FOR long-suffering Carlton supporter RON REED, even getting beaten by the Tigers – again – was still an enjoyable night out.
FOR Carlton supporters, recent history suggests that rocking up to the MCG for the now so-called “traditional” AFL season opener and expecting to beat Richmond was like waiting for a phone call from Tatts at half-time informing you that you were the sole winner of the $50m Powerball draw being conducted simultaneously. Alas, neither occurred. So in that sense, there was no point in being disappointed.
Indeed, it was an enjoyable event. As all and sundry have pointed out, just being back at the G after 537 days – for footy that is, not counting the Boxing Day Test and a game or two of the Big Bash for me – was a welcome experience in itself. As I have admitted in my recently-published book WAR GAMES*, I have, in my dotage, become a bit of a faded footy fan, but when I suddenly didn’t have the option to go to games or not, the flame was rekindled somewhat. So I was one of the first through the gate on Thursday night, uncomplainingly jumping through the various hoops that are now involved, and finding myself nowhere near where I like to sit in the Members, instead so high up and so far back that I should have asked for a Sherpa to guide me there.
There were people sitting beside me and behind me, and a survey of the rest of the stadium seemed to suggest there was no rhyme or reason to the 50 per cent restriction – scores of people were sitting together in many areas while there were big banks of seats with no-one in them. This was obviously a test run for the Government and it will be a major surprise if things aren’t back to normal at least by Anzac Day.
My far-flung vantage point at least meant I was a bit further away from the endless Richmond gloating that preceded the action – okay, they had two flags to unfurl, but did we have to watch all of the other 11 they’ve ever won being paraded. That’s 13 in all, which hopefully will now become their unlucky number forever – and it’s still three fewer than Carlton, don’t forget.
Just wait until we’ve got something to gloat about again – not that we’ve ever been guilty of gloating, of course!
And when might that be?
Well, with less than seven minutes left to play the Blues were within a goal of the lead, which Paddy Dow should have kicked, and the surprisingly large number of Blues fans among the 49,218 who were allowed in were getting a glimpse of the long-promised land. It seemed too good to be true – and of course it was.
The Tigers – or more accurately, Dusty Martin – roared back to life, winning by 25 points, just like they always do in this fixture. Martin just demonstrated again why he is the most remarkable player of his era and with all the premierships and medals he has already collected you can only wonder how long he is going to be able to keep this up. Five years would be a conservative guess.
Not far behind him for influence was the ageing Jack Riewoldt, whose ability to repeatedly thread shots for goal from on or outside the 50m arc is priceless. His two in quick succession in the third quarter had as much to do with the result as any other element of the entire contest.
This was Richmond doing what Richmond do.
The Blues made their share of mistakes – Harry McKay being collared after playing on from point blank range was more evidence for my long-held theory that he is well and truly over-rated – but there was also plenty to like, enough resilience, endeavour and cohesion to suggest that significant improvement is not too much to hope for.
The plusses included a fine blue-debut from Adam Saad, a strong performance from young ruckman Marc Pittonet, the usual big contributions from Patrick Cripps, Sam Walsh and Jacob Weitering, plus an eye-catching second half salvo from recruit Oscar McDonald, the first player to take advantage of the new injury sub rule.
Embed from Getty ImagesThat rule is destined to be unpopular and possibly short-lived because it is so replete with potential unintended consequences and so capable of being gamed.
McDonald will have enjoyed his introduction to it, and so will plenty of other players. But as has been widely pointed out, what if someone sits in their tracksuit for every minute of a Grand Final and is then awarded a premiership medal? No such medal has ever been thrown in a bin before, but this could be a first.
*WAR GAMES, now in bookshops, or from wilkinsonpublishing.com.au or from Amazon or Booktopia.
RIP Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the legendary American boxer who has died at 66, way too young for a dude who looked after himself extremely well and who had a lot to contribute long after he hung up his gloves. I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting him when – double name-drop alert! – Cathy Freeman introduced us at a drinks party at the Laureus world sports awards in Berlin about five years ago. They were good mates because they had a lot in common other than spectacularly successful careers, including charity work on behalf of under-privileged kids, which is one of the reasons the Laureus awards – known as the sporting Oscars – exist. Marvelous – he changed his name by deed poll so he could call himself that after TV commentators declined to do so – came across as a most agreeable character, slightly surprising when you consider how ferocious he was in the ring, dominating the middleweight division between 1973 to 1987 with a record of 62-3 and two draws, including 52 knockouts.
Embed from Getty ImagesHe told me he believed the fight game was in decline because the participants didn’t go as hard at it as h and his contemporaries did and because there were too many meaningless titles being handed out. “It’s easier to become a champion because they basically are giving away belts like candy,” he said. “Fighters today don’t sacrifice as much as the old-timers. Hagler did roadwork in heavy army boots rather than running shoes, but said: “Even before me, in the old Jack Dempsey days, there were guys who trained by chopping down trees. IT’s totally different now. Fighters are always trying to find the easy way of doing things but there is no easy way. It’s got to be from the old school, the hard way.”
FOR no obvious reason other than to talk itself up, the AFLW put out a media release the other day claiming that by just about any metric you cared to name, interest was booming. Among other things, “fans continue to flock to AFLW games around the country with a total of 87,740 attendees across Rounds 1-6.”
Hmmm. Verifying that figure has become a trickier exercise with some attendances – especially low ones – no longer appearing on the match reports on the AFL website, which wasn’t the case earlier in the season. However they can be found at austadiums.com, and if you add them up using a combination of both sites – leaving out seven games that were closed to spectators and one for which no figure has been posted on either – you come up with 85,627 for the seven rounds that have been played so far, not six. Unless I need a new calculator on my phone, that’s a considerable discrepancy.
It averages out at 2088 a game, for 41 games, compared to 6626 in 2019 and 4458 last year.
The numbers certainly weren’t helped by last weekend’s round seven, in which one game was “closed” and the other six totalled 6073 with four of them failing to crack four figures and one as low as 445, which is pretty much friends and relatives territory. The round averaged 1012.
No doubt there are influential factors in play – most obviously that adults are being charged at the gate for the first time, albeit only $10, and also the arrival of the men’s season – but however you cut and dice it, this is hard to describe as “reaching new heights” as the release was headed.
So what? Well, it’s almost illegal in the media to be caught saying anything negative about women’s footy – or women’s sport in general – these days, and even though I confess to doing nothing to improve the crowd figures myself, I sincerely wish them all well in their aspirations to become popular and successful professional sporting organisations.
But credibility is an important part of that.
RON REED has spent more than 50 years as a sportswriter or sports editor, mainly at The Herald and Herald Sun. He has covered just about every sport at local, national and international level, including multiple assignments at the Olympic and Commonwealth games, cricket tours, the Tour de France, America’s Cup yachting, tennis and golf majors and world title fights.
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