One week into the season, with the thread going so well, they take it away from us!

Anyway, good opportunity to grab some early attention for the new one!

What a pain to have to start it all again!

With the old forum consigned to oblivion, we won't be able to hold your pre-season predictions against you, MA...!

Round 2
St Kilda 125 Carlton 85
Crowd 43,396

St Kilda’s 10th win in a row against Carlton.

Carlton’s 23rd game in a row conceding at least 100 points.

The first quarter gave no indication of what was to come. Carlton kicked the first 4 goals of the game, 3 from free kicks, 2 of them unbelievably soft. In fact, of Carlton’s 4 goals 4 behinds in that first quarter, 3 goals 2 behinds were from frees. While the umpires were all but putting the ball through the posts at one end, St Kilda started with a woeful 5 consecutive behinds. As quarter time approached, the scoreboard read St Kilda 5 Carlton 28 – even typing it now, it looks ridiculous. St Kilda managed 2 goalless quarters against Sydney last week but to go goalless against Carlton would have made us the laughing stock of the AFL. Fortunately, 2 late goals saved the humiliation although it still left us 11 points down at the first break.

From that point on, the game went as expected. A 6 goal to 2 second quarter and a 4 goal to none third ended the game. The lead blew out to nearly 10 goals in the final term but Carlton finished by kicking 3 goals in the final 2 minutes.

Despite the easy win, I’m not impressed. I had St Kilda pencilled in for 3 wins in the first 3 games (it’s Geelong in Round 4) but we could have serious problems against the Western Bulldogs (who we normally beat) on Friday playing like this. This result did not say that St Kilda are a good team – it said Carlton are shite. Anyone who saw Chris Judd up until half way through last season knows that he was the best player in the AFL by a mile. Since then, things have gone badly wrong. I don’t know how long he needs to recover from his operation in the close season but, right now, he is an ordinary player playing in a shocking team. The only good sign for Carlton was that the number 1 draft picks of 2005 and 2006, Marc Murphy and Bryce Gibbs, were their 2 best players.

St Kilda yet again looked too slow. I really worry about how we will fare against the slick, fast moving, handballing teams like Geelong and Hawthorn. It looked like the Land of the Giants at Telstra Dome tonight – 17 of St Kilda’s 22 players were over 6 foot tall. When the ball’s at ground level, some of these blokes take several minutes to bend down and pick it up by which time some fast midget has already scooped it up and got it down the other end.

Moaning after a 40 point win – just wait till we lose.

Setanta is randomly free this weekend on US Satellite so I watched Geelong-Essendon. Holy God were Essendon bad.

The statisticians tell us that Essendon made 60 errors yesterday while Geelong amassed 462 possessions, the second highest total ever recorded in the AFL.

Geelong play Melbourne next week who've lost their first 2 games by margins of 104 and 95. The bookies have made Melbourne the longest priced outsiders in AFL history at $10; Geelong are $1.03.

Chris Connolly, Melbourne's Director of Football, said yesterday "we could have Jesus Christ playing at centre half forward and he'd be held goalless the way we're playing."

Speaking of the umpiring... looks like we are in for a treat this season...

With players not allowed to speak to an umpire without copping a 50 metre penalty. Is that a bit draconian, or what? What next, a 100 metre penalty for a sarcastic smirk? It would be amusing if they tried to institute those sort of measures in soccer for communicating with a referee!

Seems like the AFL are hellbent on removing as much physical contact from the game as possible: now ruckmen aren't allowed to touch each other throughout a ruck contest.... and defenders hardly dare to lay a hand on a forward when they are standing them. Demetriou wants "his" game to look like basketball... as AFL comes to look more and more like a made for TV game and less and less like grassroots Aussie Rules.

As AFL CEO, Andrew Demetriou has overseen an era of incredible success – record levels of participation, record attendances, record memberships and the most lucrative tv contract in Australian sport. Despite that, he is universally loathed. The sight of Demetriou, a former North Melbourne player, trying to kill off his former club, which has been around for 138 years, by making it the latest rugby state franchise turned many a stomach.

He's turning the game "soft" and making it impossible for defenders to defend for 2 reasons:

1. To allay the fears of "soccer moms" that their kids will get heads and limbs smashed if they play Aussie Rules.

2. The advertisers want goals, goals and more goals. Foxtel show each quarter uninterrupted but Channels 7 and 10 show a commercial after every goal. The last thing they want is a 12 goal slugfest between St Kilda and Sydney – give them a 40 goal shootout every time. Anyway, who cares about defenders – all the kids want to be Nick Riewoldt not Max Hudghton

Patrick Smith, in this morning's "Australian", is suggesting that Nick Riewoldt should play at centre half back..... because he is clogging up the St Kilda forward line!

I've just read the Patrick Smith article and taken great offence at this line:

"when he (Fraser Gehrig) retired he had kicked 540 goals and was something of a cult figure with the easily pleased St Kilda fans."

I'm easily pleased by anyone who wins 2 successive Coleman Medals and was the last player to kick 100 in one season.

Incidentally, the Patrick Smith entry in Wikipedia is slightly inaccurate. I wonder if those not familiar with him can spot what's wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Smith_%28journalist%29

Ha, ha... did you alter that wikipedia entry, MA?

On the topic of Victorian footy journalists.... Caroline Wilson is another real gem, isn't she? She has all the personality of a lump of concrete, and looks like she is about to bite the heads off anyone who has the nerve to speak to her. When Ange Postecoglou comes on "The Offsiders" to present his five minute soccer segment, Caroline actually looks like she is hissing and spitting at him. She seems to believe that Aussie Rules is "the world's greatest game..."

She's the Margaret Thatcher of sports journalism. Actually, I think Caro's softened a bit since she had her braces removed. I couldn't believe the way she flirted with Sam Newman in the North Melbourne changing rooms on last week's Footy Show.

As Sam said afterwards, he's thinking of making a change to that notorious house of his.

Round 3

Western Bulldogs 125 St Kilda 87

Crowd 38,677

I’ve been expecting this for a few seasons now. Every time we play the Bulldogs, I think their pace is going to be too much for us but, for the last 4 years, St Kilda’s physicality and height has won. Except, that is, in the game late last season when St Kilda threw away a 4 goal lead in the final quarter to finish with a draw. If that was a sign that the trend in this fixture was changing, it certainly wasn’t evident in last night’s opening quarter. St Kilda ran riot with 7 goals to 1 and a quarter time lead of 45-8.

It wasn’t the fact that the Bulldogs managed to turn that deficit around that was astonishing, it was the suddenness with which everything changed. During the first quarter, the Bulldogs did not take a single mark inside 50. Within 20 seconds of the restart, they’d done that and kicked a goal. From that point on, this was a completely different match. St Kilda still led by 18 at half time but the lead changed hands early in the second half and the game was over.
The change in tactics by the Bulldogs was pretty simple – they dropped numbers back into defence and double and even triple manned on the three big forwards. Patrick Smith would have been delighted to see how cluttered it was in the St Kilda forward line. It became practically impossible for the big men to take a mark and, through sheer strength of numbers, loose balls ended up in Bulldog hands. They then used their pace to race away from the lumbering giants, sped through midfield knowing that the plodders St Kilda have there would never be able to catch them to lay a tackle, and then kicked accurately into the forward line. There’s not a lot of height in their forward line but, like the rest of the team they’re nimble and, as mentioned above in this thread, any contact leads to a free kick. 4 of the Bulldog goals in the second quarter came from frees.

So what did St Kilda do to counter this change of game plan? Nothing. The final three quarters were an embarrassment. St Kilda should have cleared out the forward 50, isolating Gehrig and Koschitzke with their markers, and congested the midfield to strangle the opposition runners. That’s what Sydney would have done. Perhaps Ross Lyon is fed up with the Sydney Mark II tag – or maybe he’s not as smart as we think.

Next week we play Geelong, a truly terrifying prospect.

Who thinks Ross Lyon is smart, MA?... Most non-St Kilda fans can't even remember his name!

The "showdown" in Adelaide was a real old fashioned blood and thunder match, with players (mainly Crows) going down at regular intervals with serious injuries. Even the Crows' assistant trainer was flattened at one stage. The Crows managed to win by six points.

Channel 7 showed some footage from the 1980 Grand Final yesterday- which I thought graphically illustrated the different body shapes, and playing styles, between then and now. The 1980 players were nearly all bigger and heavier than their modern counterparts, who look quicker, more athletic and more versatile. The 1980 player only knew how to go in one direction- forwards. He always kicked much longer, and didn't care if he did "kick to a contest"- unlike the modern player. There wasn't much chipping around with little short passes in 1980, and less handball. The whole rhythm of the game was different. The game was not as "technically" good in 1980, but it was probably more entertaining to watch.

I thought yesterday's SA derby (sorry, "showdown" ) was a brilliant game. There was a lot of talk during the week abour Port being "soft" after their feeble capitulation to Sydney last week and it did seem as though there was a determined effort to flatten every Adelaide player (and trainer!).

What did surprise me was the atmosphere given that Crows fans have a reputation for being a bit quiet. The noise was tremendous and almost constant throughout the game.

The Dockers, being the Dockers, downed the Eagles with a solid performance at Subi.

The Eagles really missed Judd for the first time (the fit Judd, not the 60 per cent fit Judd who plays the game nowadays). An underperforming forward line has always been the Eagles' weak spot and the absence of a two or three goal contributor from the centre really hurt.

The Dockers would do well not to get carried away. The game was error strewn and if Pavlich gets injured the Freo boys are stuffed.

West Coast go to Sydney next week and could be 1 and 4, which will bugger their season right up.

Still, barring injuries or a smallpox epidemic, Geelong are going to win the flag by a country mile, so no harm done.