Round 13 isn’t done yet – but we’ve already had drama to spare on another chaotic weekend of football.

Three separate thrillers on Saturday, all with questionable umpiring decisions at crucial moments late in the piece, have dominated discussion – most of it of the negative kind.

Amid the rubble, we had Hawthorn continuing their surge towards the eight with a famous win over GWS, while North Melbourne’s drought-breaking triumph over West Coast will be celebrated just as hard. St Kilda, meanwhile, made it two wins in a row and confirmed Gold Coast’s status as home track bullies.

Brisbane roared back into form; Richmond showed heart to spare; and on Sunday, perhaps the two best teams in it flexed their muscle, with first Sydney shipping Geelong a six-goal head start just to give themselves a challenge, and then Carlton holding off a wayward Essendon to jump up to second on the ladder… for now at least.

No doubt King’s Birthday will throw up another round of questions, controversy and chaos, but while we wait, let’s dive in and unpack the round so far.

1. Sensational Swans aren’t quite invincible

The natural response to Sydney’s remarkable 30-point win over Geelong on Sunday is to wonder just how the hell they can be beaten.

The Cats played some of their best football all year, and the Swans some of their worst, to kick the first six goals of the game and lead by 35 points early in the second quarter, with rampant pressure, speedy ball movement and beautiful kicking – the Cats were kicking at 71 per cent efficiency to just 46 per cent at the time of their sixth goal – the keys to what seemed destined to be a famous, classic Geelong triumph.

And yet within ten minutes, they’d been swallowed up almost entirely as the Swans finally work up, their biggest stars exploded onto the scene, and the AFL’s most fearsome machine piled on five goals almost before you could blink.

Sydney were five points down at half time and it still felt like game over; though it took until the 26-minute mark of the third term for the Swans to actually hit the front, such a moment felt as inevitable as when the Cats were repeatedly overrun in the premiership quarter of big games by Richmond during their 2017-2020 dynasty.

Isaac Heeney is the best player in the game this season; Errol Gulden was absolutely everywhere against the Cats, racking up the ball and using it exquisitely; Chad Warner was his usual blistering self; Brodie Grundy was the instigator to it all with his ruckwork and follow-up efforts comprehensively overpowering Rhys Stanley. It’s a midfield group that is honestly frightening to behold when it all clicks.

So the question is: if the Swans can play one and a half quarters of horrible footy against a quality opposition playing at their best, and have it hardly make a damn bit of difference, then who could hope to take them down?

I’m not quite in that camp: this might have been the Swans’ most awe-inspiring performance precisely because of how far they had to come back from, but it also served as a reminder that they’re not infallible.

You shouldn’t bank on being able to wipe the floor of an opposition midfield as comprehensively as the Swans did on Sunday to surge back into the game – try doing that to Carlton, or Collingwood, or Melbourne, or Essendon, and the result surely won’t be anywhere near as spectacular.

Just as alarming was how quickly the Swans let the Cats back into the game in the final quarter, just when it seemed like they’d killed them off: three quick goals had Geelong a mere 12 points behind, and closing fast, before the hosts managed to steady.

The truth is that any team that can concede a six-goal head start to an opponent is more vulnerable than they’d like to admit, even if they can reel it in – and if it’s happened once, it can certainly happen again at a most inopportune time, like, say, a cutthroat final.

All it takes is one loss to bring even the most dominant season crashing down; hopefully for the Swans’ sake, John Longmire and his team treat it as the proper scare this was, and not a sign that a team can throw the kitchen sink at them and still not get the chocolates.

Thinking the latter is a mighty risky business, even if you are the best team in in by the length of the straight.

2. Is this what people wanted holding the ball to be?

*inhales*

I had plenty to say in last week’s column about the farce that the holding the ball rule had become thanks to the league’s much-publicised crackdown.

Well, now it has literally reared up at the decisive moment of a game, caused massive controversy, and left an entire state with their noses out of joint.

Let’s get two things straight about the call to penalise Elliot Yeo for holding the ball late in West Coast’s loss to North Melbourne: it was an entirely correct decision in the current climate to pay the free kick, and the strongest sign yet the crackdown is the worst own goal the AFL have kicked in years if not decades.

I’ve seen arguments around that Yeo dived on the ball, but give me a spell – there is no way known that free kick, in that moment, is paid a fortnight ago, before the AFL made a public announcement that prior opportunity was going the way of the dodo.

If we’re comfortable with this being a free kick now, we’re comfortable with players being taught in no uncertain terms that the worst thing you can do with the footy in dispute is to grab the ball.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the idea that Jy Simpkin needs to be rewarded for making this tackle with a free kick is a ludicrous one. His reward should be that Yeo was wrapped up, couldn’t rebound, and North Melbourne now have a stoppage inside 50 and a neutral ball to attack.

Holding the ball, like every other free kick, should be a punishment for a transgression that we don’t want to see in the game: Yeo picking up a loose ball like you’re taught as a schoolkid to do is as far removed from that as it’s possible to be.

Instead, a crucial rule is now a chook lotto: literally any tackle at any time at any place on the ground can now be justifed as being worthy of a holding the ball free kick, because the whole thing is now completely vibes-based. If you take possession, and you are tackled, then you’d better make an attempt to get it out, but not too much of an attempt because then you’ll be pinged for taking the tackler on, and don’t dispose of the ball incorrectly but don’t hold it in either if you can’t dispose of it correctly.

A player who picks up the ball now has to consider all of that, while a tackler just has to make sure they don’t hit the bloke high or fall into their back or sling them to ground: pretty easy to accomplish.

This is what happens when the AFL listens to a select group of coaches – and we all know which ones they are – whose primary interest is to advantage their own teams and not improve the game as a whole.

But as fun as it is to lay the blame on Chris Scott and Damien Hardwick, there are other factors at play, like the media circus and public furore that erupted earlier this year every time a player was given a second longer than we thought they ought to get to dispose of the ball, or when the tackle numbers compared to the holding the ball frees being paid seemed disproportionate without any close analysis to prove whether this claim was factual or empty.

In true AFL fashion, they saw people calling for a change, took it to the highest and most ridiculous level, and now things are worse than ever. It’s like that time they responded to a spate of bad behaviour in crowds by ejecting fans en masse, or when they made stamping out umpire dissent a focus by penalising players for even thinking about disputing free kicks.

But sometimes we get the game we deserve; for all those who wanted the holding the ball rule to be tighter, well, this is the result. And it’s horrible.

*exhales*

3. All three last-minute frees on controversial Saturday were there

If there’s one thing that becomes painfully clear on a near-weekly basis in footy discourse, it’s this: people generally don’t like it when free kicks decide games, and it doesn’t particularly matter whether they’re correctly paid or not.

Scroll through social media after any of Saturday afternoon’s games and the reaction was the same – big-ego umpires inserting themselves into the game unnecessarily and deciding all three tight affairs with tiggy touchwood free kicks. How dare they ruin such a spectacle, and shame on the AFL for not immediately sending them back to the VFL until they learn their lesson.

In response, I’m going to do something very unpopular: defend all three decisive calls. Even the one the AFL have since acknowledged was a mistake.

Let’s begin with the most obvious free: Tom Green barrelling into James Sicily and making contact after the Hawthorn skipper had kicked the ball inside 50 is a free kick paid every day of the week. It isn’t even an eyebrow-raiser if it happens at any other point of the game, or if this wasn’t a match going down to the wire.

Green’s bump was fractionally late, hitting Sicily after he’d disposed of the ball, making a downfield free the correct decision; and while many, including (supremely annoyingly) some Fox Footy commentators didn’t think to check the rulebook before debating whether the fact Sicily’s kick had gone out of bounds on the full negated the downfield element, that part of it was also correctly paid, though the law in question (18.1.2) is admittedly a touch vague in this specific scenario.

The one thing I will say about that is this: it is very unfair that Green is punished for what would have been, had he been about six milliseconds quicker in bumping Sicily, a legal act with what essentially amounts to a 50 metre penalty.

I’m not sure the punishment fits the crime there – I wouldn’t mind seeing an interpretation change where as long as the offending action is in play (and yes, there’s a bit of grey area there), then it’s just a free kick paid at the site of the infringement, with the advantage rule then to determine whether the infringed team can take the ball further downfield, i.e. if Breust had marked Sicily’s kick rather than had it sail out on the full.

I’ve already said my piece about the Elliot Yeo decision, but for all the infuriating, ridiculous harshness of the holding the ball crackdown, this was at least a consistent application of the rules.

Yeo picked the ball up at ground level – I strongly disagree with anyone that says he dived on it – was immediately swamped by Jy Simpkin, and didn’t make an attempt to get it out for the simple reason that his body and the footy were both pinned.

It SHOULDN’T be a free kick, but the umpires are being asked to pay exactly that. If you’re going to complain about anything – and I suggest you do – then complain about the interpretation change, and not this specific free. There were dozens more like it across the weekend, all infuriating, and this one shouldn’t be more controversial than the rest just because it decided the outcome of a game.

The hardest one to defend is the call to penalise Mac Andrew for holding Max King late at Marvel Stadium – mostly because the AFL have already admitted error, but also partly because the one camera angle Seven had of the incident might as well have been from the moon for all the clarity it provided.

As a general footy rule, though, if both a forward and a defender are holding one another, then there’s still every chance the defender will still be penalised. It’s been this way for years – watch a Carlton game and Charlie Curnow seems to nab one every week or two.

Looking at the vision, while it seems like both are indeed holding each other, the moment that seems to be the tipping point in the umpire’s mind is when Andrew turns his back to play and continues to jostle with King – like in so many other incidents, umpires hate when you only have eyes for your opponent.

Again, it would be unfair to hang an umpire out to dry for a decision like this, no matter what stage of the game.

Unless we want them to put the whistle away in the last five minutes of close games and take an anything goes approach, then line-ball frees to decide matches are something we’re just going to have to deal with.

On Saturday, two were on the right side of that line, while another was on the wrong one. It’s just a matter of inches either way.

4. The most Ross Lyon match of Ross Lyon’s life

The worst football match I have ever been to in person was Round 6, 2010, when a Ross Lyon-coached St Kilda, minus Nick Riewoldt, combined with the Western Bulldogs to manage just 13 goals combined in perfect conditions under the Marvel Stadium roof.

I came away from that game – which, incidentally, the Bulldogs lost because the Saints kicked three goals in the last five minutes to pinch it after kicking four for the entire rest of the match – thinking I’d just seen the most boring close match the AFL had ever, or would ever, see.

Depending on your tastes, the Saints’ win over Gold Coast on Saturday might have been even worse: certainly, it was just as low-scoring, with the Saints and Suns managing just one goal and four total points more than that day of infamy 14 years ago.

So dour was the match, even before it was decided via THAT free kick, that even Saints fans I know had a hard time getting all that excited about a desperately needed win; then Kane Cornes hit Lyon and his team right between the eyes on the Sunday Footy Show, saying the game was ‘a disgraceful way to play football’.

It’s a bit unfair on Lyon, given the Suns themselves were culpable: the sheer amount of cheap, uncontested marks they racked up at half back looking for an opening rather than try anything radical to break through was as much to blame for the eyesore that was Saturday night’s game as the Saints’ tactics forcing them into a corner.

And it misses the core point: Lyon’s one priority is to ensure his team wins a game of football. I reckon 99 per cent of footy fans couldn’t give a toss whether their team won 150-149 or 1-0, just so long as the final siren sounded with them in front.

Maybe this is the best way the Saints can compete: they’ll face better teams than a Suns outfit that is basically that muscled dog meme depending on whether they play at home or away, but having won two games in a row, you just have to take whatever scraps come your way.

And the positives were that, for the first time all season, the Saints’ defence looked back to their suffocating best: guarding space exceptionally across the ground, running hard to support teammates, and applying serious heat to a star-studded Suns midfield. No wonder they were all knackered at the end of the game.

The reality is that this is who Ross Lyon is as a coach; it’s who he’s always been. To ask him to open the floodgates and play attacking, freewheeling football might as well be poison to him; he’d never countenance that. And while he’s winning games of footy, you can’t fault results like Saturday night’s, no matter how ugly.

And I can guarantee that if the Saints could 51-48 their way through every game for the rest of the season, every single St Kilda supporter in the country will be thrilled to bits.

5. The Bombers are normalising

If you look at the scoreboard alone out of Sunday night’s blockbuster, the logical reaction is to think Essendon kicked themselves out of it.

A horror 9.16 scoreline from the usually reliable – at least this year – Bombers was a disastrous result, and meant that despite comprehensively dominating the territory battle with 60 inside 50s to 40, they never truly looked like beating a battle-hardened Carlton team that has learned the hard way how devastating missing your chances in big games can be.

The Blues kicked 15.6 and won by 26, and while the Bombers fought gamely right until the end and kept asking the question, a settling Carlton goal was only ever a few minutes away.

It’s the second week in a row the Bombers have paid for inaccuracy, kicking 11.14 to Gold Coast’s 14.7 in Round 12 to comfortably win the ‘expected score’ metric.

But far from signifying that the Dons have been unlucky and that they truly are worthy of their spot in the top four, it instead shows that footy evens out in the long (or in this case, short) run.

The Bombers had plenty of lucky breaks in starting the year 8-1-2; from THAT Sam Draper non-free kick against Adelaide, to narrow wins over West Coast and Richmond, to making the most of opposition inaccuracy from the Western Bulldogs and, especially, St Kilda.

Third at the moment, but with a swathe of teams nipping at their heels, this is probably a true reflection of where the Bombers sit: they’ve banked enough points to suggest finals are in their future, but barring a Collingwood-esque run of good luck in close games, they’re more in the 5th-8th region.

The Blues, meanwhile, are top four bound: sitting second after a night where they beat a quality opponent with minimal contributions from Patrick Cripps (19 disposals), Sam Walsh (22), Charlie Curnow (two goals) and Harry McKay (one) is an ominous warning to the rest of the competition.

Alex Cincotta continued his emergence as a tagger by clamping down on Zach Merrett, especially early. Elijah Hollands’ three goals were priceless, and gives the Blues an extra mid-sized dimension to a forward line that lacks for nothing. Jordan Boyd and Brodie Kemp are solid as a rock down back. And as a team, having been reeled in by the Bombers in the third quarter, to steady so wonderfully with the first three goals of the last quarter to effectively seal the game is a wonderful sign of their composure, which can only hold them in good stead.

Right now, the Blues are in the top two: and with everyone chasing Sydney at the moment, Michael Voss’ team might just be the ones most likely to challenge their supremacy in the run home.

6. The stereotype Luke Darcy can’t resist repeating

You’ve probably come across it at least once or twice before, but this is a serious bugbear of mine: that a string of AFL commentators, and some more than others, always describe non-white footballers of all shapes and sizes with certain stereotypical adjectives.

Indigenous small forwards are ‘magic’, or ‘wizards’; tall, intercept marking Sudanese-born players always play with raw ‘athleticism’. And it gets to the point where those cliches are repeated so often that they don’t become noticeable for most of us, but stick in the craw for those of us who do.

Even the players know about it: Gold Coast rising star Mac Andrew called it out this week in an interview with AAP.

“The commentary around myself when I play is, ‘Oh, Mac is just really athletic’ but I’m more than that,” Andrew said.

“I’m a really smart football player. I can read the game pretty well, I’ve always been a pretty skilful player.”

That sticks out to me because, literally 30 seconds into the Suns’ clash with St Kilda on Saturday night, Luke Darcy, the commentator who uses these stereotypes more than anyone else who calls our game, had this to say for Andrew’s first touch of the night, a spoil away from Max King having made great closing speed and leapt into the air to punch the ball clear:

“Look at the athletic spoil from behind! Mac Andrew just spiked it out of there!”

I probably wouldn’t have noticed it had it been later in the game, or in a week where that exact player hadn’t made a point of addressing it in the media: but it both rubbed me wrong and made me laugh out loud.

Here’s the thing: there is nothing wrong at all with calling a player, or something they do, ‘athletic’, in and of itself.

It’s just that every single footballer who runs out there is an athlete, and yet it seems, to be blunt, that only the black players get this moniker. I’m not sure Jeremy McGovern has ever been called ‘athletic’ by a commentator in his life, and yet he makes spoils like Andrew’s one on a weekly basis. Ditto Liam Jones, ditto Tom Stewart, ditto James Sicily.

You know who does get called ‘athletic’ a lot? Aliir Aliir. Majak Daw used to get it a lot, too, from familiar sources.

This isn’t meant to be a dig at Darcy, or to suggest in any way at all he’s some raging racist. He’s clearly not. But there’s a subtle bias to stereotypes like this, and the end result is that players get called and judged differently based on how they look and not how they play. Which was Andrew’s point in addressing it in the first place.

Also, they’re really lazy bits of commentary, in the same way as Dwayne Russell calling every act of a player stepping around another player a ‘shake and bake’, or Brian Taylor saying ‘boy oh boy wowee’ when his vocabulary fails him in describing anything remotely exciting.

So I’m asking commentators around the country: can we please find another adjective for non-white footballers?

Or at the very least, can we start calling pasty white blokes ‘magic’ and ‘athletic’ when they do the same things too?

Random thoughts

– Saturday was St Kilda’s first win by under a goal since the 2020 elimination final. Lordy.

– Tom De Koning is everything we thought Tim English was going to be. Love his competitiveness.

– With all the talk around Warner, Gulden and Heeney, don’t sleep on Justin McInerney. A serious footballer, and at pick 44 in 2018, another Swans draft steal.

– Once more with feeling: I’m not sure why any team would have even the remotest interest in Rory Lobb.

– Tom Brown is such a smart footballer. Going to be a staple in Richmond’s backline for 15 years.

– Am I the only one for thinking King’s Birthday teams only getting announced on Sunday night is way too late? Should be extended teams Friday, full 23s Saturday.