The ladder says Collingwood by 33 and West Coast by two. The football tells a different story underneath — and the Giants are the ones who paid for it.
The scoreboard is a tidy liar. It hands out the four points, tallies the margin, and walks off whistling as if that settled it. Round 3 says one thing. The football says another.
This edition reads two results where the winner and the better side were not the same mob. One team earned a day out and got nothing for it. One team won a game the football never quite gave them. The results stand — but here is what actually happened.
GWS GIANTS. Read it plainly: by the football the Giants were the better side against Collingwood, in front by about two. They did the work. They earned the day.
And they walked off with nothing. Collingwood won by 33 on the board — a margin that tells you the Magpies were a class above, when the football had this the other way. That is not a close-run thing dressed up. That is a side that led on the merits and lost by five goals.
This is the clearest injustice of the round. The Giants were level or in front where it counts, and the scoreboard buried them. No argument with the four points going to Collingwood — that is the rule. But do not let 33 tell you how this game was played.
West Coast Eagles won by two. By the football they earned barely five — a wafer-thin day, the kind that could have gone either way with a bounce.
About three points of that winning margin was not the Eagles' own football. It was a gift, handed over by Port Adelaide. Take the charity back and this is closer to level than a win.
No sneering at West Coast — they were there at the end and they took what was offered, which is its own kind of football. But a two-point win built partly on the other mob's mistakes is a result to hold lightly, not to frame on the wall.
Elsewhere the football was harder on the winners than the board suggests. Geelong won by eight, and eight sounds like a scrap — but the football had the Cats by about 61. That was a hiding wearing the disguise of a tight one.
Fremantle won by 60, a proper flogging on the board, and even that undersold them — the football had them by about 84. Two sides who won and were still short-changed on the margin.
No robbery in either of those. The right teams won and won well. If anything the scoreboard was too polite about how far in front they were.
The results stand. Collingwood have the four points, West Coast have theirs, and nobody is handing them back.
But the football underneath tells you the Giants were the better side and got nothing, the Eagles won a game they barely earned, and Geelong and Fremantle were even bigger than their margins.
Rate these sides on the football, not the ladder line. Then decide for yourself what Round 3 was really worth.
The results stand — nobody is rewriting the ladder. This is the football underneath the scoreboard. What it means for how you rate these sides is yours to weigh.