1. Inside knowledge
A quirky sidelight to the Collingwood-Carlton clash on Friday night will be the roles of Gavin Brown and Matthew Lappin. Brown ended a quarter of a century with Collingwood as a player and coach when he crossed to the Blues as an assistant coach at the end of the last season, while Lappin departed the Carlton coaching staff to join the Pies. Both will have deep insights into their former clubs, but Brown as Carlton's defensive coach, will have more headaches trying to curb the Travis Cloke-Leigh Brown-Chris Dawes triumvirate that he helped create. As much as he'll want Carlton to win, you can't help but think Brown will be a touch emotional as the Pies raise their premiership flag.

2. Another first for the Suns
Granted, every week for the Suns will bring about some sort of first or another, but this week it's the first trip to Victoria for the AFL's newest club. We note with interest that two bays have been reserved at Etihad Stadium for the Suns' away supporters, which begs the obvious question. Just how many Victorian supporters does Gold Coast have? And how well are the Bulldogs travelling? Brisbane then Gold Coast, both at home, and in consecutive weeks. Not too bad.

3. A classic rivalry reprised
Between 2005 and 2007 West Coast and Sydney played seven games, all decided by less than two goals. Two of them were Grand Finals, with those each decided by less than a kick. They weren't classic games of football necessarily, but gee they were close. The last few games have blown out a bit, but now we're back to Saturday night, with a game at Paterson's Stadium that is the hardest game of the round to call. TAB Sportsbet has the Eagles at $1.85 and the Swans at $1.90. The Eagles look good with Dean Cox back to his coltish best, Andrew Embley in vintage form and youngsters like Andrew Gaff, Luke Shuey and Jack Darling adding some excitement. The Swans are steady as ever and again pulling out the close ones. A really hard game to pick.

4. Introducing St Kilda the hunted
When an AFL coach is running out of fresh ideas, out comes the "we're tired of being hunted, we're now the hunter" and other sorts of rubbish. The thinking here is that Ross Lyon - who we rate really highly - was beyond that rubbish, but there it was at his Tuesday media conference. The only problem for old Roscoe is that when it comes to games against Essendon, his Saints can't go hunting - they're too slow.

5. Dud Sunday
Three weeks into the season and you'd want to have Foxtel in order to watch a decent game of footy this Sunday. The early Foxtel game is Melbourne-Brisbane (yuck), followed by Geelong-Port Adelaide (yawn). St Kilda-Essendon is the twilight game and should be a good one at that, but not on free-to-air, only Foxtel. And judging by the talk around the TV rights, that situation might not be changing anytime soon.