Micro Noises 167: Bob's brilliant plan
All part of the plan
A lot of Doggies' fans would have been disappointed to learn that skipper Bob Murphy won't be making the trip to Perth for the Dogs' important round eight match against West Coast. But while Bob's poise and skill will undoubtedly be missed at Subiaco, we think it's all part of Bob's wider, carefully considered plan. And we believe that plan is for him to play all remaining matches as the Bulldogs shore up a top-four spot.
The next stage of the plan will be to win the Qualifying, Preliminary and Grand Finals. This will not only deliver Bob the premiership he so richly deserves, it will give him the chance to retire with an AFL games total of 319, one on which no other player has ended their career. If Bob had not missed the West Coast match, and the season unfolds as we've outlined, a retiring Bob would have to share his career games total of 320 with Essendon's Dick Reynolds.
As great as 'King Richard' was, we think a player as uniquely wonderful as Bob deserves to finish up with his own unique games total.
Matching match reports
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At right is a brief match report, a potted summary of the game that took place between the Bulldogs and Richmond on Saturday. It's a pretty straightforward report, outlining the main points of the events that took place at Docklands last Saturday.
But what makes it just a little bit unusual is the fact that it describes exactly what happened not just in the Bulldogs' win over Richmond on Saturday night, but also in the curtain raiser played between the two clubs' reserve sides a few hours earlier.
For the record, the Bulldogs won 11.14 to 11.9 in the AFL match, and 17.16 to 17.9 in the VFL match. Déjà vu is pretty common feeling amongst footy fans who often recall games from their dim, dark past when the match they're watching follows a similar script to one they saw years earlier. For those who went along to Docklands early on Saturday to see both Dogs-Tigers matches, this is one occasion on which they didn't have too wait long for to experience that feeling. For Doggies' fans it was a double dose of delight, but unfortunately for Tigers, it was a twin trauma.
Heart attack Doggies
Mind you, as happy as the Bulldogs would have been with the win on Saturday night, if they keep playing the way they have been so far in 2017, they are surely in danger of losing members - to heart attacks! In all seven games this season, even the two they have lost, the Dogs have given up a lead - more often than not a significant one - only to mow it down and hit the front later in the match.
It started off innocuously enough, with the Dogs falling two points behind in the third quarter against Collingwood before defeating the Pies by 14. But it got more serious the following week when they gave up the first four goals of the match against Sydney, trailing at one stage by 23 points before eventually winning by the same margin.
In round three the Dogs went even further, giving Fremantle a 25-point start before hitting the front in the third quarter, albeit eventually going down by 16 points. The following week they stretched the elastic band further still, this time falling 29 points behind North Melbourne before winning by three. In round five the Dogs took the concept to almost ridiculous lengths. They trailed by as much as 38 points against Brisbane before eventually winning by 32. Perhaps that was a deliberate bizarre tribute to the ups and downs of Bob Murphy's career in his 300th match.
Still that was not enough for the Bulldogs. In round six they allowed the Giants to get out to a 16-point break. then hit back to lead by 11 before eventually going down in a thriller, and last week against Richmond, they were as much as 32 points in arrears before sneaking home in another close one.
For Doggies' fans, each week is very much a rollercoaster ride of emotions. It might be pretty hard on the old ticker, but at least they know that no matter how far their team falls behind, they're still in the match.
Swans still a chance?
We pretty much wrote Sydney off after its round six loss to Carlton, pointing out that no side as ever made it to the finals after being 0-6. But there might just be some hope for you Swans' fans. Now that Sydney has broken through for a win, against Brisbane last Sunday, it has a 1-6 record, and we only have to go back seven years to find an example of a team making it to September action after starting 1-6.
In 2010, Hawthorn won only one of its first seven matches before recovering to win 12 games and draw one to finish seventh. The Hawks were eliminated in the first week of the finals but the fact that they got there at all will give Sydney fans at least something to hold onto.
The three-point win specialists
And while we're talking about the Hawks, their three-point win over Melbourne on Sunday reminded us of their incredible run of three consecutive three-point wins last year. A quick look at the results over the last season and a half reveals Hawthorn and the Bulldogs to be the three-point win specialists. Of the nine AFL games decided by exactly three points in 2016 and 2017, seven have been won by either the Hawks or the Dogs. Hawthorn has been victorious four times, the Bulldogs have won thrice and Sydney and St Kilda have each had one three-point win since the beginning of last year.
Lightning strikes thrice
Our twitter friend Nick the Stats Guy picked up on a truly incredible stat last weekend. After Adelaide was held scoreless in the first term against North Melbourne on Saturday, Nick went back through the records to discover that it was third time the Crows had failed to score in the first quarter of a game, after they had done so against Hawthorn in 1994 and West Coast in 2011.
Amazingly in all three matches, the opposition finished the match with a final score of 22.13.145. If that's not a reason to cue the Twighlight Zone theme music, then surely there will never be one. In a further twist, 22.13.145 has never been recorded as a final score against Adelaide in any other match. So the lesson here is, if you want to kick 22.13.145 against the Crows, you must hold them scoreless in the first quarter.
Lowering your colours to a lower team
Another very rare quirk to come out of round seven was the fact that all nine matches were won by the sides ranked lower on the ladder than their opponents. It was the first such occurrence since the AFL expanded to 18 sides and introduced nine-game rounds in 2011, and the first time it's happened at all since 1975, when the AFL was still the VFL and had only 12 teams and played six games a week.
While the unusual event was highlighted across most media on the weekend, a similarly-themed feat was also not too far away from being achieved. In seven of the nine matches, not only was the winner lower ranked on the ladder, they were also ranked lower alphabetically. Only the Demons and Magpies let us down in that regard, with Melbourne being pipped by Hawthorn and Collingwood failing to make the grade against arch (and alphabetical) rivals Carlton.
Postcode of the week
St Kilda had a great win over GWS last Friday night, defeating the Giants despite starting the match as underdogs and trailing by 17 points in the third quarter. The win was all the more meritorious when considering that Saints skipper Jarryn Geary was arguably a little bit flat during the game. Geary had only 13 touches on the night, down from the 22 he had in his team's win against Hawthorn a week earlier. The situation was perhaps best reflected by the fact that Saints goal total in each of the four quarters against GWS was 2, 4, 4 and 6, and that 2446 is the postcode of Gearys Flat.
Ridiculous footy anagram of the week
Country footy expert Paul Daffey has released a new book this week, Behind the Goals: The History of the Victorian Country Football League. Daffey's book (available here) is a fascinating look at the league's existence, and contains some great stories. One in particular concerned the Bendigo Football League issuing a permit to a VFL player Roger Marsden to turn out in the league for South Bendigo.
The permit was issued against the instructions of the Victorian Country Football League and caused much consternation between the two bodies, so the Bendigo League might have been best served had they been a bit sneaky and kept quiet about issuing the permit. Had they done so, it would have tied in nicely with Daffey's "BEHIND THE GOALS" BOOK, which is an anagram of "A BLOKE TO BENDIGO. SHH!"
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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