A Good Friday
It’s hard to overstate the positive impact the Good Friday appeal has had on the community over the years.
In strictly monetary terms, more than $310 million has been raised since the Appeal began in 1931, and the first ever Good Friday fixture is the footy community’s chance to do our part for The Royal Children’s Hospital.
How can you help? Five dollars from every ticket goes directly to the GFA but it doesn’t end there. There’ll be raffles, special GFA bunny ears for sale, or you can drop some coins into the tins at the ground.
And if you can’t make it to the game, there’s other ways to get involved. Click here for details.
Tall story
The Kangaroos have traditionally gone into clashes with the Bulldogs tall, at least in recent years. The two sides faced off twice last season, with Brad Scott trotting out a combination of Drew Petrie, Jarrod Waite, Ben Brown, Todd Goldstein and Majak Daw.
That’s 987cm and 498kg of man.
You can now add to that list the 206cm, 109kg Queenslander, Braydon Preuss.
Preuss more than held his own against Greater Western Sydney’s own Giant, Shane Mumford last week, picking up 16 touches, seven marks, 26 hit-outs and two goals and a spot among his side’s best.
As Luke Beveridge said at Thursday morning’s press conference, it’ll be a challenge for ‘the two Toms’, Boyd and Campbell, but there’s no doubt that they’ll be ready.
Living in the Seventies
The last time North Melbourne lost four games in a row Gough Whitlam was still prime minister, the PC was still two years away from being invented and you could buy a house in Melbourne for the princely sum of $19,800.
The year was 1975.
If the Bulldogs are to keep the Kangaroos winless into round five and improve their own ledger to 3-1, it says here that they’re up against a fair bit of history.
What does it all mean? Probably not much, the Roos went on to defeat Hawthorn by 55 points in that year’s grand final.
Hard heads
No one has ever accused the Bulldogs of lacking toughness but if you wanted to add even more to the mix, there’s no better pair to bring into the side than Josh Dunkley and Clay Smith.
The Roos will be doing all they can to ensure that they don’t fall to 0-4, especially in a blockbuster timeslot like Good Friday, so make no mistake this one will be a fight.
So, who better to have in the trenches than renowned hard heads like Clay and Dunks who’ve been named for their first games of the season.
Oh, and Liam Picken – possibly the toughest player to play any sport anywhere, ever, will play too.
Is it 4:15 yet?
