Cricket fansthroughout Australia will again have to cede their wintertime venues for end-of-Summer contests, in this case, the Preliminary Finals of the AustralianFootball League 2017 season. Two of thefour teams playing in these preliminary finals, the Adelaide Crows, the GeelongCats, the GWS Giants and the Richmond Tigers, will finish these weekendcontests heading into this season's Grand Final. None of the teams is whatmight be called perennial favorites. Whoever survives, the competition will be great.
While we wrote of theIrish Aussie Rules Grand Final last weekend, and while the Swedish Aussie RulesGrand Final takes place this Saturday in Stockholm, Australian Football fans worldwideall are excited by the Granddaddy of allGrand Finals, to be held at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds next Saturday,September 30th. Don'tforget the parade: Theannual Grand Final parade will be held in the streets of Melbourne on Friday,September 29 — a public holiday in Victoria. Saturday Sport is being published a day early this week, to allow all ofyou to share in the excitement. The first match willtake place at the Adelaide Oval, the Adelaide Crows against the Geelong Cats,Friday evening at 7:20 p.m. ACST. Thesetwo teams have the top two spots on the "ladder," but at this pointof the season, does that matter? Intheir recent games they are evenly matched, each winning and losing to theother evenly. The Crows have had 15 daysto prepare since they cruised past Greater Western Sydney in the firstqualifying final. A short training camp on the Gold Coast has the minorpremiers in good spirits as they aim to punch their ticket to the Grand Finalfor the first time since winning back to back in the late 1990s. Before theydream of ending a 19-year premiership drought, though, the Crows must get pasta Cats' side that put the football world on notice with an emphatic 59-pointthumping of the red-hot and ever popular Sydney Swans last week. Many of thefollowers of this space are Swans fans, and still have not gotten over theloss. This is a clash of two of the highest-scoringteams in the competition. The Crows are ranked first with 15.9 goals per game,while the Cats are equal third, with an average of 13.9 goals. Will Geelong reign supreme, or will the Catshave to eat crow? Saturday's match seesthe GWS Giants play the Richmond Tigers at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds. Richmond has not played in a preliminaryfinal since 2001, when they lost miserably. The fairytale team of this year's finals takes on the game's mosttalented list in what shapes as an intriguing battles of defense and offence.If defense wins premierships, Richmond is in the box seat to reach a historicGrand Final. But the hard run and slick attack of the Giants,which has been sosurprising in recent weeks, can never bediscounted. Last year they lost in the preliminaryfinal to the Western Bulldogs, who went on to win the Grand Final for theirfirst time since the 1950s. Richmond lacks players with experience at theselevels, and will go in with just oneplayer (Josh Caddy) who has played this deep into September, but they arebattering down hurdles throughout this season and look like a team on amission. With more than 90,000 fans already having bought tickets at the MCG, setto cheer them on, it will take something special from GWS to stop the Tigers'charge. Indeed, sales have been so goodfor the playoffs through the Grand Final because the excitement in these finalshas been infectious. In the USA, NCAACollege Football this (Saturday) evening, an exciting game will be the NittanyLions of the Pennsylvania State University at the University of IowaHawkeyes. Both teams are currentlyundefeated. That great temple tofootball, Kinnick Stadium, in Iowa City, will see an epic game. Iowa is 3-0 for the second time in threeyears as they host the Nittany Lions in this Big 10 contests. Penn State's fierce defense has generatednine turnovers throughout their first three wins. Penn State has just about recovered fromtheir multi year suspension, and may very well dominate play this evening. In the USA, in MajorLeague Baseball, Divisions are being decided all over the place, as will happenthis time of year. The Houston Astrosand the Cleveland Indians have already clinched in the American League races, withthe Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees keeping things interesting in theAL East. In the National League, theWashington Nationals, of course, clinched the NL East weeks ago, it seems. It will take very little for the Los AngelesDodgers to clinch the West, but the Arizona Razorbacks still have the slimmestof chances. The Central Divisionis once again the key battle ground of baseball in the National League. Like the AL East, the NL Central alwaysprovides plenty of excitement right up until the end of the regular season. Last year's World ChampionChicago Cubs are heading the division, with their chief challengers being theMilwaukee Brewers. They are currentlyplaying each other, so the standings could shift rapidly. In third place, but still within strikingdistance, are the St. Louis Cardinals. -- Posted By Rex to SR at 9/22/2017 12:17:00 AM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
