PLAYING FOR THE FUTURE
Fremantle were beaten. Again. And Melbourne list managers did a quiet fist pump.
The Demons aren’t death-riding Luke Jackson’s career, but they are death-riding Fremantle’s season. The worse Fremantle go the better it is for the Demons.
Tim Taranto, who has joined the Tigers from GWS along with Jacob Hopper, in action against the Swans.Credit: AFL Photos
Tonight Melbourne play Richmond. The Giants will quietly sit and salve the wound of another competitive loss with the comfort of barracking for the short-priced Demons to have their way with Richmond.
A Richmond loss is a Giant win.
Richmond, like Fremantle, punted on their season this year. Based on an educated guess of how their seasons might go both the Dockers and Tigers threw in their first-round picks in this year’s draft to get trade deals done. In Richmond’s case it was essentially part of the total package in the double deal to secure Jacob Hopper and Tim Taranto from GWS. And the Dockers had to toss in this year’s pick along with last year’s to get the Jackson deal done.
Both clubs did so in the confident expectation they would likely be trading picks in the teens in this year’s draft to go with the first-round picks from last year’s draft (and ancillary other picks) in their respective trades.
Currently, Richmond are fourth last, Freo sixth bottom. They will probably not finish that low, but presently both clubs face paying a much bigger price for their players than they thought they were paying when they did the deals. That doesn’t make the deals wrong, but they do now look likely to be more expensive than they thought they were.
Clubs are optimists. They all believe they are close to a flag and find the recruit coming in far more tantalising than the future pick going out. No club trades out a future first-round pick thinking they are going to go worse.
Ask any coach or president in February how their season will go and barring about two clubs they will tell you if everything goes right they will make the eight/four/win the flag.
Seldom do they say ‘if we have a normal year and normal number of injuries and normal number of upset losses we’ll go backwards’. They don’t think that way.
Clubs trade future picks like house buyers who only expect interest rates to drop.
Former Demon Luke Jackson enjoys the moment for the Dockers. Credit: AFL Photos
Richmond’s season is drifting for a mix of foreseeable and unforseeable reasons. Old players fall off the perch quickly, players young and old (Gibcus and Nankervis, Short, Prestia, get injured) some get suspended (Broad). At this point in their year they could still go in any direction, but the most likely prediction is not as glass half full as it was in October last year.
The deal on the pair was for long term and is not one that will or should be judged now after five rounds. They were brought in as transitional players not transformational ones. They are hoped to bridge the Tigers to the next flag and keep them in contention as they transition the old players out. But the price they are likely to end up paying is looking bigger than they thought it would be, which is the risk of trading your future to build a future.
Freo? Well, this is another fumbling list decision. Their strategy seems to extend only so far as getting players they can get, not which ones fit their needs. They are paying a million a year for a second ruck who is yet to prove he is a good tall forward. They chased him because they could get him but the price they are now looking at in draft terms is likely to be much higher than they expected.
They didn’t so much chase Jaeger O’Meara as welcome him. He didn’t cost in trade terms like Jackson, and his wage is heavily subsidised this year by Hawthorn, but what is he adding? They might have figured him an ideal top-up to a midfield that was contending. Now he just makes a slow midfield slower. When Nat Fyfe was fit they struggled to find a place for him and Will Brodie (who admittedly had been one of the trades of last year).
Meanwhile, the Demons happily watch the Dockers lose and the Giants tonight sit and barrack for the Demons to help them out.
Blues feel the pressure as Saints shine
Carlton at half-time had every reason to think they should be a mile in front. All stats pointed that way other than the scoreboard. But stats are misleading when you butcher the ball kicking it inside 50 the way Carlton did.
Carlton’s Patrick Cripps is tackled by Saint Brad Crouch.Credit: AFL Photos
They outplayed the Saints for a half but outplayed themselves the way they used the ball. And then the Saints owned the second half. They changed things, they moved Jack Sinclair on the ball, but most importantly they won the contested ball in the third quarter after being belted by it in the first half. And it swung the game the Saints’ way.
With the way that they fold numbers back, St Kilda make it so hard for teams to move the ball. Carlton tried going with pace, and they turned it over. They tried owning it and going slowly and St Kilda were patient and sweated them into error with the final hit and hope kick inside 50.
This was a win that enhanced the idea of how far St Kilda can go this year. This is a serious Saints team now.
Fog cleared
It was not quite the after-the-siren shot in front of a packed MCG like Jamie Elliott’s match-winner last year, but Darcy Fogarty’s third goal from the boundary in Tasmania was just as consequential and the level of difficulty just as high. After missing a much easier one earlier in the quarter this was a superb kick after a strong mark on the boundary. He didn’t even pretend to think about centring the ball. “I didn’t look inside too much,” he said.
Cameron’s stunner no accident
A fluke is something that happens unexpectedly and without intent. Peter Daicos, like Eddie Betts after him, used to kick so many ‘lucky’ goals it was agreed that maybe they had not been happy accidents.
Charlie Cameron.Credit: afl.com.au / Twitter
Daicos was either the luckiest accidental goal-kicker of all time, or he knew what he was doing.
He knew what he was doing.
That is why the presumption of genius, not the assumption of accident, should be given to Charlie Cameron and his inventive – or accidental – half-volley soccer goal.
You can churlishly insist it was just a happy accident that the ball bounced off him for a goal (even Chris Fagan said he thought it was a fluke) or you can say it was brilliantly intuitive and intentional.
To decide you have to think of the goal in the context of Cameron’s career-long body of work not the goal in isolation. He ran to meet the ball and in a blink understood what would happen next. He meant it. It was the goal of the year.
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