and the great Geelong team of 2007.



Good Friday football: One of the great traditions on the AFL calendar is the annual Easter debate over whether there should be football scheduled on Good Friday.  The debate has heated up this year with Andrew Demetriou, a long-time opponent of Good Friday football, announcing that he is stepping down at the end of the season.

The clubs seem to have picked up the Sherrin shaped Easter egg and run with it. Club chairpersons and presidents are all busy bickering among themselves about which clubs should host football on this day.

As a non-practicing Christian, okay atheist then, and only casual donor to the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday appeal, I personally don’t care whether football is played or not played on Good Friday. I have no religious sensibilities to offend and can’t see how a game of football could adversely impact the annual hospital appeal. On a weekend with three days of football already – effectively four given that a match is scheduled for the Thursday night before Good Friday – I can take or leave footy on one day of a four day weekend.  I don’t care whether they play a match or not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion about who should and shouldn’t play.

James Brayshaw from North Melbourne is at the forefront of the push for football on Good Friday and seems to believe that North has some pre-ordained right to host a match on this day. He has tied his argument to the Good Friday appeal, saying that because the Royal Children’s hospital is located in Flemington, which is sort of between North Melbourne and Carlton, then it stands to reason that North should play Carlton on that day. So there’s a geographical imperative apparently. In the next breath he talked about the need for big clubs to play on that day, which essentially rules out North Melbourne anyway, given their modest membership base. North Melbourne’s Easter Saturday clash with Collingwood this week, the biggest drawing club in the competition, attracted a crowd of just 57,116 people. Based on that, I can’t imagine why he thinks North v Carlton would get more than 30,000 on Good Friday.

With 18 teams who could potentially play each other on that day, there are 162 possible combinations the AFL could schedule. Of those 162, you could argue that North Melbourne and Carlton, two teams who last troubled the top four at the same time somewhere around the turn of the century, would be among the least attractive fixtures from either a crowd or a football perspective.

Of course no argument about blockbuster fixturing is complete without Eddie McGuire weighing in. He too is calling for big clubs to play and unsurprisingly sees Collingwood as a natural fit. After all, they only have ANZAC Day and the Queen’s Birthday set aside for their matches, so we may as well stick with the theme. Essendon too are claiming rights to Good Friday. Perhaps Collingwood and Essendon could play each other on Good Friday and follow it up a week later with a return clash on ANZAC day?

All of these club presidents only seem to advocate for big Victorian teams? Adelaide is a big club. So is West Coast. Why shouldn’t they play? And is there some reason why it must be the same two teams every year - what would be so wrong with different match-ups, like ANZAC Day used to be.

Age football writer, Caroline Wilson, is on the other side of the argument, using her ‘Arrow’ segment on Footy Classified last week to call for no games to be scheduled on Good Friday because it is “tradition” to not have football on this day. This argument makes even less sense than Brayshaw’s or McGuire’s. Can something be a ‘tradition’ on the basis that it has never happened? Using this logic, it is a tradition that Hawthorn can’t defeat Geelong in a Home & Away game, but hey, we just might one day.