With apologies to Essendon fans, the biggest surprise of the opening two rounds of the new AFL season has been the performances and excitement around St Kilda and North Melbourne, which has the two clubs in second and fifth on the ladder after eight quarters of football.
When we ask the question of what has changed at the two teams since last season it's simplistic, if understandable, to go no further than the men in charge — Ross Lyon and Alastair Clarkson, the two highest-profile hires of the last six months.
For the Saints, there have been other personnel changes, with a string of delistings and retirements, the latter including Dan Hannebery and Paddy Ryder.
There was a mix of national draft and supplemental selections which also gave an idea of where the club was looking — draftees Mattaes Phillipou, former Carlton defender Liam Stocker and former Bulldog Zaine Cordy, plus a previously undrafted forward in Anthony Caminiti, whose intensity and willingness to go hard in training has already won him a spot and turned him into something of a cult hero at St Kilda.
But forget the players for the moment, how has the approach changed? Or how has the result changed from what was being achieved last year?
When Lyon was chosen, the clear indication was that the Saints would toughen their defence, a trademark of the coach in his previous incarnations at St Kilda and Fremantle.
Last season the 10th-placed Saints conceded an average of just over 77.9 points a game, which was seventh-lowest in the league.
Round one saw the Saints hold Fremantle to just 52 points, and last weekend, they backed it up with an even stingier performance, allowing the Bulldogs just 41 points at Docklands.
This makes them — on points conceded — the number one defence in the AFL after two rounds, five goals better than they were in 2022.
What else can we say about the Saints of 2023?
To sum up: they tackle more (surprise, surprise), they handball more — or to be more precise, they get the ball more overall but there's a higher proportion of handballs than last year — they get more contested (and uncontested) ball, they are better at stoppages, they are more willing to run it out of defence, they gain more ground and they go inside 50 more.
Most important of all, they're more efficient at hitting the scoreboard — they score a goal every 4.54 forward entries in 2023, compared to one every 6.83 entries last season.
Last year, St Kilda had three out of the top 53 players in terms of contested ball, and seven players averaging 7 or more contested possessions a game.
This year — on a small sample size — they have two players in the top 15 (Brad Crouch and Rowan Marshall), and 10 players averaging seven or more, so it's more of a group buy-in.
In 2022, only Jack Sinclair averaged more than 500 metres gained a game, and only three — Sinclair, Bradley Hill and Sebastian Ross — averaged more than 350m a round.
This year, the movement is better and while Sinclair still leads the way (538.5m average), there are now four players averaging over 450m a game, also including the now-injured Jack Steele, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera and Mason Wood.
The Saints have also gone from 14th in the league at stoppage clearances to sixth this year, with Ross and Marshall both ranked in the top 10 in the AFL, averaging six and five clearances from stoppage respectively.
So it's fair to say that Lyon's Saints look more like his kind of team than the 2022 version. The question from here is, given St Kilda are highly unlikely to keep oppositions to a bit under eight goals a game for the rest of the season, how far is the coach willing to open things up? Time will tell.
Clarko's Kangaroos
What about Alastair Clarkson's new-look Kangaroos, who came into this season as most people's favourites for the wooden spoon, and find themselves just outside the top four at this early stage?
The Kangaroos had a difficult off-season, losing their number one draft pick, Jason Horne-Francis, who completed a move back to South Australia to play for Port Adelaide.
However, North Melbourne continued the recharge of its list by adding a mix of draft talent — led by the remarkable Harry Sheezel, who has excelled off half-back — and experience as the team reset for life under Clarkson.
The two main adds from other clubs were key defender, ex-Docker Griffin Logue, and a familiar face from Hawthorn days in the hard-working veteran midfielder Liam Shiels.
It hasn't been easy for North so far. The winning margins have been five points over West Coast and the bare minimum of a single point against the Dockers — and the latter could well have been a different result if the siren had sounded a second or two later.
So it's not a dominant style of football, but don't doubt that what has happened in the first two weeks of 2023 is a transformation — at least for now.
When you compare with last year, when the Kangas' average score was an anaemic 60.8 points per game and the team was conceding a monster 109 points per outing, the combined improvement in attack and defence has North Melbourne close to nine goals better off per game. That's nothing to laugh at.
That's the end product, but how are they getting there?
The early take on North this year is: contested ball is king, more handballs (relatively speaking), much more tackling and forward defensive pressure, and even more improvement at clearances and the stoppage than the Saints. It's a similar sort of story to Lyon's side, but there are differences.
There hasn't been a huge increase in forward entries, but they have improved their conversion, off a higher base. Last season they were scoring a goal every 4.96 entries — they just weren't scoring enough to be in contention in many games.
This year, North are averaging 47.5 inside 50s a game (only 15th in the AFL), but they are scoring a major every 4.13 entries.
One key to their increased competitiveness is the amount of contested ball the Kangaroos are winning — an extra 20 possessions a game, rocketing them from 16th in the league to third.
What's changed? Well, Luke Davies-Uniacke has become an A-grader in short order, averaging 18 contested possessions a game and making life tough for opposing midfielders.
In stoppage clearances, North had four players in the top 80 in the AFL last year — led by Jy Simpkin averaging a little over three a game — and two of the four, Jed Anderson and Jason Horne-Francis, are no longer at the club.
And this year? Davies-Uniacke is again leading the way, with six stoppage clearances a game, (10.5 overall) but add in Simpkin and Will Phillips and North has three players inside the top 25.
So far, the Kangaroos are yet to be tested against top-eight opposition. What is clear is that the players have confidence in Clarkson and his new direction — and while they're not likely to match the three-in-a-row Hawks any time soon, who knows how far they can confound the predictions for the rest of the season.
