Tag Archives: damian-hardwick

Weekend musing – the Brownlow medal, Grand Finals in AFL & NRL……

I was pleasantly surprised to listen to Dustin Martin at his Brownlow presentation on Monday night. He came over a lot better than I had envisioned and he seemed like a reasonable bloke who loves his footy. Bruce McAvaney was a little sickening, but he did a good job getting Martin to talk so it worked.

With 36 votes Martin scored exactly the same amount as the entire All Australian back line of Rory Laird (9) votes, Alex Rance (8), Michael Hibberd (7), Sam Docherty (5), Michael Hurley (4) and Jeremy McGovern (3). While I am not suggesting that Martin did not deserve his votes, it is a little hard to accept that these six champion players could only amass 36 votes between them as most of them are big ball winners as well. The forward line did significantly better with a total of 75 votes, but the forward line included Dane Zorko (14) and Robbie Gray (12) who are essentially mid-fielders and Lance Franklin (22) who seems to capture the umpires eye. With five votes it did endorse my view that Eddie Betts was lucky to make the team.

It was also interesting to see that nine of the 18 clubs had two players that secured half or more of their teams votes and at Richmond, Martin almost did that himself with 36 votes out of a team total of 80. As much as it is great to have a Brownlow medalist from your team, from a team perspective it is better to have a spread of vote getters. The two top teams were Adelaide and Sydney who both had 88 votes, but the contrast was that Adelaide’s top four Sloane, M.Crouch, Jacobs & Atkins contributed 51 votes and Sydney’s top four of Kennedy, Franklin, Parker & Hannebery contributed 67 votes with Hannebery only contributing 6 votes. I think the upshot from this was Adelaide had more to handle in trying to control Martin it will than Richmond had trying to control Rory Sloane…and that is how it turned out yesterday. One thing that the Brownlow coverage brought home was how disappointing it is that Jobe Watson is no longer a Brownlow medalist. To see Cotchin & Mitchell lauded as medalists was disappointing whereas I had not thought about it much beforehand.

The Grand Final was a reasonable game and even though I thought Adelaide were the better side going into the game, the Grand Final was played on Richmond’s home ground which, in my view evened out the contest. Richmond were worthy premiers and it says something for a Club that decided to hold fast in the face of great criticism of their 2016 performance. If the Tigers had buckled at the end of last season and sacked Damian Hardwick, I doubt they would have climbed to the heights of premiership glory.

The Melbourne Storm are my fancies in the NRL decider today. They
have had a great season led by Dally M medallist Cameron Smith. North Queensland Cowboys have had a remarkable run to the Grand Final but I believe they will fall short especially as they are without their champion play maker Jonathan Thurston.

Have a great weekend!

Weekend musing – father/son combinations, Richmond FC woes……

Sfan OB6It was great to see Kyle Chalmers win our first men’s 100m freestyle Olympic gold medal since Michael Wenden in 1968. He is the son of Brett Chalmers who made his name playing AFL and it got me chalmersthinking about other father/son combinations in different sports. There is Gary Jack (rugby league) & Kieran Jack (AFL), Jack Newton (golf) & Clint Newton (rugby league), Ray Ruffels (tennis) & Ryan Ruffels (golf), Tony Mundine (boxing) & Anthony Mundine (rugby league & boxing), John Ronaldson (VFL/AFL) & Tony Ronaldson (basketball), Pat Cash Snr (VFL/AFL) & Pat Cash Jnr (tennis) and Dimitri Markov (pole vault) & Oleg Markov (AFL). There are bound to be a lot more, but this is a good starting point for further discussion.

I was pleased to see Richmond win last week to get the heat off Damian Hardwick. As much as I thought Richmond erred by martinextending his contract at the start of the year, I thought he should be excused one bad year. The discussions about Richmond this year remind me of the discussions about Richmond of 10-15 years ago. Back then they had fourn players, Matthew Knights, Wayne Campbell, Nick Daffy & Matthew Richardson and then they fell away and now it is Dustin Martin, Trent Cotchin, Jack Riewoldt, Brent Deledio and Alex Rance and then they fall away again. Is history repeating itself?

Have a great weekend!