Micro Noises 102: Drawn to tragedy
Drawing a curtain on the eight original teams
Geelong's match against St Kilda last night was the 211th meeting between the sides but the first to finish in a draw. The result means that there is now only one combination of the VFL's original eight sides that has not produced a tied match. The Cats and South Melbourne/Sydney have met 217 times but never finished on equal terms. The two sides have come very close a number of times, playing six matches where the margin was just one point. The Swans have a 5-1 advantage in such games.
in 1974 the two sides come as close as possible to drawing, without actually doing so, twice. At Kardinia Park in round nine, the Cats led by 45 points at quarter time before South Melbourne whittled away at, and eventually overcame, the deficit to win by a point. 11 weeks later at the Lake Oval, they turned the tables to win by the same margin against the Swans.
With Geelong still a chance to sneak into the eight, the two sides could yet meet in a final, but if they were to do so and finish on level terms when the siren sounds in the first three weeks of the finals, they still won't have played in a draw together, because the extra time rule will be invoked. But if they were to somehow to meet in the first week in October, we could see them record their first-ever draw in a Grand Final.
'77 revisited - almost
Saturday night's draw was the first in VFL/AFL history in which the two sides finished on 97. A few hours earlier, the Suns and Dons almost made it two draws in one day, and almost two with sides finishing on 97. Ultimately Gold Coast ended with a score of 97 but Essendon finished two points shy on 95. Had one of the Suns' behinds gone to the Bombers, we would have had two tied matches, one finishing 97-97 and the other 96-96. That would have made the day eerily similar to May 14th, 1977 (the last time the league saw two draws in one round), a day which saw Essendon and Richmond draw 99-99 at Waverley and St Kilda and South Melbourne finish 98-98 at Moorabbin.
The draw between Geelong and St Kilda also closed another statistical gap, with drawn VFL/AFL matches now having been represented by every score in the 90s. The only scores between 80 and 110 that have not been represented in a draw are now 82, 86, 89, 102, 104 and 110.
Score Wars
Coming up as it did three times on Saturday, 97 has now been registered six times as a final score in 2015 but our Score Wars leader is 78, which came up for the 10th time this year with Carlton's 12.6 to 7.13 win over Melbourne on Sunday. With that, 78 takes a narrow lead over 69, which has been seen nine times in 2015. 85 is third with eight appearances, while 84, 83 and 63 have come up seven times.
At the other end of the spectrum 107 is the only score between 60 and 120 that has not been seen in 2015.
Not one 1
Round 21 gave us a two-point game and a zero-point game but nothing in between. In fact we have not seen a one-point match since Melbourne pipped Essendon in round 13 last year. With only two home and away rounds and finals remaining, this season could be the first since 1984 in which we have had no one-point matches.
Year of the week
The ongoing Essendon saga has had the hallmarks of a Shakespearean tragedy. There have been dramatic highs, despairing lows and last week saw the dethroning of King James Hird, who stepped down as coach. It seemed rather apt, then, that the Bombers scored 1, 6, 0 and 4 behinds in each of the four quarters of Saturday's match against the Suns. 1604, you see, was the year of the first recorded performance of Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear, before King James I of England in the banqueting hall of Whitehall Palace.
Postcode of the week
Hawthorn's loss to Port Adelaide last Friday night - its second of the year to the Power - was unexpected in the eyes of most footy pundits. Perhaps the Hawks had other things subconsciously on their minds, like the plateauing season of the Fremantle Dockers. Hawthorn's behind total at the end of each quarter on Friday was 3, 6, 7, 8 and 3678 just happens to be the postcode of Dockers Plains.
ZIP code of the week
The Sydney Swans' form in recent weeks hasn't been world-beating but with a big win over GWS on Saturday they moved back into the top four to announce to all and sundry that when it comes to the premiership race, they are still and the hunt. And they demonstrated this by leading 14.8 to 4.6 at three-quarter time. 14846 is, of course, the US ZIP code of Hunt.
Ridiculous footy anagrams of the week
Round 22 will see two great servants of the game hanging up their boots. On Saturday PAUL CHAPMAN will retire after 251 games with Geelong and 28 with Essendon. As an all-round tough guy and three-time premiership cup winner, he is very appropriately an anagram of ALPHA CUP MAN.
Meanwhile Adam Schneider has had a fine career with Sydney (98 games, two Grand Finals and a premiership) and St Kilda (129 games, three Grand Finals). He is returning to the side after a four-week break for his final match, one that he would hope might end with a successful bang. With that in mind, it seems fitting that SAINT MAN ADAM SCHNEIDER is an anagram of HE'S IN - A MAN'S DRAMATIC END.
Micro Noises is Andrew Gigacz's regular, quirky look at all things footy. The name Micro Noises is an anagram of Enrico Misso, who played one game for St Kilda in 1985. He remains the only Enrico and the only Misso to have played footy at the highest level.
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