Round 21 Teams: The Thursday Blockbuster And My Blood Pressure

The sides are in for Thursday night and, as usual, half the commentary is about who’s been managed and half is about who’s actually crook, which tells you everything you need to know about where this competition’s got to. Back in my day a bloke played with a bung shoulder and a strapped thumb and nobody wrote three hundred words about his “load management”, he just ran out and had a go.

Selection panels earning their keep this week

The Thursday night team sheets, finally

Every club’s locked in their twenty-two now and there’s the usual sprinkling of ins and outs that’ll have talkback running hot until first bounce. A couple of the bigger names have been squeezed out with soft-tissue concerns, which in the old competition we’d have called a Tuesday training strain and told the bloke to get on with it, but these days it’s scans and hush-hush injury lists and a physio in a lab coat deciding who plays footy on the weekend instead of the coach.

The interesting one for me is the amount of chopping and changing clubs are doing with their bench roles now, rotating fellas through like it’s a netball squad rather than a footy team. I understand the modern game’s quicker and the med staff know things we didn’t back then, but there’s something about naming your best eighteen and letting them play the whole four quarters that I reckon this game’s lost, and lost for good if I’m honest with you.

Ins that’ll actually matter

Every club’s got a bloke coming back in who’ll be babbled about as the difference-maker, and fair enough too, because form counts for plenty this time of year with finals footy just around the corner. The clubs still alive for September are bringing back their senior men, the experienced heads who know how to grind out four quarters when the ball’s not bouncing your way, and that’s exactly as it should be. You don’t want kids out there learning on the job in a Round 21 blockbuster, you want blokes who’ve been there.

What gets my goat, though, is watching a club leave out a bloke who’s been solid all year because some algorithm reckons the matchup favours a different type of player. I’m old enough to remember when selection was about who trained the best and who you trusted, not a spreadsheet telling the coach who’s got the better GPS numbers against a particular opponent. Call me a dinosaur if you like, I’ve been called worse by better people.

Outs that’ll cop the blowtorch

There’s always a name or two dropped that gets the fans of that club fuming, and this week’s no different, with a couple of clubs making what I’d call brave calls on senior players who reckon they’re still doing enough. Whether it’s genuine form slump or a coach making a point, only the inner sanctum really knows, and I’m not going to sit here and tell you which one it is because that’s a decision for the club, not for a bloke writing a column with a cuppa going cold beside him.

What I will say is this: dropping a senior player in Round 21 with finals on the line is either the bravest call of the year or the sort of thing that comes back to bite a coach in September, and there’s not much middle ground. We’ll find out soon enough which one it turns out to be.

The Thursday blockbuster itself

Now to the main event, because Thursday night footy still gets the blood up even for an old grump like me who reckons the game’s had the traditions sanded off it one rule change at a time. Two sides with plenty on the line, both naming close to full-strength squads, and you can smell a genuine arm wrestle coming rather than one of these run-and-gun affairs where the ball never touches the deck.

I still maintain the best football’s played when two teams contest hard at the coalface rather than bombing it long down the boundary line hoping for a stat-friendly mark inside fifty, and from the team sheets this week I reckon we’re in for a genuine contest rather than a highlights reel. The inclusions both clubs have made suggest they’re picking for the ruck and clearance battle first, which as any old-school follower will tell you is where footy matches are actually won, not lost in some interchange bench rotation chart.

My gripe with the rule tinkerers, again

I can’t write a teams column these days without having a crack at head office, and this week’s no exception, because the interpretation of dubious contact around stoppages has been all over the shop again and it’s influencing who gets picked. Coaches are now selecting bodies specifically to avoid free kicks rather than picking their best players, and if that’s not a sign the rulebook’s gotten too clever for its own good then I don’t know what is.

Back in the old VFL days you picked your best eighteen, you played the game the way it was meant to be played, and the umpire blew his whistle for genuine infringements rather than interpreting some new directive that changes every fortnight from a committee room in Docklands. I’m not against progress for progress’s sake, mind you, I just reckon a lot of what’s called progress in this competiton is really just tinkering for the sake of being seen to tinker.

What it all means come Thursday night

So there you have it, the teams are locked in, the outs will be dissected on every forum and every barstool from here to Sunday, and the ins will either be vindicated or roasted depending on how four quarters plays out under lights. That’s footy, and thank goodness it still boils down to that simple equation no matter how many committees try to overcomplicate it.

I’ll be watching like everyone else, grumbling into my cuppa about a rule I don’t like or a rotation I don’t understand, but watching all the same, because for all my complaining about where this game’s headed, Thursday night footy with finals on the line still gets me exactly the way it did forty years ago. Some things head office hasn’t managed to ruin yet.