Match Reports of North Melbourne vs Richmond and Hawthorn

NAB CUP Match Reports of North Melbourne vs Richmond and Hawthorn

North Melbourne started of slowly in both games. Probably a little too slowly for anyone's liking. But as they got into the game against the tigers it ended up being a really good game.
Injuries.
Yeah North Melbourne got a couple of injuries. Leigh Adams got knocked out in an incident which could see Richmond's Reece Conca suspended for a few weeks courtesy of the match review panel. Nathan Grima injured his knee and we will know more once he's had scans on it. Luke Delaney suffered a sprained ankle and Hamish McIntosh got poked in the eye.
Richmond
Richmond are on song this year. They lead most of the night only to have lost the game by 3 points to North Melbourne. Brad Miller was awesome for the tigers as was Ivan Maric and Jake King. These guys dominated against Hawthorn as well and caused the massive boil over in the third game winning by 3 points against the hawks.
Hawthorn
Hawks look simply awesome this year. The scary thing about them is that they were playing like Geelong were last year. The hawks owned North Melbourne by 25 points in game 2. Buddy Franklin was all over the place. He was awesome and accurate. In the end they mucked around with the ball causing some turnovers at crucial times of the game.
North Melbourne
As I said earlier North Melbourne will have to work on the slow starts to games. If they don't they will end up getting owned due to the slow starts by the opposition. It's not what the supporters want to see. What the supporters want to see is North Melbourne on top of every team and making an impact on each game. Robbie Tarrant played out of his skin and managed to kick a couple of goals. Drew Petrie was at his best trying to get the ball and kick the goals that we needed. Aaron Edwards kicked 3 goals. Lindsay thomas kicked a goal and worked his backside off to get a couple more goals which ended up going all over the place.  Not going to bag him but at least we know he's working on his goal kicking.
The umpires
Thought that the umpiring was ok for the first game of the year. Not going to be critical of them. There were a heap of free kicks some of which the umpires have to tighten up on. But yeah they did a great job last night. 

5 more days until Pre Season Starts

Whilst there are all the summer sports going on, all the winter sports start up. That means the AFL is back.
Well the pre-season competition is back. Many people love this as it gives them all a taste of what's to come.
I am looking forward to seeing the new talent playing in this competition.
Everyone has their team. Everyone wants their teams to win. 

Fox Footy is back.
Just a quick reminder that Fox Footy is back on Pay Tv. If you have pay tv and have it to watch the sports. You will find that it's on these channels. 504 for SD and 206 for HD.
First match is North Melbourne vs Richmond then it's North melbourne vs Hawthorn and then it's Hawthorn vs Richmond.
5pm be watching this.
If you haven't got Paytv get it installed.
I am looking forward to watching the footy.
I will be doing plenty of match reports after I have had a look at these games.
I will be refraining myself from swearing and abusing the umpires just so that it looks great.
I will be adding a few things to it. You will see a lot of photos, youtube snipits from each game and lots of fun.

North Melbourne's Intra Club

North Melbourne had their Intra Club on Tuesday 8th February 2012 at Eureka Stadium, Ballarat.
I went to this and really enjoyed the club's company.
Players who I saw who have improved greatly were Ryan Bastinac, Brent Harvey, New Skipper Andrew Swallow, Ben Warren, Hamish McIntosh, Ben McKinley, Todd Goldstein, Levi Greenwood, Liam Anthony, future recruit Travis Tuck, Ben Mabon, Scott McMahon, Matt Campbell, and Michael Firrito.
All players played really well. There were some awesome marks taken as well as some great goals kicked. Nice to see Lindsay Thomas kick 4 goals and Drew Petrie kick a few goals.

I took a few pics. Here's one of the better photos.
The guys wearing the black shorts are North Ballarat and Werribee players. They were used as top up players. I saw Drew Petrie take an awesome mark. He kicked a great goal after it as well.
Daniel Wells, Majak Daw, Sam Wright, Cam Richardson, Tom Curran, didn't play due to injuries that they are coming back from.
I sat with a couple of friends and we were undercover as it was freezing and it only became colder later in the night. So we went to the car and watched it from there.
When the final siren went we left.