We’re seven weeks into the 2018 AFL season and it’s proving to be another unpredictable year.
What gets on my goat right about now is all the pundits continually making predictions, generally having two-bob each way so whatever happens in the future they can grab out one of their 3274 tweets from six months earlier and say ‘See, I always said North Melbourne would make the finals’.
The one that irks me the most, that makes me instinctively throw my right fist at anything within arm’s reach, is All-Australian predictions after the first few rounds.
Seriously, there have been commentators saying for the past month “if they named the All-Australian team today he’d be on the half-back flank’ - and it's week seven for Christ's sake!
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And it’s almost always the half-back flank because the modern game has made the half-back flank such a diverse position that you can have a third-rate midfielder ‘breaking the lines and turning defence into attack’, or a skills-challenged plodder who thumps the ball over the line with the unthinking repetitiveness of a machinist attaching plastic knobs to toasters at the end of a production line.
Yeah, I’m looking at you Liam Jones.
We were only two weeks into the AFL season before Fremantle’s Alex Pearce got a mention as ‘surely being in All-Australian selectors' minds already’.
Two weeks!
Luke Ryan’s been up there, Tom Jonas, Brad Sheppard, Dylan Grimes, Tom Stewart – these are just the left-of-centre half-back flankers.
Then there’s the Ed Curnows, Ben Strattons, Justin Westhoffs and Callum Sinclairs of the world.
These guys are not going to named All-Australian, I can promise you that. Stop chucking them in there on the off-chance one gets into the 44-man squad and you’ll look like a genius.
It’s the equivalent of that person on your table at a fundraising trivia night who gives nothing all evening then spends the whole answer-round saying “I was going to say Ben Affleck, I knew that was Portugal, my mum had that album”.
You want to know who’ll be All-Australian full-back? Alex Rance! Not Dane Rampe. Not Phil Davis.
Forward pocket? Luke Breust. Not Jason Castagna. Not Mark LaCras.
Ruckman? Brodie Grundy. Not Sinclair. Not Tom Bellchambers.
What a run from Brodie Grundy!
— AFL (@AFL) April 13, 2018
The finish - not bad either 😍#AFLCrowsPies pic.twitter.com/bPVE5KVeve
And while I’m at it, the 2018 AFL Coach of the Year is not Brad Scott.
If you're going to make a big All-Australian call then write down 22 names, in position, and send them to me at The Rover, Sporting News Australia, Sydney (it’ll get here – Australia Post delivers a lot of abusive mail and ticking packages with that address on them).
I’ll send the nearest correct entry a prize. It’ll be a blazer – a red one. Why? Because I’ve got a red blazer in my wardrobe that some drunk Swedish guy left here after a party once.
It smells a bit, but then, you probably predicted that it would, yeah?
