In blowing away the Gold Coast Suns, Port Adelaide showed a full range of gears being driven by a winning mix of quirky veterans and sundance kidsThere’s an almost avian quality to how Connor Rozee moves on the football field. He hovers and lurks. He swoops and steals. He glides in, and accelerates out of a contest. On Saturday night, he anticipated the spill from a throw in, met the ball at full cruising speed, took it in his left hand, switched to his right, consulted his protractor, caressed the ball on the lateral column of his preferred foot, and let it tumble, talk, and taunt its way past the scrambling Gold Coast defender. From gather to goal-line, it took...
This year offered West Coast a chance to reset. But two consecutive floggings and the biggest losing margin in their history have the Eagles in a tailspinChapter 12 of Stephen King’s Misery ends with the line: “Then the rain came and things changed.” In King’s book, the weather turned, Annie Wilkes’ mood darkened, and Paul Sheldon forfeited his foot. When the rain came for the West Coast Eagles in 2019, they kept their legs, but lost the double chance. Since that day, pretty much nothing has gone right.It was round 22 - Richmond at the MCG. One of the great games of the pre-Covid era. In the first term, the Eagles played almost perfect football – the clean, crisp, kick-and-catch...
The recent spate of suspensions for dangerous tackles may be the least understood and worst explained change in the history of the sport“If we keep going at this rate, there’ll be no tackling by the end of 2024-25”, Brian Taylor squawked on Friday night. “When you play this game, surely you sign up for a dangerous game. You’re not a tiler, laying tiles in a safe environment. It is a dangerous, physically brutal, one-on-one sport, and that is the most appealing thing about it.” “I give up on that one,” Matthew Richardson said. “I’ve just got no idea,” Luke Hodge added.It was in response to Jarrod Berry being reported for dangerous tackling, which was swiftly and predictably thrown out. It...
Blues coach was a magnificent footballer but after an abysmal season-and-a-half the reality is he hasn’t made it work at the clubHere’s Carlton chief executive, Brian Cook, last night: “Michael Voss will be with us until at least the end of next year.” Here’s the president, Luke Sayers: “The boys love Vossy … Vossy is a phenomenal human.” Here’s sportswriter Peter Ryan: “The Age spoke to six people inside and outside the club who are familiar with the environment surrounding the Blues’ current predicament, and none thought that moving on the coach was an option even worth considering.” Here’s pundit David King: “It’s not anywhere near the crisis some are making it out to be – most issues simply require...
The Gold Coast Suns also showed substance in victory over Adelaide while the GWS-Richmond clash put other prime-time match-ups in the shadeMany moons have waxed and waned since the Gold Coast Suns were a talking point following a round of football that did not question their very existence. For years the expansion club have been hard to take seriously, a team slightly less threatening than a Carlton forward’s set shot. But on Saturday night, they radiated energy like sweat on a humid Darwin night, kicking nine unanswered goals either side of half-time to defeat Adelaide by six goals.For so much of their history, the Gold Coast has been a broken team with the soul of a Docklands’ ATM, wrecked by...