There were a few of us taking nervous sips at our beer during the chilly half-time break on Saturday night at the SCG, the nagging feeling that, perhaps, the Swans expected twelfth straight win wasn’t going to materialise.
Carlton, rank underdogs, with finals beyond them and mired in a disappointing season by anyone’s reckoning, were expected to be the sacrificial lambs, but someone obviously forgot to give them those instructions. Instead, Michael Malthouse’s men came out with endeavour, taking the game up to the Swans for all of the first half, and dominating for impressive stretches. A goal after the siren to end the half cut the Sydney lead to seven points: a gap that, on the form they displayed in the second term, was a very surmountable one for the surprising Blues.
Sitting there at half time, looking at the scoreboard, I – and, very few others – could have imagined what might come next. Like a hurricane spooling up across the plains of the American south, a similarly unstoppable force of nature was uncorked, and thirty scintillating minutes of football later, the Swans had padded their lead by ten goals.
That unstoppable force goes by the name Lance Franklin, and on Saturday night, when Buddy got up and going, there was no warning. Absolutely no warning. This was a sneak attack combined with a blitzkrieg, and it was scarcely believable, even to those of us who sat there and blinked, worried that perhaps this was a dream, as Franklin led the Swans to an impossibly perfect quarter of football: ten goals to Carlton’s one behind. And suddenly, Sydney’s bid for twelve straight was back on track.
Where the Swans had been wasteful, indirect and often lacking in basic football skills in the (admittedly greasy) first half conditions, they were ruthless, fast, smart and played a scintillating brand of damaging running football, precision and panache, one way traffic through the middle of the park, Carlton, like so many teams before, hapless, unable to stop the rot.
And what a rot. Franklin had been quiet, defended out of the game in the first half, but the second was a completely different story. As one of my friends said, it’s like Swans coach John Longmire has a button he can press to bring Buddy online. Well, he must’ve given it an almighty whack at half-time, and Franklin, the new face of AFL footy in Sydney, responded, as he has done so many times before, with the Swans and at Hawthorn, in kind.
If you were in attendance at the SCG last night, it was a quarter of football that you won’t soon forget it. If this was your first AFL game – and, for four of my friends last night, it was – it’s gotta be a giant hook, a command performance that’ll have recent converts coming back again and again. It’s no surprise that crowds are up.
Another attendance of nearly 35,000 is proof positive that, more than ever before, Sydneysiders are getting out to the footy in force. Even the Swans premiership years of 2005 and 2012 didn’t inspire quite as much red-and-white fervour.
I’d go so far as to say that we haven’t seen AFL obsession in this city since the days of Tony Lockett. You can draw similarities between Plugger and Buddy, both in the way they have really put AFL on the map here in Sydney, and in the way they could, with great ease, rip a game apart.
Buddy did that Saturday night, in the fierce, take-no-prisoners manner that we’ve become used to seeing. The third quarter was a master class, helped by a midfield engine that purred like a Ferrari. And then there was Buddy, taking full advantage. The man could do no wrong, whether that meant bombing balls through the big sticks from sixty meters away, or converting speculative chances on the run from a tight angle, every touch sending the crowd into delirious rapture.
It was the Port Adelaide game all over again, but arguably more devastating. The entire field opened up, and Franklin, beardless for the first time in a long time, dominated – with great support from Sam Reid, the ever improving and oft-forgotten fourth member of the Swans ‘Fab Four’ up forward – in a way that we have come to expect from #23, but, still, are struck dumb when it happens.
Franklin’s aerial game has improved leaps and bounds, as has his ability to do the important things when he doesn’t have the footy in hand: chasing, tackling, defensive pressure. It’s a hallmark of the Swans and their all-in, all-the-time culture, and obviously it’s rubbed off on their prized recruit. Of course, in that third quarter, it was a rare occasion when Buddy wasn’t in control of the Sherrin.
When it was all said and done, the Swans romped to a victory of nearly twelve goals, leapt into the history books – a twelve-goal win for twelve straight wins has a nice ring to it – and Franklin ended with 6.2, and could’ve easily had eight or nine, including a near-gimme that he handpassed off to rookie Dean Towers, who, unfortunately sprayed it wide in front of the sticks.
Crucially, the Swans, a game ahead atop the AFL Premiership ladder, have a bye week to get stars Dan Hannebery, Kurt Tippett and Rhyce Shaw back ahead of a giant clash against Hawthorn. Alistair Clarkson’s backline is undermanned, and with Tippett likely returning to join the established triple threat of Franklin, Reid and Goodes, surely there are alarm bells ringing down at Glenferrie Oval.
And in other places around the AFL.
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