Last Thursday, the St Kilda Saints triumphed over the Carlton Blues and on Friday evening, the Essendon Bombers beat the Collingwood Magpies – but in both games the umpiring was inconsistent, due to the new interpretation of the prior opportunity rule.
The league has to address this issue because it’s fraught with errors.
The AFL was forced to alter its fixture when Victoria was deemed to be coronavirus active and teams from other states couldn’t play in Victoria without everyone quarantining for weeks.
As a result, 10 Victorian sides have relocated: Carlton, St Kilda, the Western Bulldogs, the Richmond Tigers, Essendon and the North Melbourne Kangaroos are now in Queensland, the Hawthorn Hawks and the Melbourne Demons went to Sydney and Perth is now home to Collingwood and the Geelong Cats.
Victoria, the spiritual home of the AFL, won’t host any games for at least seven weeks!
Collingwood again disappointed their fans last Friday by going down to a determined Essendon, while the Brisbane Lions dished out a thrashing to league leaders, Port Adelaide.
The Bulldogs seem to be going from strength to strength, but are they the real deal like four years ago?
The Gold Coast Suns were defeated by Geelong at the Cattery and both the West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers posted a victory a piece.
Richmond scored after three weeks of failures, but at a horrendous injury cost, and the Adelaide Crows are eyeing the wooden spoon.
On to Round 6...
One wants to throw one’s hands in the air and shrug one’s shoulders in despair, while playing pin the tail on the Sherrin (footy) this week.
It’s not so much the soft tissue injuries which are mounting for many teams, it’s the travel to the hubs, playing home games on foreign grounds, no supporters to cheer them on and being distant from their families and friends for weeks on end.
The competition is completely dominated by uncertainty – you’d have to have a PhD in “footycology” to pick a winner on any given day.
Thursday night at the SCG, Geelong will do battle with the Lions.
Both teams like attacking down the middle and I suspect this may become a frenetic shoot-out.
If that’s the case, the Cats are a little more goal savvy than the Lions, who are renowned for kicking lots of behinds from set shots.
I pick Geelong to win by 15 points.
Friday night, Collingwood and Hawthorn will meet at Brisbane’s Gabba.
This game will be played defensively.
Last outing, Collingwood came back but lost, while Hawthorn were hammered by the Giants.
Despite players injured and missing, the Magpies will win as they have more depth than the Hawks.
On Saturday, from Metricon Stadium on the Gold Coast, Fremantle will go head-to-head with St Kilda and although the Saints are still a little overwhelmed, they’re brimming with confidence and that’s going to be enough to beat the Dockers.
West Coast will have an easy victory against the “stone-the-crows” Adelaide side at the Gabba.
Melbourne and the Gold Coast will lock horns from the Giants Stadium in Western Sydney.
Both suffered losses last week, but the Demons are an enigma with no consistency, so I’m favouring the almost-in-form Suns to take the win.
Essendon will take on North Melbourne at Metricon Stadium without Jake Stringer, and this is going to be a hard-fought match.
The Bombers are slightly depleted at the moment with their captain and a couple of key players sidelined through injury. North Melbourne may put their good foot forward this weekend and take the fight right up to the Bombers.
I pick the Kangaroos to come out on top in a bruising affair.
On Sunday, the early game at Metricon will pit Port Adelaide against the Giants.
This is going to be a cracker of a game as both sides want to assert themselves. GWS is not quite up there yet, while Port Adelaide were handed their first defeat of the season by Brisbane last week.
I pick Port Adelaide to bounce back and defeat the Giants. A very injured Richmond side has three of their stars and two other major players who opted out of relocating to Queensland on the sidelines.
It doesn’t go well for the “not- so-mighty” Tigers, so I think Sydney will be good enough to secure victory at the Gabba.
In the last game of the round, Carlton will play the Bulldogs at Metricon Stadium, featuring a mouth-watering encounter between two of the best young-guns in the midfield business: the Bulldogs’ Marcus Bontempelli, up against the Blues champion, Patrick Cripps.
This match will go down to the wire, but given the Carlton side will have returned from an 11-day rest, this should give them enough of an advantage to take victory.
2020 AFL SEASON ROUND 6 TIPS
Geelong Cats
Collingwood Magpies
St Kilda Saints
West Coast Eagles
Gold Coast Suns
North Melbourne Kangaroos
Port Adelaide Power
Sydney Swans
Carlton Blues
Progressive tip score: 26
