No one wants to play the Blues, but the Swans are sitting ducks as finals race turns wild

Sydney are the team everyone now wants to play in finals. Carlton are the team no one wants to play.

Forget the Swans’ win over North Melbourne, it doesn’t change that. The Swans had to respond on the field after the week they had, and they were playing a bottom-five team whose season was over in two hours’ time. Sure, North weren’t playing for anything the past couple of weeks either, when they played very well, but this was the last round, feet were already being put up.

The Swans showed some spirit, as opposed to culture. But they are not a top-four looking team now. No side would be removing five senior players, three of them among their best five.

The Blues have now beaten three of the top four teams. The other one is Sydney, and even they admit they have torpedoed their season. Well, Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, James Jordon, Riley Bice and Nick Blakey did that, then the Swans did the only thing they could do by suspending the five for the rest of the season for breaching the club’s behavioural standards, thus consigning the finals to an afterthought.

You might dismiss Carlton’s Brisbane win in round 21 as the back-to-back premiers having a mulligan and being due a loss. OK, that’s one. But they also beat the Cats. And now the Dockers. You could try to diminish the win over the Fremantle as the top side resting some players and others playing carefully to safeguard September. That would be unkind. The Dockers will be not be comfortable at having lost their past two games in Melbourne.

The Dockers kicked the first four goals of the game but Carlton didn’t panic.

Carlton has been playing with the unburdened freedom of a lack of expectation. The idea they would be here after sacking their coach after nine rounds was farcical. So, of course, whatever they do from here is a bonus. In fact, going further back, trading out Charlie Curnow and losing Tom De Koning altered the idea of what was reasonably achievable this season, and they have surpassed that.

But that doesn’t mean they are now completely unshackled. This is Carlton playing finals, of course there is expectation.

They still have holes in their list but not vulnerabilities in their game. Yes, you hold your breath when Lachie Cowan and Billy Wilson are kicking the ball coming out of defence. You also wonder if a DNA test needs to be done on Frankie Evans to make sure the bloke who kicked five goals against the top side and has been outstanding for the past three months was really the same Frankie Evans who kicked only five goals in the first 13 rounds of the season. Is he the same Frankie Evans who was cut by the Cats and Port? You wonder if Marc Pittonet can sustain this level of footy when he comes up against Max Gawn next week, and you have no idea just how far Wade Derksen can go. But right now, none of that matters.

The Blues are playing not just exciting footy but well-rounded modern footy.