Month: July 2019

Round 19, 2019
St Kilda 3.2, 5.7, 10.10, 15.14 (104)
Melbourne 5.3, 6.4, 10.6, 13.7 (85)
Crowd: 22,854 at Docklands, Saturday, July 27th at 7.25pm

Are we feeling freer? Were we able to focus a little more on what we were meant to be doing on Sunday? Was the sun shining at a different angle, the air a little milder? For both of those last ones, the answer is actually yes. We’re pattern-seeking mammals and we read into things like that. In this case, that St Kilda has just won two games of footy playing its most interesting footy in three years, endless fluffy skill errors aside.

Richo’s success was ours, and we felt the pressure that was building on his job and the lcub in some way. Watching the Saints every week went from “Holy shit, the Billy Slater thing worked” in April to a sad countdown with no obvious end by mid-July.

Not just for the broader picture, or the Road to 2018, or the last 53 years, but more immediately a coach being sacked usually means that specific season has turned to slop. And now peeking out, or peeking through, or seeping through, or whatever, is a tiny bit of pressure coming the other way. Secretly, quietly, the mathematical chance of playing finals is a little higher now. In all likelihood this is the same teasing Road to Nowhere runs seen in 2012, 2016 and 2017, and while we’re here we might as well throw in 2003 and 2007, although each of those represented very different parts of this club’s history. Since the Pelchen days we’ve been waiting for a Riewoldt generation-style rebuild to become apparent, Road to 2018 maps or not, but the confetti and endless futures that exploded into view in 2004 haven’t eventuated. If we really wanna push it, then maybe this might be a 2008, if we can shit out some successive 108-point wins and everyone collapses around us in smoking piles of shit and draws. Fantastical scenarios in our head are justified with freak past occurrences. Remember when Brisbane made it in 1995 with 10 wins? And then Essendon did it in 2009 with 10 and a half? Remember that article that said maybe a team could make it with less than 12 wins? That could be us, and anything could happen, but usually it’s bad.

And let’s not completely get carried away. We’ve got a percentage that’s as attractive as me on the 58 tram heading into the game on Saturday evening realising I had a bit of snot on the outside of my nose. It’s a less forgiving environment too, you’re consistently the only Saints fan on that route.

Five-and-a-half minutes had us three goals down and the weird apparition that was a vaguely competent St Kilda team had disappeared in a floundering mess of red, white and black and red, white and royal blue that echoed the Camberwell and Frankston match-ups in the 1970s.

The 6.5 of the first quarter against the Dogs had turned into three players cutting across Luke Dunstan’s path as he was running in to goal, and Doulton’s set shot misses were widely known enough that when he reluctantly took the chest mark in the forward pocket in the second quarter it set off one of those moments in which everyone starts talking about it, and instead of 30,000 people (or in our case, 30) people yelling “BALL” the chorus is dispersed into smatterings of “Doulton Langlands/the video at training/he’s already missed two”.

***

Before his game turned into a career highlight, Seb Ross was merely contributing magic moments amongst quality capers that in all fairness weren’t confined to him. He kicked his once-every-several-months goal on the run from 50 metres to go with probably the classiest forward line moment of his career, but by the end he’d produced a quality body of work. Not sure that he’s screaming captaincy, but he’s seeming a whole lot less meek about it. The most promising part of the night as far as his 2021 Onwards Premiership Captain prospects go was cracking the shits with Blacres after the GOAT played the uncontested ruck contest against Gawn for a second time on the wing without actually, you know, contesting at all. and Melbourne walked in a goal at a crucial moment in the third quarter. It felt like it was going to be one of those nights at Colonial Stadium: a young team you have no reason yet to trust fumbling their way down to the wire.

Half-time saw Disney tightened its stranglehold on our home games beyond the Spiderman wall, and the giant thing of whatever the fuck it is just inside Gate 3. Simba Cam appeared to replace Kiss Cam, so instead of some tacky US MAJOR LEAGUE SPORTS half-time shit we got…forget it.

This game was heading towards zero clear resolutions. Newnes pulled out the self ankle-breaker in the opening minutes of the third quarter when abusing the game of Australian Rules football lost its appeal. But in the same way Seb kicked his long goal, Josh Bruce’s played his once-every-several-months Kosi-late-career colossus game, except he’s now played a few them in the space of a several weeks. Again, you’d consider him a leader but probably not a captain, but Paddy aside he’s the only guy that genuinely plays like one. Herculean efforts, a big presence, and I can tell from my room in Brunswick West that he does what he can to keep the atmosphere in the group lively. His first goal via ruck contest grab-and-go was weirdly aggressive, an unwieldy big guy’s version of Seb’s neat turn, and so many of his moments on Saturday were big. Who else would have kicked that goal on the three-quarter time siren? Who else was going to honour Hunter Clark’s almost-literally game breaking moment off half-back with a lead and then another set-shot goal with a 50-metre-plus kick to put us back in front in the last quarter?

Very quietly over the past several weeks, he and Membrey seem to have sorted their shit out and are rarely sighted at or near the same contest. It helps when players up the ground seem to actually know what they’re doing or would like to do with the footy, and the longer this chapter of the season plays out the less blame we can put purely on the lack of presentation foward of the ball. Bruce has kicked 19 goals in the past six games; he’d kicked 13 for the entire season before then, and Membrey has kept his own tally ticking over without needing to do anything spectacular. So much so you’d barely have realised he kicked three goals in within 10 minutes of play in the third quarter. His first might have been the worst goal I’ve ever seen, walking after loose ball that had bounced off the top of a pack and no one bothered else bothered chasing after it. Bruce is usually the ring-in, but this was part-time keeper at Wednesday night futsal giving up the one-on-one stuff.

***

Neither team really looked like they actually wanted to win. A goal off the ground from past and almost certainly future nemesis Christian Petracca after a poor goal square contest, and then a free kick immediately given away by Carlisle saw a 10-point lead became a two-point deficit in a few seconds. Bruce’s huge goal put us back in front on the siren, but I was assuming we’d all turfed the whole “we’ll run teams off their feet at Marvel Stadium” schtick (as if we’d kept that up throughout the season anyway) and wasn’t sure what else we could pull out in the last quarter. Melbourne kicked a goal in the first 20 seconds, and the next one, and the atmosphere had been sucked out of the stadium, presumably via the gates because for some reason there’s a fucking roof on our home ground.

Rather than having a moment in which the game was thrust upon some unwitting kid, Hunter Clark decided to do the reverse. He’d been good anyway, and I say that with a strange familiarity. When was the last time a Saint did something so decisive in one game, let alone a 20-year old? A fend-off with one hand, a gather with the left off-balance, and turn and acceleration off half-back is something our game plan hasn’t allowed for, or our players haven’t been capable of, or wanted to do, or knew they could do. Or whatever, and even better that Seb and Bruce could finish it off. The Best Player in the AFL Since Round 11, Rowan “I’ve Fucked It” Marshall, didn’t beat Gawn but he was clearly learning during the game and by the final quarter had figured out how to win the ball out of the ruck consistently. Nick Hind had backed out of contests, had a mark on his own on the boundary called touched over the line, and taken the game on after pulling off the shortest kick known to science and blasted it across the face all within a few minutes, but when game was down to the final minutes he had his chance to go with flight, and had the awareness and balance to stay with the ball and kick the goal.

***

Having a VFL match-up the day after is both a) a ridiculous waste of a chance have a curtain raiser; and b) a massive come down for at least on set of fans. There would have been negative willingness the morning after to go again if we’d lost on Saturday night, but all of a sudden I’m more than willing to waste a beautiful Sunday on my weird yellow pleather couch and watch Sandringham play. The all-star cast helped, sure – Battle, Webster, Steven, Parker, Marsh, D-Mac, but the Brett Ratten Effect had reached the coaches’ box of Sammy Hamill at the Wilson Storage Trevor Barker Beach Oval. Anyone who bothered tuning in would have seen the new quintessential St Kilda stuff: D-Mac running and bouncing down the wing and kicking forward to the lead of Darragh Joyce, who nailed the goal from the set shot 40 metres out. You would have seen Stuv bulleting a kick out of the air from the pocket to Robbie Young, Webster bulleting a kick through the middle to Joyce on the lead (but he missed that one). Marsh running through traffic to Joyce on the lead. You would have also seen, uh, Parker blatantly, wildly, going third-up in the ruck. Never has anyone given away a free kick while looking so confident and athletic.

The point is, guys are playing like themselves (the Parker thing aside, but the levels of entertainment, relatively speaking, are through the Concrete Disney Store’s roof). Gresham needs to stop kicking the cover off the ball but the different elements of each player are being encouraged and it shows. I’m not sure what the hell happened between April 20th and July 21st – three months and one day – but for now we can enjoy the feeling of being catapaulted into another dimension, like a cat shaking itself off after accidentally being shut in the bathroom for an entire day.

This six-week stretch feels like a pilot episode for the 2020s. Some of the cast will change. Character development will naturally occur, some will be written in and some will be written out. In the way The Simpsons and Seinfeld had their first episodes in 1989, but are linked inextricably with the 1990s (or at least the peak of the former is), the players we’re watching, if successful, will most likely be linked to the 2020s when it comes to western pop culture references and conversations had in mid-21st century bars.

What was supposed to be the next Geelong rivalry of the aughts for us hasn’t yet proven to be anything, but Melbourne and the Saints seem to keep circling each other – even last year we both decided to do things in extremes. We’re the last two teams with premiership droughts after the Lions, Swans, Cats, Bulldogs and Tigers wiped out a combined 276 years of drought the in space of 17 seasons (I’m counting the Bears, but also fuck that). We haven’t been successful enough over any period of time to generate any genuine rivalries so the consistent spotfires on Saturday night stirred a competitiveness we’ve forgotten about, or never really got that used to. If you had any empathy you could take some pleasure out of seeing Geelong break through in 2007, even if at that moment the Riewoldt generation looked to be floundering. It should have been us, we might have thought, and we definitely think it should have been us two years later. The Bulldogs also loomed as a potential rival in the next great drought-breaking race between two battlers, but we could take pleasure in their 2016 heroics. We felt like we were on our way ourselves at that point, too. Instead there’s a chance if we get our shit together with this group we’re going to be competing with Melbourne and then maybe Carlton, whose drought is at 24 years already. But all we’ve really done right now is win two games in a row.

Round 18, 2019
St Kilda 6.5, 11.6, 13.9, 17.14 (116)
Western Bulldogs 1.0, 4.5, 10.5, 14.5 (89)
Crowd: 21,705 at Docklands, Sunday, July 21st at 4.40pm

“I got friends in Kansas City with a motherfucking futon couch,
If that’s how you want to play it.”

 ***

Appearances in the spotlight have been rare in the past six years. Occasional excitement about Billings and Gresham, the landmark events that were the retirements of Lenny Hayes and Nick Riewoldt, but that’s mostly been it. This week we were confronted with mattering again, if only to a news cycle and viewer numbers and journos one-upping. We were reminded of what it’s like when cameras and media bother hanging out in the Moorabbin car park waiting for players in non-St Kilda merch to emerge. This had been reserved for the peak of the GT and Ross eras, a team of glamour boys in 2004 and 2005 that matured into a machine in 2009 and 2010.

Last Tuesday confirmed we had gone from The Age’s “story of the year” in April to simply one of the stories that will make up the year that was. Once it actually happened it wasn’t overly sensational. Probably expected, and a dignified exit in keeping with the humility of Richo’s tenure was hardly clickbait fodder.

***

What does it feel like when your season is over and you get to 4.40pm on the Sunday of Round 18? Faux new era feeling or not, the echoes of the crowd ring out around the Concrete Disney Store for longer and with a hollower tone. Everyone’s a mathematical chance by some string of freak occurrences; the Dogs had and still do have realistic finals prospects, but we’d turbo charged our “relaxed day at the footy as social outing to watch the Saints because none of this matters”.

This one had a lot more optimism, sure, with more kids doing things we hadn’t seen them do before. The weight of the recent past had been lifted, however temporarily before the anxiety begins again. Where are all the New Zealand members? Where’s the free agency big fish? All of those hot flushes thinking of wasted years will come back eventually. But on Sunday we had one day, and we now have this small window of several weeks, to exist outside of the throes and ups and downs and vigorous side to sides a that the length of an entire live season gives us, if we can ever remember what that’s like.

We don’t have a coach, maybe not officially anyway, but maybe the future does look bright, maybe this list is ok, and we can get to watch these kids run around with a clear freedom, with their dragon haircuts and sleeve tattoos and Jill’s blue boots and relatively accurate goal kicking. There is nothing yet tainting where this could be going.

The strange sensation of surety when the Coff was near the ball, the surprise aggression and progression of Hunter Clark, Doulton Langlands literally standing up to take a mark under heat from two opponents in the middle of the ground. It was all working. Even Jack Bytel got more mentions on Tuesday alone than he had in his entire time at the club.

***

Hunter was given “the next Bont” treatment by the AFL site, and since Brent Guerra’s feature in The Age after Round 9, 2004, and The Age’s 2009 August 9th and of course the infamous April 27th headline that was, uh, also in The Age, we’d be right to be terrified of any positive media coverage, ever. I don’t know what the hell happened between the time he was last dropped and recalled for the Gold Coast game. All of a sudden we have a new, other best player alongside Best Player in the AFL Since Round 11 Rowan Marshall. I keep saying it, this team has played bored and anxious footy for basically two years, but somehow we now have Hunter Clark acting as if he’s got time and space on both sides of his body, and then actually doing stuff with it. The exclamation point this week was his two goals. A set shot from 50 metres and then a wicked snap out of a stoppage, in one movement across his body from 40 metres out, which soared as high as any of Kosi’s set shots. Sometimes moments in play feel like they occur in a specific part of the ground just so you can experience them more lucidly from wherever you happen to be sitting. Watching the ball blasted from his boot, curl and then hold his line was one for Aisle 33 (and most of the members probably, but you know what I mean).

***

It actually felt like we didn’t have a coach. Like the box was empty and some veteran staff had just turned up on the day to boost morale and let the players know when it was time to run out for the game. “Just enjoy yourselves, guys”, or whatever people say.

Tory Dickson’s opener aside, something was up. This team looked different. This was the team Matt and Rich and I went to Werribee to watch in 37 degree-heat during the pre-season. There was something bolder. There was an aggression to shape the game and make it our own. The expression was back with the ball and with the mouth, which ended up with spotfires not seen since Jack Steele went out of his way to give up 50 metres against the Bombers after Jimmy Webster got collared. Nick Hind getting stuck into Dogs players after Doulton’s goal reminded us of those heady times of three months ago (it also meant there was a push and shove group next to a first-goal celebration group). It happened during actual play, too. Parker made up for his non-paid mark (which ended up with Lonie’s banana goal) by slamming into a marking contest.

Maybe Jack Lonie was the spiritual leader of this team after all. Maybe this whole time, he was the Aaron Hamill. We’d been playing him at Sandy and then yo-yoing him in and out of and around the team in a revolving small forwards door with Minchington and Weller and Templeton and Murdoch and Wright. A 20 possession game kicking 4.3 are individual numbers reserved for excellent players of other teams. Maybe one day he’ll kick straight. Of course, it was very Jack Lonie that he would miss a relatively easy snap in space to have banked four first-quarter goals.

Watching the first quarter unfold made sad sense; we’d seen glimpses of this in the first part of the year, but whatever they’d taken this week was an optimal dose of Lovan. More movement running forward, smarter and more efficient positioning in congestion and further up the ground, handballs to guys moving forwards, i.e. guys who’d worked hard enough to be there in the first place. The anticipation of the ball sailing deep into attack to a well-positioned forward. We forgot what aggressive footy and a team wanting to actually win looked like. It was at once a reminder of St Kilda teams long ago, and also felt ultra-futuristic.

***

Bruce and Sav both sliced opportunities late in the first quarter to tick the scoreboard over to seven goals to one. By quarter time we had to settle for 6.5 to 1.0. And I mean that – if you’ve had the year we’ve had, who knows where your next goal is going to come from? Nothing could have been enough.

And so we had to navigate all sorts of emotions and experience all sorts of dynamics unfold that we’d simply forgotten about, and may not have been so well equipped to handle. The natural ebbs and flows of a 21st century game of footy necessitated that the Dogs would get some traction. Watching a bunch of kids feel the pressure of an in-form team come back in the third quarter, and with no proven reference points in their short careers as to how to handle that. Coff had zero reference points for any ways of winning.

By three-quarter time there was frustration in the crowd. I punched the chair in front of me Maybe some despair. Couldn’t we just at least have this? Our wins this season have been at arm’s length. This was a different type of tension we hadn’t felt for a long time. What if we lost? Would we just waste kicking 11.6 in the first half? Would it be left to tiring young guys to fend off the Bulldogs pack? See Round 5, 2002 vs Sydney and Round 5, 2018 vs GWS.

Whichever way, it’s a very small step. We’ve been here before, of course, and the more optimistic parts of us would this is different. It might be, but it doesn’t necessarily end up with what we want. There are a lot more ways to not win a premiership then there are to actually win out. We’ve come up with more ways to not win a premiership while leading in time-on of a Grand Final than we have to win one. You get the idea.

This was an exhaustive exercise with no real known outcomes, successful or otherwise, to be evident for some time. Perhaps not clear until the 2030s and we’re sitting around doing whatever people do that are nearly 15 or 20ish years older than our current age, discussing what became of the St Kilda team of the 2020s. We’ve watched eras come and go, never mind single weeks of dips and peaks in form. Next year will mark the beginning of first era for this club that has real separation from the GT and Ross era (the birth and peak of the Riewoldt generation). Maybe there were some lessons or opportunities during the week that we could take. Time to reflect on the good and the bad, and that all of those can and do co-exist. A lesson in humility, in empathy, in sympathy, in that there are no guarantees, in that not winning three Preliminary Finals and then not winning any of three Grand Finals does not mint a new standard at the football club, and does not mean your next rebuild will come off. One hell of a fucking exhaustive exercise indeed, if only to end up with Doulton Langlands on the front page of The Age.

Individuals that become a part of the St Kilda Football Club – most of whom we’d have nothing to do with them otherwise – players, coaches, officials, whoever, are intertwined with our search for a life experience as Saints supporters; the “after” that we can pair with this 53-year-old “before”.

And so they come to represent more than just themselves as individuals. What position should Blake Acres be played in? How many games will Dan Hannebery be fit for? Why isn’t Brandon White being selected? Maybe Max King will take us to glory. We see the St Kilda supporter in ourselves in him, and we see our messiah complex being fulfilled by him.

We’ve started asking deeper questions in the past few years. Where did our leaders go? Is our recruiting awful? What happened to the Road to 2018? Where are all of our New Zealand members?

Fairly, unfairly, simplistically, unusually, often this winds up being represented in the coach. The senior person who is in charge of and represents the players. It’s an easy place to have concentrated the frustration. A club’s primary function is to have a team play Australian Rules football, and St Kilda’s just hasn’t done that very well very often. Richo, given his position, has been at the centre of our frustrations.

But he’s been central throughout the past six years. In a period that has seen leaders and true St Kilda people go and very few emerge, Richo has been the only constant. Hayes left in the first year of his tenure; Fisher and Dempster were there a little longer; Riewoldt and Joey for four seasons. Armo peaked briefly in there, Geary emerged and perversely his best season has been upended by two freak collision injuries. But what else?

Who did we see and hear represent the club after every game? Who were we looking for when we looked to the coaches’ box across the other side of the ground? Who were we looking to take us out of the post-Grand Finals misery? Richo may well have been the closest thing to an identifiably St Kilda person at the club that remained from the end of the Watters era black hole. As time goes on, that era appears a deeper and more curious chasm dividing the GT and Ross Combined era and the current post-Grand Finals era. Richo’s appointment and tenure has become a clear demarcation point. Even watching the (very funny and enjoyable) Doulton video was strange. All of a sudden, this is the St Kilda Football Club. Who are the Saints? It just looked Brett Ratten and a bunch of guys who like footy.

A modern-day storm of rebuild-via-draft-and-free-agency, and a St Kilda board seeking stability meant that despite a not-quite-35% win rate, Richo is St Kilda’s second-longest serving coach, and whatever I think of how he coached or the results during the past six years, the place feels strange without him.

***

It was a text from Matt that dropped down from the top of my iPhone screen that was how I learned what had happened on Tuesday. But I didn’t register it immediately; he decided to call me anyway in that moment, and I blankly opened with “What’s up?”

Heading into last weekend, many thought this was the most likely game to trigger an immediate move from the club on his position: a trouncing from the ladder leaders at the Cattery, ten years on from Paul Chapman ultimately being proved right. Instead, the team had put in one of their heartier performances, but like so many games throughout the past six years, the gulf in top end talent was the difference.

And maybe there was, indeed, enough in his face on the siren to gauge what was about to happen. I thought maybe it was projecting on my part, but it became apparent during the week that he knew.

Did he ever get a really decent chance? He took over a lost list and a heartbroken club, and then had to deal with genuine heart issues, head issues, mental health issues, poor trading and recruiting (but was the development his fault?), other strange injuries, and other strange list decisions (in hindsight anyway).

However it was, Richo carried himself with dignity, decency humility throughout whatever happened over the past six years. He engaged with anything he saw was in the club’s best interests. He kept fronting up to 360 to get asked about on TV why the club’s rebuild was collapsing, and if he was aware of the implications that the public scrutiny and pressure might only end up with him losing a role that he had worked years to attain. He answered similar questions for much of the past couple of months; he kept it out of the conversation at training. Going by the most oft-consulted metric for a coach’s viability, the players were still playing for him.

The only faint crack that appeared was a swipe at the umpires after Saturday night, but a very large part of me feels that it was his way of sticking up for the club in one of the few remaining ways he could. He certainly wasn’t going to get fined, and he could let AFL HQ knew that the club was watching.

Footy’s a business, sure, but you can’t just leave it at that. It’s a fucking emotional one, whether you like it or not, and whether I like it or not. Those simplistic components co-exist and cross over in uncomfortable ways. Maybe when tears appeared during the press conference – for what people had given up for him – it was that the situation became a whole lot more real. The chatter was something we’d become used to for more than 12 months, but the requirement he felt to stay stoic was now gone. His involvement with the club was now past tense. Some were keen for this event. I certainly didn’t take any joy out of it. His success would have been our own; the optimism of late 2016 was his and our own; the plummet down the ladder may or may not have entirely been his, but it was our own.

***

By chance, my brother Matt was driving around Moorabbin on Monday and decided to swing by the club shop. Maybe some of the players would be out on the track. Instead, on his walk from the car up Linton Street, he chanced upon Richo and Matt Finnis. Matt couldn’t pass up the opportunity. He thinks Richo had done really well in 2019 given the the varying physical and psychological tolls felt by the players.

“Sorry to interrupt lads, but I just wanted to shake this man’s hand and let him know what a great job he’s done this season.”

That ended up in a several-minute chat with two people who, it became apparent, were discussing a landmark event in this club’s history. One of them was 24 hours away from publicly getting the arse end of it; from answering questions about it, specifically how he had not been successful.

Matt’s interaction might have been the last Richo had with a supporter, or a member. I’m not sure. In the footy bubble, Alan Richardson the human is infinitely intertwined with Alan Richardson, and I don’t know how many positive lines he would have heard about his coaching over the past 12 months, nor, given what we walked into, the past six years. I hope he got some affirmation from what Matt said. That the time and effort he had spent – and the pressure he felt – during his time at the club had meant something to St Kilda supporters. On a windy and wintery day in a suburban Melbourne street, away from anyone else and knowing that he’d coached his last game at the club, he still felt and honoured a responsibility to engage with them.

Round 17, 2019
Geelong Cats 4.4, 5.7, 8.8, 12.12 (84)
St Kilda 2.2, 6.3, 6.7, 8.9 (57)
Crowd: 24,035 at Kardinia Park, Saturday, July 13th at 7.25pm

We were looking at four in a row for Geelong and St Kilda matches in the final year of a decade producing something bizarre or incredible or wonderful or awful or scarring:

• Round 7, 1989 – Geelong kicks 35.18.228 to 16.13.109, Gavin Exell kicks eight goals, Geelong’s highest score at the time, and what remains the biggest score we’ve conceded.
• Round 10, 1999 – Came back in the last quarter at the Cattery to go 7-3 and move into premiership favouritism. This was the last win before the Alves/Watson team collapsed. (Shout-out to Sebastian Hasset for reminding me that I’d missed in the 1998 win in my initial tweet about this.)
• 2009. Twice. For all of the feel good memories the club and the media have tried producing around the recent 10-year anniversary of the Round 14 match, it’s just a sub-plot to the main story arc, in which Paul Chapman was ultimately proved right. No links required here. We all know it.
• Bonus round:
  • Round 14, Corio Oval, August 12th, 1899 – The Cats win 16.23.119 to 0.2.2.
  • Sectional Round 3, Corio Oval, September 9th, 1899 – Geelong wins 23.24.162 to 0.1.1, which remains the lowest score in VFL/AFL history, against what at the time was the highest score to date (eclipsing Essendon’s 120, also kicked against the Saints)

What horrible delights awaited us at Kardinia Park on a cold Saturday night? In the 10-year anniversary meeting since the rivalry of the aughts came to a head, we got the absolute opposite. We didn’t even get the thrashing that 1899 nor 1989 teams received, nor for that matter those that went to Kardinia Park in 2002, 2013, and 2014. Rather, we saluted a decade in which we descended into mediocrity, and collapsed in a heap of disengagement and irrelevance with a match that no neutral would have cared for and no Cats nor Saints particularly needs to remember.

***

Another week of the bizarre “Win, and our season is still alive, lose and the coach is sacked”, but this is now moving into the, “Win, and we might keep our coach, lose and the coach is sacked” phase. This week did have something dangerous written over it; Adelaide are clearly capable of dishing out big defeats and we’ll need to deal with them in a few weeks, but top-of-the-ladder Geelong coming off a loss presented an immediate threat. We’re an off day in general away from requiring new coach, let alone an off day against the team on top of the ladder. Maybe we feel like our rage (or whinging) can be enough to move things at senior level. This felt like an ominously quiet week among supporters. For those actively wanting a change of coach this week presented the most likely chance for the footy to do the talking.

Geelong haven’t been great (relatively speaking) after the bye over the past two seasons, and despite all the available empirical data over this season and the past 146 years, I had a sick feeling during the week we would either win or lose a close game. The kind in which you get run over the top in front of a hostile one-sided crowd. That didn’t quite happen. However, we did play like we cared. The players were still responding to the coach. We just don’t have good enough players; perhaps this coach isn’t the right fit for this team. Guys a few years into their careers are going to weird places. Acres had four touches at three-quarter time, we don’t have a genuine midfielder that is an excellent user of the ball; Gresham is still playing a role in which he feels the need to quick the cover off the footy instead rather than using his agility and shorter kicking to open up the game; Membrey is lost; D-Mac was played up forward for some reason; Sinclair is still indifferent.

Bruce yet again played like one of the few guys that look close to a leader on the field. Something isn’t quite working between both he and Membrey. They’ll both benefit from Max King coming in. Otherwise, our best player right now just played his 27th game in a position he actually isn’t a full-timer in, and arguably is perversely our best midfielder. He’s also The Best Player in the AFL Since Round 11. A St Kilda Best and Fairest might yet have Rowan Marshall’s name on it, and I’d wonder how he’d go in the Brownlow (he obviously wouldn’t win it, but given the AFL’s official rankings and his position it would be a fun curio to keep tabs on one of the few St Kilda guys that genuinely impacts the play, and across all parts of the ground).

His bump on Dahlhaus was a rare moment since Round 6 onwards in which we took to it to the opposition. Steele went with him on that that, and Dunstan too, and that annoying/hardarse factor has been a bit of a bellwether. The run of four goals in the second quarter might have given us perverse, fleeting thoughts, immediately weighed down by acknowledgement this team most likely wouldn’t be capable of sustaining it for four quarters.

Not much as actually been said about what happened between the Melbourne and Adelaide games in April. The first few minutes of that Adelaide game may well have been the peak of the season. The crowd wasn’t big, but there was an anticipation in the moments leading up to the first bounce that hadn’t been felt since late 2010, and the feverish pressure in the opening minutes had me thinking that we might actually be a good football team. But as the first quarter unfolded, it was clear that was more in the maniacal style of 2017 and 2018, and it started to come undone too easily. As the second quarter unfolded on Saturday night, maybe we had finally returned to what happened before that. Maybe it was because Lonie was back. Maybe Jack Lonie was our spiritual leader this whole time. You might be able to make a direct correlation between the time he went down with a knee injury in that Adelaide game with our personality disappearing and our season turning to shit. Never mind, we lost and he had five touches.

***

Still, some mongrel was nice as opposed to zero mongrel, and the defensive pressuring was high-energy as well as efficient. There were players around the ball in the right spaces to make sure the ball got moving the other way, but the ball wasn’t used well, or there just wasn’t much ahead, but probably both. It made for a forgettable game in which Geelong couldn’t show off much and we once again farted out a score that provided more of a nuisance than anything else.

Watching on TV is always a very short and sharp experience. No build-up in physically going to the game and being among the crowd and getting a drink. In the lounge room, sometimes it can be hard to really absorb yourself in the game. The team is running out, a quick ad break, nothing changes in the lounge room aside from finishing off the Juanita Peaches delivery, the ball is bounced, quarter time, nothing really changes in the lounge room aside from an M&Ms refill, start of the second quarter, you get the idea. This was the depths of winter. Choosing to stay in on a cold, wet Saturday night to watch a public demonstration and confirmation that Geelong are better than us and can have this four points. We just needed it to be broadcast and to see what it would look like, for transparency.

Geelong weren’t quite 100% and we were on, but all it took to finish this was less than two minutes of a 35-year old injured Gary Ablett. Another three-quarter effort, but we were probably operating at capacity and Geelong could just pull it out when they needed to by choice. The different between this and the last few weeks was that we didn’t lose that outlier quarter by as much, but the numbers were instructive as any. With the season on the line, 14 entries for 0.4 for the third quarter, to Geelong’s nine entries for 3.1.

In a year of low and bizarrely consistent scores, this was a little surprisingly our lowest. After Long kicked his second goal 16 minutes and 44 seconds into the second quarter, we kicked 2.6 to 8.7, and no goals until Acres’ 12 minutes and 15 seconds into the final quarter. Again, much like this season, an isolated block of decent footy covers up a lot of benign kicking down the line and an inability to win contested ball, or trying to play on too fast and kick to not much. Outside of the 10 minutes and 31 seconds in the second quarter during which we kicked four straight, it was 4.9 to 12.12.

Unfortunately couldn’t add to the 11 out of 15 games coming in to this in which we’d scored between 66 and 76 points. Let’s take another look at the board:

13.7 (85)
10.16 (76)
9.12 (66)
10.14 (74)
15.5 (95)
10.8 (68)
10.10 (70)
10.10 (70)
10.11 (71)
9.14 (68)
9.15 (69)
11.14 (80)
8.11 (59)
10.10 (70)
11.6 (72)
8.9 (57)

***

Broadly, this Australian Rules football team just isn’t that good at Australian Rules football. Maybe they’re too young, maybe the injuries did matter. It’s hard to feel overly proud of honourable losses as you’re watching a rebuild fail. The soft draw has turned into a string of games that just don’t matter any more. From here, we’re a minor roadblock to the 2019 aspirations of the Bulldogs, Adelaide, and maybe Freo. We are the soft draw.

The fact that the commentators were talking up how the last time we went into half-time in front at Kardinia Park was in 2004 – also a game that we lost (in a very handsome Heritage Round jumper) – was patronising enough. This came in within a couple of days of AFL.com.au publishing a glowing article about Geelong’s 2009 premiership 22 all still being still involved in the game. On the same day, Ross was coaching his 300th in Tasmania, on the same ground and against the same opposition we went 19-0 ten years ago; when it looked like the next seven weeks was written for us. I was secretly hoping chairing off a coach became a thing for one day, and specifically on Saturday, because the idea of Ross bashfully being chaired off the ground is objectively funny.

I was cleaning my room while listening to Kane and Dermie on Crunch Time on SEN late on Saturday morning to hear them talk about West Coast and Collingwood and they way they play, just to remind myself what talking about good footy teams sounds like, let alone what it looks like. How would you view us from a Geelong perspective? That would have been a “pedestrian” win for a Geelong fan, ticking down to the pointy end of another flag tilt. From a competition perspective? “Plucky” or “brave” if you wanted quickly scan an article the next morning, perhaps, but no neutral would seek to find out any more details about this game. No need to mention it again. How would you feel watching the game at home if it wasn’t the Saints playing? What would you think of the players? Or the game style? Or the club?

***

As far as footy goes, the coach is in charge of a lot of what dictates our emotions through the week and is a representative of the football club and its history and its current journey. We project how we’re feeling onto them, likewise the players. Alan Richardson the coach and public figure is a different entity to Alan Richardson the human. Sometimes that bleeds across how we might be feeling about the club and the team. Watching Richo on the siren was upsetting. Channel 7 cameras were poised for the moment. He looked upset. The players are still playing for him. The team’s effort was up and a lot of things went right. He’s handled himself excellently. But it just hasn’t been enough. He looked like he knew it was over. He looked like he didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want it to be, certainly in that moment. I don’t want it to be, if only for it being an official acknowledgement that this rebuild hasn’t worked (if we needed more than everything that has happened in the past 30 months). There’s still time for a little more thrashing about until it happens, of grabbing at anything that might be able to sedate things momentarily, or maybe stumbling upon something that could save him and this whole era. A way out of this that isn’t taking the jump to a new coach, and all the uncertainties that come with it. What if there was a genuine reason that this hadn’t worked that was out of Richo’s control? What if the injuries did actually matter? What if Paddy and Roberton could make it back? What if Acres and D-Mac and White are just another pre-season away? What if it’s just the goal kicking? What if it’s just a few small things misaligned? We probably won’t ever know.