An early smoky for the Brownlow?
by Darren Spence
Sunday saw the Mighty Dees take on “Essedon” in the early game at Etihad Stadium with another bumper crowd of over 44,000 seeing our boys run away with the points and break a 10 year hoodoo against their mob at this stadium, snap out of a 3 game losing streak and amazingly see us having won more games this season here than at the MCG.
I think watching the first half that both teams had a hard night on the turps as the game was riddled with errors and definitely won’t make any highlight reels…..But you know what?…..I don’t care…I will take that every week as long as we win in the end!
And win we did by kicking 13 goals to 6 after half time ending up easy winners by 38 points. It was an all round performance by our players and it was pleasing to see some Dees boys who have been down on their usual metrics find some form. Again Oliver was dominant and again was the leading possession getter on the ground with 33 possessions. With his read hair and constant leather poisoning is he an early smoky for the Brownlow?….Only time will tell. Nathan Jones found form with 30 touches as did Lewis in a welcome return to our side. Tom McDonald found plenty of the ball (most times I had my heart in my mouth when he did!) as did Tyson and Hibberd. Hibberd is quickly becoming a new favourite of mine; he is really damaging when he has his hands on the ball.
But this week I wanted to focus on what was supposedly our Achilles heel leading into this game – our ruck and our forward line. Pedersen was outstanding as our fill in ruck. He never stopped competing and whilst he lost the hit outs he dominated Bellchambers around the ground finishing with 19 disposals and a goal – quite rightly earning praise from Goodwin. Up front with big Jesse missing many were wondering how we would kick a winning score. Well we finished with 17 majors and they were shared around with Petracca and Watts kicking 4 each and Hannan and Garlett both with 3. This was one of the most pleasing aspects of the game in my opinion. Having multiple avenues to goal makes us extremely dangerous and very difficult to match up against.
This week we have the Hawks again on a Sunday. Yes the Hawks are down at the moment but this is exactly the type of game the Dees have had a habit of dropping. It won’t happen this week and by Sunday night we will be 4 and 3 sitting comfortably in the 8.
Go Dees
Follow us on twitter
Join our facebook group