There’s no need to bemoan a sport gone soft, just reflect on what it means to an Indigenous footballerRichmond supporters will be waiting for Tom Stewart on Friday night. It’s been coming for nine months. He’ll be booed as vociferously as a footballer can be these days. He’s fair game, apparently. He’s a magnificent footballer and a big boy. He rearranged Dion Prestia’s face, and now it’s payback time. “Good, clean fandom,” broadcaster Gerard Whateley called it this week.But what happened at the MCG last Sunday was more complicated than good, clean fandom. It was a particularly spiteful beginning to the Magpies v Swans game and the Collingwood crowd was riled up. At first, the booing of Lance Franklin seemed...
The rise of Geelong and Collingwood proves the game has changed since Richmond’s premiership years. Can the Tigers evolve to find success again? “As a football club, I reckon we fail well,” Richmond CEO Brendan Gale said in the lead up to Saturday’s clash with West Coast.He’d just been pipped for football’s top job by the company man. His team couldn’t take a trick. His coach was cranky. Half his list was sidelined. Against Gold Coast, at a ground they hate, against a team that always brings out the worst in them, they looked tired, confused and frustrated. They gave away 50 metre penalties, flubbed kicks across goal, and sprayed easy sets shots. They’d addressed their deficiencies, but completely regressed...
By picking the company man backed by the outgoing Gillon McLachlan the league knows exactly what it’s gettingThe AFL cast their net around the world. They spent more than a million dollars on the search. It dragged on for nearly 12 months. For a while, it looked as though the league was about to appoint its first female chief executive. But in the end, they went for the man in the office next door. They opted for the company man, the safe pair of hands.For many, the appointment of Andrew Dillon as the CEO of the AFL is the epitome of the boys’ club. He ticks a lot of boxes – six premierships at Old Xaverians in the amateurs, and...
In Sunday’s come-from-behind win over Adelaide, Craig McRae’s team continued to take risks but their success is not all voodooThis week’s column was supposed to be about Richmond. It was supposed to be about their truly ghastly game at Marvel Stadium, a ground they hate, against the sort of team they would have rolled over with absolute contempt a few years ago. It was supposed to be a look at time’s assault on champion players, and on champion teams.And then Collingwood happened. You’re probably sick of me writing about them. I’m sick of it myself. It’s becoming ridiculous. “Every week is a new adventure,” Craig McRae said a few weeks ago. And every week, they outdo themselves. They’re the team...
The returned coach has made great strides with his team unbeaten during the opening three rounds and top of the AFL ladder“Ross the Boss!”, they chanted on Saturday night, “Ross the Boss!”. As always, the Boss seemed a bit bewildered by all the fuss. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a slog. Ross Lyon had spent the best part of summer tempering expectations, and watching his best players go down, one by one. What the hell is going on? Half his list is on crutches or in a sling, yet here here is, undefeated, and in danger of becoming a cult figure.To understand what this means for St Kilda, the pre-match sesquicentennial is a...