With 10 minutes to go until the opening bounce of the Bulldogs\u2019 game against Melbourne, Luke Beveridge stalked the MCG boundary line, a man careful not to slip on a banana peel. He was more clenched and coiled than usual. He looked like he\u2019d spent the last six months deadlifting trucks and moving magnets. He knew better than anyone how dangerous this game was. He\u2019d seen Brisbane slip up the previous day. He\u2019d seen Fremantle nearly throw away their season. He knew his own team\u2019s history of self-sabotaging in games like this.<\/p>\n
When Aaron Naughton kicked his fourth goal and his second in as many minutes in the third term, his coach was entitled to loosen up a little. The first half had been a dozy affair, with both sides just trundling along. But now Naughton was marking everything, Bailey Dale and Marcus Bontempelli had about a thousand touches between them and the Dogs had their foot on the throat.<\/p>\n
But there were little distress signals that all was not well. Their deficiencies are glaring. They\u2019re a poor intercepting team and struggle to score from turnovers. Their defensive zone is often sloppy. It only takes a couple of players to be a couple of metres out of place in the grid and the opposition can go to town on it. For about half an hour, every time the ball was in the air in their backline, they looked like conceding a mark, a free kick and a goal.<\/p>\n
Besides, the Demons are far from the worst team in the world. They annihilated West Coast a week ago and it\u2019s worth remembering how well they were playing against St Kilda until Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera went berserk<\/a>. They had a locum coach, but they had nothing to lose, and they were suddenly playing like it.<\/p>\n Ten points down at the final break, the Bulldogs were forced to go as deep down the well as they have in a long time. This was a crackerjack contest, a most welcome heartstopper after weeks of blowouts. Both sides were superb, but some individual brilliance dragged the Dogs across the line. It was Naughton, who booted five goals for the fourth time in six weeks. It was Joel Freijah, whose clever handballs and tap-ons directly set up three goals. It was Ed Richards, whose two goals both had a high degree of difficulty, and both helped his team regain the lead.<\/p>\n And with all chips on the table, and just a few seconds left on the clock, it was Sam Darcy who hurled himself into oncoming traffic and pulled down the match saving mark. There\u2019s no wasted energy with Darcy. He doesn\u2019t get mad at himself. He doesn\u2019t bother with much push and shove. He misses a goal and just trots back to defend. Even when he did his knee, he didn\u2019t seem overly distraught. But with his team\u2019s season on the line, he summoned the urgency and the hide that the moment called for.<\/p>\n Sam Darcy marks the ball. Photograph: Morgan Hancock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n All up, it was a typical Beveridge-era day at the football. They\u2019re one of the most potent teams we\u2019ve seen in recent years. They\u2019re a terrific team to watch. They have half a dozen of the best and most exciting players in the league. They have been competitive in every game they\u2019ve played this year. They have a percentage of 135. And they still probably won\u2019t make the eight.<\/p>\n While all this was going on, one of the biggest upsets in decades was brewing in Perth, where the cellar-dwelling Eagles threatened but ultimately failed to roll the top team Adelaide. Heading into this weekend, the last time a bottom nine team had knocked off a finals contender was five weeks ago when Sydney beat Fremantle at the SCG. The Swans went in as favourites that day anyway. And they\u2019re the last team you\u2019d want to be playing right now, with a depth of talent that belies their ladder position. On the weekend, they finally had a full list to choose from, a score to settle and a platform to launch their 2026 campaign. And they had Isaac Heeney, who even when he\u2019s green-gilled still looks like he should be playing in a bow tie. The Lions were wasteful, caught on the hop by Sydney\u2019s slingshot game and suddenly in danger of missing the double chance. But Chris Fagan has an optimism that\u2019s at odds with his careworn expression. \u201cI don\u2019t doubt this group in any way, shape or form,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to From the Pocket: AFL Weekly<\/p>\n Jonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week’s biggest AFL stories<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n It\u2019s the sort of thing Ken Hinkley has been saying for more than a decade. It has been a lean year for Port Adelaide, but they\u2019re still one of those teams that can spring a major surprise every couple of months. With Hinkley and Travis Boak bowing out and Zak Butters scampering out the front of stoppages, they looked poised to sink Fremantle\u2019s season. The Dockers had never beaten them at the Adelaide Oval and were playing dreadfully.<\/p>\n But Fremantle are dogged, well-conditioned and finally reliable in close finishes. The cartoon villainy of Patrick Voss and the exquisite skills of Murphy Reid were pivotal in the final term. And with scores level, the music stopping and the chair being hoiked from underneath them, captain Alex Pearce drifted forward. He resembles Reno Raines from the 90s late night TV show Renegade and he sometimes kicks like him. But the set play and the set shot were perfectly executed and the Dockers dodged another bullet. That final round game against the Bulldogs is going to be excruciating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 10 minutes to go until the opening bounce of the Bulldogs\u2019 game against Melbourne, Luke Beveridge stalked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-58042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}