Archive for June, 2010

FREMANTLE’S unexpected rise up the AFL ladder is even more meritorious than it appears, given the Dockers have had to overcome more than just Victorian scepticism.

As the Herald Sun’s Injury Ladder shows, the Dockers have been without key players for large chunks of the opening 13 rounds … and have exceeded expectations.

Their defence has been decimated with Greg Broughton, Luke McPharlin, Antoni Grover and Michael Johnson missing five games or more.

The bad news for the rest of the competition is the Dockers should have them back soon, plus they have the best run home of any of the clubs who will feature in the finals.

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THE fairytale of Michael Barlow has given the football cognoscenti a shake, planting a rare seed of self-doubt: what if we don’t know best after all? Yet his greatest lesson speaks to us all — no matter how many times you get knocked down, don’t stop getting back up, don’t ever lose sight of the dream.

Barlow’s is a very Australian story, with a central character who would not have been out of place on a different field, in another time, fighting a battle more cutthroat even than AFL football in 2010. Dig for the root of this resilience, and you’ll unearth the crossheads of a nation’s history — immigration, goldrush, war, toil of an unforgiving land by hard men and even stronger women and, above all, persistence.

Michael is the middle of Herb and Jenny Barlow’s five children, the third of four boys. His father — the third in four consecutive generations of Herb Barlows — is a Cobram dentist who grew up at Rushworth, where his grandfather, the pioneer of this magnificent moniker, alighted from England. He soon decided running a butcher shop had greater prospects than digging for gold, laying the foundations for his sons to make a life on the land.

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WE HANG on what they say, we scrutinise every move they make, and those they don’t, we analyse every little detail of their task of rousing 22 players into spirited action each week, looking for clues as to just what will unfold.

In a team game of large numbers, it’s the coach who comes to most represent the success or failure of that side. It’s he who explains the victories, rationalises the losses, sets the course being followed and the make-up of the playing group attempting to steer the ship.

It’s his own performance, paradoxically, which is arguably the hardest to assess. It obviously can’t be measured in kicks, handballs or goals, but nor even ladder position, the quality of the tools with which Geelong’s Mark Thompson has to work giving him a clear advantage over, say Richmond’s Damien Hardwick, before the battle has even started.

But it doesn’t mean we can’t have a crack at measuring just which coaches are getting the most out of the resources they do have, and coping best with the various slings and arrows of an AFL season. And the standings on a coaching ladder don’t necessarily go hand in hand with the premiership version.

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FREMANTLE coach Mark Harvey sat down with Nathan Schmook to reflect on the season so far and outline his plan for improvement.

How do you assess your season up to the break?
We’ve given ourselves an opportunity to capitalise on something. We’re finding more and more, barring really Geelong and perhaps St Kilda for that matter, that if you’re around the 60-70 per cent winning strike rate then you may give yourself an opportunity in the second half of the year to capitalise on that. That’s where we’re at.

What would have been realistic expectations for you coming into this season?
Just that the team was going to advance with our game plan and also the experience that we needed to get into a lot of the younger players – to see that evolve.

You made the comparison during the pre-season to the Baby Bombers. Can you expand on the similarities you saw between the groups?
That was more because we’ve got around six guys up around 28-plus, we’ve got 20-odd players between 18-22, so that was the comparison. There are some big differences; the Baby Bombers didn’t travel every second week for a start. It was more on age demographics than anything.

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