This historic week started off with Melbourne pulling off a mild upset in beating Richmond.  The game was back and forth for the first half, but Melbourne pulled away in the second to even their record at 2-2 while Richmond falls to 2-2.  The game featured this great mark from Big Ben Griffiths:

As far as I know, Australian Big Ben has never made questionable decisions regarding bathrooms and females, so I feel good about posting his highlight video.

I had promised my buddy that I would drive him to the airport on Friday night, so the logical thing was to go to a bar beforehand and watch the early St. Kilda-Carlton game on my tablet using the bar’s wifi while enjoying some beverages.

By the time we needed to leave for the airport, a little bit into the third quarter, St. Kilda was in full command with a decent 16 point lead.  Imagine my surprise when I returned home, popped the game on, and discovered that Carlton were not only leading, but blowing the Saints away!  I mentioned it last week, but it is really surprising how quickly momentum can change in this game and how teams are really not out of it until the very end.

A perfect example of that was the Sydney Swans – Fremantle Dockers battle of unbeatens which I managed to catch the end of early on Saturday morning.  Fremantle started off hot in the first quarter but really turned it up by only allowing Sidney to score 2 behinds in the second term en route to a 48 point half-time lead.  Of course, Sidney came roaring back and only allowed Fremantle 1 behind in the third to get the margin down to 3 points midway through the 4th.  Fremantle finally came back to life, though, and finished off the Swans to remain unbeaten.

The other game I was able to see live on Friday night was the Essendon-Collingwood game which has become a bit of a rivalry as the two teams have now been scheduled to meet every ANZAC Day. It was a back and forth low-scoring game which Collingwood ultimately won by 20.  It featured this great goal from Downtown BFE by Essendon’s Dustin Fletcher:

Holy Shit!  Do you realize how far that is?  That is at least 69 meters, which is roughly 76 yards!

In one late Friday night game, the GWS Giants absolutely destroyed the Gold Coast Suns. This is really worrisome because Geelong’s sole victory in the first three rounds came against Gold Coast so

In the other game, Port Adelaide shocked Hawthorne with a tremendous start.  At one point, the lead was 58 in the second term. Hawthorne improved in the second half, but could only get as close as the final deficit of 8 points.  Hawthorn’s Jarryd Roughead, who scored 7 last week, was held goal-less while Port Adelaide’s Jay Schulz scored 5 of his own.  From what I’ve read, Hawthorn had Port Adelaide right where they wanted them at the end, but simply ran out of time.

Now that Hawthorn’s record has fallen to 2-2, I may have to revisit my idea that they are the best team in the league.  On the other hand, if they learn from the mistakes that cost them these two victories, look out.

Also out of the running for best team in the league is Adelaide, who shockingly got blown out by the Western Bulldogs. Jake Stringer forced Adelaide’s Kyle Hartigan to leave his jock on the ground in scoring his fifth goal:

Btw, I understand that the AFL players don’t wear jocks, rather something called Skinz.  That same company also sells products for women:

In another Saturday night game, poor Brisbane had only this lone highlight to be proud of after getting beat handily by the West Coast Eagles.

Finally, in the game I had been waiting for all week, Geelong started the Scott family derby against North Melbourne very aggressively and got out to a 25 point lead at one point in the first.  A really stupid defensive mistake, however, resulted in a North goal late in the period and foreshadowed Geelong’s undoing as they fell to the Kangaroos by 16.  If you click on the link below, you can see the critical mistake as well as several others with our coach discussing them in the audio.

http://www.afl.com.au/video?guid=744918&t=15-75

To add insult to injury, North’s Jarrad White converted this great mark into an easy goal:

On the bright side, I feel pretty good about my level of AFL knowledge.  Analyzing the game, I see the same things that the coach spoke about in his post-game press conference

“We had control of the game today but then a few really bad errors halt your momentum and get the opposition back into the game. There were actually a few parts of the game that were much better than they have been in the previous three weeks,” Scott said.

 “I think we’ll get better as the season goes on but we have just got to bridge that gap between that first quarter of really good solid footy and then just gifting the opposition four really easy goals in the second quarter to get them back into it.”