Four points: How Blues got their swagger back; Tiger Tim joins the elite; trade win-win

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The team that could do nothing right could suddenly do nothing wrong.

Yes, there is a caveat here, Carlton were playing the Suns, a team as reliable as Jetstar.

Finally something to cheer about for the Blues.Credit: AFL Photos

But this was a Suns team that had come off two big wins in Darwin and pushed Carlton around in the first quarter. But for wasteful shots at goal (Carlton can relate), Gold Coast should have been well ahead at quarter-time.

This was also a Gold Coast side that was the worst team coming off a bye in the AFL and has historically been a helpful opponent when a team is confronting moments of crisis and doubt.

In the second quarter Carlton kicked 9.3. Players who only last week had you wondering if they had chosen the wrong sport suddenly looked like heroes.

The Blues scored eight goals and two behinds from centre clearances, which is not just a domination of Gold Coast, whose midfield had ironically been strong in this area. It was a centre-square clearance scoring blitz the equal of any team.

Patrick Cripps kicked three goals in a dominant performance.Credit: Getty Images

In a single quarter they scored more than they have averaged for entire matches for the year.

The thing about a win like this is it actually reinforces the questions and the criticisms raised by their run of terrible performances, for this was the demonstration of what they can do and should have been doing. It shows what was expected of them and therefore how far short they had fallen.

This was the style Carlton played when they were in form. They dropped Lewis Young, used the more mobile Brodie Kemp as a second tall, and had Mitch McGovern intercepting. Kemp was very good, and the balance seemed better, in returning to a more attacking fast rebound game.

The difference from recent weeks was that the lesser Carlton players played better and the good Carlton players played vastly better. Sam Walsh – coming from a long way back after missing another pre-season with injury – had clearly his best game for the year. He in part mirrored his team; he had gone away from what made him a good player. On Sunday he found that again.

Paddy Cripps had one of his best games for the year and kicked three goals. He’d only kicked one for the year before Sunday’s game.

Harry McKay looked more confident. Adam Cerra and Charlie Curnow have been all year – but for a recent hiccup from Curnow – and both again performed well.

Carlton play best as a team – in fact, as a club – when they have their strut, and on Sunday they had swagger. They hunted the ball and had confidence in their teammates, which has been absent all year. They ran from behind the ball. Adam Saad looked like a threat again and Sam Docherty was punishing of the opposition rather than his own team with his ball use.

What this win means in the context of a season that in reality has slipped away is more about what it means for lowering the temperature around the Blues and easing the mounting pressure on Michael Voss.

Suns’ letdown

As good a win as this was for Carlton, it was terrible loss for the Suns. Another one.

This was a team that had two big wins going into the bye and with a possible first-ever top eight finish available to them, they dominated the first quarter. And then they were overwhelmed.

Gold Coast had enough inside 50s (51 to the Blues’ 55) to do damage and did nothing. They were smashed in the midfield in the second term and while they changed the centre-square mix after conceding almost a record number of scores from centre clearances, they could not stem the bleeding.

It was one thing to lose, but another to lose by so much.

Tiger Tim a Giant improvement

Tim Taranto has made Richmond better. He has won them games.

Admittedly, there is a broader question of what you hand over as a club in a trade and what that means for a team in transition, but Taranto as a player has delivered for the Tigers. By most measures he’s one of the better midfielders in the comp this year.

Tim Taranto kicks the sealer against St Kilda.Credit: Channel Seven

He is ranked third among AFL midfielders for disposals, fourth for tackles and second for hitting the scoreboard. That is a reasonable dividend.

His output is significantly better than at any stage in his career. He averages 32 touches a game at Richmond when he had never averaged more than 27 touches per game in a season at GWS.

He is averaging 13.6 contested possessions a game in black and yellow, but only once as a Giant did he average double figures for contested ball across a season. His clearance numbers at 6.9 a game for general clearances and 2.9 centre clearances a game are far better than he has ever achieved.

Critically, and this is the most interesting bit, he is hitting the scoreboard at twice the rate he has ever done at the Giants, averaging just under a goal a game (0.9) and yet he has spent more time on the ball at Richmond than at the Giants, where he was often rotating more heavily as a half-forward.

He suits Richmond’s style for he is not a possession and territory player. His kicking is not elite, but he fits the Tigers’ method of ball movement.

Then there are the things you can’t measure. More than once he has booted the goal that mattered when it was needed. He did it at the end against the Saints on Saturday night. When Richmond needed the goal it was not Dusty Martin, or Shai Bolton or Dion Prestia who booted it, it was Taranto. Again.

Strong trade hand

Taranto didn’t really want to leave the Giants. He is a loyal type but they couldn’t really afford to keep him, given they had a surfeit of players of his type. GWS needed to cut their wages bill so Taranto had to go.

By losing Taranto, and fellow Giant-turned-Tiger Jacob Hopper, the Giants not only eased their salary cap pressure (which has enabled them to present a new offer to Harry Himmelberg this week) but it has teased out more from the Giants by uncluttering the midfield of similar types all fighting for their moment on the ball.

Tigers interim head coach Andrew McQualter and Tim Taranto of the Tigers sing the team song after beating GWS Credit: Getty Images

Stephen Coniglio is back playing in his best position as in inside mid. Tom Green is closing the gap on the competition’s elite mids.T

The trading of Hopper and Taranto has also given the Giants a stronger hand at this year’s trade table. The Giants have Richmond’s first-round draft pick as well as their own. If they were to bundle them together, they could be one of the clubs to tempt West Coast into a trade for pick one and access to teenage prodigy Harley Reid.

It leaves them in a win-win situation; after getting No.1 pick Aaron Cadman last year the worst the Giants could do this year is end up with two picks in the top ten. The best is they bundle those picks together to get deeper into the draft.

So, Richmond remain content they have brought in the two players in Taranto and Hopper to bridge their generational change from era to era, while the Giants think they can do the same thing through losing the same two players.

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