Ovens and Murray grand final match review: Albury v. Yarrawonga at Lavington

Last Sunday, your humble correspondent witnessed the deciding match of the 2014 Ovens and Murray Football League season, the sixth in succession between Albury (the Tigers, playing in black with a yellow sash) and Yarrawonga (the Pigeons, playing in navy and white hoops). The league’s two power clubs, boasting a combined six hundred and sixty-six games of AFL experience between them, played out a thriller in front of a healthy crowd in a match which showcased the best of our great game.

This season, the Tiger ranks were bolstered by the arrival of the O’hAilpin brothers, Setanta and Aisake, late of Carlton, and Brayden O’Hara, a midfielder from Central Districts. The squad, one of the finest ever assembled in country football, took home the minor premiership with sixteen wins, one loss, and one match abandoned (the season opener at home to Yarrawonga, in which young Albury player James McQuillan was airlifted to Melbourne after suffering a spinal injury, which left him a quadriplegic.) Yarrawonga finished third on the ladder, but two wins over second-placed Lavington in the qualifying and preliminary finals (of a McIntyre Final Five, if you’re playing along at home) put them into the Big Game at the End of the Season.

Before the match, as your humble correspondent enjoyed some hot chips and a can of a prominent black fizzy beverage, we were treated to a brilliant rendition of Hunters and Collectors’ ‘Holy Grail’ by local performer Jason Ivill, a song which ought to become the antipodean version of ‘Abide With Me’ and played before the grand final of every football league in the Commonwealth. Legendary Brisbane Lions forward Jonathan Brown, en route to the Brownlow, tossed the coin and we were off. Or, more precisely, Yarrawonga were off – the out-of-towners scored the first three goals of the match, two of them from the boot of our old mucker Brendan Fevola, and it was looking like they would take home their third successive premiership. The nerves of the Tigers faithful were settled, however, by a flurry of goals, one each to Dean Polo (ex-Richmond and -St. Kilda) and Andy Carey, and two to Setanta O’hAilpin. The minor premiers led at quarter time by just four points.

The Tigers’ ascendancy continued in the second term. Despite some poor clearances from defence, they out-goaled the Pigeons five to four. The highlight of the quarter for Albury was an eighteenth-minute running goal for indigenous speedster Lonnie Hampton; for Yarrawonga, it was the leaping grab and subsequent set shot conversion by Fevola in the thirtieth minute which trimmed the margin to twelve points at the half. Despite some minor outbreaks of guernsey-pulling, the match calmed down somewhat in this quarter, and that ingredient which makes country football so delicious – The Biff – would be sadly absent in the second half.

The long break came, and your humble correspondent tucked into a hot dog (our hosts having run out of chips and warm pies) and his second can of the black fizzy beverage. When the teams returned from the sheds, it was again the Pigeons who came out of the blocks firing. You-know-who scored two quick goals within nine minutes to tie the scores at nine goals seven apiece. I gialloneri could manage only behinds in response, allowing Yarrawonga to take the lead with a goal in the twenty-first minute by Jeremy O’Brien. With the Pigeons’ defence keeping the brothers from the Rebel County relatively quiet, the men from Moira Shire smelled blood in the water, but two goals from O’Hara in time on gave the locals an eight-point lead at lemon time.

What followed was a final quarter to remember. A ninth-minute Fevola shot on goal was ruled a behind by the goal umpire without benefit of score review; Albury led by fifteen. Andy Carey marked on the fifty-metre arc and played on to O’Hara in the eleventh minute; the Croweater’s goal (enlarging the margin to twenty-one points) would be Albury’s last. Tigers full-back Michael Thompson got a hand to a Fevola soccer one minute later, and Albury led by twenty despite Fevola’s rather in-your-face protestations to the goal umpire.

Two Yarrawonga goals and then a behind narrowed the margin to eight points. The ‘Big Mo’, as George H. W. Bush called it, was with them as they yet again moved the Sherrin goalwards into the waiting hands of Fevola in the twenty-seventh minute. Situated twenty minutes out and straight in front of goal, and realising that the siren could blow at any second, the former Dancing with the Stars contestant played on, taking two steps to his right and snapping around his body, somehow missing to the right by about one metre. The siren did indeed blow soon after, followed closely by the triumphal strains of ‘Oh we’re from Tigerland / A fighting fury we’re from Tigerland’.

The best defensive football is played on relatively large ovals in dry and warm conditions, and this match was a textbook demonstration of this fact. In a year in which the AFL’s average score per team per match has dropped to the lowest level since 1968 due to the expert application of pressure by defences, the O and M’s Big Two showed that they too adhere to the tenets of Roosism-Lyonism; the air was alive with the glorious sounds of pigskin being smothered and imported talent being unceremoniously thrown onto the turf. Although Fevola and Setanta O’hAilpin bagged six and four goals respectively, they would have had more if not for the efforts of the backmen who kept them quiet, Thompson and Luke Packer of Albury and Connor Hargreaves and Marcus McMillan of Yarrawonga. The latter became, at just nineteen years of age, the first player to be awarded the Did Simpson Medal in a losing side; having already represented country Victoria at under-19 level, he undoubtedly has great things ahead of him.

The flag is Albury’s nineteenth, and after two years of grand final heartbreak, the Ovens and Murray premiership cup has once again taken up residence on the side of the border where it belongs. But what next for the league, and for the Tigers? Six consecutive Albury-Yarrawonga grand finals has brought equalisation to the top of the agenda, and it seems likely that some sort of points system will soon be implemented, limiting the ability of big clubs to recruit players with AFL and state league experience. (A working group of local football identities has already drawn up a scheme, as detailed mid-season in the Border Mail.)

After the demise of the Bendigo Gold left the VFL with fifteen clubs, the Weekly Times published a non-story speculating about Albury replacing them. Of course the club denies any interest, but this club deserves to seek greener pastures, and North Ballarat have already demonstrated how a country club can make the jump. One of these Septembers, we might be hearing ‘Yellow and Black’ blaring out across the Docklands.

Albury 13.13.91 – Yarrawonga 12.12.84

Goals: S. O’hAilpin 4, O’Hara 3, Mitchell 2, Carey, Hampton, A. O’hAilpin, Polo (Alb.); Fevola 6, Pettifer 2, Ednie, Gorman, O’Brien, Seymour (Yarr.)

Best: Polo, Hampton, Packer (Alb.); Hargreaves, Fevola, Gorman (Yarr.)

AFL second semi-final match review: Geelong v. North Melbourne at Melbourne

Rumours of the death of Geelong, Mark Twain would have said if he had been a follower of o jogo australiano, have been greatly exaggerated. The men from Motor City may have become the first team since the 2007 Eagles to go out of Professor McIntyre’s famous finals format in straight sets, but they put on a stunning display of football, and came within six points of out-comebacking the comebackers.

The first sign that we were in for a good night came before the start of the match. After experimenting with having nobodies from the X-Factor sing the national anthem in the first week of the finals, the league went back to the trusty old tape-recorded Julie Anthony version. A good move by the new CEO, and hopefully he follows it up by reverting to the Ross Oakley style of Brownlow vote-reading.

North Melbourne came out of the blocks firing, scoring seven goals to Geelong’s five to lead by twelve at the first change. The score was flattering to the Cats at this stage, their first quarter having been filled with intercepted kick-outs and inside fifties aimed at no-one in particular. The second term was mostly a quiet affair, highlighted by two goals to the Shinboners, a Joel Selwood visit to the bench under the blood rule, and a bit of argy-bargy as the warring sides headed for the sheds. North, supposedly the kings of second halves (as has been noted by every so-called expert football writer on teh interwebs for the past week) carried a four-goal buffer into the long break.

The third saw more of the same; the teams traded goals three times, and Selwood was nearly impaled on the fence when Lindsay Thomas decided to continue the half-time scuffle. With three sirens now having sounded with a lead divisible by six, and neither team ever having more than two behinds than their opponents, the draw was on.

When play resumed, the Pivotonians started well. Josh Walker marked and goaled to bring the margin down to eighteen. Tom Hawkins won his physical duels with Nathan Grima the way he didn’t last week against Brian Lake. Two Jack Ziebell goals appeared to seal it for los norteños, who were now thirty-two in front. Then the Tomahawk added to his two majors from the first quarter, nailing three to put the Hoops thirteen behind.

A score review didn’t go Lincoln McCarthy’s way, and his shot on goal was deemed to have been touched. Twelve points. Then a turnover in the Kangaroos’ forward fifty was punted upfield to Hawkins, who went via Mathew Stokes to Jimmy Bartel, who marked at the goal post. His banana kick went through, and the margin was six points with two and a half minutes remaining. A tense passage of play followed. Geelong bombed the ball forward but North had numbers at the back, and only one of the latter’s many efforts to put the ball into touch was ruled deliberate. The Scott Brothers superclásico ended in victory for Brad. North’s unlikely tilt at the flag isn’t over yet, but neither is the Geelong dynasty.

Geelong 13.14.92 – North Melbourne 14.14.98

Goals: Hawkins 5, Walker 3, Bartel, Blicavs, Caddy, Duncan, Enright (Geel.); Petrie 4, Thomas 3, Ziebell 2, Black, Dal Santo, Goldstein, Harvey, Turner (N. M.)

Best: Hawkins, Selwood, Caddy (Geel.); Goldstein, Dal Santo, Gibson (N. M.)

AFL first qualifying final match review: Sydney v. Fremantle at Sydney

In last season’s preliminary final at Subiaco Oval, Fremantle gave the Swans (and us all) a footballing lesson, putting on a display of pure defensive football unrivalled since Port Adelaide’s demolition of North Adelaide in the 1989 SANFL Grand Final. If the Dockers were to upset the minor premiers at the Olympic Stadium, they would need to repeat that magnificent performance.

There was just one problem: it’s been bucketing down intermittently here in the Emerald City for the last fortnight. The rain brought the Melbourne Storm unstuck against Easts at Moore Park last Saturday night, and it threatened to do the same to the purple-clad chaps from the State of Excitement. The damp surface promised a return to the wet-weather footy of yore, as it was played by men like Matthews and Carey back in the Good Old Days before this great game of ours was basketball-ified and Etihad-ised.

It didn’t feel so much like Heritage Round as Multicultural Round when Tendai Mzungu slotted home the first of the match. Buddy Franklin and Matthew Pavlich were among the scorers as both teams went into the first break with three goals, the Swans leading by three as a result of their superior tally of behinds. Pavlich was again on the scoresheet when he finished off a coast-to-coast Fremantle play to put the visitors ahead with the first score of the second quarter. Ben McGlynn answered straight away for the Bloods, and then the match took a defensive turn.

It was twenty minutes before we witnessed the next major score. There were a few behinds from some inaccurate stabs at the sticks, but with a wet ground and two sides skilled at high pressure defensive football, the quarter was permeated with smothers, blocks, one-percenters, and general tit-for-tat. Everyone thought Buddy would break the deadlock, but Alex Silvagni mercilessly brought him down. Jarrad McVeigh found Kurt Tippett at the goal post, then Pavlich answered with a soccer-style goal with three Sydney defenders on his tail, and the home side led by five points at the half.

At the mid-point of the third stanza, i biancorossi led by three. Two more goals had been kicked: McGlynn from a free kick and Mzungu from a turnover. This quarter had the same feel about it as the second until Lewis Jetta marked and goaled, and then Adam Goodes did the same after getting underneath a bomb, and the margin stood at fifteen. Kieren Jack’s bending effort after the siren extended it to twenty-two. Franklin and Tippett had been quiet, and John Longmire’s decision to move them into the midfield turned out to be a masterstroke.

La viola knew they had to come out firing. Cameron Sutcliffe got them started, and when Pavlich grabbed a bouncing ball and swirled it in from the pocket, the comeback was on. Franklin hit back immediately with a brace of goals, and all of a sudden we had a shoot-out: four goals had been scored before the quarter had been going for three minutes. The watersiders will rue the missed opportunities of that quarter: the missed set shots, the pushes forward wasted for a lack of targets, and the brilliant Swans pressing that forced Silvagni to skew one into the stands.

The minor premiers put the icing on the cake with a polished move in the final minute. Rhyce Shaw to Franklin, back to Shaw, to Franklin again, and a punt up forward to find the waiting arms of Dan Hannebery. They matched the vanguard party of Marxism-Lyonism at their own (defensive) game, and continued to excel when the match broke apart into a shoot-out. Worthy minor premiers, and your humble correspondent fears what they can do to his Cats in two weeks’ time.

Sydney 13.15.93 – Fremantle 10.9.69

Goals: Franklin 3, McGlynn 3, Goodes, Hannebery, Jack, Jetta, Parker, Pyke, Tippett (Syd.); Pavlich 4, Mzungu 2, Fyfe, Mundy, Sutcliffe, Walters (Frem.)

Best: McGlynn, McVeigh, Hannebery (Syd.); Pavlich, Barlow, Fyfe (Frem.)

AFL second qualifying final match review: Hawthorn v. Geelong at Melbourne

The football-viewing public of the Commonwealth were on Friday night treated to another classic edition of the modern antipodean equivalent of the Celtics-Lakers rivalry. For the second time in a fortnight, Hawthorn galloped home in the second half, and booked themselves a home preliminary final.

The first quarter was the archetypal ‘game of two halves’. As the Melbourne Cricket Ground recovered from the murdering of the national anthem by some X-Factor contestant or other, it was all Geelong for the first ten to fifteen minutes. Joel Selwood bagged the first of the night after a Luke Hodge kick from defence was intercepted, and after a few minutes of back-and-forth, Jimmy Bartel put the Cats two goals up. Geelong defended solidly to neutralise Luke Breust (who failed to goal until early in the final stanza), but Hawthorn applied such forward pressure as to back the Pivotonians into a corner in their backline on two occasions. The Hawks hit back with three goals by the end of the quarter and led by nine at the first change.

Geelong quickly regained the lead after scoring the first two goals of the second quarter: the first a set shot resulting from a soaring Jimmy Bartel mark, the second the product of Tom Hawkins combining with Selwood in front of an open goal. But in true Hegelian fashion, thesis was followed by antithesis, and Hawthorn scored the next three to lead by fourteen points. Two behinds later, Jordan Murdoch goaled to put Geelong six behind with forty-one seconds left on the clock. A well-executed centre clearance allowed Josh Walker to convert a set shot to leave the teams tied at 6.5.41 apiece at the long break.

David Hale and Joel Selwood traded goals to open the third term, signalling that the second half would be as tight as the first. Minutes later, Geelong hit the front through Tom Hawkins, whose first goal of the match came via a free kick arising from his much-anticipated physical duel with Brian Lake. Geelong native Hodge reclaimed the lead when he marked and executed an exquisite checkside. Jack Gunston hit the next two, leading Bruce McAveney to treat the viewers to a dose of The Bleeding Obvious with his observation that “they need a goal, Geelong.”

They would get two thereafter, the only problem being that the Mustard Pots snagged five. Jarryd Roughead sealed the win with a set-shot snap eight minutes from time, and it was time to flick over to the Scottish lesbians on SBS2.

Geelong must now win three matches for the title, including a preliminary final at either Homebush or Subiaco Oval. They played like a third-on-the-ladder team – frustrating to watch for fans who know that this Golden Generation is capable of so much more. They played with too little aggression – Hawkins’ tussles with Lake and Steve Johnson’s cheek wound notwithstanding – and were poor when trying to clear the Sherrin away from those swarms of bodies around the ball which characterise il football moderno. The winner of the North Melbourne-Essendon elimination final awaits.

Hawthorn 15.14.104 – Geelong 10.8.68

Goals: Gunston 3, Lewis 3, Puopolo 2, Roughead 2, Breust, Hale, Hodge, Langford, Smith (Haw.); Selwood 3, Bartel 2, Blicavs, Hawkins, Johnson, Murdoch, Walker (Geel.)

Best: Mitchell, Gunston, Hill (Haw.); Selwood, Bartel, Stokes (Geel.)