Big moments have a tendency to reveal essential truths. It’s true of people, institutions, and sporting teams alike.
They don’t always reveal weaknesses necessarily, like when Hans Gruber and his boys took over Nakatomi and the essential truth of John McClane revealed itself to be that he’s a smartass with a pretty good eye for stopping robberies, nor do they always reveal strengths.
They simply revealed truths that were always there if you were looking for them.
In the qualifying finals, essential truths were revealed about Fremantle and Brisbane. It’s not that they can’t pull a 2020 and end up meeting in the Grand Final anyway, nor is that those truths are fatal to them necessarily, but they are there and they need to be accounted for.
For Fremantle, despite being one of the better home and away teams in recent memory, they have a defined method of ball movement and the tweaks that they can make are more around the margins than at their core.
They kick long and wide to Luke Jackson or one of their key forwards who has worked their way to defensive wing to compete. Either that player marked the ball, or the Dockers won the ground ball on defensive wing and exploded through their cavalcade of elite runners like Murphy Reid, Shai Bolton, Andy Brayshaw, Hayden Young etc.
It worked for them through the season because while they were middle of the pack at moving the ball from D50 to F50, when they did get it out, they were so quick and precise that they usually scored. They were fifth in taking the ball from D50 to a score and second at turning chains into scores.
Beyond the stats, the method is like a hurricane where it has a natural, destructive momentum. You kick one goal from a long exit and run through the middle, then you kick another, then another, then you’re winning out of the centre square and the game is over. That’s what Freo did over and over this year, and why I regularly called them a hit squad. They parachuted in, did some damage quickly, then helicoptered out.
The essential truth is, however, that they don’t have many other ways of moving the ball from defence. That method of exit is both a product of good talls and an explosive midfield brigade, but also that they don’t have a creator off half back in the mould of a Bailey Dale. Jordan Clark is the closest thing to it but his kicking is just okay compared to the great half back creators. He had seven turnovers on the best night of his career.
If you can stop that ball movement, like Hawthorn did by constantly rolling an extra number up to those long down the line exits and forcing Fremantle to go laterally when they did win an up the line contest, Fremantle doesn’t have another way to play. They couldn’t kick it through the Hawthorn press and consistently ended up getting stuck around their defensive wing, the area where they launched so many of their attacks.
They had other problems, like shakiness in defence outside of Alex Pearce in 1v1 situations or open forward line situations and Mason Cox’s lack of physicality, but all of them are ameliorated if momentum is in their ball movement.
It wasn’t on Thursday night, and they were destroyed.
For Brisbane, the essential truth is less complex but arguably more dangerous. They had a tendency this season to look past opponents, especially defensively. You got the sense throughout the season that, other than Josh Dunkley and Harris Andrews, most of Brisbane’s players wish they were NFL players and only had to play one side of the ball.
At times you would look at Will Ashcroft’s patterns at centre bounce and wonder if he knows the other team is allowed to get the ball and he is allowed to chase them if they do. He looked like Michael Cera playing soccer in Superbad.
On the whole, their defensive numbers are atrocious for a two-time reigning premier. They gave up the sixth most points in the season and were among the bottom 5 in every stopping ball movement stat including being sixth worst at stopping chains to score.
With all that Sydney has been through over the past five weeks, and having lost the skeleton keys to their ball movement in Chad Warner and Nick Blakey, Brisbane looked past them on Saturday afternoon. Tom Papley reported that exact attitude on Sunday morning, when he told the Sunday Footy Show that Brisbane players were “saying” they expected the Swans to “fold”.
On their way to conceding 141 points, the hallmarks of Brisbane arrogance – mids absurd running patterns and their inability to stop ball movement – showed up. Sydney had 15 scoring shots from the back half, 17 from stoppage, and kicked 6.3 from the centre bounce.
The delta in intensity across the board was also telling, with the Swans sitting +10 in disposals and +15 in tackles.
The Errol Gulden goal at the end of the third quarter was the perfect example of all of it. After a Draper goal to bring the margin to around 5 goals, gettable for a team as explosive as Brisbane, Errol Gulden was allowed to get front position on Hugh McLuggage and stroll out of the centre square with Lachie Neale jogging behind him. He then had time to float a long handball forward to Dattoli, get it back because Brisbane didn’t squeeze up on the forward handball which is the accepted way to beat Sydney, and kick a truly beautiful goal.
It was microcosmic of the whole game. Brisbane’s pressure was poor, they failed to squeeze up, and they allowed what runners Sydney have left to do what they want. Cam Rayner, Hugh McLuggage, and Zac Bailey combined for 4 tackles. That’s how you cop 17 shots from stoppage.
Brisbane has flipped the switch before and tightened up defensively, especially against Hawthorn in round 22, but they need to do it again against an Adelaide team that might be uniquely placed to make Brisbane’s free-flowing game hard to access.
What happened to the two hottest premiership favourites this weekend was a reminder that there is no such thing as a perfect team. Every team has an essential truth at their core that they will either overcome or not. For these two teams on qualifying final weekend, the essential truths that have sat at their core all season sunk them.
The question will be whether they can overcome as we progress deeper into September.