That’s gotta hurt

Round 10, 2021
Western Bulldogs 3.5, 10.10, 15.13, 21.18 (144)
St Kilda 2.0, 3.1, 4.2, 5.3 (33)
Crowd: Reciprocal, at Marvel Stadium, Saturday, May 2th at 7.25pm

A DM landed in my Twitter inbox late on Saturday afternoon. 

“Rory, you can say no, but would you like to write this week’s report?” 

I was keen, so I replied, “I’ll do it. How many words, what’s the tone?” 

My internal monologue said, “I’m not a professional writer! I can’t write like Tom and Lethal.” 

A reply came back, “try for 1500 words – and make it cathartic”. 

After the game I considered a Bart Simpson-esque blackboard gag of writing, “We are crap”, five hundred times – but didn’t think that would cut the mustard for my blogatorial debut. 

This will be like something out of the movie, Inception (where the follower and fan becomes the content writer), so here goes. 

It was a reciprocal home game for the Saints, but I quickly realised that this does not equal a commensurate home game. While I was interstate for work, I got an email from the club at 9:30 the night before tickets went on sale for this game. Lack of organisational time meant I was destined to be watching the game at home. 

I’d heard of mates with Level 2 Premium reserved seats instead being offered nosebleed tickets on Level 3, or they could purchase another Level 2 ticket for $70 in the General Sale purchase window – reciprocal, not commensurate. 

This negative worked in my favour. Instead of a cold May night at the Concrete Disney Store, I was at home with the heater on, watching on delay. A kid’s party earlier in the afternoon spilled into the early evening. My snack of choice for the evening was leftover mini-vanilla cupcakes, with swirled blue and pink icing, dusted with edible glitter. 

The pre-game build up during the week for two teams who played finals last year was measly – probably representative of second playing eleventh. A highlight was the celebration of Josh Battle’s 50th game. Josh is playing like an early 00s Brendon Goddard (without the terrible haircut) – he’s fifty games into his career, and after two coaches and four years of development, they are still trying to figure out which position best suits him. 

Losing RoMa (again) to a foot injury (again) brought in McKernan – again, this was definitely reciprocal, not commensurate. Geary came into the side for his first game of the year to add some on-field leadership. This was on display early with an intercept mark in defence, whilst his now-regular Dogs’ opponent, Caleb Daniel, started on the bench. 

This was always going to be a clash between the much-vaunted Dogs’ midfield (actually missing a few vaunts), and the Saints’ ruck combo of Ryder and the reciprocal McKernan. So to hear the call from the umpires of, “No St Kilda”, in the ruck a few times early was just a bit weird.

It was a rough start to the game, with the first six shots at goal resulting in four behinds to Dogs, and the Saints kicking one out of bounds on the full and one reciprocal McKernan shank. Watching on replay, this was unbelievable for an AFL footballer.

Soon one of the many, many Dogs’ mids, Libba, kicked a good goal on the run. 

The Saints came back with a quick reply from Membrey, who took a strong contested mark from a long Clark Inside 50 kick. 

Billings, Clark and Hill were all busy early, and, when we got going, we kicked accurately – but the Dogs took an eleven point lead into quarter time after one of those, “what was that fifty for?” moments. 

The Dogs started to kick away early in the second with their midfield getting on top. 

Then it got ugly. 

Goal after goal after goal from the Dogs, taking the half time margin to fifty one points. It resembled the Saints of earlier this year against Richmond, Essendon and Port Adelaide. Heads dropped, the margin seemed insurmountable, so just give up. 

The first goal after half time went to the reciprocal McKernan, who had been present all game, but had failed with execution on numerous occasions. 

But all was lost… 

Halfway through the third it was twenty three scoring shots to six, and the margin was fifty four points. It could have, and should have been, a lot bigger. The Dogs sliced the Saints up with precision disposal by precision players. In the end it blew out, both in number of scoring shots and margin. 

The highlight of the third quarter was a scuffle in front of the reciprocal Saints’ home end (aka the Bulldogs’ cheer squad end). Clark dumped Weightman in the back, Weightman responded with a tap on the chest, which resulted in another fifty to the Dogs, with Weightman kicking the goal. There was no Saints’ player on the mark, as they were all still involved in the scuffle. 

Last week Ratts had questioned why bother tackling if you are not going to be rewarded. Players took this literally, with only thirty six tackles to three quarter time. It was great to see Ratts backing King in during the week though (ten marks, six shots on goal, in my mind, deserved a coaches vote or two for the Geelong game), whereas the Saints of old would have dumped a young player under the pump to Sandy. 

Unfortunately, King responded with the most recalcitrant performance of his career, taking a mark late in the game to the unnecessary Bronx cheers of the crowd. 

At this stage, I must mention Josh Bruce, so here’s me mentioning Josh Bruce. That’s all I have time for (for him, or for the word count). 

The Bulldogs’ development showed significantly in this game, with Hannan, Weightman, Dale, R Smith and co prominent throughout the game. All have been through the Footscray VFL system, whereas we still tinker with the Sandy arrangement (read: an away jumper that is a Saints’ jumper, with a block of Arial font that says “SANDY”). Ten years later, when every other team is now seeing the value of investing in their own VFL / development system….debt sucks!

Butler, Lonie and Higgins went missing again (again). Clearly the three of them can’t be played in the same team at the moment, but who comes in? The calls of “play the kids” will come, but we really have only four “kids” playing at Sandy, (a result of trading away draft picks) – Allison, Clav, Coff and Connolly. 

None of these are really medium/small forwards. Allison was recruited as a forward, and is playing down back and on the wing to learn his craft, and rightly so. And we are playing the kids, with Byrnes having his best game of his fledgling career against the Dogs and Bytel stringing games together without being mysteriously dropped to Sandy or starting as the medical sub. Calls will come to play Dunstan because of his numbers in the VFL, but this is not a numbers game, as he can’t seem to elevate his game to an AFL level. Calls will come to draft Nathan Freeman in the mid-season draft, but he did his time at the Saints, and in the system, and he is not the answer. 

We are clearly suffering from prime-time fatigue. Up on the big stage, and a big loss again (again). Seven showed highlights of the 2009 Preliminary Final before the game, and that seems a lifetime ago now. Gee beating the Dogs in the 2020 Elimination Final seems a lifetime ago. 

Unfortunately, injuries have been staining our year with Clark, Geary, Frawley and Hill all suffering various forms of injury during the game. We have the depth to put a team on the park, but it’s really starting to show. 

Sinclair and Byrnes were the only highlights in a horror performance, the fourth capitulation of the year. Our biggest loss under Ratts, our biggest loss at the Concrete Disney Store, our biggest loss to the Dogs – and our first one hundred point loss since 2016. 

Mixing metaphors, when the heat is on, the tough get going, and the Saints capitulate. 

Where to from here?

The season isn’t over, but it’s over. We have two off Broadway home games, then a Saturday night game against Adelaide in sunny (reciprocal) Cairns. Noosa to Cairns is further than Noosa to Melbourne, so I’m not exactly sure how we’re rewarding our Queensland fans for everything they did for us in 2020. We’re definitely rewarding the coffers.

Methinks the Dogs game will be the last prime time game we have on Seven for a little while. Advantage AFL for the floating fixture, for which they blame COVID, but have been wanting to implement for years. It’s here to stay. 

Earlier this year my Dad (a longer suffering Saints fan than me, who, as a 16-year-old, missed the 66 Grand Final as he was in synagogue on the Day of Atonement), apologised for making me and my brothers barrack for the Saints. He’s 70 now, and I think he believes he won’t see us win a premiership in his lifetime. I’m starting to believe him.