Blues Get It Done While the Roos Sweat on One
Three results on the weekend that’ll have three sets of supporters sleeping a bit easier, and for once I’m one of them, because the Blues got the chocolates against Sydney while North Melbourne clawed their way past a stubborn Fremantle and Hawthorn did enough to see off Brisbane. Not a bad Saturday’s work all up, though I’ve seen enough footy to know you don’t go printing the premiership cup just yet.
The Blues do it the hard way, like always
Carlton get over Sydney and I’ll take it, I’ll take it with both hands, because this mob has had a habit under the current fella of making the simple things look like they’re defusing a bomb. We were good enough early, we always are, and then there’s that period in the third term where you can hear every Carlton supporter in the outer groan in unison because we’ve gone away from the game plan that was working. Back in my day you picked a style and you stuck to it for four quarters, win lose or draw, and if it didn’t work you had the post-mortem on Monday, not live out on the ground in front of forty-odd thousand people.
Still, the scoreboard doesn’t care how pretty it looked and the Blues get the four points, which is the only stat that matters in September reckoning. Our midfield brigade did enough to win the clearance count and that’s half the battle against a Swans outfit that likes to play keepings-off through the corridor. I thought our pressure forward of the ball in patches was as good as we’ve shown all year, and if we can find that for four quarters instead of two and a half we might actually worry somebody come finals.
Roos survive the early fright
North Melbourne gave their supporters a proper heart-starter against Fremantle, copping an avalanche early before steadying the ship and getting home, and good luck to them, because it’s never easy building something from the ground up the way they have been. I’ll admit I don’t mind watching this current Kangaroos group — there’s a willingness about them, a refusal to lie down, that reminds me a bit of the old Shinboner spirit from way back, even if half the current crop wouldn’t know what a Shinboner was if you handed them one.
Fremantle will be filthy they let this one slip after setting up such a handy start, and you’d have to say the inside 50 count told the story of a Dockers side that couldn’t quite finish what they started. That’s footy though — doesn’t matter how you dominate for a quarter if you can’t hold the lead when the heat comes on in the last. The Roos showed some ticker there and I respect it, grudgingly, the way you respect any outfit that isn’t the Blues but plays the game the right way.
Hawks get the job done against the Lions
Hawthorn knocking over Brisbane is the sort of result that’ll have the competition sitting up, because the Lions have been going along nicely and a loss like that, even on the road, tends to rattle a few cages in the review room. I don’t mind the way the Hawks play, truth be told — there’s a bit of that old Hawthorn arrogance about them again, the sort that used to give us absolute curry back in the eighties and nineties, and while I’ll never forgive them for half of what they did to us over the journey, you have to tip the cap when a team plays smart, patient footy and gets its reward.
Brisbane will have questions to answer about their intensity at the contest, because from what I saw they were beaten around the stoppages for long stretches, and no amount of fancy ball movement going forward papers over cracks like that. The Lions have been talked up as flag contenders all year and fair enough too, but results like this are exactly the sort of reminder the competition serves up when a team starts believing its own press.
What it all means in the bigger picture
Three wins, three different stories, but the common thread for me is that none of these results came easy, and that’s exactly how it should be at this time of the year when every game starts carrying a bit more weight. The ladder’s tightening up nicely and if you’re a Carlton supporter like yours truly you’ll be watching the games around you just as closely as our own, because percentage and position are going to matter plenty before this thing’s done.
I’ll say this too — and I know I bang on about it every second column, but head office keep tinkering with rules nobody asked for while the actual product out on the park is better than it’s been in years when you let the players just play. Saturday’s trio of results had contested footy, had scoreboard pressure, had genuine ebbs and flows the way the game used to flow back when I was standing on the Lake Oval hill as a kid, long before they started fiddling with interchange caps and stoppage zones and whatever other brainwave gets cooked up in a boardroom this week.
The Blues outlook from here
For Carlton the job now is consistency, plain and simple, because we’ve shown flashes all season of being genuinely dangerous and then undone it with ten minutes of brain fade that costs us four goals and a world of angst among the faithful. If this group can bottle what they did in patches against the Swans and spread it across the whole eighty minutes, I reckon we’re a genuine finals proposition, not just a make-weight that sneaks into the eight and gets bundled out in straight sets like we’ve seen too many times this last decade.
The Roos and the Hawks both deserve their credit this week, even if it pains an old Blueboy to type it, and Brisbane and Fremantle will both have some soul-searching to do before their next outings. But from where I sit, rugged up in the member’s stand complaining about the price of a meat pie, the only result that matters is the navy blue one, and for once this week the Blues gave us somethign to actually smile about heading into the week ahead.
