Round Four: Battle of the Basketcases: Part One

Well as Boris the chicken can no doubt attest, one week you're the rooster, next week you're the feather duster. There were to be no Whoppers for me this week, I went from the perfect 8 to a miserable 2 correct selections in Round 4 as the favourites tumbled like dominos. A great week for Hungry Jacks, they won't have lost too much money giving away hamburgers, that's for sure.

By the end of round 4 it became excitingly clear that one of the longest running questions going around, one that has been pondered by football fans old and young, rich and poor, from the north, the west, the south and the east since 1995 seems set to be finally answered at the end of this season: that question being, of course, is Richmond or Fremantle the biggest basketcase in the AFL? I don't want to imply that other clubs haven't had their moments. St Kilda has a cutlery drawer overflowing with wooden spoons; Carlton in recent years has been a bit diabolical; Fitzroy in their dying days were a barely competitive figure of pity; and the less said about the Brisbane Bears the better- at one point they recruited Warwick Capper in order to give themselves more credibility as a football club! It's true, I swear. Nor do I mean to imply that it has always been so: Richmond in the depression and war years was a team not to be messed with, while in the 1960s and 70s they were an absolute powerhouse. I'm sure any Western Australians in the house will be able to confirm my understanding that South and East Fremantle were equally credible outfits back in the day. But boy, oh boy, the Tigers and Dockers should really come equipped with a canned laughter track these days, it just seems to be one sitcom moment after another, off-field and on.

Let's take as a starting point 1995, the season Fremantle entered the competition. They were welcomed with open arms, as their entry meant that the AFL now had an even number of teams and we were thus spared from the bye. Some would argue that that is still Freo's greatest contribution to the AFL. Somewhat less welcome was the Dockers' introduction of the totally unnecessary "home and away" jumper concept- Freo is completely to blame for the collective loss of sanity that resulted in such monstrosities as the Port Adelaide Phallus, the West Coast Gay Pride Flag, the Collingwood Magic Eye Magpie On A Bar Code, and the Hawthorn Number Seven in the Ninth at Flemington, amongst others. Check them all out at http://www.footyjumpers.com/, hours of fun for the whole family. The Dockers also introduced to the AFL an appalling dirge of a club song based on the Volga Boat song, of all things. I'm still staggered to this day that Port Adelaide somehow managed to come up with a worse one.

While Freo were distracting everybody in 1995 with their terrible song and array of sartorial atrocities, Richmond were on a rare high, making the finals for the first time since 1982. They also made the finals in 2001. Freo, for their part, has played finals in 2003 and 2006. That's it. Two finals series each for the two sides in 14 seasons (2 in 27 years for Richmond), with a preliminary final being the best result for both (2 in Richmond's case). By comparison Port Adelaide, which entered the comp two years later than Freo, have played in 7 finals series, finished top three times, played in two Grand Finals and won a premiership. The draft system and salary cap were supposed to even out the competition in order to avoid an English Premier League scenario where only a handful of clubs can ever hope to win. This had been the case in the old VFL, where only five different clubs won premierships between 1967 and 1989. The system has largely worked, every club has made it as far as a preliminary final since 1990 and only Freo, Richmond and the Bulldogs haven't played in a Grand Final. Every other team has played finals regularly, and worked out how to rebuild a team in the down years in order to get back in quickly. So why have the Dockers and Tigers been so consistently bad?

Answer one- recruitment. Freo and Richmond have made an artform out of abysmal work at the draft table and in picking up other clubs' rejects. You wouldn't have thought it possible to make a worse selection at number one than Richmond's 1987 choice of Richard Lounder, who played four games in total. But you would be reckoning without Freo's decision in 2001 to trade draft picks 1, 20 and 36 for Trent Croad (the Dockers also got Luke McPharlin). Croad played 38 games for the Dockers and then returned to Hawthorn. Pick one ended up being Luke Hodge, who was last year's Norm Smith Medallist; pick 36 ended up being Sam Mitchell, who held the premiership cup aloft as the Hawks captain. And Croad got a medal too (pick 20 didn't work out, but it's fair to say it was a better outcome for Hawthorn than it was for Freo). Both the Tigers and Dockers have let players go who have gone on to star at other clubs- ex-Tiger Ben Ottens won a premiership at Geelong, ex-Docker Adam McPhee won a best and fairest at Essendon- and have picked up good players from other clubs who have promptly become a shadow of their former selves once at Punt Road or Subiaco- Kent Kingsley, Mark Graham, Dean Solomon, Jeff Farmer, Chris Tarrant, the list goes on.

This is clearly not a discussion that is going to be able to be concluded in one Wrap. We haven't even gotten onto coaches yet. That might have to be the subject of next week's outing.

So, Round 4. It kicked off under lights up at Brisbane with the Magpies being the visitors, in desperate need of a win to get their season back on track. It looked pretty ordinary for them at quarter time down six goals to two. But a stunning fightback saw them pour on 11 goals to 4 in the next three quarters to record a stirring fighting win to level their 2009 record at 2 and 2, the same as Brisbane. The same 2-2 record is also that of Sydney and Carlton, after the Swans recorded a somewhat surprisingly easy win over the Blues in a game most expected Carlton to romp home in. Bad goalkicking from Carlton was a major factor in the result, with Brendan Fevola the main culprit with 1 goal 4. At the MCG it was a huge upset with Port Adelaide running away from the reigning premiers Hawthorn in the second half to record a 30 point win. Hawthorn's premiership defence is looking decidedly shaky at 1 and 3, while the Power are shaping up as a very hard team to tip.

The Saturday night fixtures saw the season's frontrunners both record very good wins (these, incidentally, were the two matches I actually managed to tip correctly). St Kilda handed out a fearful hiding to the hapless Dockers, keeping Freo goalless in 2 quarters and restricting them overall to a paltry 4.4.28 while chalking up 111 points of their own. At the end of the match the Saints' percentage was up to a whopping 200%, while the Dockers was down to a woeful 56%. And Freo's week got even worse when their assistant coach Steve Malaxos made an astonishing gaffe on live radio, telling stunned listeners that morale at the club was quite good because players were playing pranks on each other "dressed in Ku Klux Klan outfits". It subsequently emerged that the outfits in question were more Blues Brothers than KKK, but surely Malaxos will never be allowed near a live microphone again without an alert club official standing by armed with an electric cattleprod. Over in Adelaide, Geelong toyed with the Crows for three quarters before running away with seven goals to 2 in the last quarter to rack up an impressive 48 point win. Best afield by a country mile for the Cats was the magnificent Gary Ablett Jr, who recorded a lazy 46 possessions in his 150th game. Amazing to think that when his father retired, we wondered if there would ever be a player as naturally skilled ever again. Now the next great debate- once the Richmond vs Fremantle dispute is resolved- will be which of the Gary Abletts is/was the better player.

Sunday afternoon saw not one, but two affronts to the good name of AFL football. Two incredibly shoddy encounters in which skill went completely out the window. One took place at Docklands, where North Melbourne prevailed narrowly over Essendon in a very poor game indeed. At a rough guess 50% of kicks missed their targets, 75% of decisions made were the wrong ones and 100% of Essendon fans there wished they hadn't bothered turning up. The game will probably be best remembered for the first ever freekick awarded for a deliberate rushed behind, against North Melbourne's Daniel Pratt, one of the villains of the previous week's Chookgate. Not having a great season, young Pratt. The other shocker was across town at the MCG, where one of Richmond or Melbourne had to open their accounts for 2009 (barring a goalless draw). In the event it was Melbourne's young brigade who prevailed, putting the final nail in the coffin of Richmond's 2009 finals chances and Terry Wallace's Punt Road coaching career. Wallace may yet last out the season but in terms of a longer future at Tigerland he's a dead man walking.

One game left to complete Round 4, and over in the west the Eagles recorded a super impressive victory over the previously unbeaten Western Bulldogs. A great comeback for West Coast after their shellacking at St Kilda's hands one week earlier. With two impressive home wins the Eagles look to be re-establishing the Fortress Subiaco of old, but will need to discover some away form as well if they're to be a finals contender in 2009.

So after four rounds there are two teams who look certain to play finals (St Kilda and Geelong) and two who look to be gone (our friends the Tigers and the Dockers). Everyone else is still very much in it, and there's everything to play for going into the Anzac Day round. So be sure to join us here for the Wrap of that, and for Part Two of Why Freo and Richmond Are Perpetually Awful. Perhaps it's because the Dockers and Tigers don't think about the game enough, this should take care of that! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK45rcLk27k&feature=related