The normal caveats cautioning about rogue round one results ordinarily should apply, but in Carlton’s case those caveats seem generous.
The damage caused by Carlton’s loss to Richmond was profound and cannot lightly be consigned as a round one mishap of an unready team. If any team should have been unprepared it was the callow Tigers.
Richmond’s youth and enthusiasm proved too much for Carlton on Thursday night.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
This loss by the Blues in the opening game of the round was so bad that, even by round’s end, it remained the most important and season-shaping of the nine played.
Carlton must produce a Collingwood-like response this week to correct the immediate pessimism about the season ahead.
But, unlike Collingwood who played a compliant Port Adelaide, Carlton play Hawthorn. The Hawks are the last type of team the Blues are ready for right now: fast, balanced and well-drilled. All things Carlton were not.
Jake Niall’s excellent series last week on Carlton’s 30 years of waste, mismanagement and hubris was the perfect backdrop for what occurred against Richmond on Thursday night for it provided the context of why this result was so consequential. It was plainly the worst loss of the Michael Voss era, which was an era that was supposed to be unlike the flawed eras that preceded it.
More importantly, the series on Carlton’s history reminded us this is not a club that tolerates defeats of this nature – no matter when it comes in a season – unless the players deliver an immediate and significant response.
This is not to suggest Michael Voss’s job is in immediate peril. But at Carlton, a loss of this type sows seeds of doubt and establishes it as a conversation point. In a results-based business, some results are bigger than others.
We know from their season launch just over a week ago what the internal expectations are at Carlton this year. Outgoing chief executive Brian Cook was unabashed in outlining the club’s ambitions and their belief that a top-four finish was a realistic goal.
That will be unrealistic if Carlton continue to make the sort of panicked decisions with the ball in hand that they made on Thursday or if they continue to dispose of the ball with the same wastefulness.
Nick Haynes’ first game for the Blues should be his last for a while, and he should be joined in the VFL by Mitch McGovern.
Brodie Kemp looked out of place as a forward. But the Carlton small forwards looked slow and unable to apply the pressure the best AFL teams demand in that role.
What was perplexing was how and why Patrick Cripps was playing as a back-up ruckman.
Richmond would have loved that. Carlton is a team with limited leg speed and slow ball movement, but their great asset is that they are a clearance and contested ball team. That is their edge.
Why then would they use their best clearance and contested ball player – a player who won two Brownlow medals retrieving balls from packs – in the ruck?
Kamdyn McIntosh is a limited player whose strengths are his athleticism and strength. In tagging Cripps, the one area of the game he was mostly to find difficult was matching the Blues skipper on the inside of the pack. But by playing Cripps at times in the ruck, the Blues made his job easier.
Jack Silvagni was playing his first game in nearly two years, so it would have been unfair to use him as secondary ruckman, though he did look far better forward than in defence. But Harry McKay was having a dirty night, and could have been an option.
After struggling with Richmond’s pace, the Blues will surely struggle with Hawthorn and their team that runs in waves in a style reminiscent of that employed by Alan Jeans, whose Hawks teams of the 1980s borrowed from rugby’s rows of runners.
That said, a win over an in-form opponent is just what the Blues need, if they are to reaffirm themselves as a team able to compete with anyone.
Hawks have incentive
The other element to remember about this Thursday’s game between the Hawks and Blues is the added incentive Hawthorn has to put their old enemy to the sword.
The Hawks already have Carlton’s first round draft pick this year. As part of the Blues plunge to get Jagga Smith at No.3 in last year’s draft – which, notwithstanding his ACL injury, remains a sound strategy – they traded this year’s first round pick to the Hawks.
The impact of the Smith injury was painful, and was felt even more acutely against Richmond as No.1 draft pick Sam Lalor made his excellent debut and the Blues looked sluggish.
The Hawks are in form and full or run. That’s an imposing proposition for Carlton this Thursday, but it does present them with an opportunity to take a big scalp.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
But it wasn’t only Lalor who impressed this round. Finn O’Sullivan (pick No.2) made a stylish debut for North Melbourne, No.4 Sid Draper was sub for the Crows as they monstered the Saints and looked comfortable when he got his chance, and a week earlier No.5 pick Levi Ashcroft did what Ashcrofts do, transitioning seamlessly into the AFL.
Some clubs said they would have taken Smith first in last year’s draft, and he was impressing on the track before his injury.
Lalor was so exciting to watch for Richmond in his first game, but the quality at the pointy end of that draft already suggests it will prompt debate for a decade.
Just like people still debate whether Luke Hodge was a better choice than Chris Judd in 2001, or Finn Callaghan better than Jason Horne-Francis in 2021 (if you disregard academy and father-son selections).
Immediate returns
Collingwood got the sort of win Carlton now needs to right itself. They looked far better than last week, and it wasn’t only because they were back at the MCG at night out of the subtropical heat they faced in opening round against the Giants. But they looked far better for the inclusion of newcomer Dan Houston.
Houston was exceptional for the Pies against his former club. When the game was there to be won in the first half, he was the best player on the ground.
Like Houston, the other major off-season mover, Bailey Smith, had an immediate impact for the Cats. After Murphy Reid’s funky four-goal burst in the third term, the Cats needed to reassert themselves, and Smith was wonderful in that last quarter.
Dan Houston ran riot in his Collingwood debut.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Chris Scott is an excellent coach for intelligently crafting players into very defined roles across the ground, which as an analyst from a rival club said makes the Cats, “a team of clever moving parts”. Smith is a slight disruptor to that for he is still finding what that role is.
All three of Adelaide’s recruits – ex-GWS pair Isaac Cumming and James Peatling, and former Demon Alex Neal-Bullen – all kicked goals as the Crows picked St Kilda apart.
Rue but no regret for Dees
The Demons might rue their loss to GWS by season’s end, but it was not a performance they should overly regret. Yes, they should have been able to hang on to their lead in the last minutes, but by comparison to their ragged, rudderless performances last year, they looked more like a finals-worthy team that had a better idea of how they should play.
Christian Petracca was Melbourne’s best player.Credit: Getty Images
First and foremost, the game affirmed that the Giants are the real deal. At least in the home and away season they are. After their capitulation in the finals last year, they will carry doubts about their flag bona fides until September.
Melbourne spent the summer insisting they had patched up their problems and were on track again. But that’s what they were expected to say.
Actions are more persuasive than words, and their actions on Sunday spoke more than any retelling of a kumbaya meeting in Bright.
Matthew Jefferson and Aidan Johnson joined Jacob Van Rooyen up forward, giving them robust targets to at least bring the ball to ground if they did not mark it.
It was a stark contrast to the way Collingwood fed Giants defender Sam Taylor last week with long bombs and no one there to compete.
