NIGHTMARE by Whispering Jack

In my all-time nightmare game, the team is so ill-disciplined that it concedes its first two goals with the courtesy of not one, but two, fifty metre penalties while opening its own scoring with four behinds in a row and losing a talented youngster with good decision-making skills and a lethal left foot kick, subbed off in the first quarter with what looks like a bad knee injury. 

The nightmare continues in the second term as the team regains a tiny little scrap of composure but is unable to make any impact on the scoreboard. Our ruckman is winning the hit outs but the midfield bulls, once renowned for their ability to win the ball out of packs and to push forward with consummate ease, are getting beaten to the ball by the opposition young guns.

Our most reliable and accurate kick for goal misses two easy shots from a kickable distance and drops an easy mark at close range from goal (he’ll finish with 0.3). We can’t buy a goal and the home crowd has lost its passion for the game by the half time break when it’s 2.9.21 to 5.8.38.

Surely, when we wake up from this stupor after half time, the nightmare will end, the team will stop fumbling, the free kick count will start going our way, we’ll get a holding the ball or holding the man go our way or we’ll be paid a lucky goal after the siren sounds?

No. The restless, fitful dream continues and gets worse. We continue to give away frees in front of goal. We win the hit out numbers but are smashed in the clearances by 40 to 24. We used to have a midfield that wasn’t afraid of getting its hands dirty. Not anymore. Ben King gets his kicking boots on. Our players are caught flat-footed and out of position, the opposition runs past, we fumble, play on when we should slow down the play, then slow things down when we should get a move on. In this bad dream, we move around in slow motion and take the long way home by playing in the fringes of darkness.

We’ve been so mesmerized by our summer of love, that we’re too busy smelling roses than living our dream by playing winning football. We lose to the Gold Coast Suns by 58 points. We hadn’t lost to them since our season of nightmares back in 2014.

We come out of it all with very few plusses. Harvey Langford is one. The fact that we have some players coming back who have skills and pace to burn like Kozzie Pickett and Caleb Wilson and maybe Judd McVee. We can even take solace in the fact that twelve months ago, it was Hawthorn that was living this same nightmare and look how they finished and look at where they are now.

MELBOURNE 1.4.10 2.9.21 6.12.48 8.14.62

GOLD COAST SUNS 4.5.29 5.8.38 12.10.82 18.12.120 

GOALS

MELBOURNE Sharp 2 Bowey Chandler Langford Melksham Petracca van Rooyen 

GOLD COAST SUNS King 4 Miller 3 Graham 2 Anderson Flanders Humphrey Long Noble Read Walter Weller Witts 

BEST

MELBOURNE Langdon Langford Bowey Oliver Gawn Rivers

GOLD COAST SUNS Rowell Anderson Collins Miller King Noble

INJURIES

MELBOURNE Lindsay (knee)

GOLD COAST SUNS Nil

REPORTS 

MELBOURNE Nil

GOLD COAST SUNS Nil

SUBSTITUTIONS 

MELBOURNE Jake Melksham (replaced Xavier Lindsay in the first quarter)

GOLD COAST SUNS Jake Rogers (replaced Nick Holman at three-quarter time)

UMPIRES Nicholas Brown Alex Whetton Tom Bryce Matthew Young 

CROWD 24,506 at the MCG