Patrick Cripps we are told is the future of the Carlton Football Club. The deceptively tall on-baller has had pundits raving all season with his attack on the contested ball and is seen as the face of a “new Carlton”. Whatever that face was on Sunday night at Giants Stadium, it was totally unrecognizable as the Greater Western Sydney punished and toyed with Carlton as they bullied their way to a massive 93 point thrashing. Giants tagger Matt de Boer was best on ground, not by disposals amassed, but by the superb nullification of the effectiveness of Cripps. Matt de Boer not only stopped the disposal count for Cripps, but he got into the mind of the Carlton superstar and for the majority of the night was a distracted footballer. Due to the close attention given by de Boer, Cripps was in an antsy mood and gave away undisciplined free kicks and looked lackluster.

Matt de Boer was easily the best player on the ground via his tagging role on Patrick Cripps. Photo: Jodie Newell

Cripps wasn’t alone, as some of the bigger names of the Blues were barely noticeable “The Blues Brothers”, in the Curnow boys had a quiet game, Adelaide recruit Mitch McGovern also had a forgettable night but he wasn’t alone, the Carlton side put in their worst performance of the year. In the opening minutes, Carton looked switched on and posted the first goal of the game through Harry McKay. McKay would go on to be one of the Blues few bright spots booting 3 goals for the game. However the hopes of the Carlton side were quickly downgraded as the Greater Western Sydney Giants stepped up their intensity and slammed on 7 goals in reply. Harry Himmelberg, Jeremy Finlayson, Brent Daniels, Lachie Whitfield and even half back flanker Adam Kennedy got into the goal scoring frenzy. The Blues simply dropped off a cliff and were unable to get any of the ball. The early disposal count during this 7 goal blitz was 61-33 in favour of the Giants and basically one could argue the game was all but over.

Blues defender Will Setterfield repels another attack from the Giants. Photo: Jodie Newell

Lachie Whitfield was enjoying his return to senior football after recovering from injury. He was in everything. The running midfielder had 40 touches, including 3 goals and made 4 tackles. He linked up well with Tim Taranto and Josh Kelly as the Giants stormed through the midfield with searing pace and polish that Carlton was unable to to stop. Veteran Brett Deledio slotted home 3 goals and any questions about not having “the leg” to kick goals on the edge of the 50 metre arc were put to rest as he kicked two superb goals from a long way out of the goal square.

Harry Perryman making one of his 12 hand-passes for the match. Photo: Jodie Newell

The Blues woes continued when they lost Marc Murphy who copped a heavy knock from Giants ruckman Shane Mumford. The impact was so severe, Murphy took no further part in the match and was taken to hospital via ambulance as a precautionary measure. The hard bruising contact was later diagnosed as fractured ribs, leaving the Carlton star out of the game for several weeks. Mumford’s contact was deemed to be legitimate and did not incur any penalties from the AFL Match Review.

Sam Petrevski-Seton (left) & Giants tall-man Adam Tomlinson escort the ball to the boundary line. Photo: Jodie Newell

The Blues managed to boot five goals after half time,but the Giants were simply too powerful and too good and ran out easy 93 point victors. The magnitude of the loss has already seen football experts speculating on the future of Carlton coach Brendon Bolton who has struggled to gain any winning momentum. He acknowledged at the post-game presser the significant first quarter drop out by Carlton. When we asked Brendon about that he responded by saying “Yeah, really poor. I think the centre square bounce numbers weren’t very good at all. I think we coughed up the ball from real pressure from GWS. Our contested numbers were poor, on the back of that they won the contested game and got it to the outside and got quite a few inside 50’s and it was a poor quarter and it set the tone for the rest of the match,” lamented Bolton.

“Our contested numbers were poor” Carlton coach Brendon Bolton. Photo: Jodie Newell

Greater Western Sydney coach Leon Cameron was pleased in how his team bounced back to form after a poor effect last week against Hawthorn at the MCG “Yeah, you can only do what you can do. I thought we played really well for 3 and a half quarters. We needed to respond because we clearly let ourselves down against Hawthorn, so it was a good, positive response”.

Phil Davis celebrated his 150th game in fine style over the weekend. Photo: Jodie Newell

Next week the Giants 3rd (6 wins, 3 losses) have a golden opportunity to redeem themselves of a bad winning record at the MCG when the face Melbourne 15th (3 wins, 6 losses). It should be a beauty with Melbourne desperate to rescue their 2019 season, whilst the Giants will gain much needed respect if they can win this type of MCG test. Carlton Last (1 win, 8 losses) play St-Kilda 13th (4 wins, 5 losses) next Sunday at the Docklands / Marvel Stadium.

GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY           7.5    13.9    18.14    20.18 (138)
CARLTON                                                 1.1     2.1     5.2          7.3 (45)

GOALS 
Greater Western Sydney: Finlayson 5, Himmelberg 3, Deledio 3, Whitfield 3, Daniels 2, Kennedy, Taranto, Perryman, Tomlinson
Carlton: McKay 3, Fisher, McGovern, Silvagni, E.Curnow

BEST 
Greater Western Sydney: de Boer, Whitfield, Taranto, Finlayson, Kelly
Carlton: McKay, Fisher, Setterfield

INJURIES
Greater Western Sydney: Williams (hamstring)
Carlton: Murphy (fractured ribs)

Reports: Dale Thomas (Carl) for abusive language towards an umpire (The AFL tribunal later found on Tuesday night that Thomas was guilty and would be fined $7000 for his comments)

Umpires: Nathan Williamson, David Harris, Cameron Dore

Official crowd: 9,599 at Giants Stadium, Sydney Showgrounds, Homebush, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.