Some notes and observations from the release of the draw for the 2020 AFL pre-season competition, now known as the Marsh Community Series, which was released on Monday.
1. There was no burying the lead here, with the perhaps the most appealing fixture being the first, with St Kilda hosting Hawthorn at RSEA Park, better known to all as Moorabbin, on Thursday, February 20.
It will the first official AFL game at the ground since the Saints played Fitzroy in their last home game there in round 20, 1992 before the move to Waverley. There were 27,000 fans there that day, but Saints officials estimate capacity for this game will be around 10,000. Don't discount it being close to sold out given how much Saints fans love the place, while for the Hawks, it will be a rare pre-season outing in Melbourne, so their diehard supporters will be there as well.
Still, props to the AFL for again taking pre-season footy back to the ‘burbs and the Saints and the Hawks locking horns there will hark back to the rugged early 70s when games between the two clubs were, as former Hawk captain and coach David Parkin often says, “played mainly without the ball.”
There has long been player and coaching traffic between the two clubs and next year’s game will mark three-time Hawk premiership wingman Bradley Hill’s first game for the Saints, after a three-year spell with Fremantle. Saints coach Brett Ratten is a former Alastair Clarkson assistant at the Hawks, as is David Rath who now heads up the Saints footy programs. Jarryd Roughead will also be sporting a Saints polo shirt once the pre-season rolls around.
2. For the last few years the AFL has eschewed staging pre-season games at Marvel Stadium but now that it owns the joint, perhaps it makes more commercial sense, so the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne will have a Friday night hit-out at the ground at which they are co-tenants the night after the Moorabbin game. The roof will likely be open, as it should be for night games there early in the regular season when the weather is still warm.
3. The AFL has also paved the way for Gary Ablett to return to his former stomping ground at Metricon Stadium on the opening weekend, but the chances of Ablett actually playing in that game would be miniscule, you’d think. Another return to traditional values, if there is such a thing for pre-season footy, is stretching the series out over three weekends. Each club will play once over the first fortnight, while they’ll all play again on the third weekend, which takes place over the Labor day long weekend in Victoria, a fortnight before the start of the home and away season.
It is the right idea. The Marsh draw will make much more sense on Tuesday when the AFLW fixture is finally released because it will include several AFL/AFLW double-headers, but the focus at that time of the year should rightly be on meaningful women’s football for premiership points rather than the low-key match practice that pre-season men’s games usually provide. The need to televise every game – women’s and men’s – also makes it necessary to stagger the first lot of games over two weekends.
4. Just as the Saints get to open their pre-season at their shiny new training and administration headquarters, so too does West Coast, which will host Essendon at Mineral Resources Park, known to Perth old-timers as Lathlain Park. It’s not quite the house that John Worsfold built, but the Eagles legend will enjoy paying it a visit as he starts out on his final year as coach of the Bombers before he returns to Perth to live.
5. Can anyone remember the last time we had a Grand Final replay during the pre-season? Wagga Wagga’s Robertson Oval will stage a GWS-Richmond game on March 9, and while not even bragging rights will be up for grabs, the second and final pre-season game usually features stronger squads and with Callan Ward and Stephen Coniglio likely back in the side, the Giants might get some sort of indication as to how they really stack up against the best team in the competition.
6. There were minor grumbles from both the Crows and the Power after they played each twice in the pre-season last year. One was an under-23 game, the other a JLT game, as it was then known. Next summer, they will avoid each other, with the Crows playing Melbourne and Gold Coast, while Port meets Brisbane and the Bulldogs.
7. The Lions and Suns will also not clash, at least in an official pre-season game, but we will have mini Sydney and West Australian derbies between the Swans and Giants, and Eagles and Dockers.
8. The pre-season draw hasn't thrown up a whole lot of games made more interesting by the trade period, but we do get new Hawk Sam Frost taking on the Demons in Launceston and new Sun Hugh Greenwood visiting Noarlunga to play against the Crows.
9. For those of you keeping score at home, Marsh isn’t a new sponsor of the pre-season competition, but having recently purchased JLT, the sponsorship opportunity was part of the final sale. But Marsh now joins Panasonic, Foster’s, Wizard, NAB and JLT as having its name associated with what was the night competition, but which since 1988 has been played solely before the home-and-away season. If you can name the various tobacco companies that preceded them, you really are a footy tragic, and the desired audience for pre-season games in the first place!
