Love is a playing field

The longer this league goes, the closer we get to our Original Club Advantage™ running out and sending us tumbling into the dreg end of the competition, so cherish the experience of being significantly better than half the competition while it lasts. Injuries temporarily took us out in 2024, and our last finals campaign proves that tormenting lowly sides doesn't necessarily translate to the important end of the season. But for now, please enjoy games like this where our best players treat opponents like the US Navy taking on Fairstar The Fun Ship.

We'd need worse luck than the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team to lose all our stars (remember: I don't believe in curses so it's not my fault if this happens), but it won't take much to bring us back towards the average team. For example, before we get into the joy of racking up our biggest ever score at Casey Fields, let's discuss the tragedy of Olivia Purcell doing her knee. 

Here's a player who missed 3/4 of last year with a literally broken face, then came back in top form despite wearing a plastic mask, and had played nearly six flawless quarters this season before one wrong turn in a tackle and boom there goes her knee, season, and a minimum of 12 months out of the game. How do you replace her? Yes, we've got Hanks running riot and the luxury of being able to throw Hore into the middle, but even if you're a Moneyball wanker good luck finding even 50% of what Purcell brings from players not already playing on the weekend. We're lucky to have so many stars, but the other end of the list is so suspect that a few injuries at either end of the severity scale could make all the difference at the end of the year.

But that's a question for the future. The start of the year has been - as they say in the classics - grouse. If you don't believe me, or are reading this in the future after a surprise 2-10 season, our percentage after two games is 520.7%. Just the casual five and a bit more times score than our opponents. It's like a rerun of 2023, when the freewheeling early season massacres of underwhelmed opponents briefly had the women ahead of the men for average points per game. The winning could last, the several hundred percentage points won't but it's laying a good platform for the rest of the season.

Last week I said we've had more trouble than necessary with the Saints, but in reality this was just long-term trauma from when we kicked ourselves to death in the inaugural meeting. Since then, the closest they've got was 14 points last year when we were only just coming back from premature death. Like last week, there was a brief time during the first quarter when it looked like we might be held to some degree, but in the end everything you needed to know was explained in the opening seconds when we were operating in acres of space, then booted to to Harris at the top of the square. Obviously she wasn't seeing eight goalposts because through it went for a first goal since Round 10, 2023.

After missing a year, it would've been cruel if she'd missed time via the novelty self-inflicted eye injury but you could tell they weren't playing for her for the sake of it when Gall got re-galled to the side after injury, giving us what was surely the tallest forward line in AFLW history. You wouldn't want to try this in the rain, but on lovely sunny afternoon the Saints had NFI how to stop them. They're lucky Purcell didn't make the second half or the weight of ball going inside 50 might have ended with multiple St. Kilda defenders curling up in a ball and crying.  

It was a bit premature to say the midfield was dominating 30 seconds in, but between them Hanks, Purcell, and Paxman already looked like having a hundred possessions combined. Paxy has turned the clock back in the last two weeks, a good reminder of a tremendous career that looked to be sliding away over the last couple of years but has roared back to life in the first fortnight of 2025. What luxury when you've got so many midfielders that you afford to park a legend like Kate Hore forward.

The Saints had barely had the ball halfway once when they got into the wide world of self-harm, giving away a 50 just as Harris was lining up to kick it to the top of the square. Instead wahtever technical infraction was committed, she ended up standing in said square and booting a second. If you thought we were on the way to winning by shitloads you were right, but there a minor deviation for them to kick a goal. Don't you hate when that happens? In this case it involved a run-down tackle on Goldrick, who hadn't played any sort of competitive game since last season so you'll forgive her for being rusty. 

This set up our old friend the player named after a sewing machine, and after all that dominance it was only two goals to one. Their rebirth didn't last long, but even I felt bad for the opposition when Zanker dropped the ball cold in a tackle, and conceded it so completely that she was starting to walk backwards with hands in air to stand the mark before realising it had somehow been called play on. They pinched her for a less obvious one shortly after to make up for it.

We were dominating possession, but for no the Saints were still putting up a decent resistance. Harris missed a chance for a third but was creating havoc in the air, and after my 2022-2023 attempts to set up Hollywood endings for the men's team failed, I'd like to transfer that feeling to Tayla winning a flag immediately after we tried and failed to trade her to Hawthorn. You could see the logic in that after Gall's obvious development last year, especially when Harris only kicked three goals in all of 2023 but if she's only around for one more year I'm into it ending in a surprise double premiership.

When she got a third goal shortly after the first change, Harris had as many goals in a quarter and a bit as in total since the start of 2023. On landing she looked to have injured herself again but it was a false alarm. By the end of the day she was level with her total back to the Grand Final. For now she was playing a lone hand while the rest of the forwards looked like they'd just met each other, including Zanker and Gall spoiling each other at one stage. By the end of the day they had four goals between them and all was right with the world.

Notwithstanding the Saints nearly getting one back from a mark that was clearly dropped on the way down, we were absolutely rolling now. Paxman set up Zanker with a delightful kick, Gall got to stand 30 metres out on her own, and thanks to developmental umpiring that allowed a St Kilda forward to get belted in the head without reward we took off the other way for Harris' fourth. At this stage she looked every chance of not only beating the five in a game record of Bannan and Daisy Pearce, but shattering it. Didn't kick another, but didn't need to as everyone else got on the scoresheet after half time instead.

Sadly, just when everything was going so well and the half-time helicopter was heard overhead, down went Purcell with her knee injury. This was the only downer for the day, and even though she walked off that's happened enough times now that nobody thinks it's a positive sign. It wasn't, and we wish her all the best in recovery.

In a way it's lucky that was the biggest injury of the day, because when I heard that they'd be flying a helicopter over the world's windiest ground and doing what I thought was some kind of ball-drop that the fans had to gather it felt like there was going to be a serious injury involving chopper, spectactor, or combination of the two. Turns out I misread the premise and you didn't have to wait for the ping pong balls to hit the ground then beat the piss out of your fellow fan to have the best chance of winning. It was effectively just an aerial raffle where you had a number and if yours was closest to the pin you won $10k.

I've long suspected Maeve Chaplin is one of the most entertaining people in any AFL competition, and the genuine level of excitement while seeing this process unfold is further proof. Meanwhile poor old Jake Lever probably was getting into the spirit of things but gets shown in a brief cutaway looking as if he'd disgusted by the idea.

IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. 🤯#DemonSpirit pic.twitter.com/9rKTAZpYdw

— Melbourne AFLW (@MelbourneAFLW) August 24, 2025

I'm happy for the fan who basically won an AFLW season one annual salary, but thought the process would include more of a visual spectacle in the tradition of Apocalypse Now. Also, I've got not idea where Karingal Hub is, but they'd be flat about Russell Robertson hanging shit on their status amongst shopping centres. Given that only 2100 people turned up, I don't think this gimmick had the desired effect (and Karingal Hub will probably point out they've got that many people in the food court at any given time), but still good to do something different.  

The pace of tonkage slowed down in the third quarter when we only kicked two goals to one but this was - for the first time in a while - a lead against a St Kilda side you were right to trust. Though to be fair I was on guard for disappointment a little bit when they kicked the first, then had it on the goal line almost immediately after. It's not like we needed a steadier, but Paxman put the best kick imaginable to Zanker's advantage and procession mode was back on.

There was another trademark Harris Injury Near Miss via smacking her head on the ground in a marking contest, but that was about the only bad news between this point and Purcell's scan results arriving. In a confirmed case of 'when you're hot, you're hot' Hore got a goal purely because a bad bounce confused her opponent into a high tackle, and everything was very much going our way.   

The defence didn't have much to do, but I'm impressed that Saraid Taylor had nine disposals for zero meters gained. I've seen people go into the negative before, but is the most anyone's ever had to land on exactly 0? Otherwise the backline was largely unchallenged but should probably stay limber and alert for when the good sides turn up. They weren't anywhere in the vicinty of Casey Fields on Saturday but are out there somewhere and will be more motivated to correct us the more the hype there is about piledriving the less fortunate.

We piled on another four goals in the last quarter just for fun, including late inclusion Johnson bobbing up for a goal with her second kick of the day. Bannan joined the party and did her traditional arm aloft celebration, and you could see genuine joy from her teammates when Harris marked for a chance at five. She missed, ending with 4.4. It's only the second time we've had a player end on four behinds, but unlike Paxman in 2019 she got goals as well.

As long as you're into MFC thrashings and not the league's competitive balance this was great fun, and while I'm all for it the AFL are kidding themselves if they think this is good for the game. Or, alternatively, they'll use their website to tell you how well everything is going because scoring is up. Sure, there's a 42% gap between the teams in ninth and 10th, and the bottom two are scoring less than a third than their opponents, but as long as we're on the positive side of the massacre equation then I'll get into the 'best AFLW season ever' hype. The moment we lose it will need to be totally restructured.

2025 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Tayla Harris
4 - Tyla Hanks
3 - Paxy Paxman
2 - Kate Hore
1 - Megan Fitzsimon

Apologies to Chaplin, McNamara, Pearce, Purcell and Zanker

Leaderboard
8 - Tyla Hanks
5 - Tayla Harris, Olivia Purcell
4 - Kate Hore
3 - Shelley Heath, Paxy Paxman
1 - Maeve Chaplin (LEADER: Defender of the Year), Megan Fitzsimon

Goal of the Week
The Bannan one, just for the elite celebrations.

Next Week
You're never far away from a game against Collingwood, and here we go again. In this timeline we're the shit hot side that wins the occasional premiership and they're the mid-table strugglers who only occasionally look like contenders. On paper we should win this easily, but after dual walkovers I'm wary of a side getting a start on us and creating doubt. Probably won't happen, but don't bet your house on us at a -60 line just yet.

Final thoughts
It's unrealistic to say more of the same please, but even if our percentage crashes into let's say the 300s I don't think there'll be any cause for complaint. Don't crank it too high though, they'll start trying to farm off our players to the dud clubs again.