Australian Football

Micro Noises 197: Bevo — hat-trick man

Can the Dogs take another hat-trick?

The Bulldogs are in hot form at the moment, their late season charge towards a finals berth yielding wins by 104 points and 61 points over the last two weeks. Consecutive wins by 10 goals or more have not been unusual for the bigger AFL clubs, but for the Dogs, it's a pretty rare event. In 95 V/AFL seasons, they have only managed the feat 10 times.

And as for claiming three 10-goal-plus wins in a row, that's something the Bulldogs failed to achieve in their first 90 seasons. Not even premiership coach Charlie Sutton or Terry Wallace, the only man to take the Dogs to four consecutive V/AFL finals campaigns, could conjure a hat-trick of 10-goal wins.

It was not until Luke Beveridge took the reins in 2015 that the Bulldogs put three consecutive 10-goal-plus wins together — and they did it in his first season as coach. The Dogs won by margins of 87, 64 and 98 points in rounds 18 to 20 that year.

This Sunday, Bevo's Bulldogs will have the chance to match that feat. Having won by 104 points against Essendon and 61 points against GWS in the past two weeks, the Dogs will take on Adelaide in Ballarat. For omen-loving Dogs' fans, the good news is that the Bulldogs' only run of three 10-goal-plus wins in a row (in 2015) began with a thrashing of Essendon, just as the current run of two did.

Of course, as nice as achieving a second 10-goal hat-trick would be, not many Doggie fans will be too concerned if they do not. They'll be happy enough with a one-point win, or even a draw, which will be enough to propel the Bulldogs into September action for the first time since their famous 2016 premiership win.

Consecutive 10-goal wins by the Dogs, and the result of the third game:

State of the states

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: The WAFL has long been associated with high-scoring games but East Perth and West Coast took the league in the opposite direction last Friday night. Wet conditions at Leederville Oval made scoring difficult for the Royals and Eagles, and between them they scored just 5.16. The aggregate score of 46 was the lowest for a WAFL match since Round 5, 1921, when Perth and East Fremantle could together muster only 5.13.43.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA: Meanwhile, North Adelaide in the SANFL decided not to miss out on the low-scoring 'fun'. The Roosters managed just 2.8.20 against South Adelaide on Sunday. This represents their lowest score since 1989. In that year's Grand Final, North posted an abysmal 1.8.14 as they were thrashed by 94 points at the hands of Port Adelaide.

VICTORIA: The VFL didn't escape the low-scoring bug last weekend either. Not one of the twelve teams who took the field in Round 20 managed to crack a three-figure score. The same thing also happened in Round 5, but the Round 20 teams went 'one better', with the highest score of the round, 92, kicked by Footscray, two points lower than the Round 5 highest score, 94, recorded by Essendon. Prior to this year, the most recent round in which no team 'cracked the ton' was Round 11, 2003. The highest score attained on that weekend was 99, kicked by Bendigo at Queen Elizabeth Oval.

The last time a VFL round had a highest score of 92 or fewer was in Round 4 1999. In a five-game round, the highest score was 92. Three other past VFL rounds had highest scores of below 100: Round 12 1996, when the highest score was 90, the following week Round 13 1996 (highest score 98), and Round 20 199, in which none of the ten sides got past 86.

1 versus 100: A point proven

Sunday's thriller at the Gabba between Brisbane and Geelong was the eighth AFL game this year to be decided by one point, a record for any single VFL or AFL season. Three other seasons have had seven one-point games: 1928, 1952 and 2006.

The Gabba result means we have a runaway leader in Eddie McGuire's favourite battle, 1 versus 100, which compares the number of one-point games in a season with the number of games decided by 100 points or more. With only 18 more games to be played in 2019, 1 has an 8-1 lead over 100, and looks set for its first win in a decade.

The Marginal Medal

One point may have been a margin eight times this year, but it is not the most common one of the 2019 season. There have been nine games each decided by 5 points and 27 points. Along with 1 point, 19 points has been a margin eight times. We have seven 22-point games, and six matches each decided by 4, 16, 24, 33 and 44 points.

There are four margins of 50 points or lower that have not yet been attained in 2019. Along with 50 points itself, the missing margins are 30 and 46, and zero, with no drawn matches as yet this season.

Score Wars

With average scores as low as they've been for decades, the 60s, 70s and 80s are dominating the Score Wars race in 2019. 71 and 69 have been the two most common scores of the year, recorded 11 times each, while 72, 75, 85 and 88 have shown up 10 times each. The only three-figure totals to have been recorded more than four times are 104 and 106 (five each). 

Apart from 47 and 109, all scores between 40 and 110 have been registered at least once.

Omen of the week

The Tigers are building, and so are the omens for another Richmond premiership. Not only did the Yellow and Black acknowledge the year of their fifth premiership by trailing 19-43 at quarter time, but on Friday night, the Swans won 95-42, a scoreline that has only been seen once before. The Swans won 95-42 as South Melbourne against North Melbourne in Round 12... 1943.

Postcode of the week

At half time of last Friday night's match at the MCG, Melbourne once again found themselves at the crossroads. The Demons were four goals down, and in danger of letting yet another 2019 fixture disappear down the chute.And given the half time score — they were trailing 3.3-7.3 — perhaps their situation wasn't all the surprising. After all, 3373 is the postcode of both Cross Roads and Chute.

Ridiculous footy anagram of the week

There's been no shortage of action on the AFL coaching front in 2019, and this week has proved to be no exception. The footy world was blindsided on Tuesday by the news out of Perth that Fremantle had sacked coach Ross Lyon. But the Dockers didn't stop there — they also parted ways with CEO Steve Rosich.

While the termination of two long-term club leaders came as a bit of a shock, upon reflection, maybe it shouldn't have. In hindsight, the Fremantle coach/CEO combination was perhaps doomed to fail when you cosider that LYON AND ROSICH, FREMANTLE is an anagram of I'LL NOT MEND FREO'S ANARCHY.

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.