Don’t worry footy fans…be happy

Don’t worry footy fans…be happy

GuyWhoLikesSport

Something weird is happening in footy, or more aptly, something weird should be happening in footy.

Every fan should be happy, at least a little bit.

If you consume much footy media, or listen to any of your friends who like footy, it’s pretty easy to see that everyone thinks everything is a crisis but that just isn’t the case when you look at the on-field product or the genuine prospects of success.

Take St Kilda, by way of illustration, the Saints are 5th on the ladder in a rebuilding year.

Every win from here should be a victory lap, and yet the major story that’s swirling that their CEO and coach aren’t getting along which apparently could spell catastrophe for the club.

Yeah, they probably are pretenders, but they weren’t meant to pretend this well.

They’re like Ed Norton in Primal Fear, it just wasn’t meant to be this good.  

Ed Norton in Primal Fear and Ross Lyon Saints 2.0 = Same thing. 

If you’re a Saints fan and I offered you 5th spot on the ladder at the start of the year you would have slit the throat of your third best work friend. 

 In short, equalisation is really starting work, there is no dynasty.

We have no idea who’s going to win the premiership, but we know that chances are it’ll be someone new, 5th and 13th are separated by two games. 

You’re in the top 4 – Don’t Worry Be Happy.

This one is easy.

The current top 4 is Collingwood, Melbourne, Brisbane and Port.

All 4 clubs are positioned to contend this year and at least for the next couple of years.

You can’t be mad at that.

You’ve had some recent success. Shut up and appreciate it.

Bill Simmons, the man whose style I am shamelessly ripping off, wrote a column years ago about the rules of being a fan.

One of his rules was that your team gets a 5-year grace period after having won a championship.

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GuyWhoLikesSport is the Bill Simmons of the AFL. 

I know you were wondering how I managed to wrangle West Coast into this, you should be happy with how you’re going conversation.

Here’s how.

They won in 2018 so I’m counting them until this year’s premier is crowned.

This one also catches the Tigers, Geelong, and Melbourne again.

Between negative gearing, snow season, and falling into two categories Dees fans are only permitted to be having a great time.

New coach, who dis?

The teams with new coaches have all shown reason for optimism.

The Saints and the Bombers, with their coaches Ross Lyon and Brad Scott have both massively overperformed relative to expectations.

The Saints, predictably, are the best defensive team in footy and also the number 1 turnover team in footy.

Where they have struggled this year according to a podcast I heard that had a Champion Data guy on it, because good footy stats are gatekept more tightly than the Home Affairs bribery budget, said that where the Saints have struggled primarily has been inside 50 conversion.

They rank 18th in that stat.

The Bombers are kind of the inverse.

They have scored heavily and moved the ball freely but have really struggled defensively.

If you could meld the two sides, they’d be formidable.

You can’t, but regardless each side is better than they should have been and the fanbases have genuine reason for hope.

Both teams have gone to free agency, footy’s wizz fizz (a Teflean staple), for a sugar rush in for get short term gain in recent years.

This doesn’t feel like that, both teams feel sustainable and likely to improve in the coming years.

They may not win as many games next year, especially the Saints, but the true measure for each side will come in 2-3 years as the new coach puts his imprint on mostly still young lists.

GWS have won seven in a row with their two previous losses coming by a combined 13 points, they’ve only lost by more than 21 points once this season.

Where Leon Cameron sought to defend with ball in hand, Adam Kingsley has loosened the shackles and has allowed his best players the freedom to have their best years since their run to the Grand Final in 2019.

Aside from anything else, they’re almost the best team to watch in the competition at the moment, if GWS had any fans they’d have real reason to be optimistic.

North Melbourne have obviously been terrible this year and realistically their fans should be despondent.

But they won the last offseason by adding Alistair Clarkson and he has won a lot, not sure if you’ve heard.

That’s really their biggest positive other than LDU and the fact that Ben McKay looks like he’s leaving soon.

I’m going to throw Gold Coast into this category because, as I have written previously, their list is better than you think and all accounts are they’re getting a triple premiership coach for season 2024.

Building teach tape  

Hawthorn and Adelaide, have done roughly similar things in terms of building from the ground up, with the Crows are just a couple of years ahead of the Hawks.

After some success, and some scandal, both sides jettisoned older elite talent either by choice or by that elite talent saying they no longer wanted to be a part of a place that had the racial politics of Hans Landa.  

 The upshot of it was that both sides tore it down to the studs and are building it back up.  

 For the Hawks’, the teardown job took place last offseason and they came into this year the least experienced and youngest side by 10 games and 0.8 of a year, respectively.

But, Hawthorn have massively overperformed, especially recently, relative to expectation even while sitting 16th.

They have consistently been competitive and play a game style that has basically stacked up, with a jewel in the crown of having beaten Brisbane.  

Adelaide is a couple of years ahead of the Hawks in their rebuild but what they have done should be a guide for the Hawks in how to do it.

They totally bottomed out and are still extremely young as the second least experienced and third youngest side.

Despite that, they have the 6th best percentage in the competition and a forward line that stacks up against any in the competition.

This Adelaide team reminds me a lot of the 2015 Crows in that they were a year away from being a year away, with a forward line they can hang their hat on. 

 The fact that the Crows, as an organisation, have built themselves up twice in 7 years is extraordinary. 

The Sliders  

 We’re now getting to the harder part of the game.

For Sydney and Fremantle, it would be easy to talk yourself into this season being a blip on a road to larger success, both sides were top 5 last year with excellent percentage and underlying numbers.  

This year both have been extremely disappointing.

For Sydney they have been racked by injuries and bad luck.

Based on their recent history, it is surely easy for the Sydney fan to talk himself into a return to form next season especially if one of Joel Amartey or Logan McDonald emerges as a gun forward.  

For Freo, they have shown signs of life this season notably beating Geelong at Geelong. It seems more to be an issue of a coach that has reverted to his hyper defensive ways despite having an at least decent forward line. Part of me wonders if Longmuir is under pressure and Freo enters the New Coach Who Dis tier. 

 They have to think of it as if they are Margot Robbie in Amsterdam or Babylon, before the raging success of Barbie.

Well, we’re in the finals now aren’t we?

These two are probably the two most difficult.

For the Bulldogs they won in 2017 and made a Grand Final in 2021 so they don’t fall into the grace period.

Their coach is a walking midlife crisis who appears to be the human embodiment of the “what’s up fellow kids” meme and his various obsessions with Tom O’Donnell and playing Jack Macrae on a flank or a wing (what is he? An All-Australian selector) seem to genuinely be hurting the side.

If Bontempelli doesn’t win them the game, they are cooked.

But they are in the finals as at the day of writing this and they have twice made the grand final from outside the 4 so they can’t be ruled out and their fans have to be happy with that.

For Carlton, the argument is maybe a little easier.

The Blues are currently in the finals and they should make it for the first time since 2013 (lol), that simple fact should have the fans happy.

Beyond that, their list is replete with top-end talent and the Harry McKay injury has them playing much better, and also has the Ewing Theory committee making weekly trips to watch them play.

The good news is that they have never been in this position before and certainly won’t find a way to bottle it from here!

So, there you there you have it: my dissertation on why every club’s fan base should at least be relatively happy for the first time in my lifetime.

 

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