R23 The Other Games: reckoning of the heavyweights

[bloodspirit]

Deja - I apologise for cutting your grass by launching this thread. I look forward to you properly launching this thread with your preview of the games in due course. But every week I'm impatient for this thread to begin and feel it needs to kick off a bit sooner and this week I can't wait. I tend to start looking ahead to the coming weekend's games as soon as the last round is finished.

So, I'm going to limit my focus to trying to guess at the fixture for this round, and then only on timing - I wouldn't have a clue about venues.

My thinking is that it might be something like

Friday night: Demons v Cats

Saturday arvo:

Swans v Suns
West Coast v Lions
GWS v Carlton

Saturday night:

Bulldogs v Port
Essendon v Pies

Sunday

Saints v Freo
Adelaide v North
Richmond v Hawks


My logic is that the top of the table clash deserves top billing on Friday night. And the finalists and finals contenders will get preferenced to play Saturday instead of Sunday.

The tricky bit is that I think they will want to avoid the Swans and Giants games overlapping and so maybe Giants-Carlton will swap places with the Pies and the Bombers. I'd like to see the 1 v 2 and 3 v 4 games as well as the Swans match but I'm afraid that they won't schedule three games on FTA TV all on Saturday and we'll miss out on the 3 v 4 match (in Sydney) if Swans and Giants both play on Saturday. So hopefully they can push the Giants to play on Sunday (which will give us an extra day's preparation if we're going to play the following weekend, as seems likely).

[707]

Friday, August 20
Western Bulldogs v Port Adelaide at Marvel Stadium, 7.50pm AEST (SEVEN)

Saturday, August 21
Richmond v Hawthorn at the MCG, 1.35pm AEST (FOX)
Sydney v Gold Coast at Marvel Stadium, 1.45pm AEST (FOX)
Brisbane v West Coast at the Gabba, 4.35pm AEST (FOX)
Geelong v Melbourne at GMHBA Stadium, 7.25pm AEST (SEVEN)
Carlton v GWS Giants at Marvel Stadium, 7.40pm AEST (FOX)

Sunday, August 22
St Kilda v Fremantle at TBC, 12.15pm AEST (FOX)
Essendon v Collingwood at the MCG, 3.20pm AEST (SEVEN)
Adelaide v North Melbourne at the Adelaide Oval, 4.10pm ACST (FOX)

[bloodspirit]

Well, I was hit and miss but more miss than hit. They've switched the Friday and Saturday night games compared to my prediction. They've also made the Bombers play on Sunday. The bummer is that with the Giants playing on Saturday night I think we Sydney viewers will miss Geelong v Melbourne because they always prioritise the Swans and Giants games. That's my only gripe. Happily these days they provide the full replays by stream on the afl.com.au website the next day.

[bloodspirit]

Saw this video of Clarko talking about coaching: Farewell Clarko: Football and life lessons from the master coach (afl.com.au). It's pretty good and he comes across as more gracious than he often does. The most interesting bit for mine was to hear him talking about how he got players to focus on not chasing top dollar and but instead sacrificing for the good of the team and the intangible things (like success) that could come from making those sacrifices. I wonder how much he did that himself?