200 reasons for Roos win
SHAUN Higgins reaches game No.200 when North Melbourne takes on West Coast in a huge match at Blundstone Arena on Sunday. And the milestone man said yesterday he believed AFL footy was still “years down the track” from free agents announcinguncing they were changing clubs. .
IF you don’t go to the footy on Sunday, you will be judged harshly by Tom Browne.
The man who discredited an entire state’s contribution to the national footballing landscape in a single tweet based only on one game’s crowd numbers — and a GWS game at that — and who also broke news during the week that Steele Sidebottom was set to be in a race for the finals, after having a crack in his jaw revealed during an MRI scan, only to have a rival news outlet discredit his claim an hour later, that Steele would in fact be fit to play this weekend.
It is true, however, that if you don’t attend this week’s fixture you are letting yourself down. Not the state, not Tom Browne, not the crayfisheating varnish addicts in the Chairman’s Lounge, but yourself. North Melbourne v West Coast is the best game of footy we’ve had in the state all year.
Mind you, if you looked at this fixture before the start of the season, it was just another interstate team (non-Victorian) travelling to Tassie with their 55-strong cheer squad and a reliance on the footy diehards of Tasmania to fill out the rest of the stadium so that North Melbourne can eat/survive/prosper against the hometown Roos who were a team destined for the bottom three at the start of the season.
Bottom three, not just in membership, but also ladder position. Yet somehow, they found themselves embedded in the top four early in the season by playing top-drawer footy against some of the more fancied and premiership-backed teams.
West Coast, like North Melbourne, was also pegged as a bottom eight side that would be set for a period of “rebuild” after the retirements of Matthew Priddis, Brett Heady, Sam Mitchell, Darren Glass, Sam Butler and Michael Brennan.
And like North Melbourne, the Eagles were off to a blazing start thanks to a midfield that has seen Jack Redden return to his ball-hunting days of Brisbane, and All-Australian defender Elliot Yeo, who has played roles all over the ground as he waited patiently for the old blokes to sod off so he could win the footy in the midfield, the best and fairest and the endof-season raffle that forms part of his salary. Yes, AFL clubs are just like regional clubs!
Importantly, it was the development of Jack Darling into a superstar that had the Eagles a formidable outfit. He has been missing, alongside key pillar Josh Kennedy, for parts of the year. But they are both now back and if they can find their best football, West Coast is going to be a major player deep into the finals series.
It is why you should go to the match. Scarily, I don’t think we’ve seen the best of West Coast yet this year. That team without its best two forwards jelling together has been winning games of football. And now they are back? They are a must watch-team.
North Melbourne? Well, not so much. They are fading faster than the winter sun and will need to find their magic from the start of the season if they are to topple the Eagles.
It shapes as must-watch football, not must-watch from home with a big ol’ bag of crisps, but a must-watch from the luxury of the sun-soaked hill, or the cracked plastic seats of the Boon Stand with a cold pie and warm Coke that you’ve waited 30 minutes for.
Do it. But don’t throw your pie at the window of the Chairman’s Lounge. That will get you evicted and your invitation to the Ricky Ponting Medal as a previous winner revoked forever.