AFL Fraud Watch

AFL Fraud Watch

GuyWhoLikesSport GuyWhoLikesSport

We’re about two months into the season and the ladder has started to crystallise and equalise, with everyone playing seven games other than Gold Coast and Essendon because of the Opening Round hurricane.

Given that we’re all pretty much equal, it’s a good time to have a look at the ladder and check on three teams that might be frauds when it comes to their premiership chances.

The rules are simple. You have to:

  1. be in the eight; and
  2. have a fatal flaw that makes you a George Santos level fraudster.

GWS

Fatal flaw: Lack of time in forward half

Given their list, I can’t believe GWS is here, but they have to be.

When they’re on, they’re Bill Belichick’s girlfriend scary.

But with the amount of pressure they put on their defence and their commitment to the tsunami above all else, it’s hard to be on often enough.

Only North Melbourne, West Coast, and Richmond have less time in forward half than GWS. Those same three clubs and St Kilda are the only teams with a worse inside 50 differential.

The Giants don’t play the volume game well enough.

With speedy, high-pressure players like Harvey Thomas, Darcy Jones, and to a lesser extent Brent Daniels, that’s unforgiveable.

Even though they have Sam Taylor, Jack Buckley and Connor Idun in defence, and their defence is incredibly efficient giving up the fewest goals and scoring shots per inside 50, there’s too much on their plates.

At a certain point, weight of numbers will show.

It certainly did against the Bulldogs last week.

They want to live the hard way.

A repeat entry won’t make your biceps smaller, Adam Kingsley.

Adelaide

Fatal flaw: SLOW up forward

In a sense, the Darcy Fogarty injury may end up being a bit of a blessing in disguise for Adelaide, not that we saw it against Fremantle.

The Crows fatal flaw is that, ahead of the ball, they are SLOW when Thilthorpe, Fogarty, Walker, and Curtin all play.

It’s a bit of a Tom Brady situation where his lunatic approach to football was his greatest strength but also cost him Gisele Bundchen.

Although honestly, he should have known when she was working on her “jiu jitsu” at 9:30 on a Friday night.

Those talls make them one of the best mark and goal per inside 50 teams, but one of the worst when the ball hits the deck.

They’re 15th in forward 50 ground ball gets and 14th in inside 50 tackles.

Josh Rachele, not a known pressure player, should help the ground ball numbers after coming in for Fogarty, but they can’t win without more juice at the fall of the ball.

In a sense, they’re the inverse GWS.

Adelaide is middle of the pack for time in forward half and inside 50 differential because they set their structure relatively high up the ground, but don’t have the horses to make anything of it while GWS has the horses but not the structure.

Hawthorn

Fatal flaw: No superpower

Regretfully, I have no choice but to conclude that Sam Mitchell is a genius.

To have this group sitting 5-2 and fourth on the ladder is remarkable.

The game that crystallised his genius was, to me, the wind-affected game in Tasmania against GWS in Round 3.

With the wind, the first two quarters indicated that one end was the scoring end and one end was impossible to score on.

Coming out of half-time, Hawthorn was kicking into the non-scoring end but managed to flip the script.

Hawthorn essentially didn’t kick the ball as they came out of defence in that third quarter.

Instead, they flooded the defence at every opportunity and used those numbers to chain handballs out.

And then, when they got it deep, they sweated on GWS’ run and handball game and kept numbers in the corridor to nullify GWS and Finn Callaghan’s run to force repeat entries and take away GWS’ one and only wood.

It was a bit Oleksandr Usyk-y, who takes the first part of fights to gather information on opponents then, always comes home with a wet sail.

But Usyk has superpowers. His movement and gas tank are impossible for a heavyweight, so is his hand-speed.

Hawthorn doesn’t have that, they lack star-power especially with Will Day out.

That was true last year as well, but the Hawks played unsustainably good footy at the end of last year.

This year, they’ve generally been more middle of the pack and are well down on all of their scoring numbers compared to last year.

The biggest indicator is forward half-scoring. Last year the Hawks kicked 45 points per game from the forward half.

This year, with a group of small forwards that aren’t playing as well, they’re down to 38 points.

This is a team of B+ talent elevated by an A+ coach.

Systems win seasons but players win finals – ask Hawthorn about Willie Rioli in last year’s semi-final.

Hawthorn doesn’t have the players.