Preliminary Finals Preview

 Last Week           1/2           Season Total      139/205

The semi finals went very predictably (he says, even though he only got one of them right).  Both teams who put in poor first week performances bounced back in two almost identical games where very fast starts were had.  In Brisbane’s case, Adelaide mounted a little bit of a comeback, but it sputtered out quickly and Geelong were good enough to hit the front before Luke ‘The Unicorn’ Jackson snuffed out all hope.  I asked A.I. to give me an artists impression of that last statement and it produced this, which was pretty good I thought, on short notice.

I make it sound like it was easy but getting A.I. to produce that was painfully troubling.  The horn seemed to be the sticking point (pardon the pun) with it almost never being on the forehead.  It put the horn on the tip of the nose, on the chest, on the front knee and on the rump.  The fact that it failed at a pretty simple instruction over a very iconic mythical beast had me quite worried for the future.  Imagine giving your future A.I. housemaid the simple instruction of making your bed only to find that it interprets that as ‘destroy all humans.’  I’m starting to think that likelihood is high.  And we would suffer the irony of dying out as a species, not because we were out-witted by a superior intelligence, but because we were too smart to realise how stupid it really was.

The most frustrating thing about creating that picture is I asked it to do it in the style of WEG and it went and added his signature to it.  Once it was finally good enough, I didn’t feel comfortable presenting art signed by someone who didn’t actually do it and is also no longer with us.  But the simple instruction of asking A.I. to ‘remove the WEG signature’, not only removed the signature but also put the horn on the cat!?

Anyway, a couple of cracking games to get on with here.

Sydney vs Fremantle     SCG        Friday Night

Sydney supporters have been on tenterhooks waiting for the team to implode through lack of decent players.  Will it be this week?  Not only have the Pullman Five pulled out, but the captain is down too, suffering a knee injury.  There is always risk associated with tipping Sydney when one quarter of the starting team is not playing, but they have more heart than Phar Lap.  Or at least more heart than the display case housing Phar Lap’s heart in the National Museum.  But the rest of Phar Lap is in Melbourne.  Is that where his spirit resides?  Is spirit more important than heart?  I feel I’m wandering off topic, but it is a compelling existential debate.

What about Fremantle?  They showed last week why they finished on top of the ladder and treading the haggard grass of the SCG won’t be too troubling as they have won 2 of their last three games there against Sydney.  But here’s an interesting statistic to put fear into Freo supporters…Fremantle have NEVER won at the SCG at night.  Only 5 of their 21 games have been scheduled there at night but they have never walked away with a premiership point in any of them.  But this Fremantle team is a more well-rounded, better polished unit than past night visitors there.  The weather on Friday night appears to be clear and even a bit summery.

It’s been a finals series of clearances and while Grundy is a damn fine ruckman, he has to tame a Unicorn on Friday night which lore tells me is notoriously difficult.  In fact, the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual is pretty clear on the fact that Unicorns are untamable, and I have no basis of which to dispute that.  Fremantle should get a lot of clearance from the middle and from stoppages.  On a ground as short as the SCG this will give their monster forward line a good look.  Up there they have a Prancing Pony, which can be tamed.  In fact, a Pony does not prance unless tamed and trained to do so.  What is it with horse metaphors at Fremantle anyway?  Unicorn, Prancing Pony, Big Cox…are they compensating for something?

As clearances probably won’t go in Sydney’s favour, they can’t run a stoppage game and will need to ping the ball around between the arcs in possession style.  The key will be winning possession in the back / half-back area and use the added width that the SCG affords to drag Fremantle’s defensive structure further apart and then try to canter through it.  Now I’m using horse metaphors!?  If they get the same output from their forwards as they did last game, then they are a strong chance.  Easier said than done.

So, what’s it to be?  I honestly don’t know.  This is a flat out guess (he says as if the previous 205 weren’t)  Fremantle by 12 points.

Hawthorn vs Brisbane   MCG      Saturday Twilight

I’m not really a fan of either of these teams, but I suppose one of them has to make it into the Grand Final.  Hawthorn have the benefit of a rest after putting on a perfect pressure performance against Freo a couple of weeks back.  Meanwhile, Brisbane rebounded after a very poor showing against Sydney before Fagan gave that classic Dad talk, “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.”

The case for Hawthorn is the well-restedness and the fact the match is at the MCG.  These two teams don’t play each other all that often at the MCG, but Hawthorn usually win when they do.  How improved were Brisbane really?  Sorry to say Adelaide supporters but a lot of how well Brisbane won rests on Adelaide’s shoulders who didn’t turn up and couldn’t arrest the slide before finally giving up.  That’s brutal, but that’s footy.  Hawthorn present a challenge as they have a formidable midfield and are an exceptionally disciplined and well drilled side.

No doubt about it, despite the way they won last week, Brisbane is a good side and know what to do around this time of year and will be a handful for the Hawthorn tacticians.  They have genuine winners in almost every position.  There is nagging doubts in my mind though because Brisbane have turned in some insipid performances this year and I feel their attitude is not too predictable.  If they can’t be motivated by a do or die final and a chance for glory the following week, they don’t deserve it.

Last time they met Lohmann got off the chain, but he already did that last week and might rest on his laurels a bit.  I haven’t seen him put two good games together.  Lachie Neale was a midfield beast, getting 35 touches, 9 tackles and 6 clearances.  But then on the Hawthorn side, Newcombe had an incredible 11 clearances and his team relied more on an even spread of contributions, but they got absolutely toweled up at The Gabba.

The key to this match will be pressure.  Hawthorn will bring a level that Brisbane hasn’t experienced yet this finals series as they let Sydney do what they want and Adelaide just didn’t bring any.  Brisbane have the wherewithal to deal with that though.  I’m unsure, in the Hawthorn coaches box, what the right tactics are to make headway into a hot Brisbane outfit.  Maybe you need to hope Brisbane have one of those poor showings.  But this is exactly why I’m not an AFL Coach and Sam Mitchell is.  The coaching staff wouldn’t get a lot of confidence entering the box and I say, “I don’t have any ideas, let’s hope Brisbane don’t show up.”  Mitchell, however, probably has some plans and an effective way to communicate them.  But I don’t think it will be enough.  Brisbane by 16 points.

Brownlow

I forget to preview the Brownlow each year as I don’t generally think about it until the Monday night itself.

The bookies have N. Daicos as runaway favourite and if the voting goes as they predict this could be the quickest count in history with him having an unassailable lead by Round 10.  But I wonder if Collingwood won enough games?  Can a player poll enough votes from a team that won only half their games versus a player from a team that won more than 80% of their games?  The answer is yes.  While you might think, putting a sneaky $20 on Bailey Smith at $80 to 1 is a good idea, you have to remember that N. Daicos is literally the one diamond in the Collingwood sack of coal.  In every win, he will get 3 votes most likely and many of the games they lost the margins were low enough that he will pick up 1, 2 or possibly 3 votes in those too.  There is almost no-one who will steal votes off him (except Pendlebury on Anzac Day – a nostalgic 3 votes there).  Putting your hard earned cash on Murphy Reid or Caleb Serong is a mug move as the three votes is going to any one of 15 players who all contributed to their wins.

At $1.01, your best bet is to go to Twitter and see if you can get Elon Musk to lend you $1,000,000,000,000 (which he has) and find a bookie willing to take it so you can get a return of $10 billion.  You could even offer up a billion to Elon as interest.  He’d take that for sure.  Guaranteed you’d find a bookie that would take that because…what do umpires know? P. Cripps for the win!