There’s a clear standout top 4 teams in footy, and they currently occupy the top 4 on the ladder.
But nobody is impervious to weakness. Achilles had the heel, Superman had kryptonite, Tony Soprano had Livia Soprano.
What is the fatal flaw for each of the top 4?
Let’s find out
Sydney: Defending in general
You cannot make a with-ball case against Sydney. They’re ridiculous.
A fortnight ago, I would have said that if you can stop Justin McInerney and Angus Sheldrick’s corridor running lines you can stop Sydney, but both North Melbourne and Melbourne did that over the last two weeks and the Swans still dropped over 100 on each.
This team only has good defensive numbers because they score so aggressively and their pressure is so ballistic through midfield.
Tom McCartin is their best key back and he’s far from a star, while Will Edwards has been admirable as a number two key back, but neither are game definers.
Last week North Melbourne understood that, which is why they continuously bombed it deep to Nick Larkey and Jack Darling despite that not being their games. They wanted to get Paul Curtis and the North small brigade going, and it nearly worked.
Given how good their pressure is and how little clean ball you’re likely to get going inside 50, the North method is a good one to potentially beat Sydney at money team especially if you’re a team like Hawthorn that has a little more talent at ground level than the Roos.
Fremantle: Too slow to do what they do best
Imagine if Sherlock Holmes spent his days bagging groceries.
Imagine if Don Draper was in insurance.
Imagine if Walter White grew weed.
The world would be robbed of their specific genius because they refuse to do what they do best.
That’s how I feel about Fremantle.
When they get out and run, they truly look like the best team in the AFL. They have hyper-athletic destroyers the whole way across midfield and half forward with Bolton, Reid, Young, Brayshaw, Clark and Frederick and yet so often they are too slow to get into attack mode.
In the first quarter against Fremantle, Hayden Young took a mark on the half back flank and released Jordan Clark into the corridor with a brilliant handball. Clark then went to Bolton who sprayed it wide to Frederick who kicked a goal to put the Dockers up 14-6 five minutes into the first quarter.
If Hawthorn can’t stay with them, nobody can.
For the season they’re eighth in handball metres gained. I bet if you looked at fourth quarters of games they’re chasing, they’d be first.
I give Justin Longmuir a lot of credit for shifting the dials slightly in favour of more aggressive footy, he just needs to shift them slightly more for the Dockers to be just about perfect.
Hawthorn: Incredibly Jack Gunston centric up forward
This Hawthorn team leads the league in scores per inside 50 in large part because of one man: 35-year-old Jack Gunston.
The Hawks are leading the charge on the return of the genuine full forward with Gunston, who is getting about 80% of his touches inside 50 and has spent many games barely leaving the forward 50.
Sam Mitchell does that for two reasons:
- Leaving a forward deep keeps the ground long and gives his high half forward brigade space to run into, and
To point number 2, Gunston leads footy in marks inside 50.
Gunston’s movement skillset is not easily replaced, and he left Optus Stadium in a walking boot. Even if he’s fine this time, at 35 it’s no guarantee that he makes it through the season unscathed without a level of structural assistance from the Hawks.
Separate to the issue of injury, Collingwood was the only team able to gum up Gunston’s leading patterns for a whole game so far and the Hawks had one of their worst scores per inside 50 games of the season.
Fremantle had similar success on Gunston in the second half after Gunston tore up Luke Ryan in the first, and the Hawks were held to just two goals in the second half.
If Gunston plays well, the Hawks score heavily. If he doesn’t they struggle.
The Hawks have other issues, like the fact that teams have made a concerted effort not to kick high into a dominant aerial back line that struggles on the ground but to me (an issue that will get worse in Tom Barrass’ absence), the heavy reliance on Jack Gunston at his age is the biggest issue.
Brisbane: Stopping ball movement
At 6-3 Brisbane looks like they’re careening toward a three-peat, but they have one big problem at this point in the year that they need to fix if they want to join the early 2000s three-peat Brisbane team in immortality: they can’t stop ball movement.
History tells us that you need to be able to stop teams moving the ball from defensive 50 to inside 50. Brisbane is the fourth worst team in the AFL at that. Only Essendon, Carlton and North Melbourne are worse.
Last year they weren’t great, but they were acceptable at eighth. This is a far cry from that.
And it’s not because Harris Andrews hasn’t been playing either. Brisbane’s three worst games at stopping transition have come after Andrews returned from his suspension.
They can’t stop transition for two reasons as far as I can see:
- They’re struggling to incorporate a fourth predominantly offensive player across half back. While Keidean Coleman has played well in his return, plonking him in alongside Zorko, Wilmot, and Fletcher (who has badly regressed) may mean they are giving up too much defensive mettle in their quest to be able to move the ball aggressively by foot themselves, and
- Their pressure is deplorable. Brisbane is the second worst team in the AFL for pressure acts. Last year they were seventh.
Number 2 especially is an effort problem.
They feel like Selina Meyer right now trying to get their library built at Yale or some other Ivy League school. They seem to assume that they can coast on their past successes even though the past doesn’t remotely guarantee a future.