UPS and DOWNS for Tuesday, Sept 29th, 2015

UPS to the AFL for an amazing season under some difficult conditions - dealing with the specter of racism against the aboriginal superstar Adam Goodes, who chose to retire quietly, after his final game, so as not to go through the traditional plaudits at the end of his last game that he so richly deserved and therefore avoid the possibility of negative reaction to deal with. The league can't be expected to solve a centuries-old problem singlehandedly in a few weeks, but the footy community did everything they could reasonably do for Adam and against racism. More than that, the murder of Adelaide Crows head coach Phil Walsh was handled with more aplomb and grace than could have ever been asked for - some of the most touching and beautiful moments ever seen on a sporting field took place in the aftermath. The league dealt with the after-effects of the Essendon doping scandal, the possibility of "tanking" for draft choices, and the seemingly everpresent shadow of injuries to its star players, such as Gary Ablett Jr and Nat Fyfe, the 2015 Brownlow Medal winner last night as best player in the league. Finally, as its highest paid player, Lance Franklin, admitted as the playoffs began that his injury issues were more of a mental health case than physical, the AFL and its community made great efforts to both shield him from the prying eyes of the media and to put those mental health issues in the light of day, exposing them as serious and no more or less debilitating OR worthy of embarrassment than a broken arm or an ACL. (Now, if they can get their free agency set-up to work more reasonably...)

DOWNS to the TEAMS WHO WERE EXPECTED TO DO SO WELL THIS SEASON! And yet, here we are, not even out of September, and some teams are so deep in a hole they probably can't dig themselves out of it before the season ends...

> Baltimore Ravens, 0-3, looking up at a hot Bengals team three games up and a tiebreaker, with improved wild card possibilities throughout the AFC... Is another Harbaugh going to the colleges next year?
> Saskatchewan RoughRiders, 2-11 and presumably out of the playoff picture completely, despite the ridiculously generous CFL playoff system which invites 2/3 of the league into the post-season. In theory, they are still just 3 1/2 games behind 5-7 Montreal for that last spot, but with six games remaining, the Mean Green has correctly started playing for next year already. The Riders, Grey Cup winners just three years ago, were expected to contend for the West division title this year with Edmonton and Calgary...instead, they're on coach number 2, quarterback number 3, and on to 2016...
> Oregon Ducks, 2-2 and 0-1 in conference. Still a very viable possibility of a Pac-12 North title, but that's not the OU goal - the college football playoffs are their goal, and while the 31-28 loss at Michigan State would have been survivable, the spanking they got at home last Saturday night from Utah, 62-20 (including a late gift TD by the third-teamers) was so comprehensive and so vivid that no voter will forget it. Ever.
> Many other teams who shot themselves in the foot, like Louisville (1-3), Nebraska (2-2), Texas (1-3), Texas' kicking game (0-2), Tennessee, Auburn, and South Carolina (all 2-2) and Arkansas (1-3...but hey, someone's got to lose in the SEC!); Marshall (3 bad wins and one BAD loss); the entire Mountain West (15-24 outside of conference, 11 of the wins coming against FCS schools); U Mass (1-3 and expected to contend for a MAC East title); Cal Poly SLO, Idaho State, and Montana of the Big Sky, 3-8 between them; Eastern Illinois (0-3); Stephen F Austin (0-4); the entire SWAC (3-12 outside of conference); and our #1 Bottom Team, Davidson of the Pioneer League, who plays almost equally-fruitless Valparaiso at home Saturday, in a meeting of the two last place teams in the Sagarin Ratings for the 253 Division 1 schools. Valpo is down to an amazing 6.67 rating, and yet is favored on the road at Davidson, who has set a record with their current rating of 3.08! It's conceivable that a bad Davidson loss this weekend could create a situation Sagarin's never had in D1: a negative rating.

Bonus AFL coverage on a Friday morning...

Several points of interest as the penultimate round of the home-and-away season begins:

1. With Geelong's stunning upset at the hands of the excoriated Magpies (and we were the excoriartors on Tuesday) in Friday Night Footy (time difference! If you wanna listen to the future, tune into Australian radio!), the eight teams for finals are set in stone, seventeen games from the end of the season! There's still a bunch of position jockeying to be done (places 5-8 - Richmond, Western, Adelaide and the Kangaroos - all have seven losses), but Geelong's spectacular championship run over the last eight years is over. Eight years, eight post-seasons, three titles, 70+% winning percentage (season and finals), and a host of players in their thirties now who have given their footy lives to my wife's beloved Cats and are now on their way out...either now or soon enough. Some tough decisions will have to be made, and it leads into a conversation about how a team handles this scenario, one many if not most great teams have to deal with: how to handle the transition period. More on this topic in a blog post in the near future, I'm sure.

2. Fremantle's wunderkind Nat Fyfe had such a spectacular first half of the season that not only was he the Brownlow Medal favorite for MVP, one betting house actually paid off bets on Fyfe by round eight and closed the betting on him! But between his own niggling injury problems, his brushes with being disqualified for the award through suspensions (a head hit two weeks ago that by all rights should have ended his quest somehow escaped punishment from the Match Review Panel), and Fremantle's struggles as a team over the last few weeks, the Brownlow is no longer a certainty by any means. On our Player Of The Year tally, after ten rounds, Fyfe had 208 points when no other player had yet past 100 - but now, he's been stuck on 221 for five or six rounds, while Dan Hannebury (Sydney) leads the charge up the hill towards him at 168. It's only theoretically feasible for Hannebury to catch him at this point, but with Fyfe out of the last two games with an undisclosed medical issue (I think it's charlielossphobia - "the fear of copping a penalty that would ruin my chances of winning the Charlie Brownlow medal"), the chances are at least there. Interestingly, since Fyfe has missed four (and probably five next week) games this season, it's the second year in a row that the medal favorite will have missed so much time: Gary Ablett Jr. went out with the shoulder injury in round fifteen (and with him, Gold Coast's finals chances), and still came in second to surprise winner Matt Priddis of West Coast. Suddenly, the awards voting will be interesting!

3. Carlton hired a new coach this week: a man named Brendan Bolton, a great assistant at Hawthorn for many years, a proven winner who should bring a strong organizational model to a club in disarray, if he's allowed to (and they're saying all the right things). Bolton will join the Blues immediately, even though Carlton has nothing left to play for and Hawthorn is in the thick of the hunt for a historic three-peat. Wouldn't he be better served staying with the team who needs (and was PAYING for) his services NOW, rather than the one who'll be in the same place in a month? Again, here's a subject we'll be addressing in the near future, in all sports.

4. Finally, a great story: Daniel Menzel, a 24-year old Geelong player who's suffered through FOUR knee reconstructions since he last played in the big leagues four years ago, was the Cats highlight in the Friday night game, scoring four goals, taking some incredible marks (high flying catches), and generally showing why the team was so patient with him. How wonderful to see THAT kind of hard work pay off like that!

Okay, now all the votes are in...

...from The Age, Sports Fan Australia, Following Football, and AFL.com.au, and here's your All-AFL 2015 team at mid-season:

Behind the 50:
Alex Rance (Rich) - the outstanding on-ball defender in the game today.
Sam Mitchell (Haw)
Michael Hurley (Ess)
Jarred McVeigh (Syd)
Tom McDonald (Mel)
Matt Boyd (Western)

Between the 50s: 
Nat Fyfe (Fre) - Polled 6+ points voting EVERY round Freo's played (no one else has polled in more than 10 of their games)
Matt Priddis (WCE)
David Armitage (StK)
Todd Goldstein (NMK)
Dan Hannebury (Syd)
Dylan Shiel (GWS)

Forward of 50:
Lance Franklin (Syd) - it's rare that the highest paid player's also the best, but Buddy is...
Scott Pendelbury (Col)
Luke Parker (Syd)
Jamie Elliot (Col)
Josh Kennedy (WCE)
Eddie Betts (Ade)

Interchange:
Aaron Sandilands (Fre) - the premier ruckman in the game today. 
Andrew Gaff (WCE)
Corey Enright (Geel)
Patrick Dangerfield (Ade)

And, on my personal wish list to watch play any day of the week:
Cyril Rioli (Haw) - Along with Betts, the most exciting player in the game!
Jeremy Cameron (GWS) - the top goal scorer of 2017 and beyond...
Adam Goodes (Syd) - enjoying a fantastic resurgence since May!
Nic Natainui (WCE) - the most athletic player in footy
Rob Murphy (WB) - always on the ball, literally
Marcus Bontempelli (WB) - 2019 Brownlow medalist
Chad Wingard (PA) - a down year for him and Port; still a phenomenal player
Jack Riewoldt (Rich) - Jack would have been player 23 on the All-Aussie list
Jesse Hogan (Melb) - rookie of the year, possibly
Gary Ablett, Jr. (GC) - it took just one game to remind us why he's the greatest player of his generation and the Brownlow favorite any year he's healthy (and some he's not, like 2014!).

(And, by the way, here are our top 22 point getters in voting for Player of the Year so far:)
NAME                           TEAM               POINTS

Fyfe, Nat	F	221
Hannebury, Dan	SY	124
Armitage, David	SK	112
Pendlebury, Scott	CO	106
Cotchin, Trent	R	101
Shiel, Dylan	GW	100
Mitchell, Sam	H	92
Priddis, Matt	WC	91
Goldstein, Todd	NM	88
Steven, Jack	SK	83
Gray, Robbie	PA	81
Murphy, Marc	CA	80
Beams, Dayne	B	80
Franklin, Lance	SY	79
Kennedy, Josh	SY	75
Martin, Dustin	R	74
Dangerfield, Patrick	A	73
Gaff, Andrew	WC	73
Hurley, Michael	E	70
Parker, Luke	SY	70
Murphy, Robert	WB	69
Neale, Lachie	F	68

 

Update - Individual honors for AFL player of the year...

After five weeks, it seems as though Fremantle Dockers' center Nat Fyfe, reigning AFLPA player of the year but never a Brownlow medalist, has a huge lead in the race for any and every version of the 2015 AFL "Player Of The Year" award you want to name, including the most prestigious - "Charlie", aka the Brownlow Medal, given by the league at a huge ceremony during finals (in Sept.)

Our scoring system uses two distinct elements: the AFLCA voting, which asks each head coach to rate the players on the ground after each game on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis (so a perfect score is 10, when both coaches give you a 5 for best on ground that day), and AFL.com.au's Team Of The Week, which names the 22 best players that particular week - fifteen at the five groups of positions cemented in, plus three "followers" and four in the "interchange" (bench) named regardless of position. Those are credited as 8 points for the fifteen positioned starters and 5 points for the remaining 7 candidates.

So, five weeks in, here's the scoreboard for the FOLLOWING FOOTBALL AFL PLAYER OF THE YEAR award - 

1. 71 points - Nat Fyfe (FRE)
2. 45 points - Dylan Shiel (GWS) and Dan Hannebury (SYD)
4. 37 points - Cale Hooker (ESS)
5. 34 points - David Armitage (STK), David Mundy (FRE), Scott Pendlebury (COL), and Rory Sloane (ADE)
9. 32 points - Patrick Dangerfield (ADE) and Michael Hurley (ESS)
11. 30 points - Todd Goldstein (NM), Stephen Hill (FRE), Bachar Houli (RCH), and Jay Schulz (PORT).

The first thing I notice is that it's easier to score points when your team wins. There are three Fremantle players on that list, and many more just below in the 20s and teens. Every player in the top fourteen listed plays on a team no worse than 2-3.

Secondly, it's not generally the big scorers up high on the list, but rather the swift ballhandlers in the middle of the field. Gary Ablett Jr., currently out with an injury but generally considered the best player in the game over the last half-decade or more, is not a big man - his nickname is "The Little General" - but he gets things done, like a quarterback. QBs don't usually score a lot themselves, but they create the plays that let everyone else score. That's what a great midfielder does, and most of the fourteen names on my list are great midfielders! 

We'll keep you updated on the leaderboard throughout the season...but it's week six of the AFL home-and-away season, and there are a few very interesting games on the docket we'll look at in our next post!