If history has taught us anything, it is that no lead is safe. Not five goals, not six or seven. There are myriad reasons; mental lapses, fatigue, injury, inexperience and momentum. Whatever the reasons, clubs are giving up leads they shouldn’t.
The season is just three rounds old but there have already been some remarkable comebacks, as shown by the table below.
| Round | Club | lead | Term | margin | Winner |
|
1 |
Hawthorn |
32 |
2nd |
7 |
Geelong |
|
1 |
Adelaide |
22 |
1st |
35 |
Essendon |
|
1 |
West Coast |
19 |
1st |
28 |
Fremantle |
|
1 |
St Kilda |
25 |
2nd |
13 |
Gold Coast |
|
2 |
North Melbourne |
41 |
2nd |
4 |
Geelong |
|
2 |
Carlton |
19 |
3rd |
17 |
Collingwood |
|
3 |
Fremantle |
36 |
half time |
4 |
Essendon |
|
3 |
Adelaide |
32 |
3rd |
9 |
PortAdelaide |
It is fascinating watching a club lose a big lead. The obvious question is why. There are too many factors competing against each other during a game of AFL football to come up with a simple answer.
Most footballers can’t maintain the rage for four quarters of football. Those same players who acted incisively and executed excellently in the first half suddenly become mannequins.
Suddenly they miss targets, take the wrong option and fumble under pressure.
Coaches move players forward in the hope of a few goals or back to bolster defence. Tags are alternated on the midfielders and players are rested on the bench. Coaches push unlikely players forward in hope of a few goals.
The coach not only moves his men around, he offers encouragement, enforcement and abuse, imploring his men for sustained effort as the game goes on.
But players get tired and hurt. Their lungs burn and muscles ache. They are constantly surrounded by a mass of hard bodies. Mental strength is required, but it has its own variables.
As the body fades, the mind does too. A weary player can’t kick as long or run as fast.
Maintaining possession helps, but as the players tire and the pressure increases, a five goal lead is just five straight kicks.
Few spectators can follow the changes coaches make during a game. Footy is too technical for those in the outer. We watch and think we understand, but we don’t, so we can’t adequately explain why a team blows a big lead.
It’s too easy to explain the variants of footy as momentum, and when you watch your team give up a 41-point lead, it’s the first explanation we seek.
Momentum is the explanation but it isn’t the answer.
Any team who can come back from five goals down in the third term epitomises all that makes the game great.
They are mentally strong, fit, disciplined and determined. Simply, they are better than their opposition, for an infinite number of reasons, over the course of a full game of football.
In AFL history, just 24 clubs have come back from a deficit of 47 points or more and won. Just four of those games occurred before 1970.
That is a testament to the evolution of football. Attacking footy became a feature throughout the seventies and that trend continued into the eighties and nineties. Players are better skilled, fitter and bigger.
The grounds are better. Mud, which once was a feature, is no longer relevant.
The new century brought a shift in attitude. Footy certainly isn’t as free flowing as the days of the seventies and eighties. It is defensive, structured and rigid. Clubs aren’t kicking as many goals as they once did.
Where 17 goals once won a game, clubs are winning by kicking twelve goals. As the game has changed, a big lead wasn’t the bulwark it once was.
Thirty years ago a 30-point half time lead was almost insurmountable. Now, with the focus on defence, a five goal lead during the third quarter doesn’t guarantee anything.
As fans, we watch as uninformed observers, experts nonetheless, when our club claws back from a long way down. We curse when a big lead is overrun. But we’re not in the coach’s box. We don’t know how many minutes a man has played or if his quad feels okay.
We don’t understand all the reasons why a big lead is lost. The next time a swing is on and a team comes back from way down, watch the game closely and try to figure out why it happened.
Just don’t blame it on momentum, because momentum is an all-encompassing explanation that explains nothing, except what happened on the scoreboard.
