Welcome to the first annual Friday Night Footy Watchability Index!
The concept of the gimmick is simple. All I’m doing is putting all the teams into tiers of watchability when they’re on during a prime-time, standalone slot. In other words, you’re either watching this game, or you’re not watching the footy.
For instance, a team in the top tier is one that I want to watch irrespective of who they’re playing because they’re so compelling, be it for storyline reasons or just because they’re so much fun to watch. A team in the bottom tier, by way of comparison, I’m almost categorically not watching unless they’re playing a team in the top tier. To determine this, I’m taking everything into account from play style to star power to the overall relevance to the discussion that people (I) have around footy.
Put simply if the two teams in the top couple of tiers play each other, it’s man date time like whenever Killers of the Flower Moon finally comes out. If two teams in the bottom couple of tiers meet on a Friday night, to steal an NFL term, it’s apple picking night.
This is not about who the best teams are, it’s literally just about who I am excited to watch.
This article really should be called the Prime Time Footy Watchability Index because there are 11 Thursday Night Footy games in the 2023 season. But Friday Night Footy is still the traditional showpiece game of the week and Channel 7 hasn’t fully destroyed the prestige of it.
Yet.
They might finally do it this year though with the news that they’re sticking with Brian Taylor and James Brayshaw as the play-by-play guys, pitting them against one another in a game of ‘who can confuse the most Indigenous players’. At least Wayne Carey won’t be on the call, presumably he’ll be busy in a hotel room with rails of Panadol and sometimes Nurofen if he’s feeling frisky.
In the interest of keeping things short and sweet, each team will be compared to a movie. I am allowing myself a maximum of 2 sentences to make my point. The comparison can be based on what happened around the movie or in the movie, or even around the people who made the movie (okay, look, there are no hard and fast rules about how the movie comparisons work, I honestly just wanted a place to fire off some movie takes).
Let’s get into the tiers:
“No plans on Friday Night babe. I’m busy.”
Richmond – Heat
· A constellation of post-prime stars mixed in with some genuine up and comers.
Collingwood – Panic Room
· Newbie burst onto the scene. Can they keep up the momentum?
Amusement Parks for the Eyes… and Geelong
Western Bulldogs – The Batman
· An indie movie dressed up as a mainstream smash.
Carlton – Amsterdam
· Full of stars in their primes. Crap, but endlessly fascinating.
Geelong – The Irishman
· Full of old stars. Good anyway.
Brisbane – Mission Impossible: Fallout
· Provably, eminently watchable but never going to win anything of note.
Sydney – Whiplash
GalWhoLikesSport wants this to be Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie (based on the trailer and Gerwig’s previous work), so, in the alternative
Showed plenty of promise. Can they do it with the target on their backs?
“Might have to chuck a multi on”
Melbourne – Den of Thieves
· Melbourne is just a budget Richmond, like Den of Thieves is just a budget Heat.
Fremantle – Parasite (pre-Oscar buzz)
· “Have you watched Freo lately?” is going to be this year’s AFL version of “have you seen Parasite yet?” An incredible watch, just too far off Broadway.
Port Adelaide – Zack Snyder’s Justice League
· Under siege Director/Coach butting up against the roof of his capability.
“I can go to the pub as long the footy is on”
Essendon – Don’t Worry Darling
· Bad in a bad way and constantly enveloped in drama that isn’t even fun to watch.
St Kilda – Australia
· Self-aggrandizing megalomaniac who makes boring drivel in charge.
GWS – Die Hard 2
· Should work but just doesn’t.
Gold Coast – The Break-Up
· You think this is worse and dumber than it is. Pretty fun.
“I’d love to go see your parents”
Hawthorn – The Ides of March
· You think this is better and smarter than it is because of the people on the billboard. Mediocre to bad.
Adelaide – Uncharted
· Who cares?
North Melbourne – Valkyrie
· Talented, problematic person in charge who has no chance of polishing this turd.
West Coast – Righteous Kill
· Familiar, once great faces who are totally checked out.
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