Micro Noises 48 - What the devil?!
Devil's (number) advocate
Whether or not it is something the AFL has advocated remains to be determined, but if it is, Gold Coast are steadfastly adhering to the directive that all of the Suns' games in 2014 must conclude with the winning team on a score of 87. The Suns kicked 12.15.87 to defeat Richmond in round one and followed up with a round two loss to Fremantle, in which the Dockers also scored 12.15.87. Expect the winner of this week's Suns versus Lions game to finish 13 short of the ton.
2014 isn't the first season Gold Coast has pulled such a stunt. The Suns were defeated by North Melbourne's 11.21.87 in round 21 of 2012.
The 90s versus the 80s
The AFL may or may not also have directed all round two games played in Melbourne played on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to finish with the winners registering a score in the 90s and the losers a total in the 80s. If so, all six teams are to be congratulated for following instructions to the letter. Richmond defeated Carlton 98 to 86, Hawthorn pipped Essendon 90 to 86 and St Kilda held off the Giants 95 to 88.
A gang of goal-kickers on the up
Of the top 50 goal-kickers in VFL/AFL history, four are still running around in 2014 - Matthew Pavlich, Buddy Franklin, Jonathan Brown and Nick Riewoldt. Amazingly, after round two of this season, all of them are huddled together in 31st, 32nd, 33rd and 34th place on the all-time list. Pavlich has 584 goals with Franklin one behind him, while Brown has a total of 579 goals, with Riewoldt one adrift of him. It will be interesting to see which of the four will be the first to crack the 600 mark.
A full list of the AFL's top goal-kickers can be found here.
Year of the Horse?
It's the Chinese year of the horse but it remains to be seen whether it's the year of the Horse. In fact, at the moment that's looking unlikely. Sydney, the team coached by John "Horse" Longmire, had lost its first two matches and faces a tough away fixture in round three. But Longmire does have a history of performing well in "his" year. In 1990, another Chinese year of the horse, the man called Horse kicked 98 goals to become the youngest ever winner of the Coleman Medal. Perhaps we shouldn't write the Swans off just yet.
Tons of tons? No!
For the first time since the AFL's regular rounds have comprised nine games, only two scores of over 100 were registered in last weekend's round. Not since round 22, 2003 has there been a full AFL round of football where only two teams have reached three figures.
Score Wars
Only two rounds into the season and already two scores have been registered three times. 87 and 69 have each come up as final scores thrice in 2014, while their near neighbours, 86 and 68, have appeared twice. Last year's most common score, 103, has not yet been seen.
The Marginal Medal
18 games have given us 17 different margins so far in 2014. 48 points has come up once in each the first two rounds, to stake an early claim for the Marginal Medal, while 4, 7, 12, 17, 18, 20, 25, 29, 32, 33, 38, 39, 54, 65, 70 and 93 have each been seen once.
First among unequals
With their victories last Saturday and Sunday, the two West Australian sides gave us firsts in the final score department. Fremanle's victory over Gold Coast was the first time a final score of 87 v 39 has been registered in a VFL/AFL game, while the Eagles' thrashing of Melbourne at the MCG gave us the never-before seen combination of 123 v 30.
Postcode of the week
A nice little hidden tribute from the Western Bulldogs in their loss to North Melbourne last Sunday. The Dogs will return to play at the Western Oval (now Whitten Oval) - in the form of Footscray - in the VFL this weekend. The station that services the ground is of course West Footscray, and the Dogs gave a nod to this in Sunday's game by scoring 3, 0, 1 and 2 behinds in each respective quarter. As everyone knows, 3012 is the postcode of West Footscray.
Ridiculous footy anagram of the week
Regular readers of Micro Noises would know that the last thing we would ever want to do is annoy the AFL. And we're almost certain that Richmond's number 41, even if he has been dropped from the Tigers' round three line-up, wouldn't want to annoy the AFL either. How ironic then, that NATHAN FOLEY is indeed an anagram of ANNOY THE AFL.
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.