AFL 2017: 10 of the Best & Worst

Oct 5, 2017
13 min read

10 BEST MOMENTS OF 2017

1. AFL Women's sets sail

The historic inaugural AFLW season had so many good stories that it’s hard to pick the best. 102 years after the first organised match, women finally had a professional national competition of their own. Erin Phillips, Daisy Pearce and Darcy Vescio became household names, role models and heroes and long-time pioneers like Susan Alberti were lauded for their work. The magical opening match between Carlton and Collingwood told us everything we needed to know: a sold-out crowd, the rekindled tribalism of IKON Park and that unbridled excitement that you were witnessing an event that would change our game forever. And it’s only just getting started.

2. Tiger Time

Richmond’s premiership victory over Adelaide was the most incredible flag fairytale since… well, since the Doggies of 2016. Before then, you’d have to go back a very long way to find a premiership team that overcame greater odds.

Richmond finished 2016 in 13th position after three previous failed finals attempts. After seven seasons, Damien Hardwick held the record for most games coached without a finals win and nearly lost his place along with the Richmond board in a failed coup that continued the modern Tigers’ habit of transcending just how bad things could get for a football club. No one sensible had money on Richmond for the flag. Too many battlers, too many limited players, not enough game winners among the Punt Road boys. Somehow, Hardwick found a strength in his players that come September had translated into a relentless machine. The Tigers were not like the Hawks of 2013-15 or the Cats of 2007-11. They had four A-listers, relying instead on the incredible commitment and efficiency with which they executed their high intensity, high pressure game plan. In the aftermath of their drought-breaking win, Facebook page the Carlton Draft described many of the Tigers as “forgettable but still top notch”. They should wear that description with pride.

3. "The greatest home and away season ever"

2017 was a glorious Sunday roast followed by a half-melted bowl of ice-cream as the most exciting, unpredictable home and away season ever played out with new twists and upsets every week. By Round 14, we had seen the highest number of single figure margins ever including an incredible Round 6 when the nine teams from lower on the ladder won their matches. The topsy-turvy season included a record attendance rate and opened the door for incredible stories like the rise of Richmond and the fall of the Hawks and reigning premiers the Dogs while GWS, the hottest pre-season favourites in years, didn’t even make the Grand Final. The twists just kept coming with Melbourne losing their first finals place in 12 years in the last match of the season and the Eagles coming from the dead to steal eighth spot.

4. The Rebirth of Liam Jones

We came to expect the unexpected in 2017. However, of all the unexpected stories none were as feel-good as the incredible resurrection of Carlton’s Liam Jones as a key defender. Just months ago, Jones was one of those players who had become fashionable to slam over a mediocre eight-season career. He started the season in the VFL for the Northern Blues playing not as a forward but as a defender and it proved a revelation: he averaged 18 touches and 10 marks a game in his six matches to earn a recall to Carlton for their Round 12 clash with GWS. Jones kept Jonathan Patton goalless, took eight marks (four intercepted) and was best afield as the bottom-four Blues pulled off one of the upsets of the season against the Giants. When Jones led Carlton to back-to-back victories by pantsing Gold Coast’s Tom Lynch (who had kicked seven in their last encounter) in Round 13, he was the toast of the football world. Some of the applause was hyperbolic to the point of being tongue-in-cheek (The Age journo Daniel Cherny probably doesn’t stand by his call to anoint Jones into the Hall of Fame) but the sentiment was genuine: people were identifying with a man who had defied the odds, refused to give up and redefined himself as a success.

5. Jesse Hogan and Jarryd Roughead overcome cancer

We are often reminded that footy is just a game and we are often reminded that footy means more to its fans than any other game in the country. In 2017, Melbourne forward Jesse Hogan and Hawthorn captain Jarryd Roughead showed us that both views are true as they won battles with cancer to return to the footy field. Hogan lived a lot of life this season. An early season suspension and a mid-season broken collarbone frustrated his year but that paled into comparison with the loss of his father Tony to cancer in late April. Less than three weeks later, Hogan himself was diagnosed with testicular cancer. After missing 11 matches, he returned to the field against Carlton in Round 16 and played six of the Demons’ last eight games. Roughead’s ongoing cancer battle was finally won in 2017. After his diagnosis shocked the football world in 2015 and turned very serious as he sat out last season following detection of the melanoma in his lungs, Roughead returned to training in December and was anointed the Hawks’ captain. He played every match at more game time than any other player.

6. Essendon's rising stars

At long last, Essendon started a season with a clean slate. Low expectations but at least free of the quicksand of the supplement saga. Consider the talent the Bombers wield in the 18-24 age bracket. Andrew McGrath would have been a deserved winner of the NAB Rising Star Award. Anthony McDonald-Tipungwiti is one of the best defensive midfielders going around after just his second seasons. Orazio Fantasia is a dynamite small forward. James Stewart and Conor McKenna have blossomed as defenders under the example of returned veteran Michael Hurley. Zach Merrett is a youngster oozing Brownlow potential. And then there’s Best & Fairest winner Joe Daniher, perhaps the most exciting talent blossoming in the game, whose extraordinary athleticism and mobility as a key forward shows more than a hint of Nick Riewoldt or Buddy Franklin. Essendon have served their sentence. Now, the shackles are off. And opposition clubs should take them very seriously.

7. Pride returning to Brisbane

Following Brisbane’s Round 9 loss to Adelaide, football reporter Matthew Lloyd made a troubling observation that the Lions were “irrelevant to the point that you lose eight in a row, have a percentage of 63 yet no one says anything about them”. It was hard to dismiss Lloyd’s fears and harder still to ignore Brisbane’s trend of losing young stars, debt and their attendance and membership figures, which were as bad as you’d expect for a struggling team in a parochial rugby state. Fast forward to the end of the home and away season and, yes, the Lions are wooden spooners for the first time since 1998. However, for the first time in nearly a decade, things are looking up. Brisbane won four matches in the second half of the season with their stunning triumph on the road against eventual finalists Essendon the highlight. Their competitiveness under first-year coach Chris Fagan is improving and, best of all, the re-signings of Josh Schache, Nick Robertson, Daniel McStay, Eric Hipwood and Cedric Cox reversed the perception that Brisbane is a nursery-cum-sinking-ship that their youth can’t wait to leave.

8. Dusty v Danger

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen two players so far ahead of their peers that we’ve just put the popcorn on and watched them go head-to-head. In 2017, Richmond’s Dustin Martin and Geelong’s Patrick Dangerfield recalled the gladiatorial one-on-ones of Buckley and Voss, Carey and Jakovich or Farmer and Nicholls. Ostensibly, Martin and Dangerfield are markedly different – the former a force of dark and controlled fury, the latter a loquacious streak of white lightning – but the midfield pair are equally brilliant, consistent and influential.

Both bust packs open. Both melt off tacklers. Both are infallibly tough. Both lift their side around them. Dangerfield is the quicker, Martin the stronger. Dangerfield averaged more possessions, Martin was marginally more efficient. Hardly any other player was even considered a chance for the Brownlow Medal with the two heavyweights in such magnificent touch but Dangerfield’s suspension in Round 19 gift-wrapped Martin the prestigious award. Martin then iced the cake when the Tigers beat the Cats in the qualifying final, playing a famous last quarter to drive his side to their first September victory in 16 years.

9. Class of 2017

The end of the 2017 season was the end of an era for so many players that it was half-seriously suggested that the retiring team could shake the Lions. All in all, we lost players who had collectively earned 28 All-Australian guernseys, 25 premierships, 22 Best & Fairest Awards, six captaincies, three Norm Smith Medals, two Rising Star Awards and two Brownlow Medals (and yes, one rescinded). Some of these retirees were more than just on-field champions: Luke Hodge, Nick Riewoldt and Bob Murphy were the sort of inspiring warriors upon which the game’s mythology rests. Tom Lonergan remains the only player to return from a kidney removal and Ivan Maric’s mullet will probably never be challenged as the greatest haircut ever. Heroes all.

Then there were Jesse White and Zac Dawson, who, uh, weren’t. But hey, we need ironic anti-heroes too.

10. Sydney's Comeback

Rome had fallen. The city was lost. The empire had crumbled. After making finals in 13 of the previous 14 seasons, Sydney had lost their first six games. It was a position from which no team had ever made finals. If you slept through the next four months, you would have woken up in a particularly perverse Twilight Zone episode. The Swans were the form team of the competition, having recaptured their best form with 14 wins in 16 matches and were in the unique position of being premiership favourites while outside the top four. Although they steamrolled Essendon in the elimination final, it turned out they needed the double chance. After having to sprint for so long, they went down to Geelong with scarcely a whimper in the semi-final.

10 WORST MOMENTS OF 2017

1. Mark Robinson v Mental Health

Awareness and acceptance of mental health have been growing within the AFL following players such as Mitch Clark, Tom Boyd and Travis Cloke publicly announcing their struggles with depression. Collingwood forward Alex Fasolo was supported by both his club and the football public when he took a break from footy for treatment of clinical depression in May. Supported by everyone, that is, except for a man who really needed to know better: Chief Herald Sun writer Mark Robinson, who jokingly tweeted that Fasolo was on “good drugs” upon the Pie’s return to training in June. Robinson was castigated and even called to be sacked for his insensitive quip but, despite a hasty apology, he subsequently proved he really had no idea of the boundary he had crossed. Attempting to make amends and save face, he contacted Fasolo asking for an interview about his depression despite being ordered not to by the club on advice from their medical team.

2. Sam Newman

Once the undisputed ratings top dog, Channel Nine’s The Footy Show entered 2017 plagued by off-and-on-air scandals and the rising threat of The Front Bar and The Marngrook Footy Show. Long-time fans were further alienated by the addition of Bec Maddern and Craig Hutchison to the panel, claiming the appointments were a compromise of the show’s style and relevance. However, Maddern and Hutchison took a back-seat as the show became little more than a vehicle for the perpetually tiresome comments of career provocateur Sam Newman. Long established as the panel’s naughty boy with a litany of accusations of sexism, Newman upped his game in 2017 by calling for an end to the cheer-squad made banners, vilifying transgender people, flipping the bird to the camera, sinking the boot into Bob Murphy on the eve of his final match and protesting the marriage equality movement in a poorly disguised attempt to grab cheap headlines in the face of plummeting ratings. However, we’ll give Newman this: his oh-so-edgy crassness was nowhere near as annoying as his supporters, who regard him not as a bully of social minorities but a warrior of free speech and a martyr of political correctness.

3. Will the Suns ever rise?

For years, the rest of the country has dismissed the Gold Coast as a vacuous, shallow hole designed to suck money out of jet-ski bogans, Schoolies and fly-over tourists pockmarked by an ugly sprawl of skyscrapers and casinos. Sporting organisations seem to have a very different perspective to us: they see the Gold Coast as a vengeful God that needs the steady sacrifice of clubs from any code to sate its wrath. We are seven years into the Suns’ existence. They are yet to make a top-eight appearance. Rodney Eade was sacked as senior coach before season’s end. Average crowd figures were the club’s second-lowest ever. Gary Ablett snr is leaving and there still isn’t a player who has stepped up to replace him as the club’s on-field leader. The AFL’s massive financial investment to get the Suns off the ground seems to be going nowhere. Their future is uncertain but it’s hard to see anything the club can build on.

4. The sacking of Simon Lethlean and Richard Simkiss

On July 10, the Herald Sun published an exclusive on an AFL manager’s alleged affair with a young woman in the AFL industry. Four days later, a sombre Gillon McLachlan called for a press conference to confirm that the rumours were true. Two senior AFL executives in football operations manager Simon Lethlean and commercial manager Richard Simkiss had been sacked from their positions effective immediately over “inappropriate relationships”. In a grim irony, Lethlean – a married father of four – was one of the major executive supporters of AFLW. To his credit, McLachlan dealt with the issue decisively and emphasised that the AFL’s culture of “integrity, respect, care for each other and responsibility” could not stand Lethlean’s and Simkiss’s actions. However, he never revealed what was inappropriate about their relationships.

5. Ty Vickery's Arrest

Across his career at Richmond, tall forward Tyrone Vickery became a reliable scapegoat and an easy punching bag as he failed to make good on his potential. After eight seasons at Tigerland, he was traded to Hawthorn but even at the middling Hawks he failed to become a regular player, making just six AFL appearances for a paltry two goals. However, things got very serious for the 27-year old when he was arrested as part of an ongoing extortion investigation. It is alleged that Vickery consulted former Tiger teammate Jake King (a known associate of underworld figure Toby Mitchell) in the recuperation of a six-figure sum Vickery believed the co-owner of his restaurant had stolen. Vickery had reportedly been unsatisfied with police findings into his business partner’s swindling. King was charged with extortion, using a carriage service to harass and making threats to kill and inflict serious injury after audio recordings of his threats were handed in to police. Vickery was released without charge.

6. Bachar's MRP Circus

The only good thing you could say about this farcical episode is that it didn’t leave any club liking the idea of going through it themselves. In Round 14, Richmond defender Bachar Houli was cited by the Match Review Panel for an ugly head-high hit on Carlton’s Jed Lamb that left the Blue concussed. He was expected to receive a four-match ban and did… eventually. Houli’s sentence was reduced to two weeks after Richmond made the unprecedented move of providing character references as defence for the half-back. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s appraisal of Houli’s work as an AFL Multicultural Player Ambassador was extrapolated and journalist Waleed Aly provided a personal statement. The football public was appalled. Quite how character references were relevant to a striking charge was beyond anyone. Then there was the question of consistency for the sentencing of head-high hits as well as the obvious point that not many players had high-profile friends to call upon. In a further unprecedented move, the AFL intervened and extended Houli’s ban to four matches – so you can add the discussion around the necessity of a separate tribunal body to the teetering pile of questions the whole circus raised.

7. Maxine Spratt

Despite years of campaigning to rid the game of its scourge, racism again reared its ugly head when 31-year old Port Adelaide fan Maxine Spratt called Adelaide forward Eddie Betts an “ape” in a Facebook rant after the Round 3 Showdown. The response was immediate and decisive. Spratt’s Facebook account was terminated and the Crows and the Power presented a united front in a mid-week media appearance condemning bigotry.

However, Spratt wasn’t done. In a bizarre interview, she appeared on Seven News alongside her husband to cheerfully absolve herself of any racism, provide the excuse (backed up by hubby) that she just didn’t like any Adelaide players and actually had Indigenous heritage anyway. Early in the broadcast of the unbelievable trainwreck, South Australians decided that their national stereotype as church-goers and serial killers could be a lot worse.

8. Roaming BT

If there was one thing we didn’t need in 2017, it was more exposure of football’s most ironic cult hero Brian Taylor. However, with public criticism of their commentary team’s in-joke egoism rising, Seven made the genius move of unleashing BT on the winning change rooms post-match to hassle recovering players with a microphone and camera. It was self-indulgent, shambolic and cringe-worthy, pushing BT from unwitting comic to the AFL’s Tommy Wiseau. It peaked when BT – who is, remember, technically a grown man – threw a live-on-air tantrum when Sydney barred him from their rooms at the SCG after their Round 14 win over Essendon.

9. Toby Greene vs Authority

13 Match Review Panel sanctions. For seven different offences. In six seasons. If we were to puff on our Sherlock Holmes pipe, we’d deduce that Toby Greene just isn’t the sharpest pencil in the pack. After playing with fire in a confrontational start to his career, the 23-year old’s playing style crossed the line from physical to undisciplined in the Giants’ Round 6 clash with the Bulldogs. Greene was rubbed out for two weeks for striking Caleb Daniel. It was the last straw for the football public, who almost universally turned on the GWS forward (except for Kane Cornes, which didn’t help Greene’s case). Hauled in front of the media like the school bully caught by the teachers, Greene said he was aware he had let his teammates down and was working with the club’s psychologist to find “a better understanding of myself and how I think on the field”. So it beggared belief when he punched Richmond defender Alex Rance in the face with the umpire within arm’s reach watching him in the Giants’ Round 18 loss. The result was a two-week ban and nonplussed coach Leon Cameron and teammates Shane Mumford and Phil Davis pulling out all tricks to contain their frustration when questioned by the media.

10. The Fall of the Dogs

The Bulldogs’ 2016 flag was perhaps the most miraculous ever but the thing about miracles is that they’re hard to bottle for mass production. The Dogs were inconsistent and frustrating in 2017 as teams countered their rolling maul style and took matches far beyond their control. In the second half of the season, they went from just doing enough to blowing first their premiership chances and then their finals chances. They fell out of the top eight in Round 14 and then really hit the skids with humiliating losses against West Coast, Adelaide and GWS. Premiership heroes Easton Wood and Luke Dalhaus had down seasons while Tom Liberatore and Jason Johannisen fell out of the side entirely. Forwards Tom Boyd and Travis Cloke took breaks from the game to deal with mental illness, stalwarts Bob Murphy and Matthew Boyd caught the last train for the coast come season’s end and Jake Stringer was traded in disgrace after revelations that he had been having an affair with a 17-year old girl while his estranged wife Abby suffered from post-natal depression. The kennel was the dog-house in 2017.