Welcome to Balls of Steel’s AFL Beat!

I am making it a habit now to wake up extra early on Friday mornings, start my workout, and have the AFL game in the background before I go to work.  This week, I was specially looking forward to it since Geelong were playing Collingwood.  I mentioned last week that I did not think Collingwood were as good as their 4-1 record indicated but Geelong have been inconsistent all year, so I did not know what to expect when I woke up.  Imagine my pleasant surprise when I discovered Geelong were up by over 50 midway through the second term!

The only thing better than waking up to this:

would be getting a good morning blowjob.  Which reminds me,

The morning kept getting better after this beautiful maneuvering through the Collingwood defense by Jordan Murdoch:

Of course, the inevitable Geelong dull spell reappeared in the second half. While Collingwood had been missing easy goals and settling for behinds in the first half, now it was Geelong’s turn and the Magpies started mounting a comeback. The margin got as close as 23 points before the Cats woke up and closed out the game with a string of goals to make the final margin 41 points.

Later Friday night, I tuned in to both the North Melbourne-Richmond and the Western Bulldogs-St. Kilda games.  Both games were very close in the first half, which was surprising since Richmond and the Saints were heavy underdogs.  At certain points, North would get out to a lead and then I’d switch to other game and St. Kilda would be within a goal or two. Then Western would extend the lead and I’d switch and Richmond would be almost tied!  I went back and forth like that until, very sleepily (remember I’d been awake since 3:30 AM Pacific) and considering the favorites were both up by over 40, I figured they were going to win and went to bed.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up on Saturday and discovered that St. Kilda had pulled off the massive upset and beat the Bulldogs by 7!  The Saints rallied from a 55 point deficit in the third term to take the lead in the fourth and then frantically hang on to the victory in the last few minutes:

This was the fifth biggest comeback in the history of the AFL.  Interestingly, the Saints had previously come back from another 55 point margin, back in 1937 against Hawthorn.

Richmond couldn’t copy the Saints and eventually succumbed to the Kangaroos by 35. The highlight below summarizes pretty well how Richmond was feeling at the end.

Watching the video, you may notice a few things:  1) After the Richmond player is tackled, possession was given to North. 2) North re-starts so quickly that the cameramen and production crew can’t keep up. 3) The game was played in Hobart, Tasmania.  Earlier in Round 3, Hawthorn played a “home” game in Tasmania as part of a sponsorship deal.  North Melbourne has a similar deal.  Considering they won and got a good crowd behind them, that deal might get extended.

The upsets continued late Friday as the GWS Giants shocked the Hawthorn Hawks by 10.  This was a game of big runs as both teams took turns scoring in bunches.  Hawthorn started off well and got out to a big lead before the Giants began their first run.  Just as GWS would take the lead, though, the Hawks would come back and build their lead back up. This process was repeated during the course of the game until the Giants went on a tremendous run in the fourth to build an insurmountable lead.

In the first, the Giants’ Devon Smith managed to squeeze in a goal from an extremely tight angle. (/sex joke)

In the second, Hawthorn’s Sam Mitchell scored a goal early while being bearhugged by a Giants defender:

This was the first game that GWS played this year at their home ground, Spotless Stadium in Sydney’s Olympic Park.  The previous home dates had been played at the Sydney Oval due to other commitments.  That’s a pretty great home field advantage!

In the super-late Friday night games, some order was restored as Sydney beat Melbourne by 38, Fremantle stayed unbeaten by downing Essendon, and Adelaide handled the Gold Coast Suns by 41. The Sydney-Melbourne match was a little rough as you can see here

and here

As you can also see, Melbourne wore pink in their uniforms because breast cancer.  You know what I would like for leagues to do to raise “awareness”?

Sydney hustled more, was more physical, and was clearly the better team.  They also have a pretty reliable Jetta, which is rare:

Is it me or did every hot girl in the 90’s drive a Jetta?  While doing a Google Image Search for “hot girls in Jettas”, I ran across this:

I think the next Friday post from DrawPlayDave should be to draw up NFL logos featuring girls (and guys) in sexually explicit positions.  The Patriots logo would be unchanged if you used the old one.

It seems I can’t do an AFL Beat post without an Eddie Betts highlight from the Adelaide game.  While this was not from his “pocket”, it was still pretty good.

At this point, Fremantle is just a machine. Just watch how quickly they can score points off a game re-start:

Essendon grew more frustrated and it showed:

That may result in some disciplinary action.  Although Fremantle is the only unbeaten, their coach is trying to cool down expectations by saying they haven’t won anything yet.  That is certainly the right thing considering the Dockers visit Western next week and the Bulldogs cannot be happy about the collapse against the Saints.  We may not have any more unbeatens after Round 7.

In the early Saturday night suck-fest, and sadly I am NOT talking about my sex life, winless Brisbane traveled to Melbourne to meet one-win Carlton so

The game was close until the end of the third when Brisbane turned the intensity up and came away with the 9 point victory.  Shortly before the Brisbane run started, Nick Robertson had this run-in with the electronic advertising board:

Ouch!  As a testament to how tough these guys are, Nick was back in the game in the fourth and contributed to the Lions’ first win this year.  This was actually the second incident in the game with the ad boards:

The AFL is so tough that the ad boards had more hits on players in one game than Deion Sanders did in his entire career.

In the last game of the round, the West Coast Eagles upset Port Adelaide by 10. Although, the Power’s coach thought his team played way better than the Eagles in the fourth, they couldn’t convert that into goals and that ultimately doomed them.  On the bright side, Port Adelaide’s Hamish Hartlett took points off the board and showed sportsmanship is alive and well in the AFL.  Can you imagine anyone in the NFL doing something similar?

Here is the goal that sealed the game for the Eagles:

http://www.afl.com.au/video?guid=749676

Also, isn’t it ironic that WhyEaglesWhy roots for Port Adelaide, who got beat by the Eagles?

Let’s take a look at the ladder, shall we?

Fremantle remains on top with a now two game cushion over a crowded field of pretenders.  Round 6 could probably be termed the Round of Upsets as several teams, most notably St. Kilda, pulled off impressive victories over teams that were supposedly better.  Next week will further muddy the picture as I expect Fremantle to lose to the Western Bulldogs and a lot of mid-ladder teams will be facing teams at the bottom of the ladder.  There could be a separation of top and bottom or there could be a bunching up of almost every team in the middle.  Which will it be? To find out, see you next week!