Micro Noises 28 - triple anagram special
Magpies miss matching Magpies by a minuscule margin
Devonport didn't have much to cheer about in their loss to top side South Launceston in the Tasmanian State League on Saturday. The Magpies were thrashed by 117 points but in the process they did come within a whisker of accomplishing a very rare feat. Their final score of 8.7 was achieved by kicking 2.2, 2.2, 2.2 and 2.1 across the four quarters of the match. Another behind in the last quarter would have seen Devonport do something that's been done only once in 14,228 VFL/AFL games (and perhaps never at Tasmanian state league level) - register the same score in all four quarters of a single match.
The once-in-a-120-year phenomenon was achieved by another team of Magpies - Collingwood - in their nine-point win over St Kilda in round eight, 1934.
These surnames are making me thur-sty
Congratulations to Jackson Thurlow who played his first AFL match on Friday night. He was part of Geelong's victory over Essendon and also scored an AFL "first". A browse of the records shows that the VFL/AFL has featured three players with the surname Thurgood, along with a Thurley, a Thursfield and a Thurstans, but Jackson is the first ever Thurlow to play at the highest level. As excited as we are for Jackson, we're a little disappointed that his first match wasn't played 24 hours earlier, on Thursday.
First among unequals
Hardly surprising that Adelaide's 135-point thrashing of GWS gave us a first-time final score. It was only the fourth game in VFL/AFL history of that margin and the first to finish with a final score of 52 v 187. Slightly more surprising was the fact that Gold Coast's win over Melbourne was the first ever occurrence of the scoreline 114 v 54.
Score Wars
The score 103 is still the most registered so far this year, having come up five times but 82 has jumped from obscurity into equal second place. It was notched up by Brisbane in their loss to West Coast and Sydney in their loss to Hawthorn. So while it might be a losing score in one sense, it is almost a winning score in another, having come up four times in 2013. 68 and 77 also moved up to second place on the weekend, coming up once each.
The Marginal Medal
There's been movement at the top of the table in the battle for the Marginal Medal. Geelong's win over Essendon on Friday night was by 28 points, the fourth time that margin's come up this year. And Richmond's win over Port Adelaide gave 41 points a share of second place. That margin's occurred three times in 2013, as has 16 points.
Year of the week
Essendon fans were none too pleased with the inaccuracy of their team in the third quarter against Geelong on Friday night. The Bombers managed just a single goal and kicked a lamentable nine behinds. But their older and more learned fans would have been at least able to remind themselves of the good times at the last break. The score for that third term was 1.9 v 6.2 and 1962 was an Essendon premiership year.
Postcode of the week
And things haven't gone at all the way Brisbane had hoped this season but it appears that they too were able to take it upon themselves to conjure up memories of better times on Saturday. The Lions were 3.0 at quarter time in their match against West Coast and 6.6 at half time. And 3066 is the postcode of the team they vanquished in consecutive Grand Finals in 2002-03, Collingwood.
Ridiculous footy anagrams of the week
Sometimes anagrams of a match can reveal the underlying narrative of the game. For instance MELBOURNE AND THE SUNS can be rearranged to make MAN BURNS OUT - HE'S NEELD. At other times a game's anagram can seem quite confusing. For example, we're not really sure what ST KILDA AND CARLTON can do to clear up the peptide scandal when they have had no part of it, yet they are an anagram of CALL DANK AND SORT IT.
Perhaps if we frame our anagrams as a question we might get some sense. The AFL has introduced footy on Monday nights at something of a whim it seems. But what do the fans think of it? Well the question "HOW ABOUT MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL?" has been put to the anagrammatic jury and it has spoken. The verdict: "OF A WHIM BUT OH, BLATANTLY NO GOOD!"
We wonder if the AFL will pay heed to the voice of the anagram.
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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