FOOTY’S IMPOSSIBLE QUESTION GETS EVEN TOUGHERAfter two months of the 2021 AFL season, the premiership race features two things: certainty and uncertainty.
The certainty: It sure seems like the current top eight of Melbourne, the Bulldogs, Port Adelaide, Geelong, Brisbane, West Coast, Sydney and Richmond will be our top eight.
The teams outside of the eight are either seriously flawed or about to run into a horror fixture. For example: GWS, who sit just percentage behind the Tigers and have won four of their last five matches. They’re a finals contender, right?
Well, they still have to play Richmond, West Coast and Brisbane before their bye, plus Melbourne, Sydney, Port Adelaide, Geelong and Richmond again after it. Want to reconsider?
But then there’s the uncertainty: who the hell is actually going to win the flag?
You can make a case for every team in the top eight, perhaps with the exception of Sydney, just because they’re so young and on paper their list simply doesn’t have the talent of the other looming finalists.
But the other seven? Absolutely.
Port Adelaide, Brisbane, Geelong and Richmond were all right there last year. You can’t be mugs and go 8-0, so Melbourne’s in the hunt. The Bulldogs have looked damn good at times. And West Coast is doing a great job of staying in the race while suffering the AFL’s worst injury crisis - you’d hate to draw a healthy Eagles side in September.
It’s very difficult to pick who the favourite should be though. There are so many results that conflict.
We can almost make a complete loop: Melbourne beating Sydney, who beat Geelong, who beat West Coast, who beat Port Adelaide, who beat Richmond, who beat the Bulldogs, who beat Brisbane. Make sense of that!
We’ll learn more over the rest of the season, but North Melbourne champion David King believes the most crucial factor is simply going to be who earns the double chance in the finals.
“I still subscribe to the fact you’ve got to finish top four - so the squeeze is on,” David King said on Saturday Countdown.
“And when you play a like type, so the teams that are fighting for that top four position ... it’s everything for the end of the season. You don’t know if you’re going to be travelling interstate, we have no idea what COVID’s going to bring us towards the back half of the year, but that’s the squeeze.
“I reckon there’s still seven teams (that can make the top four) - it’s too early to say a ‘win the flag’-type thing.”
Realistically, the contender that has wobbled the most is Richmond, after they dropped to 4-4 following their beatdown at the hands of Geelong.
“Twice we’ve seen it, Sydney did it as well. Everyone knows how to beat everybody else, it’s whether you can carry out that plan,” Dermott Brereton said on Fox Footy’s Saturday Countdown.
“To get the ball to a position where you can exploit Richmond’s backmen; they’re a great, great defensive team, but individually let’s be honest, they’re not Alex Rance.
“They’ve got some role players down there who if you can isolate, you can expose them and you can beat them in one-on-ones, or get them all to your advantage.”
Of course, it’s Richmond; we’re not going to give up on them quickly. And just a week ago, they looked at their brutal best against the Bulldogs.
They can win it all this year. But so can six other teams.
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