Kangaroo's passion bubbles over
North Melbourne's veteran director of football, Geoff Walsh, was left slightly embarrassed on Friday night when Channel Seven aired footage of him and club doctor, Peter Bacquie, having a nice old barney in the changerooms during the Kangaroos-Western Bulldogs match.
Walsh, a passionate sort who's never been afraid to make his views known, appeared to give Bacquie a very no-nonsense piece of advice, before the ageing medico bit back and gave as good as he got.
The heated exchange had Seven's commentators all a-flutter, wondering what had provoked this internal spat.
Walsh laughed off the incident on Monday, telling ESPN that he was simply querying "the outlandish cost of private health insurance".
Then - slightly sheepishly - he fessed up, saying he had got caught up in the moment and temporarily let his emotions get the better of him.
Kangaroos' small forward Kayne Turner had pinged a hamstring early in the first quarter, meaning he was sidelined for the night, and Sam Wright had limped off not long afterwards with a foot/ankle injury, meaning the Kangaroos were down two players in the top-of-the-table clash.
"We had two players not on the ground and I was simply wondering when we were going to get one of them back on the field," Walsh said. "But there's absolutely no problem: I recruited Peter to the club and we're both having a laugh about it now."
One of the most respected football men in the game, Walsh has been a key figure in four premierships at three different clubs: one at Carlton, two at North Melbourne in the 1990s, then one at Collingwood.
Soon to turn 60, he will step back from his full-time position but remain at the Kangas in a role which involves mentoring his replacement Cam Joyce, senior coach Brad Scott and having input into the match committee.
"People say he's taking a step back because he's lost his passion - well, clearly as we saw on Friday night, that's not the case," Walsh said of himself.
Look out, defenders
The AFL's new interpretation of players deliberately taking the ball out of bounds has caused much debate this year, and there is no doubt that it has made a difference to the game, with 25 percent fewer boundary throw-ins in every game and, as a consequence, higher scoring.
But stand by for more change, notably a toughening of the stance on rushed behinds from next season to bring that rule in line with what is now being applied by umpires around the boundary line. The strong feeling is that it is time to ramp up the deliberate rushed rule, too.
Currently, players are only entitled to rush the ball through for a score if they are "under pressure", a notion that they stretch more every year after the previous change, in 2009, when it first became technically illegal to deliberately rush a behind. That rule came as a result of a grand final in which Hawthorn conceded 11 rushed behinds against Geelong, and Richmond's Joel Bowden walking through several behinds late in a tight game against Essendon to soak up time.
AFL football operations boss Mark Evans as good as flagged the harder line this week.
"I like that concept,'' he said when it was put to him that the same rules should apply all around the ground. "I think it would be not a bad thing to have consistency all around.''
Evans has also suggested there could be a pre-season trial of allowing interchange rotations after goals.
Vic clubs feeling the pressure
Four of the AFL's most powerful Victorian clubs, Collingwood, Richmond, Carlton and Essendon, look like missing out on finals action in 2016 - a prediction that can be made with some certainty after just six rounds.
That will not please the AFL Commission, because it will inevitably lead to a fall-off in attendances as the season progresses and perhaps a slightly flat finals series.
One newspaper even posed the question this week, after Greater Western Sydney's thumping win over Hawthorn: "What if they held a Grand Final and nobody came?"
The emergence of GWS has also got Collingwood president Eddie McGuire fired up, and complaining to anyone who'll listen that the AFL Commission has given the league's fledgling clubs far too many concessions, especially with regards to their academies for developing local talent.
The last time the Victorian big four missed out on the finals was in 2005 - when Richmond finished 12th, Essendon 13th, Collingwood 15th and Carlton 16th.
The grand final that year was contested by West Coast and Sydney - a grim portent perhaps for those who feel that the AFL finals really should have a VFL feel.
Leicester an inspiration
Leicester City's extraordinary English Premier League title win this week has proved a major inspiration for some of those smaller AFL clubs chasing premiership glory this year.
Greater Western Sydney midfielder Stephen Coniglio said Leicester's triumph - as 5000/1 outsiders at the beginning of the EPL season - was proof that anything can happen in professional sport, including a GWS flag in 2016.
"We know we've got a lot of hard work to do, but if you look around the sporting world at the moment, you've got Leicester City in the Premier League and everyone wrote them off at the start of the season," Coniglio said on Tuesday.
"Nothing is impossible in sport now and we'll just keep working hard. Who knows where we'll end up."
That theme was picked up on the same day by North Melbourne stalwart Drew Petrie, who this weekend plays his 300th game.
Petrie fronted a media conference on Tuesday, just hours after Leicester were confirmed as the unlikely, rags-to-riches EPL champions.
"It's a good analogy (because) they've come from nowhere," Petrie said.
"North are never going to be spoken of as one of the big four. (So) we're fighting for the small people ... we're in that (group) of small sporting sides around the world that are not in the bright lights all the time."
Hawthorn v North Melbourne - at cricket?
Former Australian Test cricket captain Ricky Ponting is keeping himself busy in retirement, doing his charity work with the Ponting Foundation, coaching the Mumbai Royals in the IPL, attending as many North Melbourne games as possible in his role as No.1 ticketholder and playing lots of golf.
Ponting, and his manager James Henderson, will soon unveil plans for a Twenty20 charity cricket match involving Hawthorn and North Melbourne footballers this summer at Aurora Stadium in Launceston.
Both clubs play home AFL matches in Tasmania - Hawthorn in Launceston; North in Hobart - so already have a sizeable profile in the island state.
And Henderson also happens to manage Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson (as well as Francesca Cumani - so quite a stable of talent) which meant getting the T20 match organised was relatively straightforward.
Proceeds from the match, which will be played before Christmas and give Launceston a taste of cricket (all international matches are played in Hobart), will go towards the Ponting Foundation and its work helping young Australians beat cancer.
Mum's the word
It's Mother's Day this Sunday and we are tipping one of the happiest mums in the land would be Lynne Scott, mother of coaches Chris (Geelong) and Brad (North Melbourne). The twins' teams are sitting at one and two on the AFL ladder through six rounds, a first for them.
Chris has a premiership, of course, from 2011, and Brad is still seeking to emulate the brother who is older by a couple of minutes, despite general apathy about North Melbourne's chances within the footy community.
The Kangaroos are 6-0 with a good draw, but can only reach the fifth line of premiership betting at the moment behind Hawthorn, West Coast, Sydney and Geelong.
LINE OF THE WEEK:
"Looking like extras in a Village People video.'' - Commentator Tim Watson on Hawthorn's clash guernsey worn in Sydney.
STAT OF THE WEEK:
North's Andrew Swallow's 52 tackles in the opening six games is by far the best in the competition. At his current average of 8.7 tackles per game and with North headed to finals again, Swallow could break the all-time record in a season of 202 by Scott Selwood of West Coast in 2011.