Footy’s most confusing teams.

Footy’s most confusing teams.

GuyWhoLikesSport

Everyone has played either four or five games now and we kind of know who’s contending, who’s rebuilding, and who’s West Coast.

But some teams have me feeling like Toronaga’s son in Shogun, confused and aggrieved.

There are 5 teams who either have me or the wider footy public confused. Some might be genuine contenders for the flag, some are good, but the wider footy public hasn’t caught up, and some are talented but flawed.

I’m not ranking them by who is the best, I’m ranking them by which ones I most often mix up with Kendall Roy when I ask “are you good or bad?”.

Note also I’m not allowing myself to talk about Brisbane or Collingwood because I wrote about them recently and not much has changed.

1. Western Bulldogs

If I did this list every year since 2016, the Bulldogs would be at the top every year, they have confused me basically since that premiership because they have always been a talented but underperforming list.

You can query the talent, too.

Look at Aaron Naughton, who has kicked four goals in four games this season.

He is having his second-worst year for marks inside 50, in front of only 2018 when he was a defender and he’s averaging less than 1 contested mark per game.

Indeed, he’s only averaged 2 goals per game or better once in his career.

Naughton’s best year by average goals per game would be the 15th-best season of fellow eight-plus-year contract receiver Lance Franklin’s career.

Were we all just sucked in by the marks that he has now stopped taking?

Whenever I watch them play this year and the commentary talks about “star forward Aaron Naughton”, I’m doing a Michael Bluth impression – “him?”

Returning to the bigger picture, I think I worked them out during the Geelong game.

They’re badly coached.

The Bulldogs massively over possess the ball, leading the competition in disposal differential over their opponents with +39.5. GWS is second with +39.3, then the next best is Port with +30.8.

The difference is that Port and GWS are 1 and 2 in metres gained differential each by over 250 metres. The Bulldogs are fifth in that stat, 500m behind their high-disposal brethren. They’re fifth bottom in metres per disposal.

They faff around with the ball and often look intoxicating doing it as they get possession chains going off half back. But they have so many numbers around the ball that, when they’re out, they’re stuck kicking it to nobody because every forward got sucked up the ground to get involved in the possession chain.

Their poor structure was so obvious even Channel 7 picked it up against the Bulldogs.

They’re like a uni student, just getting over one hurdle at a time and not considering the bigger picture. They’re a future problems football team.

Bevo’s teeth look great though.

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2. Fremantle

Is there something written into the Fremantle constitution that requires them to be boring?

They’ve had a few exciting players over the year but Jesus, watching them play is like pulling teeth.

And yet, they’re 3-1 and probably should have beaten Carlton but for some embarrassing umpiring.

Two quick asides: first, if you get a call wrong and get abused as an umpire it should be allowed; second, we must know definitively what he said. It had better have been about the umpire’s family to warrant that big of a penalty.

They’re a control team that can neuter a team’s pressure game with their uncontested style.

They grind teams down with possession kicking and moving the ball from clearance to clearance when trying to kill a game but can go over the top when necessary.

They’re an attrition-based, Western Front team that would give Tommy Shelby flashbacks.

When they do get some territory, they score so well from forward 50 turnovers.

That’s how they’re second for scoring shots per inside 50 despite being well below average in total team score involvements.

They really remind me the Buckley Collingwood teams with their love of switching, possession, and defence.

So, they won’t play a lot of overly dynamic games despite a dynamic midfield of Fyfe, Brayshaw, Serong and Young among others, nor will they blow anyone away because they don’t seem to care about scoring particularly.

But they’re going to be hard to beat and hard to watch every single week. One of the more confounding 3-1 teams in recent memory.

3. Carlton

This one will be shorter.

How much longer can they keep getting away with winning these close games?

Cardiac Carlton is right.

Against Freo we saw again that they’re good in money situations, winning a big clearance that led to the double dissent free.

We also saw that they don’t make mistakes like Luke Jackson made, hacking the ball forward when stoppage after stoppage would have suited Fremantle, who were trying to ice the game up 2.

How far can being right situationally, and relying on a few superstars take you?

Ask Collingwood.

4. Geelong

I’m not confused by Geelong.

I’m just confused as to how they did it, like the Tom Cruise jump in the latest Mission: Impossible.

Are they contenders again? Even at 4-0, they probably aren’t this season, they have a bottom-4 midfield in the AFL without Dangerfield and Guthrie.

But they will be again in short order.

They are doing what the Golden State Warriors tried to do, straddling two eras at once.

The vestiges of the old era like Hawkins, Cameron and Stewart are still there and playing well, but the younger generation has had enough seasoning now to be truly good players in their own right.

Like Robert Downey Jr, they keep reinventing themselves.

I think the best example of the Geelong model is Gryan Miers, who started his career as the kind of buzzy half-forward flanker that plays for a while but is more serviceable than valuable.

However, as he’s grown as a player and he’s grown in import to the team.

In fact, over his last two years, he’s been involved in about 30% of Geelong’s scores with over 7 involvements per game.

This season he’s moved into a forward half midfielder type role and has become irreplaceable.

He’s emblematic of what they do, they get 100 games into you with a small, replaceable role and as you grow in comfort as a player, they move you into the game’s heart.

Chris Scott is the best coach in football, and it frankly isn’t close.

5. Gold Coast Suns

This is a gripe I had watching Gold Coast play GWS, so indulge me.

Someone tell the Fox Footy crew that this isn’t Gold Coast in their second year of existence.

Credit to them for showing up to where the game was played this week, but it might be worth watching some of the team’s other games before you get there.

The fact that they played GWS close for as long as they did shouldn’t be an enormous shock.

Does everyone not see that, outside of their very weird loss to the Bulldogs, Gold Coast have been quite good under Dimma?

 

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