The picture, of course, alludes to the epic second battle this season between head coach twins Brad Scott of North Melbourne and Chris Scott of Geelong.  Imagine Rob Ryan finally getting a head coaching gig and going up against Rex.  Like that, but Australian.

Welcome to Balls of Steel’s AFL Beat!

The round started on late Wednesday/early Thursday morning with another Thursday Night Footy match.  This time, Port Adelaide were seeking to keep their finals hopes on life support against the Collingwood Magpies at home. They managed to do just that by barely hanging on to a 3 point victory.  I managed to catch the last quarter and holy balls did Port just barely hang on!  They scored just one goal the entire term but were impressive on defense holding the Magpies to a bunch of behinds but no goals over the final stretch of the game.  Here are the desperate last two minutes of the game:

Before that, though, there was some pretty good teamwork and passing from the Power:

Also, a bit of a scuffle:

That’s going to leave a mark.  Also, that’s going to land Collingwood’s Taylor Adams in some trouble.  The AFL’s Match Review Panel goes over the action of every game played and decides whether discipline is needed or not.  This allows the referees to play on and doesn’t disrupt the flow of the game.  Are you listening, NFL?  Nah, never mind.

The Friday Night Footy game (late Thursday/early Friday morning for us) featured the Richmond Tigers against the Carlton Blues.  The Tigers showed they are for real as they took care of the Blues by 30.

Have I mentioned how much I love the AFL headline writers?

YOU MAKE THE CALL!

There was a nice highlight for the Blues when Levi Casboult launched a bomb from inside the center square for a goal:

The first game on Friday night was a thriller as two relatively crappy teams met up to decide who was less crappy.  Essendon barely scraped by the Melbourne Demons by the score of 69-60.  Here is this week’s second

Keep in mind that, according to AFL rules, the ball must completely cross the line without being touched in order to be considered a goal.  Was this a goal?

It was ruled that the Demons player touched it and was therefore a behind.  At least they have goal-line camera technology!  God, you suck NFL!

Essendon’s Shaun Edwards made sure that early call didn’t matter with this beauty running goal:

The next game put the Western Bulldogs against the Gold Coast Suns in Cairns. The Suns started off hot with Gary Ablett again providing leadership and points:

but the Bulldogs’ Jake Stringer fueled a big comeback from 37 points down to lift Western past the tiring Suns:

And then we get to the clash of brothers:

Besides the side plot of brother vs. brother, this was a vital game for both clubs as they were side by side in the ladder going into the game with Geelong slightly ahead by 2 points.  The standings are now flipped as the Roos easily took care of a Geelong team that played like it forgot how to play defense.  This game started at 2 AM Pacific, so I didn’t stay up to watch.  I did, however, have to drop a deuce in the middle of the night, and I managed to catch the third quarter on the can.  The best thing about that night was the poop. The funny/sad thing is that there are really no highlights to show you as all of the Kangaroos’ goals were fairly easy and Geelong didn’t really do anything to write home about.

The other late Friday night/early Saturday game had Adelaide playing in their first game since the murder of their coach against the West Coast Eagles.  This was going to be a tough game even without the events of last week as the Eagles are the #2 team in the competition.  They showed their class as they overcame an inspired Crows team that came out on fire in the first quarter to win by 56. Here is a nice goal from the Eagles’ Luke Shuey:

There was a highlight from the Crows, but it was not Eddie Betts:

Three more games were on tap for Saturday night/early Sunday and I was able to watch the GWS Giants get the ball rolling by beating up on the St. Kilda Saints by 35.  In this highlight, GWS’ Jeremy Cameron faked the defender out of position and scored a nice dribbler goal:

The Saints seemed discouraged by the many mistakes they were making and didn’t display the same kind of effort they had shown in previous rounds.

The second game of the night was really the most eagerly-awaited match of the round:  League-leading Fremantle vs. the reigning champions Hawthorn.  Hawthorn reminded the Dockers that they haven’t won anything by being in front and humiliated them by 72 points.  The game had some dirty undertones as the two highlights below will show:

It will be interesting to see what the Match Review Panel does in either of these cases.

The last match was expected to be a blowout as the Sydney Swans were visiting the Brisbane Lions.  The game ended up being closer than expected for about three quarters, but the Swans turned the game around at the end of the third term and during the fourth to grind out a nice victory as they head into next round’s Grand Final rematch against Hawthorn.  Brisbane had a very nice goal from mid-air:

as well as a nice running goal

but it wasn’t enough.

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