Billy Picken would have loved round 19, a vintage weekend which finished with a flourish off Jamie Elliott’s boot“The game provides the same entertainment for a bloke who’s a million-dollar company director as it does for a bloke who shovelling dirt in a trench.” Billy Picken said that in 1981. He died on the weekend, aged 66. He was a magnificent, if unorthodox, footballer. A big-occasion performer, a beloved figure at Collingwood and a player who entertained suits and ditch diggers in equal measure.Billy wouldn’t have had much time for duckers and shruggers, for midweek rule changes and sub-rule shifties. As a man who used to commentate his own play, he was probably more informative and erudite with a mouthguard...
After a decade of finals but no flags under coach Chris Scott, the 2022 Cats are the best placed since 2011 to win Geelong a long-awaited premiership At the end of the 2018 season, following yet another cutthroat final that had gone belly-up in less than ten minutes, another final where the Cats had looked old, slow and ripe for a rebuild, Chris Scott addressed the players, staff, and sponsors. “We’re not giving up,” he told them. “We’re not playing it safe. No rebuild. No managing expectations. No acquiescence to equalisation.”For many, it was typical Chris Scott – stubbornly trying to beat the handicapper. Every year, the Cats would lug their weight, and race on the speed. Every year, they...
Anderson’s clutch goal was the exclamation mark on a season in which Gold Coast have finally earned respectNoah Anderson barracked for Richmond as a kid. It was a strange choice, given that his dad was a two-time premiership player with Hawthorn. Noah was 11 when a rugby league player beat the Tigers with a kick after the siren. His dad Dean was on the Gold Coast this weekend. That day, he’d learnt that former teammate Paul Dear had died of pancreatic cancer. That night, he watched his son kick the most important goal in the history of the Gold Coast Suns.It shouldn’t have got to that point. The Suns were 40 points down and playing as badly as they have...
The bitter rivalry shared by the Cats and Tigers only intensified after the weekend’s MCG thrillerAmidst all the sanctimonious slop, the slaps on the wrist, and the shock jock slanging matches, an actual round of football broke out. It was billed as Moving Weekend. It was supposed to be the round where the big boys made their run, and where the also-rans stood revealed. It pitted first against second, third against fifth, fourth against sixth and seventh against eighth. By Saturday afternoon, it had already re-established Melbourne as the top dogs, exposed the less than leonine Brisbane and added another half dozen pages to Essendon’s internal review.As Richmond and Geelong warmed up at the MCG, the Dockers were trudging off...
Drug scandals, charity drives, ‘acts of bastardry’ and Hall of Fame acclaim… somewhere in all the madness, some exquisite football was playedThe week in footy began, as these things do, with a Texan in protective goggles tearing the Queens Birthday game to shreds. It proved that people are still willing to go to the football in large numbers. It revealed all sorts of cracks in the reigning premiers. It saw a rollicking finish from Collingwood. It compressed the ladder, and threw the premiership race wide open. It raised millions more for Motor Neurone Disease research.It then quickly moved, as the week in footy always does, to the negative. It zeroed in on an 18-year-old No 1 draft pick. It emphasised...