Round 3 - Carlton Match Preview

By Shelton 10
RED ROSES? OR A KICK FOR THE CAT?

Saturday night at the G, against Carlton. Those bastards always seem to find some way of tripping us up, stopping us showing them just how much better than them we really are. But maybe this time it’ll be different. New coach, enthusiastic players, a determination to attack at all times … We’re in a different age.

We know about the trip to the ground. The walk to the station, feeling proud and conspicuous in the black and red scarf and beanie; standing on the train, seeing the others in red and black, and those in navy blue as well, maybe even some good-natured jibes given and returned.

And then we arrive. The sausage with cheese and onion – extra onion – from the caravan outside the ground; the queue to get in; through the entrance and the underground areas and then out into the arena itself, a blaze of light, the team out on the ground doing some warm-ups; and a buzz, all around.

Then, finally, after all the preliminaries, the siren blows, the umpire bounces the ball and we’re off. Some things we know for sure will happen. Someone in red and black will grab the ball brilliantly off a pack between wing and half forward, race towards goal completely free and clear, unload with a beautiful swinging drop punt … that just fades away at the last second, to a collective Oohhhh … We’ll get two or three goals from frees that were definitely there, although the umpires usually don’t have the guts to pay them; and Carlton will get two or three from frees that were just figments of the umpires’ corrupt and malicious imaginations.

And the trip home. Will we be smiling, re-living that Lovett run down the wing and the perfect pass to McVeigh, discussing with the stranger standing next to us the way Lloyd used the strength of his body to hold off that Carlton hack and clasp the mark to his chest in the goalsquare, picking up a dozen red roses at the all-night florist in Richmond to take home to the ever-lovin’ … ? Or will it be glum silence, looking with hatred out of the corner of the eye at those smug bastards in blue as they sneer and smirk … and a kick for the cat when we get through the door?

I may as well confess it now. I hate Carlton. Like West Coast and Port Adelaide, they make me sick. My worst nightmare is a grand final between Carlton and West Coast: such a game could have no positive outcome.

What makes Carlton especially loathsome is that they bring out the worst in us. Take last year. A beautiful sunny day, eight goals up with five minutes to go in the second quarter, and we start to gloat. And lose by three points to a team that was, without doubt, pure and unadulterated crap. And that’s not the first time. Need I say anything more than preliminary final 1999?

So is this the game where we finally stick it up them?

Not a bad team named, really, with one glaring exception. JJ’s unlucky to be dropped, but Slattery really hasn’t done quite enough, and NLM and Dempsey aren’t fit so there was no choice. Peverill will cover the loss of JJ’s hardness, Lovett will – if he fires – light us up with dash and skill, Reimers looked ready for anything during the pre-season and arguably should have been selected for round 1, and Monfries … well, Monfries is presented with the ideal opportunity to start fulfilling the many promises he’s made since being recruited several seasons ago. He could start by kicking straight from one of those set shots 30 metres out at a crucial time.

The glaring exception? A forward line that’s missing one key forward. McPhee’s a good player, but he’s not a centre half forward and he never will be, as he proved conclusively last week. It’s not absolutely essential for a CHF to be 192cm and 92kg plus – Hird and Brereton were both only 186cm – but McPhee is no Hird or Brereton and he just doesn’t have the core strength. There’s no-one on the bench to play the position. Johns is named as an emergency, but he’s done nothing at all to warrant bringing him in at the last minute. So it’s going to have to be Ryder, which may be no bad thing at all. But if we try to play with only Lloyd, McPhee, a resting ruckman and a bunch of runners, we’ll be looking very thin up forward.

God only knows why Welsh isn’t in the team. He’s not a CHF either, but he’s a very solid player with a lot of talent and he kicked 5 in the ressies last week.

The good news is that it seems as if nothing has really changed over at Ponces’ Park. Even with all Dick Pratt’s money and 327 no.1 draft picks, Carlton has still managed to lose to pretty much everybody. It’s 12 losses in a row now, including a recent one to Richmond, who are without doubt one of the worst teams in recorded history.

So the ball is right there in Matthew Knights’ court. Like many others, I was doubtful about his appointment and I’m still reserving judgment, but so far I like most of what I’ve seen. The players have trained very hard over summer and look very fit, he’s got their faith and confidence, and he’s got them running and taking risks. We had a pretty good pre-season – we beat Brisbane in Brisbane and we beat Footscray well, and we only lost very narrowly to St Kilda, who are a very strong team, and very narrowly again to West Coast in Perth. Then there was a very creditable win over North, one of our bogey teams in recent years. But that was followed by last week, which was not just a loss, but a clinical dissection. 99 points. May the saints preserve us.

I have a very simple view of football. First of all, the players have to be fit. Ours are. Second, there has to be a reasonable mix of big, strong, tall players and smaller nippy runners all over the ground; and provided we can do something sensible at centre half forward, we’ve got that one covered as well. After that it comes down to one thing, and one thing only. Which team wants the ball more? The most talented team in the world is not going to win a game if the other team keeps getting hold of the ball first. That’s where Carlton have had it over us more frequently than I care to remember: when they play us, they want to win; and too often we haven’t wanted to win as much as they did.

Despite Carlton’s dismal run, they’re not totally devoid of talent, and they’ll be up and at us from the first bounce. If we are not right up there with them, it’ll be a miserable Saturday night. So it’s over to Matthew Knights. A coach, particularly a first year coach, can’t do much about the level of talent or experience in the team, and no coach can control how many injuries occur. But any coach ought to be able to get his team’s mindset right; and if he does that, then the team will win a lot more matches than it loses. That doesn’t mean the players should all head out on the ground with glazed looks in their eyes, intent on knocking the head off the first opposition player they see; but it does mean that each player should go out there with nothing on his mind except the intention to get to the ball first and get hold of it.

It would be nice to be able to predict the future, but I’ve never found a course to teach me how to do that. All I can do is what anybody else can do, which is try and assess how things are now and use some logic to figure out how they might transpire from here on. So how are things right now? Not bad, is my answer. The loss to Geelong was a blow – not just because it was a loss, but because it was such a devastating loss. The sole positive from it is that it means that the players are in no doubt whatsoever that winning games is not easy. And how might things transpire from here on? Well, putting together the fact that we beat North for the first time for 7 years and the fact that the players are fit and fast and enthusiastic and the fact that Carlton have no greater level of fitness, talent or experience than we do, I think that what transpire will be a win. Not an easy win, because no wins are ever easy and because Carlton are always at their best when they play us, but a win by about 20 points.

So I’m thinking red roses and a kiss for the ever-lovin’ when I get home on Saturday night. The cat’s probably fairly safe.

The Team
B:	Ramanauskas	Michael	Fletcher
HB:	Houli	Ryder	Winderlich
C:	Davey	Watson	Nash
HF:	McVeigh	McPhee	Reimers
F:	Jetta	Lloyd	Lonergan
R:	Hille	Stanton	Dyson
INT:	Lovett	Laycock	Monfries
	Peverill
EMG:	Johns	Johnson	Slattery

Carlton Team
B:	Houlihan	Thornton	Jamison
HB:	Russell	Waite	Gibbs
C:	Simpson	Judd	Stevens
HF:	Pfeiffer	Kreuzer	Scotland
F:	Fisher	Fevola	Betts
R:	Cloke	Carrazzo	Murphy
INT:	Bannister	Bower	Hadley
	Hampson
EMG:	Armfield	Bentick	Jackson

Last Time – Round 20 2007 – MCG
	1/4	2/4	3/4	Full Time
Essendon	2.1	5.3	12.6	18.10.118
Carlton	4.5	8.8	11.11	16.12.108
Full Match Report

Best Players
Essendon	Lloyd, Camporeale, Stanton, Monfries, Lovett, Welsh
Carlton	Fisher, Carrazzo, Houlihan, Betts, Waite

Goals
Essendon	Lloyd 6, McPhee, Monfries 2, Lucas, Reimers, M Johnson, McVeigh, Hird, Lovett-Murray, Laycock, Lovett
Carlton	Fisher 4, Lappin, Betts 2, Bannister, Whitnall, O’hAilpin, Saddington, Walker, Carrazzo, Jackson, Murphy

TV Coverage
Ten Melbourne	7:30pm	Delay
Ten Adelaide	6:30pm	Live
Ten Perth	6:30pm	Delay
Fox Sports Plus NSW	7:00pm	Live
Fox Sports Plus QLD	6:00pm	Live

Radio Coverage
MMM Melbourne	6:00 PM
3AW Melbourne	6:00 PM
ABC Melbourne	6:30 PM
MMM Adelaide	5:30 PM
5AA Adelaide	5:30 PM
ABC Adelaide	6:00 PM
ABC Perth	5:00 PM
ABC Hobart	6:30 PM
ABC Darwin	5:00 PM

Betting
Essendon	$1.73
Carlton	$2.12

BomberBlitz.com ‘Expert’ Tips
Andy	Carlton by 17 points
SuperSonic	Carlton by 14 points
Pazza	Essendon by 24 points
Bomberman007	Essendon by 18 points
Koala	Essendon by 2 points
Awesome_Scotty	Essendon by 46 points
No32	Draw
Riolio	Carlton by 7 points
Shelton 10	Essendon by 20 points

Posted 4 April 08 in News Match Preview