Teams Are In and Someone’s About to Get Humiliated

The teams are in for Round 18, the fixture list is tightening like a vice, and somewhere out there a list manager is staring at a whiteboard and reconsidering all his life choices. As someone who has spent a significant portion of their adult life watching Richmond selections that made absolutely no logical sense whatsoever, I feel qualified to wade through the carnage.

Let’s get into it — the blockbuster first, then the rest of the round, because some of us have got things to do.

Thursday Night: When First Meets Second and Nobody Sleeps

The Thursday night fixture between the top two sides is the kind of match that gets written about in those coffee-table books they sell at airport newsagencies. Both clubs have named what looks, on paper, like full-strength sides — which, of course, means someone will pull up sore in the warm-up and we’ll all pretend we saw it coming.

The first-placed side has made one notable change, bringing in a midfielder who’s been working his way back from a hamstring complaint that dragged on longer than a pre-season press conference. His return adds a genuine contested ball threat through the corridor, and if their coaches have any nous at all — and the ladder suggests they do — he’ll be used to run off a half-back flank and cause havoc in transition.

The second-placed team has gone the other way, dropping a forward who had three hitouts and a goal in the last two months and seemed to be playing more for his own highlights reel than for the scoreboard. Harsh? Maybe. But second on the ladder isn’t the place for sentimentality, as Richmond’s 2022 and 2023 seasons can attest.

The Selection That Has Everyone Talking

Look, every round there’s one call that gets the football world — and by that I mean the people arguing in pub carparks and Facebook groups — genuinely animated. This week it’s a young forward who, having been overlooked for six consecutive rounds despite booting bags in the VFL, has finally been recalled to the senior side.

\p>His club’s rationale had apparently been about “development” and “not rushing him” — the same logic clubs have been using since roughly the Whitlam government to justify confusing decisions — but with injuries mounting up forward and the eight looming, pragmatism has apparently won the day. Good. The kid can play. Let him play.

Whether he slots straight back into the forward fifty or gets used as a loose man across half-forward will tell you a lot about how much faith the coaching staff actually has in him versus how desperate they are. There’s a difference, and experienced footy watchers can smell it.

The Injury Toll: Round 18’s Unavailable List

Every week we do this dance. The teams drop, the injury sub rules are scrutinised like ancient scripture, and someone’s star player is listed as a late out. This week is no different.

• Two key defenders across different clubs are out with ongoing knee soreness — that lovely catch-all description that could mean anything from a mild ache to structural drama nobody wants to talk about publicly yet.
• A prominent ruckman has been managed after a heavy knock in Round 17. His club says he’s fine. His club always says he’s fine.
• One midfielder — a genuine Brownlow contender — has been named but is considered a genuine game-time decision after rolling an ankle at training on Wednesday. His inclusion has a slightly desperate energy to it, like when you say you’re fine at a work meeting and you are clearly not fine.

The concussion protocols have also claimed two players this week, both ruled out under the mandatory stand-down. Say what you like about the AFL’s administration — and believe me, I have said quite a lot — but the concussion rules are applied consistently now and that’s genuinely a good thing.

What Richmond Are Doing (Yes, We Must Discuss This)

Ah. Here we are. The section I both dread and feel compelled to write.

Richmond have named their side for Round 18 and it is, characteristically, a mixture of genuine promise and selections that feel like they were made by someone who wandered into the selection meeting by accident and didn’t want to seem rude by leaving. There are two inclusions from the VFL that make sense — a tall defender who has been outstanding in the twos and a midfielder with the engine we’ve needed — and one inclusion that I genuinely cannot explain with any conventional football logic.

We’re not playing finals footy this year, let’s be honest about that. But there are encouraging signs, and the youth coming through has that scrappy, contested-ball mentality that made the 2017-2020 teams so bloody hard to play against. We’re not there yet. We might not be there for another two years. But the bones of something are there, and after what we’ve sat through, I’ll take bones.

The out? A veteran who probably deserved better than being dropped via a phone call but that’s football, and if you’re surpised by football being blunt and impersonal then you haven’t been watching long enough.

The Ones Fighting for the Eight

The genuine drama in Round 18 isn’t just at the top — it’s in the logjam between fifth and tenth, where four clubs are separated by less than a game’s worth of percentage. Every selection call this week from those clubs carries real weight.

One club in that group has made four changes, which is either a sign of admirable boldness or mild panic dressed up in press-release language about “freshening up the group.” Two of those changes are injury-enforced, which is fair enough. The other two look like the selection committee decided to shake the etch-a-sketch and see what happened.

Another club chasing the eight has made the smart call to recall their most experienced head — a 250-gamer who was apparently “managed” last week — for what is shaping as a season-defining stretch of football. Because nothing focuses the mind on “load management” quite like the prospect of watching September from your couch.

The Matchup to Watch Beyond Thursday

Beyond the blockbuster, the game I’m most interested in this weekend is the one between two clubs who genuinely dislike each other in that low-key, professional way that occasionally boils over into something spicy on the field. Both have named their best available sides, both have key personnel back from injury, and the umpires are going to have a genuinely interesting afternoon.

The inside-50 contest will be the game. One side leads the competition in contested possession; the other leads it in rebound-50 efficiency. Something has to give, and whatever does will likely determine where both clubs sit come the final siren Sunday afternoon.

Final Thought: The Ladder Doesn’t Lie (Mostly)

Round 18 selections are always revealing in a way the earlier rounds aren’t. The list managers have had enough data now. The coaches know their best 22 — or at least, they know it until someone tweaks a calf on Thursday morning. The players who are in contention know they’re in contention. The ones who’ve been quietly managed all year know the window is narrowing.

It is, as it always is by this point of the season, a genuinely exciting time to follow footy — even for those of us who have made a grim peace with supporting a club currently in reconstruction mode. The competition feels open. The Thursday night game feels big. And somewhere in the mix, there’s a team that’s going to do something unexpected this weekend and make us all look stupid for our confident predictions.

That’s the thing about Round 18. Everyone thinks they know what’s coming. Nobody really does.