Footy is a passion, not some cold hearted, spread sheet dominated rational exercise.

On a Monday, you want irrational reaction. You want emotion to trump reason.

What you really want is idiotic hysteria.

You’ve come to the right place.

Port Adelaide (132) v Western Bulldogs (75)

When the first quarter finished with the Power booting five goal to the Bulldogs’ solitary point, things didn’t appear to be get able to get much worse for the Doggies.

But they were just getting started.

Captain Easton Wood suffered a serious hamstring injury, Jack Macrae got a less serious hamstring injury, Lukas Webb broke his thumb, Tom Boyd got a compound dislocation of a finger, Marcus Bontempelli hyperextended his knee (but seems OK, just gave the Doggies fans a collective heart attack) and Toby McLean injured his shoulder.

Normally this sort of stuff is reserved for the Adelaide Crows.

Luke Beveridge said after the game "If we carve the first quarter off and some of the junk-time goals, it's a reasonably close game.”

It wasn’t.

Wouldn’t we all like to be able to say, ‘If you don’t count the six hours I just surfed the web at work today and the hour-an-a-half I took for lunch, I was actually very productive.”

Port were better throughout, but the heat was out of the game early on and then the Power players sat back and basically watched an episode of ER.

In all it wasn’t a very memorable night, the highlight was the crowd applauding at the 13^thminute of the first quarter for number 13 Todd Marshall, who played his first game since the death of his father in April.

Footy can be pretty great sometimes.

Sydney (72) v West Coast (57)

Now this was a masterclass by the Channel Seven commentary team.

I thought they’d peaked last week, but this was artistry.

If getting players’ names wrong was a sport, they’d win the World Cup.

Brian Taylor at one stage called the SCG the MCG, probably not for the first time having no idea where he was.

He also spent a lot of the game thinking Willie Rioli and Liam Ryan were the same person. Hmmm.

Not to mention that Channel Seven seem to believe you need about fifty people to call a game and they all need to talk as much as possible.

Daisy Pearce stands out because she actually says something about the game being played in front of her. We’ve become so unused to that it kind of jars me every time.

West Coast’s ten game winning streak is over, bookended by two losses to Sydney.

If the Swans were still based in Melbourne, they’d be named premiers this week in the Victorian media.

It was tough going for the Eagles, they struggled to score and when they seem to lift, the umpires seemed to find another level.

At one stage, the umpires tried repeatedly to get Buddy a goal, only to be frustrated by him missing shots. To their credit they didn’t give up, dug deep and managed to finally get him one.

The Eagles’ problem was their entry into their forward line was more frustrating than Optus’ World Cup coverage.

Carlton (46) v Fremantle (103)

Allowing Fremantle to kick 77 points in a half is the universe’s way of telling you that footy isn’t for you.

Footy hasn’t been Carlton’s thing for some time. Making their fans miserable and crushing any remanets of hope is more their style.

In the first half, Carlton did it all, they allowed the Dockers, a team not exactly known for their freewheeling offensive capabilities, score 77 points, while also only scoring four points themselves.

It led to various Carlton spokespeople hitting the airwaves on Sunday morning to explain how the rebuild was ‘working’.

I can only assume they hadn’t seen the first half.

Bolton said Fremantle jumped them at the start. If only they’d been some warning the game had started, like a very loud siren or similar.

Blues fans probably thought they were already at rock bottom, but this side lives to exceed even their lowest expectations.

Fremantle, it could be argued, did let the Blues win the second half, but to be honest, the Dockers were already on their flight back home by that stage.

It was a great win for them, but even Dockers fans couldn’t believe the ease at which this all occurred.

Gold Coast (78) v St Kilda (80)

The Gold Coast Suns experiment may not be successful, but it has been insanely expensive.

The Suns were up by 31 points at three-quarter time and they were playing St Kilda. You don’t lose from there. It’s actually impossible.

So screwed were St Kilda at this stage that the club had people drafting the ‘Alan Richardson sacked’ media release.

Alan knew it too, if his emotion during the second half and after the game was any indication.

In the three-quarter time huddle, Richardson pulled the troops in close and said, “Fellas, we only need five goals in this quarter, while keeping them goalless. Do you think we can do it?”

“Not really,” came the reply.

“Of course, you can do it boys, this is the Suns. We may be St Kilda but we’re still not the Suns, nobody is the Suns. They’re like someone who’s dad left them a billion dollars and now they drive an Uber and only have a three-star rating, so they never get offered any jobs.”

“Hey, you’re right.”

“We maybe St Kilda but we’re not the Suns!” they all started chanting.

And that’s what happened, in front of 10,181 the Saints stormed back to win by two points, save Alan’s job for a few weeks and made Tasmanians increasingly nervous they might actually get an AFL team so bad it makes not having one seem appealing.

Stuart Dew said afterwards, "The simple question is "why didn’t we want to win the game?”

It’s a simple answer Stuart; it would have taken effort.

Hawthorn (88) v Adelaide (32)

The Adelaide Crows have responded to the psychological torture of their preseason camp by now inflicting a similar experience on their fans.

Like Cameron Ling trying to offer insights into a footy game, the Crows season has been a dumpster fire that’s left everyone confused and a little angry.

Sure, they’ve got a lot of injuries, but you don’t let James Sicily kick three goals on you.

The only interesting bit of this game was to see who could miss the most shots on goal, but then the Crows stopped taking them. Clever.

It was a great win for Hawthorn and didn’t their fans get right behind them with 26,693 people turning up? They’re hardcore those Hawks fans.

For Adelaide, the season is now probably over and not soon enough.

It was a horrific night for Australian sport. The Socceroos lost, the Wallabies lost, the Australian Cricket team lost, and Hawthorn won.

Geelong (65) v Richmond (83)

Two top teams going at it in the only game on a Sunday and it’s not on free to air but on Foxtel.

Remember when Gil said he was for the fans? That got old fast.

And before people all say, just get Foxtel, not everyone can afford it. Why, on the money I pay my driver, I’m impressed he can clothe and feed himself. He has appeared a bit thin recently.

I stupidly went along to this in some of the most gloomy, cold and miserable weather Melbourne has turned on for some time.

It was tough conditions for the fans, why, more than once I had to ask for the heating to be turned up in the corporate box.

Despite the weather, this was a pretty enjoyable game with just a point separating the teams at three-quarter time.

In many ways, conditions were perfect for the Tigers, whose high pressure eventually got to the Cats, who made several baffling decisions in the fourth quarter only to have the Tigers punish them.

Geelong fans will have nightmares about Jake Kolodjashnij’s miskick off half-back that resulted in a Richmond goal. Hearing the Cats faithful swear at him while mispronouncing his name in numerous different ways was a real highlight for me.

The Cats have lost three from five games at the MCG this year making them the anti-Richmond.

Both teams have a bye this week, then Richmond take on the Swans in a massive game which the AFL have scheduled at Etihad Stadium because, well, they’re the AFL.

Byes: Brisbane, Collingwood, Essendon, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne, North Melbourne

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