MARCUS: Well it was another big week in local sport. Some big bags of goals, some high scoring, another brilliant week of action all round in our region that we’re lucky enough to cover. As always we kick off with the ‘best action from the weekend’ segment. Jonty, what have you got for us?
JONTY: I was down at a blustery Livingston Reserve on Saturday and Zak Roscoe kicked five goals from the midfield. I’ll give him my shout-out this week. I feel like any time I watch or speak to anyone at Cranbourne I could give him a shout-out. He’s gone up another level and he kicks goals every week from the midfield. His clearance work is second-to-none and his work-rate is outstanding. He did a VFL preseason at Casey and that’s really elevated his leadership as well.
MARCUS: Are we paying ‘best moment’ being a whole game performance?
DAVE: Well I’m about to join Jonty on that front. Are you okay with that, Marcus? I think we’ve gone away from his original plan, Jonty, of picking out a certain passage of play.
MARCUS (in disbelief): I’m not sure how I feel about it. This would be like if I turned up on Monday with four extra stories after Dave had already done the layout! But what have you got?
DAVE: Fair enough. But how’s this? At Cora Lynn on the weekend, in the reserves game, Ryan Spierings kicked 13 goals in the twos, and then the seniors come out and Nathan Gardiner kicks 12 on the same day. That’s something unique, don’t you think?
JONTY: Not unique, but not far off it. Unique means one of a kind, so it’s not unique, technically.
DAVE: I think that’s pretty impressive, 25 goals from two blokes at the same club. Also, James Nicolaci bagged 10 for Phillip Island in the twos as well…now it’s unique!
MARCUS: You don’t see that everyday. My action is actually on the basketball court, and it’s not going to be the Denver Nuggets qualifying for the NBA finals, as I predicted on this very page a few weeks ago. Dandenong point guard Jesse Ghee won a steal and took-off on a fast break and dribbled the ball around his back to keep it away from his defender. When he got to the rim he went for a scooping layup high off the glass, but he actually threw it over the backboard. Thankfully he had a trailing teammate in Jack Roberts who grabbed the ball before it went over the base line and finished the play with a layup.
JONTY: I didn’t know we were allowed to go away from footy in this segment.
MARCUS: It’s simply best action, and it was an actual moment, not a whole game performance, unlike you two.
DAVE: Jonty, we need to sharpen our acts up for next week.
SALUTE TO DIMMA
MARCUS: The biggest news in the footy world this week was Damien Hardwick’s retirement. A truly remarkable coaching career in that he looked to be right on the edge at the end of 2016 and then they end up winning a premiership with a revolutionary forward line of smalls the next year. I thought we could pay tribute to the premier small forwards of our competitions. It’s often an under-appreciated role in the forward line but every premiership team has a good small forward.
DAVE: Mason McGarrity from Warragul Industrials, he’s their key forward but he’s go to be under six-foot. They generate most of their goal scoring through him. He’s quick on the lead, they kick it in front of him and he marks it and goals. It’s pretty simple. He’s always conceding height but he’s nimble and dances around players. Jason Wells is an in-between size forward, similar to Jamie Elliot, and he’s been a star of the competition for a long time. He’s kicked more goals in West Gippsland footy than any other player, and down at Inverloch, Nick Baltas is really having an impact in his first season. Also I noticed on the weekend that Will Hams, who played a few years of footy at Essendon, he went forward and kicked five goals. If they start playing him forward instead of in the middle then he could be a really dangerous smaller forward as well.
JONTY: Tyson Barry, I think there was a lot of talk about him from a Cranbourne perspective. He’s got the blonde-oxide hair..
MARCUS: The what?
JONTY: (articulates clearer and slowly): Blonde-oxide hair.
MARCUS AND DAVE: …Do you mean peroxide?
JONTY: Is that what it is? Well he’s got that colour hair and he’s outstanding. He’s got all the tricks of a small forward. He is injured at the moment and he takes a little bit away from the forward line, because he brings pressure and the pace and when he comes back they’ll be a much better side. He’s only 19 but he’s got the expectation that he’ll kick 40-45 goals a season when fully fit. Michael Cardamone, whose absence in the last few weeks has been intriguing, it will be interesting to see him when he does come back because he’s another one that draws a lot of attention from opponents and has really good goal sense. My third one is Blake O’Leary, Noble Park premiership player and a small forward for Frankston in the VFL. Brings a lot of pressure, zip and energy to any forward line he’s in.
MARCUS: I’m going to look at Wandin. A lot of the attention on the Wandin forward line this season has gone towards Clint Johnson who won the competition’s goalkicking last year, and Aaron Mullett who is leading the goalkicking in Outer East Premier at the moment. But flying under the radar is Tom Merlino. He’s kicked 12 goals this year and he’s really playing his role, mopping up the crumbs in that forward line. What I like about him is that he’s a real pest. He’ll let his opponent know when they make a mistake and really get under their skin which I think is a really important quality for that role. Matt Frazzetto from Gembrook-Cockatoo is another one as well. He had a play the other week where he had four or five pressure acts in one 10-second burst and ended up with Jay Verhagen kicking a goal. He’s the sort of teammate you’d love to have in your side. Of course, our region produced one of the great small forwards of all time in Stephen Milne, a Noble Park boy. 574 goals in 275 games, after coming off the rookie list. The longevity behind that is pretty extraordinary.
DAVE: Tom Papley from Bunyip too. He played his 150th two weeks ago and has kicked 241 goals for the Swans.
WORLD TEST CHAMPIONSHIP
MARCUS: So by the time next week’s Gazette comes out, we’ll be eagerly awaiting the first ball of the World Test Championship final… or will we? Australia play India in that game and that was the competition that was meant to revitalise the sport and bring a bit of context, add some life to a sport that is simply a series of games that don’t really matter to one-another. But now that Australia are in the final, how are we feeling about the concept? Is it really on the radar?
JONTY: I want to win just because it’s India and Australia. It’s the patriot in me coming out. But it’s not like, I want to win because I want Australia to win the World Test Championship, not at all. But I do understand why those who play in it say it’s going to be legacy defining. With regards to saving test cricket, I think test cricket is cricket in its most pure form, and it’s always going to appeal to the traditionalists, and if you’re going to try and save it then you’re appealing to the wrong market. You need to appeal to the market that’s always loved it, so I don’t think you change it from what it is. If you have to reduce it in some form because of T20, these things evolve, so that’s fine. But any concept of four-day tests or anything to try to give it more context, I think would be misplaced and misguided, and for the wrong audience.
MARCUS: Not to simply call you old again Dave, but obviously Jonty and I are in a different age bracket. You’ve seen the evolution of one day cricket and T20 over the years to the point where test cricket is fighting for its existence. Do you take any interest in the World Test Championship?
DAVE: That’s just a different way of calling me old! For many years when I was watching Test Cricket, I thought, something has to come in, and I was rapt when they decided to have a World Test Championship. At last, we had some way of judging who the best team is. All these games would happen and they wouldn’t mean anything. Now that the concept is in, I still don’t think it would mean as much, but at least they had a crack at trying to get some sort of ladder in place. But as far as Test cricket goes in general, in One Day cricket you don’t get the five days of the pitch deteriorating and you’re playing on different surfaces over five days. The spin bowlers come in on day four and five. There’s so much more to Test cricket that makes it exciting. I know there’s been some instances of high pressure and tense moments in short-form cricket in recent times, like the 2019 World Cup Final. But nothing can beat a Test Match that goes down to the last hour on day five. You simply can’t get any better sport than that. After putting in five days of blood sweat and tears, and it comes down to a couple of key moments. I’d rather sit down and watch test cricket than any other form, every day of the week. I’m sick of T20s already, it doesn’t mean anything to me in any form. One Day cricket I don’t care for. So for me, Test Cricket is keeping the sport alive. Hopefully if we win this and start winning more of them going forward, it will become more of a legacy thing.
JONTY: They tried to do a very similar thing with ODI’s to determine who would make the World Cup. That didn’t even get to its first edition before it was scrapped. I don’t know why that was, but they just scrapped it. I think that speaks to the fact that no one really takes it that seriously.
DAVE: It’s hard when you can’t really have a home-and-away series.
MARCUS: The global powers are heavily unbalanced too as we know, with the ‘big three’ in India, England and Australia being such heavyweights compared to South Africa, Sri Lanka or the West Indies who really struggle for influence. What if we played on a neutral ground, would that add a new dimension?
DAVE AND JONTY, EMPHATICALLY: No.
MARCUS: Okay! What about franchises? Do we feel like franchise Test Cricket is going to be inevitable going forward and if you had teams made up of players from different countries, how would we feel about that?
DAVE: To me, the Australian yellow One Day cap means little, so you can do that sort of stuff there. But with the baggy green, you play Test cricket to play for your country.
JONTY: I disagree, I think there’s scope for it. It would take a very strong campaign to convince a lot of people, old bastards like you Dave, but I think franchise Test Matches could get there at some stage eventually.
DAVE: At last, after months of beating around the bush, you’ve finally said what you wanted to say.
MARCUS: Careful Jonty or he might whack you with his walking stick. I wouldn’t mind having a look at franchises but I don’t know whether it would be a long term sustainable thing. I think it would be hard for people to really buy-in to a franchise team as opposed to the patriotism of supporting your country. You see with Big Bash clubs, there aren’t too many who are staunch Stars or Renegades fans.
Thanks for another stellar episode boys, we’ll have our hands on buzzers next week!
