Nearly a four large fine for Paddy because Harley wasn’t watching where he was going! What a travesty! Is this where the revenue raising AFL corporation world has gotten to? Time to Restump Podcast the formality that was Saturday afternoon. 

Paddy Voss should be hailed, heralded and and held up as a beacon of compassion and restraint. He had the chance to put Harley Reid in the morgue. But he fought every fibre of his being and showed wonderful discipline to not follow through. 

Pre-game we’re all for it, but we take no enjoyment sticking the banter boots into West Coast post-game after a win. Hey, we don’t make the rules, we just abide by them. 

The entire day was a formality. It was simply a matter of just going through the motions and overseeing the safe transport of the 4 valuable points into our win account. It was a precisely calculated and managed, bigger fish to fry performance. 

At three quarter time JL gave them a spray telling them to be mindful of their excursion and to reel in the effort and intensity! He said, “This is July and they’re blue and gold traffic cones, so leave plenty out there and I don’t want to see anyone come off that ground with an empty tank!”  

Understandably, apart from Liam Ryan standing on Karl Worner’s head, the game never reached any great heights. While similar in age and relative experience, there were two vastly different classes of teams out there and there was a boat load of daylight between them. 

However, it was pretty enjoyable watching the surely now unbackable 2025 rising star winner, Murphy Reid, go about his business yet again like a seasoned veteran. His craft, his ability to execute and his intelligence… he has no purple peer!

Well maybe that’s not quite true because that guy Hayden Young is thereabouts. What a welcome inclusion he is. We’ve missed him all year and his return to the side couldn’t have been better timed. 23 disposals, 6 inside 50s, 7 clearances and an absurd 3 goals. And if you thought that was mental, he ridiculously did it with just 57% of time on ground.

Can we stop and appreciate the work of Jaegar O’Meara? The endless variety of roles and tasks he has been asked to do since he arrived at the club, not many players could perform them to such a level he has. Albeit acknowledging the disparity in age and experience and condition between the two, his work on Harley Reid on the weekend was superb.  

It was a convincing win but it wasn’t the percentage booster we were all hoping for. We did put on 3% though and surprisingly we’re now ahead of Brisbane on the metric. 

However, we’re rarely been big on percentage. We’ve been a big percentage boosting team at times in the past, but unfortunately it has usually been for an opponent! So, lets just focus on the winning. A place in the top 8, possibly top 4, is ours to lose. 

This game probably perfectly falls into the never as good or as bad as it seems category. We weren’t at our best but we won comfortably. We generated a lot of shots on goal but our inaccuracy hurt us. 

Not really sure what else we learn from the game, but given it was against West Coast there’d no doubt be some substance to take out of it! Oh, c’mon it’s West Coast… it’s cheap shots and lame lines in more ways than one, all round! 

Anyway, lets engage the detection dogs and get them to run their noses over the game on the pod. So, feel free to join us as we wrap up the Derby proceedings and begin the Carlton focus commentary.

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