Micro Noises 180: Goals are Dog-gone
Reigning premiers hit rock bottom
One can only hope that Western Bulldogs' fans have strong and lasting memories of the Doggies' final five minutes of their third quarter against Essendon back on July 30th. In almost the blink of an eye the Dogs piled in three goals, one each to premiership heroes Tom Liberatore, Marcus Bontempelli and Jordan Roughead.
That gave the Bulldogs a vital 19-point lead at the last break and they went on to record a five-goal win against the Bombers. And Doggies' fans, we hope you remember and savour those goals well because since then, your team has failed to score a major in the third quarter. The Dogs went without a goal in the third term against the Lions at the Gabba in round 20, kicking five behinds for the quarter before recovering to win by 14 points.
×
Right ▼
Last Friday night, they decided to reprise that Brisbane effort, again kicking five behinds without a goal in the third quarter, this time against GWS. There was no recovery this time, though, the Giants thrashing them by 48 points.
That rather abysmal effort took the Bulldogs' goalless quarters total for the 2017 season to eight, meaning their fans have been subjected to the frustration of seeing their team go for a full term without scoring a major once every two and a half weeks, on average.
The Dogs' total of eight puts them way out in front on the goalless quarters list, the next 'best' being Fremantle and Hawthorn with five each. Mind you even the best teams can have little lapses, as Geelong demonstrated against Richmond last Sunday, the Cats recording their first goalless term of the season in the third quarter at Kardinia Park.
Richmond and Sydney are the best sides at holding other teams to goalless quarters, having done so six times each in 2017. The Gold Coast Suns are the only team this season not to have held another to zero goals in a quarter at least once. The table above ranks the 18 AFL sides via 'net result' of goalless quarters against and for.
This week's telegram from Her Majesty
Congratulations to 14.14.98 on the occasion of its 200th appearance as a V/AFL final score last Saturday. Port Adelaide delivered the milestone in its win against Collingwood at the Adelaide Oval. The Magpies brought up the very first occurrence of the score, in a 1906 win over South Melbourne, after which it became a semi-regular score until the late 1960s, except on the 1920s, when it strangely came up only twice in the entire decade.
In the last half a century, it's been a very regular combination, and it's featured at least once in every season except three - 1979, 1986 and 1987, reaching a peak in 1973 when it came up six times. Two drawn matches have had both sides finish on 14.14 - Carlton v Richmond in 1960 and St Kilda v South Melbourne in 1977.
It's been a long time between drinks for Jack
Seven decades is a long time between games of footy, but when Jack Graham - who has been named in Richmond's team to play against Fremantle in round 22 - takes the field on Sunday, he will do so 68 years after playing his last VFL match - for South Melbourne in 1949.
No need to explain, of course, that the two Jack Grahams are not the same man. In fact Richmond's potential debutant will in fact be third V/AFL player of that name if he makes into Sunday's final 22. The first played eight games for Melbourne late in the 19th century, while the second was a Swans stalwart over 15 seasons and 227 games. So if and when the newest of the identically named trio runs out for his 15th match, the Tigers could get him to run through a banner that quite accurately - if somewhat misleadingly - reads, Congratulations, Jack Graham - 250 games.
1 versus 100
After no movement in this battle since round 14, Sydney's thrashing of Fremantle on Saturday has brought it back to life. The 104-point win means that we've now had three games decided by 100 points or more this year, compared to five decided by 1 point. With two rounds plus finals to go, 1 point is still well placed to win this competition for the first time since 2006.
Postcode of the week
The Dogs might have had a dirty night against GWS last Friday, but at least reigning premiership coach Luke Beveridge hasn't found himself stuck in the mire of criticism and speculation about his future that Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley has. So it's somewhat ironic that the Dogs' goal tally across their four quarters against the Giants was only 3, 3, 0 and 1, because 3301 is the postcode of Buckley Swamp.
Ridiculous footy anagram of the week
The moment all Bulldogs fans have dreaded for some time now has come, with a favourite son of the Western Bulldogs, Robert Murphy, announcing that this season will be his last. And unless the Dogs can conjure up an even greater miracle than they produced around this time last year, Bob will sadly leave without a premiership cup in his trophy cabinet.
Nevertheless, he can walk out the doors of Whitten Oval knowing that he is in so many ways a saviour, his leadership a key factor in taking the Bulldogs from the depths of despair in 2014 to a triumphant breaking of a 62-year premiership drought. He will now leave the club deservingly a man free at last of the weight of expectation placed upon him by so many. It seems only fitting, therefore, that ROBERT MURPHY, A FAVOURITE SON is an anagram of MR. FREE - NO TROPHY, BUT A SAVIOUR.
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.
Comments
This article does not contain any comments.
Login to leave a comment.