GuyWhoLikesSport

The season needed some bangers for Round 8 to distract from one of the AFL’s worst weeks in living memory.  Once again, the game bailed out the competition across all the games on Thursday and Friday night, but really the whole round. Try as they might, the AFL’s consistent ineptitude isn’t enough to drag the best game in the world down with them.  But the game I want to focus is the one that set the tone for a bonkers run of bangers: Collingwood v Hawthorn  Dylan Moore’s goal after the siren drove Hawthorn to a draw against the Pies, who remain the very best in…

Four of the five biggest traditional Melbourne clubs are either in, or appear to be careening towards, significant rebuilds.  All appear certain to miss the top six and only Collingwood is likely to make the wildcard, particularly given that Carlton has been seriously incentivised to lose so they can get access to Cody Walker at pre inflation prices.  Clearly the AFL’s chicanery could lead to Carlton getting a better outcome than they would have got because they could get Walker and a pick at the end of the first round, though they’ll probably confect a way to get out of that…

Remember early this season and for most of last year, when footy had an equalisation crisis?  That led to a mostly conservative AFL commentariat talking about helping lift the teams off the bottom like they’re Zohran Mamdani. Kane Cornes, he of “Sean Darcy is fat” fame, said earlier this year that “Every decision the AFL make from here on in has to be with the end goal in mind to make the competition as even as possible.”   Soon enough we’ll be teaching critical race theory and taxing the rich. Before we get to CGT discounts though, we’re talking about making wholesale changes to the draft and everything else around it to try and make…

Michael Myers is dead. Laurie has stabbed him in the neck.  Michael Myers appears behind Laurie telling the kids she killed him.   You can’t kill the boogeyman.  Relatedly, Geelong got killed in the Grand Final last year. For most clubs, especially in the recent past, that kind of Grand Final result is a death knell for the next season. Then they got killed by Gold Coast in Opening Round, another thing that wouldn’t typically help a season.   For most clubs, that would be dying two deaths. But Geelong is 4-1 over their last five and just demolished the Bulldogs, who went into the game as a premiership…

It seems, at this stage, like Zak Butters is going to move on from Port Adelaide.   It’s a huge story that could reshape the complexion of the AFL, not least because of the money he’ll demand to cover all of his fines.  Conservatively, Butters is like a top-5 or 6 midfielder in footy who plays every minute like someone stole his lunch. He’s mean and he’s tough on the inside, but he’s also silky and explosive on the outside and is basically the sole reason Port Adelaide is currently a functioning footy club.  He reminds me of Trent Cotchin if Cotchin had a jetpack that made him…

You know when you’re playing golf and you’re slicing them, so then you overcorrect and you start pulling them, then you correct the correction and on and on it goes until eventually the game drives you to a Tiger Woods style nervous breakdown without the sex.   That’s been the Matthew Nicks story with the Crows over the last five years.   He has lurched from extreme defence to extreme attack year after year and this year, after finally reaching a nice equilibrium last year, he has lurched back into an overly defensive team that had its first 100+ point game against Carlton on Thursday night almost by accident. …

This has been, without question, one of the worst fixtured starts to an AFL season in living memory. It feels like it was dreamt up by Amy Brookheimer in the middle of a psychotic break, but somehow makes even less sense.  But now, finally, as we head into round five every team has played the same amount of games (four, for some reason) and we’re actually going to get a full round of footy for one of just 15 times out of the 24 weeks of the season. Meaning, somehow, a third of the rounds are bye compromised, including all but one of the first…

The world today confuses me.   It doesn’t remind me of the world that I grew up in.   I could be referring here to the rapid decline of international institutions, but if you look at the 1948 Italian election you’ll see they’ve been declining basically from the moment of conception.   I could be referring to a general lack of decency among the people of the world, but before I was born there were thousands of wars of choice. Now we just tweet angrily at each other while still waging wars of choice.  No. What really confuses me is football. Especially the contentedness of the fans and the wider footy commentariat…