North Melbourne and Sydney both crack through for important wins last week, but only one of them can continue on with another victory in Round 8.
In a week of upsets, North’s was arguably the most astounding, knocking off the previously undefeated Adelaide Crows by 59 points in Hobart.
The Roos’ win came thanks to a massive first quarter in which they played with the wind and kicked 10 goals, 4 behinds to absolutely no score whatsoever from the Crows.
Leading by 64-0 at quarter time is a pretty handy start, but a young North Melbourne team showed great maturity in defending their lead well for the remainder of the game.
Unfortunate Jarrad Waite, who kicked six goals, also had a one-match suspension to come out of the game, and is gone from the team this week, as is Corey Wagner due to injury.
Jy Simpkin and Sam Durdin are North Melbourne’s inclusions to replace them.
Sydney didn’t have quite the same magnitude of victory, beating the current bottom-of-the-ladder side, the Brisbane Lions, but it was their first win for the year.
Lance Franklin kicked a big bag of eight goals, putting his name deep into the conversation for the Coleman medal.
They’ve seen fit to not make a single change to the side that was victorious by 54 points last week, and it’ll be interesting to see if now that they’ve got a win on the board they can build some confidence and perhaps play more like the team they were last year.
This game is a tough one to call – North have the home ground advantage and arguably the more impressive form, but Waite’s absence is a big concern.
At the other end of the ground, the battle between Lance Franklin and Scott Thompson could decide the match. Thompson has been in good form and has beaten Franklin a few times before.
In what feels close to a 50/50 proposition, Sydney at $2.15 to win likely represent the better value.