In America, the National Football League preseason is an audition. Second- and third-string players fight it out on the field to determine who gets to ride the bench behind the starters, who gets stuck on the practice squad, and who has to wait for the next Arena Football tryouts. Fans, meanwhile, get to pay full price for tickets to half-off games, and the NFL rakes in even more dollars.
In Australia? The AFL preseason is a tournament. They put a trophy out there and get teams to fight for it.
Don’t you NFL fans feel even more ripped off now?
Kangaroos 100, Fremantle Dockers 91. The Roos made their way to the NAB Cup semfinals by taking a 27-point fourth-quarter lead and holding off the Dockers long enough for the win. Leigh Brown and Matt Campbell scored three goals each for the Roos, while Shannon Grant got the lone supergoal. That’s an experimental rule for this tournament; any goal kicked from behind the 50-meter line is worth 9 points. I don’t think that rule will exist during the AFL regular season. Any Aussies want to back me up on that?
Carlton Blues 75, Hawthorn Hawks 68. The official match report for this game refers to Carlton as “last season’s AFL wooden spooner.” I have no idea what that means, but I have a feeling Brendon Fevola will put whoever wrote that in a headlock for it. Fevola, last year’s leading AFL scorer, kicked two goals and a behind for the Blues in this one.
Geelong Cats 60, Port Adelaide Power 57. This one went to extra time after a sudden downpour, which may have helped the Australian water shortage elsewhere, drenched the pitch and made the game both sloppy and dramatic. Cameron Mooney was the hero for Geelong, kicking the last of his four goals in the extra period.
Brisbane Lions 102, Western Bulldogs 70. According to the match report, this was a bigger upset than the Detroit Lions beating the Dallas Cowboys last New Year’s Eve. These Lions kicked five unanswered goals in the third quarter, including one Luke Power supergoal, to crush the Bulldogs’ spirits.
By the way, you’ll notice that the two teams most AFL watchers consider the best in the league — the Sydney Swans and the West Coast Eagles — are nowhere to be found in this tournament. They were eliminated in the first round. Perhaps they take the NAB Cup as seriously as most football fans in America take the NFL preseason. The Oakland Raiders were 4-1 in the 2006 preseason. How’d that work out for ‘em?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Craig Anderson // Mar 4, 2007 at 7:21 pm
“Winning the wooden spoon” is a tounge-in-cheek way of saying the team was at the bottom of the ladder at the end of the season. Carlton have been at the bottom for the last two years, even though they won the preseason competition two years ago. Last year, Geelong won the preseason and ended up finishing 10th out of 16 teams.
2 Dave // Mar 5, 2007 at 9:17 am
Good to know. In America, we say the worst NFL team is “on the clock,” a reference to the worst team getting the first pick in the college players draft.
And in England, they say, “Relegated, bitches!”