Micro Noises 146: Drafts & trade winds
Learning to live with footy's silly season
Footy season's over but the footy talk doesn't stop. The AFL in particular has made sure that it doesn't, by plunging us all straight into the trade period, which has already thrown up some utterly bizarre scenarios, some imagined, some real. Some of the real ones seemed unimaginable before they came to pass, but come to pass they have.
For instance as we type this, Sam Mitchell has officially become a West Coast Eagle. Only a few days ago he won Hawthorn's best and fairest award for a fifth time but, from next season, he'll be wearing the blue and yellow of the Eagles. This is the AFL world we now live in. We must learn to adapt to it.
When events such as the Sam Mitchell trade occur we may allow ourselves a moment of surprise and reflection but then we must move on and learn to live with it. And such a fact can be neatly summed up by the fact that HAWTHORN'S SAMUEL MITCHELL is an anagram of "WEST COAST? HUH? HMM. I'LL LEARN."
Three droughts (grand) finally broken, three to go
While trading players is the topic du jour, we can all still spare a few moments to discuss the actual game of footy, and in particular the aim of it all, winning a premiership, can't we? (Have we mentioned that we are rather fond of the Western Bulldogs?) For the sanity of Melbourne, St Kilda and Richmond fans, it's worth noting that three of the six V/AFL droughts (25 years or more without a premiership) have been broken in the last 12 years.
The longest of them all was broken first when Sydney won the 2005 flag, 72 years after its previous Grand Final win as South Melbourne. The Cats came next, their 2007 thrashing of Port Adelaide coming 44 years after they defeated Hawthorn in the 1963 decider. And of course, the Bulldogs ended 62 years in the footy wilderness two weeks ago.
So with droughts of over four, six and seven decades being ended over the past dozen years, the next dozen would seem to be perfect for breaking ones of over three decades (Richmond has now gone 36 years without a premiership) and five decades (Melbourne last won a flag 52 years ago and St Kilda exactly 50 years ago).
Which of those three will get there first? Current trends would indicate St Kilda might be the one, followed by Melbourne, with Richmond seemingly some way away from premiership contention. But Tiger fans need only look back two years to know how quickly things can change. Only 24 months ago, the West Bulldogs were considered by all and sundry to be the basket case of the AFL. Today, they are officially the best side in the land.
What's in a name?
AFL Women's took a step closer to reality this week with the 2016 draft taking place on Wednesday and we noticed a couple of anagrammatically appropriate picks in the top 10.
Bravo to ELISE O'DEA who was selected by Melbourne at number eight in the draft. She's fittingly an anagram of IS A DEE - OLÉ! Meanwhile, while we don't know what Stephanie Chiocci will think of Wayne Siekman, who will be the coach of the Collingwood women's team but she'll probably like him if her own name is any indication. STEPHANIE CHIOCCI is an anagram of THIS NICE PIE COACH.
If you're a Bailey, you're a Bulldog
Meanwhile, the Western Bulldogs, not content with having every male player in V/AFL history to have a first name of Bailey as part of the club (Bailey Dale and Bailey Williams), drafted Bailey Hunt with pick 60, which means every female player in AFL history to have a first name of Bailey has also been a Western Bulldog. Not content with that, the Bulldogs also took a player with a surname of Bailey - Laura - with pick 143.
In the beginning
Still on names, our mate on Twitter Swish Schwerdt was trawling through the wonderful AFL Tables website recently when he came across two players by the name of Peter Brown - one from South Melbourne and one at Geelong. Now there's no great surprise in that, given that Brown is a very common surname and Peter is - or at least once was - a very common footy first name. In fact six Peter Browns have graced V/AFL footy fields of the 120 years of the league's existence.
But the two uncovered by Swish have a very special link. They both played their first VFL games in the same match, in round two, 1971. To our knowledge, that represents the only match in V/AFL history to have two players of the same name making their debuts. In round one, 1897, two Bill Aherns made their VFL debuts, but not in the same match.
While Geelong's Peter Brown had a career that lasted only six matches, the South Melbourne version carved out a nice little 77-game stay with the Swans, finishing up in 1976.
Ridiculous footy anagram of the week
Yes, this week's column has already been littered with anagrams but it would be remiss of us not to finish off with one as we normally do. And this week's involves North Melbourne's Daniel Wells who, as a free agent can go to the club of his choice.
Wells' choice just happens to be Collingwood, where he would be hoping that he can help return the Magpies to a new period of footy relevance. How fitting, then that DANIEL WELLS: "NOW I CAN GO TO..." is an anagram of "...A NEW, SALIENT COLLINGWOOD".
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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