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.