Tag Archives: paddy-ryder

Weekend musing – Drew Morphett, Nathan Buckley, All Australian team, Chris Scott, Ange Postecoglou

September 9, 2017 sportzfan Leave a comment

One of things I want to discuss is the tragic passing of Drew Morphett. Drew was one of those classic ABC commentators who was comfortable commentating on anything from football to athletics to tiddlywinks. He was always interested in presenting the picture to the audience and not pumping up his own tyres. In a pretty cut-throat industry I think he was universally liked by his peers. He will be missed.

I was also pleased that Nathan Buckley was reappointed as Collingwood coach for another two years as this will consign Collingwood to another two years out of the finals. It has to be good for the competition.

It was interesting to see that three of the banned Essendon players made the All Australian team with Hurley the only player to have made the team previously. Unfortunately for Essendon, Paddy Ryder (Port Adelaide) and Michael Hibberd (Melbourne) no longer play for the club. What it does show is that a year out of the game is not fatal for a player in his 20’s, but perhaps once you get to thirty it is not a positive experience.

Chris Scott took Geelong into another finals series last night and his fellow coaches recently voted him as the hardest coach to coach against. He certainly has had a lot of success since taking over from Bomber Thompson, however, his finals record needs some scrutiny. Since the 2011 finals series where Geelong won three games, including the premiership, but with the loss to Richmond, he has now contested a further nine finals for only two wins and one of those wins was over Hawthorn last year when Isaac Smith had a shot after the siren that could have taken the game away from Geelong. I think a few questions need to be posed as to Scott’s finals coaching record.

Speaking of coaches I cannot believe that Ange Postecoglou has come under so much pressure recently. He got the Socceroos an Asian Cup and in the current qualifiers the Socceroos have only lost one game. They do have an issue with scoring, but I put that down to personnel, not system. His system creates scoring chances, but we don’t seem to have the quality of strikers to put the goals away and this was no more evident that the recent game against Thailand. I think Tommy Juric is a good developing striker in the Mark Viduka mould, but we need a Harry Kewell or Tim Cahill at his best to compliment Juric. This is not Postecoglou’s fault, he has tried to develop players, but Australia just does not have genuine strikers playing at the highest level. Let the World Cup campaign pan out and reassess at the end.

Have a great weekend!

News, Sports

Friday musing – AFL trade period, Ryan Griffen, Caulfield Cup….

October 17, 2014 sportzfan Leave a comment

The AFL trade period is over and all the trades that had to be done were done including the Dane Beams & Paddy Ryder deals. As a Bomber supporter I think Collingwood did better than Essendon with their respective “forced” trades, but it helped that they were dealing with Brisbane who had more to offer. It was always going to be hard to prise a decent player out of Port Adelaide at the moment to come to Essendon

I have gathered a bit of information regarding the Ryan Griffen & Allan Christensen trades.

With Griffen, it appears there was a bust up between some of the players and Griffen and his leadership group wanted the coach to sort it out and the coach, quite rightly told them it was a leadership group issue and they should sort it out. They didn’t like it and it caused a lot of division within the club. The Bulldogs now have the key forward they have been after, but it may take a while for Tom Boyd to produce on a regular basis. At least it will take the pressure of Stuart Crameri, who was never more than the third tall in the forward line anyway.

With Christensen it is alleged that he had an affair with a team mate’s partner and she became pregnant. If this rumour is true, then it explains why Geelong traded him without much of a fight. For Geelong to then use the pick they got for him on Rhys Stanley is somewhat of a surprise. Stanley has shown some promise, but a second round draft pick, I don’t think so.

For me the overall winner in the trade period was Hawthorn. They have won the last two premierships, played in the last three Grand Finals and they picked up an All Australian defender in James Frawley. To that throw in a very promising youngster in Jono O’Rourke and the fact that they lost no required players.

Moving on to the races it occurred to me that Lloyd Williams spends a lot of money on importing horses from overseas, but somewhat ironically his best horse at the moment and indeed his best horse for some time in Fawkner in not only locally bred, but bred from a stallion, Reset, that Lloyd used to own. Perhaps he should concentrate on the local market instead of spending so much on overseas horses!

Well Rich Enuff came unstuck last week, but on that run I don’t think he will lose too many admirers. He beat everything else in the race quite easily and he rallied once the other horse went past him and pushed him right to the line. Perhaps the 1600 metres was a bit too far, but not by much. The colts ran about a second faster than the fillies in the corresponding race and they were just shaded by the time recorded by Trust in a Gust in the Toorak Handicap. There is a Group 1 race out there for Rich Enuff and he is now being set for a sprint at the Flemington carnival.

My place tip for this weeks main race the Caulfield Cup is Big Memory. In the Herbert Power last week over the same track & distance of the cup he recorded a time of 2.26.68 which is good enough to win just about any Caulfield Cup and he drops a kilo on that run. Not only that, he also did a lot wrong in that race and held the race despite a protest.

Have a great weekend!

News, Sports

Friday musing – AFL trade period, NRL, Caulfield Guineas…..

October 10, 2014 sportzfan Leave a comment

Well what a week in AFL trading! We already knew about Paddy Ryder and Dayne Beams, but this week Allen Christensen and Ryan Griffen emerge wanting to be traded. Who will pop up next? These trades will be difficult, but if a player has publicly flagged that he wants to go, he has to be traded in my opinion. There are exceptions, like Ryan O’Keefe who flagged a few years ago that he wanted to go to Hawthorn, the Swans kept him and he went on to win the Norm Smith medal in their 2012 premiership side. Supporters from the four clubs involved will all be very disappointed as the players are popular players at their clubs, but for different reasons they want to go and the clubs have to try and get the best deal available.

On a related topic, I was not surprised the AFL knocked back the proposed de-listing of Paddy Ryder to give Essendon an additional draft pick. It would have been a good result for the club, but tantamount to draft manipulation.

Now that it is inevitable that Paddy is going, my son will have to remove the badge from his jumper and send it over to Port Adelaide. The situation at Essendon seems to be lurching from bad to worse. What player would want to come to that club the way things are at the moment? Even Jason Winderlich, who grew up an Essendon supporter and was not involved in the supplements saga wants to go! I cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel at the moment and this is a club that played finals this year!

I watched the NRL Grand Final last week and it was a lot more competitive than the AFL equivalent. Although South Sydney did eventually blow Canterbury out of the water, the game was in the balance until about half way through the second half. The game apparently rated higher than the AFL Grand Final and there has been a renewed push for the AFL to play its Grand Final at night. As much as the ratings would be better, I hope the AFL retain the afternoon time slot, but money does dictate the terms in sport these days and it is probably inevitable that the AFL Grand Final will be played at night or the early evening before too long. The first AFL night final was in 1993 so we are probably lucky that it has lasted in the afternoon for so long.

The Spring Racing Carnival is really starting to pick up with Caulfield Guineas Day this Saturday. This is one of the best days on the racing calendar and should Rich Enuff emerge as the winner of the Guineas this weekend, we may have found the star of the carnival. To date no horse has stamped their authority on the Spring and racing really does need stars to bring people to the races. Weight For Age racing looks a bit thin this year and if Rich Enuff can get through he would be highly fancied in the Cox Plate. He looks the logical winner with Looks Like the Cat the one that could knock him off without being a big upset.

Have a great weekend!