All Stars trounce hapless Blues

The Carlton Blues have been annihilated by 73-points courtesy of the Aboriginal All Stars in an exhibition/representative match which was played on Saturday night at the Murrara Oval, in Darwin. In a somewhat anti-climax, the pace-driven All Stars ran rampant and overran the error plagued Blues, who struggled in the humid conditions all night.

In front of a reported crowd of approximately 17, 000 Darwin fans, the All Stars, who were comprised almost entirely of AFL players, caught the Blues napping early with their speed, and brimming enthusiasm evident at every contest. Despite the match being a mismatch in terms of overall height the All Stars showed great spirit and hit the Blues big men hard. Once the ball hit the ground, the Blues were always in trouble, as the quick small-men of the All Stars such as Leon Davis, and Andrew Krakoeur pounced and kicked truly. In the midfield Andrew McLeod lead the ATSIC All Stars like the true champion he is, as he dominated early on, setting the scene for what was to be a historic, and emotional victory for the All Stars who had not played together since 1994, and an embarrassing defeat for the Blues, who will need to produce much better if they are to avoid successive wooden spoons. New coach Pagan has pronounced that the Blues will never produce such a performance again. He’ll want to be right too, as you can’t help but feel that if the Blues players start to let the gremlins from last season creep back into their minds, so to speak, they’ll be no looking back.

Des Headland was a standout across the ground, with his speed and class clearly illustrated. Youngsters such as Sampi, Clarke, and Cole showed glimpses of their brilliance while Adam Goodes rucked tirelessly all night with other stand out performances coming from that of McLeod, the experienced Darryl White, Troy Cook who dominated, in addition to lion Chris Johnson who played solidly down in defence, and Chance Bateman who also played well. From Carlton’s point of view it was a very sorry tale indeed with very few good performances to impress Coach Pagan in a match, which from their point of view was riddled with scrappy play, bad decision making, and unforced skill errors. One positive Blues fans will surely grasp from the match will be the come back of star player Anthony Koutoufides, who seemed to get through okay after coming back from a severe knee injury. For the Carlton side there were very few highlights in a match where the All Stars reigned supreme, after setting up the match in the first half. Darren Hulme played fairly well, but there were no real prominent performances from the Blues team. But, it was clear from the very first bounce when you saw the pace and enthusiasm of the exciting All Stars team – this was to be their night. All Stars Coach Michael McLean will go away from the game with a smile on his face, while it’s back to the drawing board for Denis Pagan, his first venture in control of his new team an embarrassing display riddled with skill errors, a performance that someone of Pagan’s stature will surely try to remedy quickly.

Final scores were:
ATSIC All Stars 19.16 (130)
Carlton 8.9 (57)

The match was truly a joy to watch, and unlike the usual batch of exhibition or representative type matches, this match had something that many other such matches lacked, true spirit.

Bring on the AFL 2003!
By Andrew White (aka Whitey)