Look down and live

In a huge week for Australia's female athletes shitting themselves, it's boo to North Melbourne for going a week early and ending their never-to-be-repeated 30 game winning streak before we could (let's just assume, now that it can't be tested) do it. Sure, it took them having to play in a Cairns sweatfest to finally reach the realisation that you can't keep winning forever, but as the only team in the league with a home ground that has its own weather pattern, I'm struggling to find sympathy for the two-time and counting defending premiers.

The other part of the Round 7 'All-Star Game' equation was that we had to keep winning too, which was no guarantee against a third place side, with wacky winds blowing diagonally across the ground. You might remember Carlton, not for recent unpleasantness involving our men's team, but as a side we last played in the AFLW just over FOUR seasons ago. Which is some of the most shambolic, half-arse scheduling in the history of professional sports. If you play 12 teams one year, how are the other five not the first written into the fixture for the following season? This would assume the AFL care, beyond pretending everything's going well because they rorted attendance figures with a couple of double headers.

The off-field may be as shambolic as ever, but no arguments about how our team is playing. Fans of other clubs, especially the ones destined to act as traffic cones for the rest of the league for years to come, can make their own judgements, this is the best football Melbourne AFLW has ever played. Whether it's good enough to overcome the Evil Empire in finals is TBD, but the ball movement is better than I've ever seen. Shame you've got to be a card-carrying enthusiast to even know the competition is on thanks to the minor issue of all the focus going to the men's finals. That ship has sailed, so the general public can amuse themselves by piffing bottles at umpires, I'm getting into the hope of converting quality footy into quality flag.

What the ladder looks like 50% through the season means chuff all for what happens at the end, but even after North stuffed up the blockbuster, I still really wanted to remain the only unbeaten side in the competition, even if it meant nothing to the big picture. That could've gone wrong quickly if Carlton had any idea how to play the local conditions. Casey remains a detriment to the game, but I'll accept the benefits in the interest of ongoing winning.

The magic and mystery of the Cranbourne Bureau of Meteorology was on full display when we opened with a Fitzsimon set shot that was going straight from 30 metres out, then swung so violently that it landed in the forward pocket without scoring. The atmosphere was not helped by some flange blowing a Vuvuzela in the crowd, but for reasons unknown we did have to hold the game up after a goal because a set of car keys were found in the middle of the ground. 

I understand how that could happen, but not how it could take so far into the game for anyone to notice. It was a bit of a bush-league incident, but fortunately the greatest game of AFL football ever played came along later that afternoon and ensured there was no room for key coverage. Maybe a disgruntled Hawthorn fan buried them in advance just in case they had a reason to sook about umpiring at the end of a game that hadn't started yet? Lucky a player didn't get injured, and hopefully the owner had to catch the bus home.

After a few Casey games where the wind was either not a serious factor or politely blew up and down the ground, you could tell how it was going to go from that first set shot. Carlton had the better of what advantage it did provide, and did bugger all with it. Instead, after they flubbed a couple of chances, we got the only goal of the first term when Hanks spelunked into a tackle and used her regional knowledge to steer the resulting free kick home.

The wind advantage seemed dubious when Carlton attacked first in the second quarter, but like a replay of last week, the visitors were wasteful and eventually paid the price. This time via a Gillard rocket run through the middle, which set up Austin's mark from a distance that any tricky crosswinds couldn't get hold of. This would count as the old "stick it up your old team" move, if she hadn't been good in every appearance so far this year. May have come in handy at the other end, but I'm sure the Blues will enjoy the second and third round picks they got in exchange.

This was nearly followed by another goal when Hanks belted straight out of the middle, but the wind was exposed as nothing worth getting excited over when Carlton kicked two in a row to take the lead. The first came via a hopeful snap from a pack, which survived a review that home viewers didn't get to see. So that means in three games at Casey this year we've had reviews, a) where the footage was shown but probably interpreted incorrectly, b) where the umpire just asked his colleagues if they had any objections, and c) where the full forward/rewind experience was conducted off-camera, while the players stood around waiting for the game to restart.

We almost let in three straight, only surviving because a handball failed to reach a player standing on her own inside 50. I was a bit worried, before Fitzsimon crumbed the shit out of a contest in front of goal to restore the half time lead. Still didn't make winning inevitable, as we didn't yet know that Carlton's quickfire double would be 66.66% of all their goals for the afternoon.

Then it was time to go whack, with four goals in a row making sure the Big Six would be achieved. O'Hehir opened her career account with what I'd describe as a 'lucky' kick if the other side did it, but becomes a moment of great skill simply due to being done by somebody in a Melbourne jumper. By the time Purcell was lobbing through back-to-back set shots, viewing of the live ladder was much appreciated.

Even after conceding a late goal, we were clearly going to win. Carlton helped make this a reality by failing to score in the final term. With the opposition now struggling for interest, we pinged away at will for 1.5. I'm almost certainly the only person on the planet who cares about fringe topics like AFLW jumper number records, but Jorja Livingstone enjoyed the rare feat of qualifying for the record books on debut, by opening the account for #40. 

God only knows why she's wearing it when we don't have numbers 34 through 39, but I couldn't be more supportive. In a league where a player gets about in #60 it hardly qualifies for cherished 'silly number' status, but I advise sticking with it and refusing any suggestions about changing to something lower. Mark Jamar is an All-Australian ahead in overall impact wearing the number, but the W games/goals double is just three games away, so double (digit) down and go for glory.           

Not for the first time this year, the point where there was nothing to play for except avoiding injuries was greeted by somebody getting injured. This time it was Campbell copping an elbow in the throat, and immediately having a couple of voms on the turf. Bad news for anyone else who left personal objects on the turf. Campbell has been very good this year, and with L. Pearce clearly winding up a great career there's a full time ruck job on offer for years to come, so hopefully this wasn't anything more than shock from an unexpected blow to a sensitive part of the anatomy. We haven't heard about a Gareth John-style career-altering larynx-shattering, so I take that as a good sign.

Other than that, and Tayla Harris ending the game with the 'injured' tag, this went about as well as you could hope for. Solid opposition dismissed without undue effort, and a warning to the competition that it may not be 12 rounds to find out who loses to North. It could still turn out that way, so the best thing to do is keep the good times rolling by metaphorically punching the bullies in the face on Friday night. 

2026 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Tyla Hanks
4 - Maeve Chaplin
3 - Olivia Purcell
2 - Kate Hore
1 - Shelley Heath-Barker

Apologies to Allen, Fitzsimon, Gillard, and Harris

Leaderboard
Exciting stuff at the top as the leaders open a full BOG lead over the trailing pack. Not much chance of a first-time winner this season, but we're set for a battle royale in the Defender award, as Chaplin becomes the third different leader for the season. And there remains as much chance of Allen being overtaken for the Rising Star as aliens participating in the Grand Final entertainment.

18 - Tyla Hanks
16 - Olivia Purcell
11 - Maeve Chaplin (LEADER: Defender of the Year)
9 - Kate Hore
8 - Tahlia Gillard 
7 - Eliza McNamara
6 - Jordyn Allen (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Tayla Harris
4 - Mia Austin
3 - Ryleigh Wotherspoon
1 - Georgia Campbell (LEADER: Ruck of the Year), Shelley Heath-Barker

Goal of the Week
For all the scoring this year, we're lacking any absolute blockbusters, but I'll have O'Hehir's debut goal as the new clubhouse leader for the season.

Next week
It's the biggest game of the year. And the next day there's a Grand Final on. We've played opposition between third and godforsaken, and it's all been leading up to the challenge of a team we had on the run early in last year's Prelim, but who otherwise walked over everyone until last week. Now they've had the big reset/reality check, and will likely be desperate to remind everyone to be scared of them. So it would be piss funny to win, and it's a live possibility, but let's not draw too much from them losing one game in the tropics.  

Final thoughts
Six of the best. Only 25 more to the record.

The beatings go on

Following Melbourne (W) must be like supporting Geelong (M). We might not always win the flag, and are vulnerable to the occasional semi-down year, but you can be reasonably sure that when starting as hot favourites nothing weird's going to happen. Our elevation to 'Unflushable nugget' status is still a long way off, and may be difficult to claim while North go on their merry way towards winning 50 straight, but it makes for a more relaxed supporting experience than I'm used to.

The 'piece of piss wins' era faces its greatest challenge in the next two weeks, and it'll be interesting to see what happens when close games start happening again. Maintaining the current level of scoring across a whole season just isn't possible, but enjoy it while it lasts because there's probably never going to be another five (plus?) weeks of raining goals on the opposition like this again.  

Winning by 51 points has lost all shock value over the last few years, but my favourite bit about this one is that Port Adelaide weren't all that bad. Usually, half century wins are reserved for flotsam/jetsam teams, or Brisbane when all their players died simultaneously, but this was death by a thousand cuts disassembly spread over four quarters. And it served Port right for turning up dressed like the 1990s New South Wales State Of Origin team.

Given that we'd lost the only competitive match against them (a total which is well on-brand for AFLW fixturing featuring a team in the competition since 2022), I reserved the right to be nervous. Just because you know the result will almost certainly go as expected, evidence is still required to ensure there's not something stupid on the cards. So I didn't think much of losing the first centre bounce without much of a fight. Fortunately, they split the difference from the last two weeks and fed Gillard an uncontested chest mark.

I imagine the Port coach was looking for objects to hurl through the Casey coaching box when this unnecessary turnover led to the ball instantly pinging down the other end. If there's anything the first four rounds showed, it's that the last thing you want to do is feed Melbourne counter-attacking chances. This one didn't directly lead to a goal, with the spoilt for choice inside 50 kick missing a bunch of players standing on their own. It did, however, set the table for Austin to be tackled high and kick her eighth goal from as many shots this year. 

Without bothering to check the records, I'm going to say nobody's gone 8.0 for our (W) team before. Or, if you prefer, 9.0, because Austin got another one straight after. It was finished by her barging through Port's defence and kicking it from the square, but the conditions for it to exist weren't there without Chaplin bamboozling an opponent in the build-up with candy selling so extreme that the City of Casey is tendering for international experts to extract a Port Adelaide player from the turf. The Roadrunner never went past Wile E. Coyote that savagely, and it kicked off her best game since returning from injury. Amongst our galaxy of stars, there's an argument that Chaplin is up there with the most entertaining players on the list to watch.

Port won all the early centre bounces, but when they didn't convert it was only a matter of time before the ball went our way at speed, and they could only stand around hoping that it wouldn't be converted. They were generally not, but if 'Eyes Light Up Cam' was a thing, it would've activated at full power when Fitzsimon saw a ball sit up in the square to be smashed home, before a defender threw herself in the way goalkeeper style. Never mind, soon after Hore arrived for her customary mark and goal, and this was a classic case of one team taking their chances and the other blundering them horrifically.

Not surprisingly, we lost the following clearance, but even more predictably they expertly picked out Gillard again. Sadly, the subsequent pox attempts at extraction ended with Port getting what may have been (but wasn't) a critical goal into the wind. This was followed by us finally breaking even at a centre bounce, only for the umpire to extract a holding the ball free from the keister and allow them to get the ball inside 50 anyway. The quarter still ended down our end, without further scoreboard drama, but as the other lot broke even in most departments except the most important, the second quarter would show if the wind had helped, or whether we really were the better team (spoiler: yes).

As you'd expect, the visitors emerged from quarter time with all the enthusiasm of people who'd heard mystical tales of the famous Casey breeze and now finally got the chance to use it. For the first few minutes they put on plenty of wind-assisted pressure, but couldn't convert for shit. And when the ball hit the ground, our defenders were scooping up ground balls in the same way robot vacuums will deal with your pets after AI goes rogue. 

The combination of poor finishing and desperate defence saw them finish their inaugural Casey wind quarter with a string of points. Which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't let in goals down the other end. Enter Harris to bust past their entire backline to mark at the top of the square, nearly get another one straight after, then celebrate Fitzsimon's dagger to the heart goal after the siren by starting a fight with about seven opponents at the same time. 

For all the recent vigorous self-gratification over 'Wharfie Time', it should be noted that DemonTime has been around much longer (can I cash in somehow?), and was fully in play here, as we spent the last 90 seconds offering Port chances to kick goals that they couldn't grasp. Then Fitzsimon's played the DemonTime reverse card, and while a 19 point margin was a touch unfair considering Port's effort, if you don't convert you've got nobody else to blame. And if they felt hard done at this point, it got a lot worse in the second half.

We were so comfortable with the lead, that in the week Allen got nominated for the Rising Star after a storming start to her career in defence, she was sent forward to have a crack. There was one moment of high excitement when she burst through a gap, before an absurdly premature bounce went awry and ended it all, but I still choose to interpret from this sliver of evidence that she's going to be ace at either end of the ground. There was a pass that set up a goalscoring opportunity in the third quarter that was as good as any seen at Casey Fields.

When the ill-fated McNamara snatched the ball off the pack for classic crumb, our win probability was somewhere around 99.9%. It may have gone backwards if Port took advantage of storming inside 50 with multiple players on their own, only to botch it by handballing straight up in the air rather than to any of the free players available ahead of the ball, then hitting the post from the next stoppage. It was the story of the game. They had enough chances, but torched them with poor forward play. By the time they hit 1.9, we'd also left a few goals on the table, which isn't as important when you're five goals up against bulk chance incinerators.  

Insurance against the most unlikely of last quarter comebacks came from a late double of Mahony's snap, and Bannan's first of the season after the siren. The margin was now getting unexpectedly brutal, and while the commentators unconvincingly tried to keep the prospect of a miracle alive, they may as well have said there was a chance of world peace by the final siren. To be fair, Port did kick the first goal of the final term, rejecting the temptation to continue the theme of the afternoon and miss from the square. 

There was nothing more to be gained from this game, so as long as nobody got suspended or injured... oh, and here's McNamara having her jaw smashed to bits by a failed bump. I get the impression that this goes beyond the standard jaw injury, and we'll be unlikely to see her for the rest of the season. Aside from the unpleasant road ahead of her in recovering this injury, what an absolute pisstake from a football perspective when she'd been on fire as a forward this year. As somebody who has previously come back from a fractured spine (!!!), I'll back her to return successfully - hopefully in time for finals. Until then, it's a fair old gap to fill just as we get to the most important pre-finals weeks of the season.

McNamara's demise delayed a Harris set shot, and the Port players must've been thinking about how long their teammate was going to be rubbed out for (answer: 3 weeks, which was fair enough) because they surely could've stopped the ball going over the line with any semblance of defensive organisation. This was the start of them conceding the sort of goals that show a team has lost the will to live - it was followed by a player being pinged HTB on the goal line, then allowing Wotherspoon to finish with the deftest touch off the side of the boot you'll ever see from somebody about to be swamped by multiple defenders.

And so, after another good-not-great performance, we somehow found ourselves winning in an on paper romp. It's confirmed good stuff, but after five weeks of warmup, things are about to get really serious.

2026 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Maeve Chaplin
4 - Tayla Harris
3 - Tahlia Gillard
2 - Olivia Purcell
1 - Kate Hore

Apologies to Allen, Austin, Hanks, Heath-Barker and Lampard.

Leaderboard
There's obvious action in the main event, but stand-by for a wild race in the DOTY - especially if Allen can avoid being DQed for playing forward too often.

13 - Tyla Hanks, Olivia Purcell
8 - Tahlia Gillard (LEADER: Defender of the Year)
7 - Maeve Chaplin, Kate Hore, Eliza McNamara
6 - Jordyn Allen (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Tayla Harris
4 - Mia Austin
3 - Ryleigh Wotherspoon
1 - Georgia Campbell (LEADER: Ruck of the Year)

Goal of the Week
Plenty of contenders, but against public opinion I want the Wotherspoon one due to its delicate nature.

Next week
Cease all advance talk about Grand Final eve blockbuster against North, first we've got to get past the side that just pushed them harder than anyone since us in last year's Prelim. Carlton is a 'one season good/one season bad' toss of the coin team on par with Melbourne 1998-2004, and are currently on the up, so for god's sake let's take them seriously.  

Final thoughts
The season begins now. But with a five win headstart.

Ease West

The obvious follow-up for any team called Melbourne to 'thumping win over perennial contender leads to premiership contention talk' is a disappointing loss to lowly opposition at the first opportunity. Fortunately Melbourne (W) has largely avoided such obscene bloopers over the years, but for the first few minutes of this 3-0 vs 0-3 glamour clash, it seemed we may have finally been about to stuff things up big time. Quality prevailed comfortably in the end, and with another relatively big score, but at three goals to one down I was silently preparing for the worst.

In the finest traditions of games broadcast from Western Australia, we got the full WABC experience. Will Schofield is the honorary life president of this organisation, but he sounded like a committed federalist compared to the co-commentator Nikki Harwood, who was so keen on local content that she may as well have been draped in the state flag while reading from a pro-secession manifesto. Interstate viewers will say this is what they have to put up with from Victorian callers, but if you think anyone here is defending Dwayne or BT when they say allegedly mean things about [insert state here], you're not paying attention.

If the early trends continued and West Coast pulled off the upset win of the year, sparks were going to fly from whatever studio they were watching from. Thank god for the quick reintroduction of sanity, even if the rapidly expanding margin didn't stop repeated references to Fun Fact #1 - that we supposedly don't travel well. I was scathing about this idea while watching - and you can't really blame the one after the siren last year on failing to adapt to conditions - but it turns out we were 1-5 interstate in the last two seasons. Still, even if the stat works on paper, I'm sure it's got more to do with the teams fixtured against, than the process of leaving Victoria.

Conveniently not mentioned - our last comfortable interstate victory was a 70 point mauling of the Eagles at this exact venue, WW2 siren and all. In the interim, they fell into the eight last year (still something to aspire to in this competition, he says, to lay the boots into the wildcard system one last time (?) in 2026) before quickly departing, and have done nowt so far this year. Still, the good news is that they might have converted a good start into defeat, but 6.8.44 was one point better than their combined score in four previous games against us. That's something to work on. Perhaps.

Having reviewed footage of Brisbane madly panic-bombing kicks into the hands of Tahlia Gillard, West Coast decided to alter their angle of attack, keep the ball lower, and kick it to Jordyn Allen instead. Getting this week's Rising Star (and, in a great moment for the Defenders Union, our first since Gillard) at pick 16 may turn out to be the biggest theft since the Great Bookie Robbery, because despite looking younger than her draft number, this is what you get from the first generation of AFLW players who grew up with the prospect of a professional career. She's turned up knowing what to do, and has been fantastic.

Everything turned out alright in the end, but there was light brickage during the first quarter. It was one thing conceding first, but we got that straight back, only to let another one in almost immediately. We looked dire, were feeding their scores with turnovers (including one to somebody called 'Abbygail', which seems unnecessarily complicated when you could just say Abigail), and lost Goldrick to a knee injury. Hooray for the defensive cockup that allowed Gall in for a settler late in the first term, reducing the margin to a workable six points.

I liked to think class would win out, but didn't expect it to happen so rapidly. Cue a 5.2 to nothing.nothing second quarter that left the commentary team sounding like they were being forced to call an atrocity. Forget the slow start, this was the Melbourne vs strugglers matchup that seemed regulation now, but we'll cherish the memories of when equalisation finally arrives in AFLW.

Inside 50s are a rotten stat, except when they prove your point - and scoring 2.1 from three entries suggested that the floodgates could open if we got the ball down there regularly enough. We did, and they did. The tone was set by Harris basically just saying "PISS OFF" to an opponent and pushing her out of the way before kicking the first, and it was off to the races then - behind dominant performances by Hanks and McNamara. 

Now we were the ones getting all the scoring from turnovers, as the home players who went to the quarter time huddle with a dream in their heart suddenly realised the crushing futility of the task before them. The Eagles soon achieved 'target practice' status, and even if by our standards conceding six goals wasn't ideal, junk time stretched for more than half the game, so no real harm done.  

After making fugly giant eye jumpers famous, Tayla Harris has now provided us with the best all-purpose MFC reaction image since thumbs aloft Jake Lever. Her apology after realising what she'd accidentally done while displaying a finger injury was even better. Overall, very enjoyable content, and you can get used to seeing this screengrab on repeat for the next several years.

With the game already decided, West Coast had a reasonable crack at kicking with the wind in the third quarter. We sensibly decided to run with the ball and link up with handballs instead of just madly bombing it into the wind. The locals narrowly won the quarter, it's a tactic that will come in handy at certain other venues that put on the occasional force 10 storm.

In the interest of full disclosure, even I lost a bit of interest in the last quarter while we were going through the motions of winning effortlessly. Pisano got a second, which is nice because they don't seem to have much faith in her, so I'm glad that she's getting the opportunities to get on the scoreboard. But otherwise, West Coast did a shitload of defending, most of it was successful, but we still got three goals from seven scoring shots. It was a solid, professional win. Nothing to get excited about, but we reintroduced the super-important Chaplin after injury (albeit at the expense of Goldrick going the other way), and put another all-important win on the board. As they say in better forums than this - what's not to like? 

... and even if it's all blown up for her team after a promising 2025, the Eagles coach has always got this medal being named in her honour: 

2026 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Eliza McNamara
4 - Tyla Hanks
3 - Jordyn Allen
2 - Maeve Chaplin
1 - Kate Hore

Apologies to practically everyone. TEAM EFFORT.

Leaderboard
New leader alert, as Purcell conserves energy after a hot start and waves Hanks through for her turn at the front. There's also action in the Defender award, as Allen morally retakes the lead that we didn't credit her with the first time around. Chaplin also lurks, in what could be the ding dong battle of the season. And beating Allen for our version of the Rising Star will require somebody coming from the clouds with the same impact as the spaceship from Independence Day.

13 - Tyla Hanks
11 - Olivia Purcell
7 - Eliza McNamara
6 - Jordyn Allen (LEADER: Defender of the Year, LEADER: Rising Star Award), Kate Hore
5 - Tahlia Gillard
4 - Mia Austin
3 - Ryleigh Wotherspoon
2 - Maeve Chaplin, Tayla Harris
1 - Georgia Campbell (LEADER: Ruck of the Year)

Goal of the Week
There were more spectacular goals, but I quite enjoyed Harris shifting her opponent out of the way like a cardboard cutout.

Next week
At the extremely friendly viewing time (for me anyway) of 12:35 on Sunday, it's one of the two sides I've still never met a fan of in Port Adelaide. After contributing to our dire interstate record last year, they come to Cranbourne with the hope of a) planting a flag in the finals race, and b) not suffering the same fate as most visitors to Mt. Variable Weather. We should win, but as always I'm on guard for the unforeseen surprise reverse double secret stitch-up.

Final thoughts
Still not sure we're beating a North team that just won by 92 points, but I'm happy to get one step closer to an all-star game against them in Round 7.

New adventures in high scores

With respect to the only MFC side I've ever seen win a premiership live, after Saturday night's events, I really didn't want to watch football again for several days/weeks/months. I hope you'll excuse the inevitable misery-related reporting shortcomings, but let's pretend that playing under the name Narrm morally separates this from any disappointment flow-on from the (M) competition. I didn't even tune in early enough to see the heartwarming human-interest story of a rabbit going hell-for-leather around Casey Fields. Lucky it didn't happen on the same day a hound invaded the field, or there may have been carnage.

Going in under a cloud of potential obligation viewing, I needed some sort of early spirit lifter. Instead, the ball was stuck at Brisbane's end for the first five minutes. The good news is, they finally got a goal out of all this pressure, before proceeding to do stuff all else for the next three quarters. Our counter-offer to their sludgey efforts to own territory came via some lovely crumb by Fitzsimon. And even with doom hovering over me, I couldn't help but appreciate a well-crumbed goal. 

That goal changed the mood entirely, and next thing you knew we were in front. Unlike the 'Elizabeth' McNamara rebrand that failed to take off last year, everyone seems to be going with the Shelley Heath-Barker name alteration, so we will too.

It was a neat recovery from the opening minutes where it looked like the Lions were going to grind us into dust, and our prospects of a 3-0 start were improved by Brisbane players going down at an extraordinary rate. The first two ran into each other, then one was inadvertently clobbered while going for the same ball as Campbell. It looked like a perfectly innocent racing accident to me, and apparently the AFLW Match Review Officer process doesn't have the same "you should've thought about doing something in the 0.1 seconds available" philosophy as their AFLM counterpart, because she wasn't immediately deregistered.

We're not rude enough to celebrate opposition players getting hurt, but this did lead to Austin getting our third. Then it was overtime alert for the Brisbane medical staff as more players collided at the start of the second quarter. Maybe this was to blame for the horror turnover in the middle of the ground that allowed Wotherspoon to pile on the agony with a fourth unanswered goal? They were nervous about the several-hour wait for medical attention if anything else went wrong.

By halfway through the second quarter, three Brisbane players were out of the game. Those remaining left so many gaps around the ground that they had to communicate via semaphore flag, and we were picking through thin resistance with the greatest of ease. When McNamara had all week to upgrade a mark in the pocket to Paxman standing alone at the top of the square, it was a bit 'taking advantage of others' misfortune', but after the sporting weekend I'd had then bad luck. Bulk goals were the only thing with the potential to make me feel even remotely better, and if that required a raft of opposition players to suffer misfortunes then so be it. Now that a thumping victory has been confirmed, we wish them all well in their recovery from whatever happened.

It's not like Brisbane didn't get the ball forward, but for the second time in recorded history they ran into the Great Wall of Gillard. She channelled her frustration (I assume) at not winning you-know-what into intercepting everything that entered the vicinity. I'd say, "Maybe don't just kick it straight to the best defender on the ground", but nobody with even the most tenuous connection to the MFC had the authority to say that after this weekend. Still, if the cliche 'lower your eyes' has ever been appropriate, it was as they kept going inside 50, directly to the tallest player available.

Like a war movie featuring bedraggled survivors stumbling home in a daze with the majority of their unit blown to bits, the Lions came back for another go in the second half, but the outcome was as obvious as it ever gets in a Melbourne game. One of their futile attacking efforts was converted into end-to-end magic that rated alongside the best ball movement seen in our AFLW history. Hanks missed the final pass in what would've been Team Goal of the Year (which is an official category that should exist, to recognise champagne football that doesn't end in somebody kicking one from over their head in the pocket), but things were going so well that McNamara still scooped it up for a snap. Then Gall got another, and it was officially a romp.

On either side of more Wotherspoon goals, Channel 7 deployed what must have been the first ever use of a live ladder during Round 3. It showed that we'd gone ahead of the 30 in a row juggerNorth and to the top of the ladder. For whatever benefit that has a quarter of the way into the season, when we're still to play them. Through the wonder and mystery of percentage, this was made possible thanks to Brisbane scoring bugger all - so even though Wotherspoon made up for being jibbed out of a mark in the pocket with her third, North still wound up back on top by the end of the round. We'll live.

After avoiding the permanently unbeaten in home and away games last year, we get the ultimate challenge in Round 7 this time. Despite claims by commentators that this was a "warning shot to the rest of the competition", I'll grade this 70% quality performance, 30% putting the boots to half-dead opposition who could no longer defend themselves. I won't take wins against West Coast, Port, or Carlton for granted, but if we reach 6-0 before playing North there's every excuse for the lid to threaten a trip into orbit. Of course, the wider public will probably have NFI that the game is even happening because it's on Grand Final Eve, but enthusiasts will enjoy it. A "why doesn't the government just abolish crime" style demand from the commentary box to move the game to Docklands fell flat when the boundary rider pointed out that there was a competing concert - which has presumably been booked at a 50,000 seat venue for good reasons.

Not surprisingly, Brisbane lost another player at 3/4 time, and the goals kept coming. Unfortunately, the second was to the visitors, breaking our run of 12 in a row. That was only a short break into the pummeling, where blatant failure to pay holding the ball in front of our goal still ended in success, with Fitzsimon doing a slow-motion version of the Harry Sharp SuperToepoke against Freo.

In the spirit of the GWS playing going boonta while five goals down, Overcelebration of the Week goes to Dakota Davidson for giving it the big “COME ONNNNNN!” after cutting the margin to a mere 56 points. This also came via unpaid HTB, making the game feel like when Daytona USA arcade machines used to slow the lead car down to keep multiplayer games interesting. And if you know what that means, you may also be middle-aged.

Coincidentally, just after a petrol can sign was held up on the bench, junk time kicked off. This featured a weird scenario where Brisbane kicked a goal under suspicion of it being touched on the way through. Last week, a goal was signalled all clear, then removed on dubious video evidence before the game could restart - proving that there's somebody ready to review AFLW goals. This time, the entire 'score review' process was the field umpire calling his goal and boundary colleagues together, asking if anyone saw anything, then calling all clear. Maybe the reviewer chucked a sickie on Sunday?

Regardless of token late goals, it was still our biggest win over Brisbane, and equal fourth highest score of all time. Which is something when you consider how many actually hapless teams have left Casey mashed into dust. It makes me even more wary about how much of it was down to Brisbane finishing with about a dozen fit players. I'd like to believe we're the antidote to North squeezing all the life out of the competition, but require further evidence against non-crippled opposition to confirm how high I should get my hopes before they're crushed in a cut-throat final. 

2026 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Tahlia Gillard
4 - Tyla Hanks
3 - Olivia Purcell
2 - Ryleigh Wotherspoon
1 - Georgia Campbell

Apologies to Fitzsimon, Heath-Barker (inaugural mention), Hore, Lampard, McNamara and Paxman

Leaderboard
I was negligent last week in not naming Allen as leader of Defender of the Year, but that's been rendered irrelevant by Gillard Mania. In other news, congratulations to Campbell on taking an early lead in the ruck award.

11 - Olivia Purcell
9 - Tyla Hanks
5 - Tahlia Gillard (LEADER: Defender of the Year), Kate Hore
4 - Mia Austin
3 - Jordyn Allen (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Ryleigh Wotherspoon
2 - Tayla Harris, Eliza McNamara
1 - Georgia Campbell (LEADER: Ruck of the Year)

Goal of the Week
The team effort one was good, but as I'm not enough of a trendsetter to introduce that category, the award for individual excellence goes to Fitzsimon for her mayhem-inducing crumb in the first quarter.

Next week
It's a West Coast team we've outscored 235-36 in our last three meetings. Like GWS, surely they've got to be good eventually. We continue to wish Daisy Pearce well in her coaching career, but feel free to wait another week before launching the big breakthrough.

Final thoughts
Good. More please. Help me forget.

Irresistible force meets flammable object

I conclude the 2026 men's season with hate in my heart, but don't know who it's directed at. Can't complain about a surprisingly good season fizzing out at the end, not upset about Carlton taking advantage of their free hit, will not take the low road and blame the umpires for our inability to score, and even if I respect the Wildcard Round as much as the Provisional IRA, we've only got ourselves to blame for responding the door being left wide open in the last quarter by repeatedly bumping into the wall.

This was an unfortunate time to kick our lowest score since the full-misery era of Round 4, 2025, but to do it after being four goals to nil up in the first quarter, is an unprecedented pisstake. So is being the first team to finish 7th and be bumped off by 10th in a fake final. There's a stain that will be unremovable no matter how many times it happens in the future. Add it to the list of stupid incidents we've been involved in during 2026, and I'll see you for the some retrospective bitterness next year when the corresponding fixture involves 7th beating the piss out of a side who fell into the finals by default. In fact, if there's another time in the next decade where the bottom wildcard (*spit*) team is also the hottest in the competition, I'll eat a goalpost.

It was rotten luck to wind up playing a side doing the ultimate Lazarus with a triple bypass comeback, but even after a flat finish to the home and away season, and the decimation of our list to the point of multiple Hail Mary selections, I wanted to believe. It was unlikely that a team on the run of a lifetime would politely piss off just because they'd finished in the double figures part of the ladder, but maybe Carlton just hadn't suffered the reality check of Harlem Globetrotters-era Melbourne's pulverising dynamism? We'll never know, because they still haven't. The brute-force attacking methods that got us this far went into witness protection, and there would be no cover version of 1998 after all.

On the long list of things that upset me about this result, a close second was our failure to protect the integrity of the top eight system. After Footscray took the long road to September on Friday night, we had the chance to ensure the alleged second week of finals would feature the exact same games that would've been played under the old system - rendering the extra games useless for everything other than bulk, game show-style grabbing of cash by the AFL, and years of shizen teams falsely thinking they could also "do a Carlton". 

Fortunately, I've been anti-wildcard from the start so can't be accused of sour grapes (and once more, just to avoid having to say it on repeat - Carlton shouldn't have been there, but were deserved winners), but spare me the cavalcade of media stooges giving it some "cop that whingers" because 170,000 people turned up to the MCG over two nights, as if this bulldust fixture couldn't have easily ended up as GWS vs Gold Coast with tumbleweeds blowing through the stands. The unconvincing "I told you so" tour peaked with Andrew Dillon being wheeled out at half time to put on his "everything's ok" fake smile and carry on with the sort of misplaced administrative self-confidence as that bloke from FIFA.

Regardless of the result, spectacle fanatics had already declared victory on the Wildcard after Friday's thrilling finish, but when the CEO did his victory lap we still had the chance to return some dignity to the first week of finals. A hot start had already been blown, and obviously nervous Carlton players were given every chance to get comfortable with the occasion, but still held a one point lead and could've conceivably belted away with a famous victory. Thus followed 2.7 for the rest of the game, and a slow, sad descent into elimination.

After a year of free-wheeling mayhem, this was like late-stage Goodwin Melbourne playing courtesy of the inaugural Time Travel Wildcard. Back then - and pretty much any time outside a couple of weeks at the start of this year - you'd have got extreme odds against us playing our next final against the same team that dicked us in 2023. The worst thing about that game is just how close the winning goal came to hitting the post in super blooper fashion. The second worst is how many chances we missed to put the game away, but what has always felt like a night where we were let down by lack of attacking options (apologies to Joel Smith, whose piss test was experiencing a Chernobylish meltdown in a lab at the same time) was a shootout of epic proportions compared to the second half of the rematch.

There's nothing like a disappointing end to the season to provoke emotional snap judgements (I've already seen people trying to sack Gawn as captain and trade Pickett, which is all a bit extreme), so no doubt words to the effect of "lost at the selection table" are being thrown around somewhere. I wouldn't have picked Viney or Lindsay, but what more were we going to get from any combination of the other surviving players with senior experience in Salem (208 games), Heath, L. Pickett, Johnson, Cross, Kentfield, and Cooke (54 games combined)? The last few weeks showed they had NFI what to do with Salem, and you're guessing at the potential impact the rest might have had. Melksham kicked 0.3 and looked exactly like somebody playing on their 35th birthday, but if you think Kentfield would've done any better the way we were delivering it then you're just being provocative for the sake of it.   

In the absence of two key forwards - and a lot of outsiders talked about Jefferson this week as if they knew who he was - I'd have argued for Heath allowing the option for Gawn to go forward, but we could've won this with the selected team. Sadly, once the low fuel light started blinking furiously in the third quarter it was all over unless our lot pulled off superhuman efforts, or Carlton self-destructed in Voss-era fashion.

Now that you know what happens, how appropriate was the reversal of Petty's massive close range mark in the opening minutes? It was the sort of grab that's made him a seriously dangerous forward, and he couldn't have presented for it any better, only for the kick to go the other way because Sharp toppled an opponent in the aftermath. Even if the plummet might have been a touch theatrical, what's the point of risking giving away a free it at the start of a knockout game in front of a 75% (+?) hostile crowd? Petty tried hard to recreate this magic for the remainder of the night but didn't go close again without two key defenders up his ginger.

Fans of other teams can drop dead/catch fire for all I care, but given that Weitering and Friend spent the rest of the night destroying our attacks, this image should become an iconic part of their culture. 

If the circumstances were reversed, you can be sure I'd be finding an excuse to bring it up at every opportunity. Based on previous experience, Carltonians will forget about it by the time they're lurking outside Princes Park, trying to sack Josh Fraser after Round 7, 2027.

My anti-Wildcard boycott held in the face of moral wobbles at the start and end of the week. This meant risking the potential disappointing result multiplying by the frustration from His Dwayneness talking nonsense, and ending with me drinking something from under the sink. Luckily (?) I was so wound up during the first half, and scared/low key outraged in the second that the Archbishop of Shitebury's constant use of the term 'fairytale' and crowbarred Bob Dylan references washed over me like I was under heavy sedation. They're both famous for saying things that are cryptic and baffling, but the most apt Dylan lyric for this occasion is "Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth".

The good news for Sharp is that his indiscretion accidentally became a cunning plan to kick the first goal instead. He went on to do bugger all else, and it may have been the last time Pickett hit a target by foot all night, but I appreciated it in the moment - even if his hasty play-on nearly ended in tragedy. Any goals accepted, but as it didn't start a chain of events that ended in winning, I'd rather have got Petty going and (hopefully) sowed seeds of doubt amongst the defenders who went on to torment us from every angle.

For 20 minutes, all was right with the world. It looked like the 7th vs 10th matchup you'd expect on paper, with the lower team overmatched and struggling to play their natural game. In reality, all the pressure is on the 'better' team here, who take on all the risk of looking stupid for the prize of doing what they'd have done next week anyway. Just with another week for players to fatigue, get injured or suspended. I hate the format, but it didn't cause us to botch this game from four goals up.

We did get a leg-up in the first quarter from some truly putrid forward efforts by the Blues, who got the ball down there enough but dropped multiple marks in good spots and generally looked like they'd all need a change of the white shorts at quarter time. They had a couple of chances, but we had answers for everything early, and there was hint of party atmosphere when Langford kicked a massive goal on the run. According to the AFL.com.au timeline, this was only our second goal from kick-in across seven weeks. That sounds foul, although it's not necessarily fatal because it does require the other team to kick points to give you the opportunity in the first place. Not that it matters a dot now, but I'd be more worried if the percentage per kick-in was also worst in the competition. 

Langford remained in the game, and other than one marking contest in defence that I'm not going to get upset over based on everything else he did right, but the third goalkicker went the same way as the first. Laurie converted well, then barely did anything else. This was a lot like last week, where a lot players who've performed well above expectations this year simultaneously hit their limit. But for now, we were the ones taking advantage of opportunities - and when Gawn got the fourth I was still terrified but had licence to wonder if we might just do this calmly and without excessive noise. Won't make that mistake again. Obviously not this season.

Their first goal seemed more minor annoyance than a game-changing intervention. There was a hint of what was to come, with the obvious comparison being how they were sticking tackles, before running past our variety of two arms out ineffectively/one arm out ineffectively/no bloody arms out at all efforts. I'm not going to sully a great season by naming individuals (even if the video footage would be the defence to a defamation action) but we've got highly rated players who didn't remotely fancy throwing themselves into the fray. If it was a video game and you just needed to crank the 'tackling' stat, it would help that we picked Viney, but the issues weren't happening in his happy place of close-quarter combat, it was Carlton players bolting through gaps unchallenged. People probably don't want to get in the way of running players in case they get three weeks a'la Steven May 2025, but if your goal is to avoid the other side chipping the ball around and getting uncontested possessions, even inferred pressure would help. As it did early, before unexpectedly going extinct in the blink of an eye a'la dinosaurs.

I'm not levelling downhill skiing accusations, because it's not the first time we've had this problem. It's just that most weeks we'd cover the odd optional defensive effort by either charging down the other end via a turnover seconds later, or by just generally kicking what qualifies for us as bulk goals. I don't know how long the famous Speed bus theoretically had between dropping below 50mph and exploding, but in the footy equivalent, last week armed the bomb, this was the big bang that should've finished off Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, and a bunch of hapless commuters.

There were multiple chances to cancel Carlton's first goal and go into quarter time with foot at least somewhere in the vicinity of throat, but there was waste on a level even government departments would be embarrassed by. To say it wasn't Pickett's night would be a massive understatement, even if you can be sure somebody's put him in their best players just because he was amongst our top possession getters. No point if most of them fail to arrive, and several were the sort of running snaps I'd have to consult the highlight reel to confirm he'd definitely have kicked a couple of years ago. He had several chances here, and none even went close. Not that he was alone in missing opportunities, after hitting the post several times last week, anybody who believes in luck will think we exhausted that budget against Freo. I'd say consider that Carlton also did that several times in this game and still went on to win. Like shit umpiring, if you're good enough, you'll overcome the disappointment.

If you didn't see the game I don't know what insight you're expecting to get from reading this review, but in that unlikely event, abandon all hope ye who watch beyond here. The season either peaked against Freo or Port, depending on how generous you are in measuring quality of opposition vs rampant wins over slopposition. Its last gasp came during this quarter, everything that follows involves toil, struggle, and the disappointment of a good season fading to black.

In modern footy, with stats out of the wazoo, tactics for everything, and training programs that probably tell players what time to have a slash, the quarter time address has never been less relevant. Especially when only the most self-confident of coaches dares to give their team a blast because they know it'll be replayed on TV a hundred times. So, I flat-out refuse to believe it was anything Josh Fraser said to his players that turned the game after the break, but tactically they fixed us from then. To our credit, with Lever partially replaced by a third gamer, we battled to keep the score low enough to make the game pinchable until the last few minutes, but the will to live was silently escaping from our players, and there was nothing left in the tank when one big push was required at the end.

The biggest "I see where this is going" storyline of the second quarter was players being run down in tackles while thinking they had all the time in the world to merrily wander through the midfield. I have no idea why - other than the Black Death injury toll - how Lindsay's game last week made anyone think "Here's a good option for a final", but I can confirm he was definitely NOT better for the run. Has got plenty of time to find his niche - and may all young players have the sort of improvement in their third season as Tholstrup this year - but there's work to do in the off-season there. Not that he was the only one getting mown down in tackles during the quarter, but was miles off the pace for the rest of the game. Big pre-season to come and other tired footy cliches etc... 

Our happy time was now clearly over, with a relaxed opposition now able to execute 20 metre kicks without either missing the target or dropping the ball when it arrived, and it was clear this wasn't going to be a high scoring classic. Which didn't have to be a bad thing for us, I don't buy the idea that we had to score 100 or near enough to win, there was a sludgy 60-55 win in us, except for the bit about not getting to 60. After that glorious start, we were behind before half time, until your friend and mine, and future State Opposition Leader Tom McSizzle pulled one back just before the break. 

After seeing every goal he's kicked since the first two, I managed to miss the last one while attending to a child who'd injured themselves in slapstick, Three Stooges fashion. All I could do was judge by the sound of the crowd that it went through. Thank god for that, and the game was still very much there to be won, but we were now very much on the run. But in the space of five minutes, Petty and Fritsch got early third quarter goals, the margin was back out to eight points, and maybe all would be ok with the world. And............... then we didn't kick another one for the game. Just the seven more behinds, as our entire forward strategy become "kick it long as quickly as possible, and never mind that two of their defenders are marking EVERY BLOODY THING". 

It was full 'escaping a burning building' style-panic, and yet it took until the end of the quarter for Carlton to get in front. A four point margin was nothing, and my sick fantasy was for Weitering and Dean to suffer the Lever/May 2023 final treatment, where they did everything possible to keep their side in the game, but were let down because the forwards couldn't hit the side of a barn the size of Uluru. They did the heroic defensive effort bit, and the dazzling array of people I'd never heard of at the other end tried to keep us in it for as long as possible, but our forward structure had gone into liquidation.

I'm pro-agitator, and have no doubt that Jagga Smith will rise above the handicap of having the stupidest first name in history to become a star, but it's heartwarming that Jake Bowey even had the option to respond to "Who are you?" carry-on with a reminder of past premiership glory. Once Carlton inevitably bomb out of the finals, I hope Jake will follow up with an invitation to come over and view the medal. 

I can't actually remember when this happened, and would rather drink motor oil than go back and watch to find out, but the exchange said it all about where the game was going. After the early scare, they now had the whip hand and were full of the joy of life. The only saving grace was that the margin remained within 'sudden outburst' range until the last few minutes, but there was to be no Melksham Miracle, no Sizzle Special, and indeed no further goals to our end. Not even the token pointless one when the result was beyond doubt, a'la Bulldogs in the 2021 Grand Final.

Pickett was thrown forward in the dying minutes, in the hope of a repeat dose of him sinking the Blues with 10 seconds left a few years ago. The problem was he was literally never seen again by TV viewers, because the ball got stuck down Carlton's end for the last few minutes. They kept missing chances to put us away, we couldn't get the ball over halfway for love nor money, and the only known method of escape seemed to be 'Hoof it to Max'. Which is usually good, but by now every team from University to Congupna Under 15s know we're going to do it. Most of the time Maximum just imposes himself on shorter people and takes the mark anyway, but we'd had 2.5 quarters of evidence that it wasn't going to work. And didn't again. 

There was an attempt at mixing it up by... kicking long to Petty instead, but he was unable to pull off another club record-equalling contested mark bonanza, and we were soon back on Killer Blow Watch. After some bloke hit the post for the fourth time, the exclamation mark came via the traditional 'win a free for Kamikaze diving into the pack' method. You know my views on this, the more the ball stays alive inside 50, the more chance there is of umpires detecting an offence - whether it exists or not. 

And... err... that was it. If it had gone centre bounce > goal in under 10 seconds, there may have been time to launch the once-in-a-lifetime miracle comeback. We were on the end of some rotten decisions (and the crisis in boundary umpires not being able to throw the ball in far enough continues), and by the end Gawn looked like he was going to one-up Phil Carman by throwing an umpire over the fence, but had plenty of chances to overcome this handicap and go on to win. 

Everything went wrong at the same time, many of those who avoided injury or suspension disaster played their worst game of the year, and against the most unlikely revival in footy history (to be fair, with huge thanks to the new 'finals' system), it all converged in a quarter of drizzling liquid shit that made you want to gouge your eyeballs out. 

With a few days to calm down, I appreciate the inevitability of it all from halfway through the second quarter, and the fun we had qualifying to play one more game than I expected this year, but if the soul exists it took a 30 minute holiday from my body while watching a team who've scored for fun this year make crossing halfway look like putting a man on the moon. 

This would've been bad enough if the margin was five or six goals, but the Blues kept the margin close long enough that you were entitled to crack the shits about not just getting one good chance to make it interesting. Eventually the shutters went down for good. Apologies to McDonald and Melksham for not paying the appropriate respect to their departure from the game, but with a minute left and four goals to kick, I chickened out of enduring the post-match crowd frenzy and furious self-gratification of commentators by turning the TV off. I'm sure they'd understand. 

There endeth a good season that we should be proud of, even if it disappeared without a trace in the last two weeks. The highs and lows were extreme, with a lot of good, solid, entertaining football in the middle. Steven King deserves praise for not only holding things together in a time of on-field change and off-field shenanigans which included him getting sued. Now that everyone in the league knows what he's about, I look forward to seeing what tweaks and alterations are on the cards next year.

The last chance for anti-wildcard forces to get anything out of these finals is for Carlton and Footscray to both lose by 130 points next week, proving (for the zero it's worth) that this fixture is less 'Wildcard' and more Death Sentence. But god I'd love to be the ones risking humiliation in Adelaide next week. Even having a ticket in the lottery was a bonus considering where we were at 12 months ago, but I'm still super glum about not stretching the season out by just one more week. 

Unless there's more shock Sydney revelations during the week and we're recalled to fill their spot post-expulsion, that's your (M) lot for 2026. Despite the tepid end, most of it has been enjoyable. As usual, thanks for taking an interest in these unhinged manifestos. God only knows what will happen next season, but I'll go around again just to witness whatever weird, disturbing, and/or unexpectedly good stuff comes of it.

2026 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Jake Bowey
4 - Koltyn Tholstrup
3 - Harvey Langford
2 - Jack Steele
1 - Max Gawn

Apologies to Jiath and Turner, with an encouragement award to Taylor.

Final standings
And there you have it. We already knew the overall winner, but Gawn's tally is confirmed as the fourth highest in the history of the competition, behind the 70s of Oliver 2022/Petracca 2023, and his own 67 last year. For all the vote inflation mockery directed at the Brownlow, I note that Cameron Bruce won the 2008 edition on just 29. There was late drama in the Seecamp, as Bowey's float to the top of a very ordinary pile this week helped take him past a desperately unlucky Turner to retain the title. And Fitzgerald is your Rising Star winner, joining an eclectic selection of previous champions ranging from premiership players to Jay Kennedy Harris and Marty Hore.

65 - Max Gawn (WINNER: Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year, WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
41 - Kysaiah Pickett
31 - Jack Steele
29 - Tom Sparrow
23 - Jake Bowey (WINNER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
22 - Daniel Turner
19 - Jacob van Rooyen
17 - Koltyn Tholstrup
16 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
15 - Harvey Langford
14 - Kade Chandler
13 - Bayley Fritsch, Ed Langdon
6 - Caleb Windsor
5 - Harry Sharp
4 - Brody Mihocek
2 - Blake Howes, Matthew Jefferson, Jake Melksham
1 - Jai Culley, Joel Fitzgerald (WINNER: Nathan Jones Rising Star Award), Bailey Laurie

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
With fewer options to choose from than at any other time this season, the answer is obviously Langford. Quality finish, but your overall winner for quality and context is Sharp vs Fremantle, followed by Cross (remember him?) on King's Birthday. Congratulations Harry, I'm sure this is more exciting than being the emergency in a Grand Final side.

Next week
My remaining interest in the men's season is going for an Oscar McDonald flag.

Next season
It's carnage for M names, as May (technically still on the list this year), McAdam, McDonald and Melksham all go off the list - and who knows if Mihocek is coming back + Campbell, who refused to join in with the theme. But we've already got Cooke, Cross, Fitzgerald and Mapley, two first round picks, and multiple players potentially arriving via trade, so somebody's getting delisted. My predictions are Adams (update: false), Henderson and Mentha. Johnson to survive as depth, and Moniz-Wakefield because it's worth giving his knees one more go.

Then it's off to trade week, where I suspect Salem will be pointed in the direction of shit teams who need competent, experienced players. And in a world where Scott Pendlebury can quit Collingwood about 12 hours after their season ends, I hope people would keep calm and carry on if we convinced another club to take the last two years of Viney's contract. Complaints inside a letterbomb to the usual address.

Unless something zany happens, I don't see us either bursting into serious premiership contention, or screaming towards the bottom of the ladder like an out-of-control plane. Good thing mid-table mediocrity is now something to be proud of.

Final thoughts

Yay winning

For all the unpleasantness levelled at AFLW by the usual types, at least it hasn't been sullied by the introduction of wildcard finals. Sure, it would've saved us from disaster a couple of years ago, and ok there are barely eight good teams let alone 10, but at least you know exactly where you stand. And in this of all weeks, I won't let my disappointment with the men's competition detract from the ongoing excellence of our W side.

And there's nothing more iconic in the history of our women's program than walloping an interstate team at Casey. We've lost games to interstate clubs at home, but have delivered about 10x more thrashings in similar circumstances to this. In fact, we played almost the exact fixture against the Giants in 2022, holding them to one goal and playing out the last quarter like a glorified training drill. The difference was, this time they scored before the fourth quarter, and gave us several minutes of concern in the opening quarter before folding tent and dissolving into the sort of irrelevancy all GWS teams are doomed to. As if to prove this, during the second quarter, whenever one of their highlights was shown, the team graphic showed 'Gold Coast'. Near enough.

Having not lost to the Giants in nearly 10 years, and even then only due to woeful accuracy, it feels like they've always been crap. This, despite winning our first final against them. I've not got nearly enough time to work out if they've got improved prospects after going 2-10 last year, but I assumed after an opening round win against reigning finalists, there wouldn't be too much difficulty pocketing four premiership points here. For that reason, spending half the opening quarter pinned in defence while the Giants blundered goalscoring opportunities was not welcome. 

The only early highlight was the one with a Karate Kid headband doing a comedy slip/trip/fall after tangling feet while running past one of our players. Which, as she didn't destroy her shoulder or plummet headfirst into the turf, we're free to treat as a great piece of slapstick.

I'm in the top 1% of MFC pessimists, but even I thought it couldn't last. They might have converted one of three early chances, but I'm confident that the moment the ball got back to the middle we'd have regained control. Even when the returning Lauren Pearce turned into the not returning Lauren Pearce as a late withdrawal, we had more than enough quality in the middle to beat anyone. The only danger was if they kicked 0.8 first, setting up the league's inaugural 14 point play.

After the visitors botched three chances, our first opportunity came after Georgia Gall was dudded twice by bad bounces, before our new friend Mia Austin won a free. She failed to score, and we remained on nil. There was next to no damage to the margin, but a scoreless first quarter loomed before the usual "get out of my way, I'm a superstar" conversion by Hore, who converted after a great pass by O'Hehir. 

It was our only scoring shot of the quarter, which wasn't ideal, but the party started in earnest after quarter time. As if to prove my hopes about centre bounce dominance, Hanks turboed straight out of the middle and set up Austin - who sadly departed with an ankle injury shortly after, holding an all-time great goals-per-game average of 2.50 per appearance. There was more dominance in the middle when Hore matched Hanks' centre breaking, eventually ending with Wotherspoon dismissing an opponent with contempt to goal from the line.

The brief period of concern in the opening quarter was a distant memory by the time Gall got the fourth and fifth. There was almost another via close range specialist Wotherspoon, only for the video reviewer to crop up out of nowhere and take it away due to the ball either being touched by a defender who didn't protest, or hitting the post. Given that there are no goal-line cameras at Casey, or I'll bet most AFLW venues, the ARC operator must've been thrilled to have a chance to do something other than sitting with his feet up on the console eating chips. I think this is the first review we've been subject to since the one time the now discredited ball tracking technology took a goal away.

It doesn't matter, and there's no AFLW360 to make a big deal out of it, but if it was reversed for the ball hitting the post, I'm not sure that was a correct decision. The goal umpire was already signalling by the time the ball allegedly hit, so obviously the ball must've had time to go over her head before she did that. I think it came off the net behind the goal, which made it falsely look like it had brushed the post. Your theories on a postcard to the usual address. All this did was slow down the pace of the thrashing, which may have been what the child having a world class tantrum live at Casey Fields was so upset about. 

I object to doubleheaders almost as vigorously as wildcards, and one of the many reasons is the lack of random conversations bleeding through the effects mic, kids cracking the shits, and nutters yelling out stupid shit that's audible to everyone. But as much as I hate the idea of playing back-to-back games, how did we not end up playing one with Footscray this week? The teams who started the course for a national league have a men's game at the exact same time of the year that doubleheaders are being fixtured, and nothing. Hopefully we said no thanks, but as far as the league was concerned it seemed like a great way to get back on the MCG and come up with another artificially inflated crowd figure to use when pretending they give half a shit about this competition.

By now, the Giants couldn't get close to scoring, and registered nada for the second quarter. As well as the usual praise for Tahlia Gillard (still waiting patiently by the mailbox for her Grand Final BOG), the highlight of our defensive effort was the run of Jordyn Allen. She was pinging out of defence like a rocket, took eight bounces, and did nothing wrong. I'll accept losing the weekly Rising Star for the week to the Gold Coast player who kicked five, but have all your money and plenty of somebody else's on her being our first nomination in four years at some time in the near future.

We've pulled back from the Rent-A-Player abyss in the last few weeks, but it looked like they'd be on high alert again when Gall got squashed in a marking contest and briefly looked to have blown her shoulder to bits. Instead, she walked it off on the way to the boundary, rejoined the fray, and carried on for the rest of the game.

There was more excitement for the live audience in the third quarter, including audio of a woman absolutely pissing herself laughing. GWS even kicked a goal, which was celebrated towards the crowd with the excitement of a Grand Final winner, not one that made the score 9-33. But it's your goal, enjoy it however you like. In this case, enjoy it as if it may be your last - because it was.

Holding it to one goal each for the term was as good as it got for the Giants, before the procession restarted with three to nil in the last quarter. Wotherspoon not only set up one for McNamara, but got another from the square. By now it was a bit "stop, stop, they're already dead" towards the Giants, but they did get two points to that end of the ground this time. Meanwhile we were able to get everyone involved, even late inclusion Pisano, who went from missing one at Wotherspoon range, to both kicking, and missing set shots after.

I don't know what to take out of this for the rest of the season, other than confirmation that Purcell remains a possession collection machine, putting two on her previous record for most disposals in a game. We were good without hinting at greatness, and there are much better teams on the horizon this season. Still, it's a win without significant overextension, and confirmation that a team that's been up for the best part of a decade still has plenty of life in it.

2026 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Olivia Purcell
4 - Tyla Hanks
3 - Jordyn Allen
2 - Eliza McNamara
1 - Ryleigh Wotherspoon

Apologies to Campbell, Gall, Gillard, Harris, and Hore.

Leaderboard
8 - Olivia Purcell
5 - Tyla Hanks, Kate Hore
4 - Mia Austin
3 - Jordyn Allen (LEADER: Rising Star Award)
2 - Tayla Harris, Eliza McNamara
1 - Ryleigh Wotherspoon

Goal of the Week
The Wotherspoon one where she basically told her opponent to piss off before marking. Heath (now officially Heath-Barker - congratulations from all of us at etc...) retains the clubhouse lead.

Next week
In the same spirit of 'not holding the sins of the men's competition against AFLW', I promise not to furiously boycott a Sunday game against Brisbane if the men go tits up on Saturday night. Presumably Lauren Pearce makes it this time, Austin doesn't, and it'll be a much tougher round of 'interstate team visits Casey'. Could go either way, but a two win start in a short season puts us in a fine spot for finals in a shortened season.

Final thoughts
Giz more of the same please.

Twilight lowlight

I couldn't appreciate more how this season has gone, and I'm up for the challenge of doing something unbelievably bizarre from here, but it feels like daylight robbery to go 15-8 and still wind up playing in the consolation round. Our fault for losing to Footscray, but still - the idea of potentially playing victim in the great Carlton redemption story (which we really started with that storming comeback in Round 3) sickens me so much that it will ruin the joy of returning to 'finals' until such time that we do as expected of a 7th placed team and win. Nobody ever considered the wacky scenario of a 10th place team turning up as the form side of the competition - and no, that still doesn't justify playing these bullshit games. 

Nobody really wants the old system alternative of playing Adelaide away, but that's what should be happening. It's not though, and thanks to GWS refusing to pop the Bradbury Plan escape hatch and beat the Crows, we've missed the top six, and most likely any chance of launching a surprise assault on the flag. You might say we've only got ourselves to blame, but I reserve the right to hold it against all the sides who could've done us a favour in the last two weeks, and the league for introducing this cash/attention grab in the first place.

Despite the agonies I'll go through in the next few days, it's a good thing this season has been a relatively roaring success on-field, because 2026 has been an administrative shambles. Five years ago it looked like we'd graduated from non-stop turmoil, before collecting post-flag fiascos by the dozen, with so many involving lawyers that we should get life membership of the Victorian legal system. First, there was the losing van Rooyen appeal, which involved our representative using the phrase 'knocking out' while defending a player who knocked someone out. Until the next person to punch an opponent in the head gets 12 weeks, three is excessive for a failed, malice-free spoil, but that's no help to us now, we have no option but to move on without him.

At the same time, we were bidding a less-than-fond farewell to major 'sponsor' Driver's Depot - or, to use their correct legal name, Dickhead Depot. Turns out they managed to scab a whole year of publicity by paying their deposit, then nothing more. It's a $1.5m version of the time I heard the membership team ringing up deadbeat members who'd cancelled credit cards to avoid paying their monthly instalments. There's a long queue to kick the people who signed this deal, but don't forget we'd already had to sack one major sponsor due to scandal, so I've got some sympathy with putting our trust in a fly-by-night operation nobody had ever heard of.

Some pundits saw this coming seven months ago, but it seems unlikely that the club got all the way to the end of the home and away season before realising the cheque was not in the mail. As the club that once found an unpaid tax bill in the drawer, you can't rule out some massive own goal caused by our rotating cast of Chief Executive Officers, but more likely this fly-by-night operation with an AI website hasn't been answering the phone for months, and what would've been swept under the carpet if the season was ending after R24 had to be acknowledged so they could be given the Tijuana before finals. Brisbane and Collingwood have been dudded in similar circumstances over the years, but at least they got out before mid-August.

Then, it took me so long to write this that the ex-CEO lawsuit had time to drop as well, featuring claims of corporate assassination linked to his exposure of widespread wage theft. If anyone else wants to join this round of Let's All Sue The MFC, you have until close of business Friday to get in on the action.

Compared to all this, the lottery of whether we'd get a double chance (which didn't survive Friday night), play real finals, or be forced into the repecharge round barely rated a mention. I know the focus this week has been largely off-field, but nobody seems to give a rat's that multiple teams went into the last round with three potential finals outcomes. Well, let me tell you I was thinking about it non-stop - especially after Footscray lost free hit status by failing to topple Carlton. After winning about eight games more to this point of the year than expected, I shouldn't need the opposition to rest half their side to calm my nerves - but I did, and was right to.

Some people seriously believe the AFL rigs the results of individual games, as if they could manage such a thing without royally stuffing it up. What they'd say is that it was "too obvious" to do it here, when a Dees win was the final piece in the puzzle to set up a Carlton vs Collingwood final that would've a) all but validated the Wildcard round with massive crowd and TV viewing, and b) provided a great talking point to steer interest in Victoria away from the scandal currently laying waste to their 'brand'. 

All they had to do for the dream fixture was [whatever rorts are supposedly done to fix results]. But no, it was played out in a free and fair environment, with au natural shit umpiring, and any chance to occupy media space all week with tedious references to Wayne Harmes went up in smoke. Meanwhile we put on 2024/2025 Appreciation Night, failing to capitalise on a million scoring opportunities in a game with so many contests that Gawn had his most hitouts in a game since 2018. And that doesn't account for the times he just plucked it out of the air and took off, against badly outmatched opposition who ultimately had the last laugh.

After some of the stuff we got away with under previous management you'd be rude to complain about the Dogs sensibly aiming to turn the game into trench warfare. We scored 111 points off turnover last week, they'd have been stupid to let this get into the open and risk more of the same. Eventually kicking a respectable score is somewhat to our credit. Shame about all the goals going the other way. No complaints about the "we'll score one more than you" philosophy, considering we've escaped from worse spots against better teams this year, but it does crank the degree of difficulty when you know the opposition will get plenty of chances to return serve. Which is no drama if you keep scoring, but the bus from Speed had run into traffic and was about to blow up.

Facing the prospect of embarrassment against 10th placed opposition in top four form, I was ready to drink poison when Turner was helped off with what seemed to be a knee injury. Not only was this bad for our 2026 campaign, and next year - but on a personal, selfish level, I thought it torpedoed any chance of the Tom McDonald farewell forward line tour. Our commitment to Forward Sizzle was so strong that McDonald wasn't sent straight on to replace him. In the reverse of all the times a player has gone off looking not too crocked then disappeared for a year, Turner was back within minutes. That's where the Round 24 miracles stopped. 

This was the reverse Freo, where the wild pings at goal didn't goal through as often (although a fair proportion of our goals were belters), and role players who looked like the Harlem Globetrotters in recent weeks collectively failed to fire. Doesn't mean they won't all roar back next week, for whatever it's worth, while we take all the risk of needing to beat 10th just to get to where we'd have been anyway. I have to tell you, I'm not feeling the excitement.

For fans of novelties in football, the highlight of the first quarter was the Footscray player who hoofed through a shot from distance, then pretended his shoe was a phone. Otherwise, Langdon kicked a nice goal after picking off an errant handball, but there was bugger all else to get excited about. I've been more disappointed in last round games with finals implications, but that was back when you didn't get a start despite being in the lower half of the ladder.

The quarter time margin was gettable, but as much as our play in the first quarter resembled the days of winning 60-55, the opposition were taking advantage of a side that's conceded more points this year than North, who lost one a game by about 130 points. 

Even as it turned into a world class stoppagefest, we were better in the second quarter, but couldn't take advantage. At the same time, there were plenty of opportunities to concede down the other end. There was, in a rare outbreak of joy on an otherwise dismal afternoon, McDonald marking and goalling to pay off all my whinging about why we didn't play him forward again three years ago when our 2024 finals campaign died for a lack of decent goalscorers. There was also something for those of us who enjoy the role of agitators in the AFL, where for the second time this year we were dicked by Artie Jones, who let everybody - especially Jiath - know about it. Shame we had to be on the end of it twice in one season, but this kind of thing is 100% good for football, so more power to him.

Just when it looked like things were going completely tits up in the third quarter, we were saved by a late goal review and managed to keep things interesting. After a filthy day that provided me all the excuse I needed to keep McDonald forward, Jefferson had a purple patch of big tackles and setting up his teammates - which was rewarded by having to limp off injured, never to be seen again. Then later we found out Lever had broken something foot related, which probably means the end of the Forward Sizzle dream anyway.

Hitting the post twice in the dying minutes of the third quarter said all you needed to know about our day, but Windsor made up for it by kicking one from Platform 1 at Jolimont Station, while running at full speed while an opponent close behind. It was a spectacular finish which may take some of the heat of him for doing sod all otherwise. At the opposite end of the contribution scale was Harrison Petty, who spent the quarter pulling down massive contested marks in all parts of the ground, and for that we are most grateful.

Salem had a chance to make the margin on the three quarter time siren, but missed and left us having to climb out of a hole. I felt genuinely sick with nerves in the break due to wanting so desperately to go into the finals on a high. And to get the week off - as much for me as any of the players. Then we conceded a goal 20 seconds into the last quarter, and some little bastards decided to ruin my one visit for the year to Olympic Stand row MM by playing drums on the seats next door with salvaged plastic bottles. This wouldn't have happened in the Redlegs seats, but I may have throttled somebody for endlessly going on about umpires - as if that's what sank us. If I hadn't already been kicked out for gouging somebody who tried to pretend Fritsch playing on 3cm from the man in the mark and being caught HTB wasn't entirely his own fault.

The final term was an exercise in futile hope, but it did give us the once in a lifetime Total Football extravaganza of McDonald, Petty, and Turner all playing in the same forward line. I was well into it for novelty value, and could see the logic considering Naughton had departed injured, but at the same time is our rebound not helped by Turner pulling down marks all over the place? I don't think it would've made a difference where he played, but maybe putting him there from the first bounce was prematurely 'death or glory'. He had a shot early, but was the only one of the Big Three not to kick a goal during the quarter.

By the last quarter, Gawn was doing an AFL version of his 80 VFL hitouts against Bendigo, and when he put one down the throat of Pickett to pelt towards goal from the next centre bounce, it looked like they might be about to team up and carry us to a famous victory. Except Pickett's shot - surprise - hit the post. We did keep going, even after sad scenarios like a spare parts ruckman who'd been pummelled all afternoon being gifted a goal from a free in the square. But, when the margin got into single digits with a few minutes left I thought words to the effect of "by christ, we're going to snatch this". And was wrong, because while there were two goals left in the contest they both went the other way. It happens, but never before with the penalty applied of being shunted into the undercard 'finals'. 

To round off a shit afternoon/evening, we were turfed off the train halfway home because some flange beached their car on the tracks. Which is a coping strategy I might adopt if it goes tits up next week. Then some nutter spent 20 minutes screaming conspiracy theories at us from an elevated position without even being polite enough to around the grounds scores from Adelaide. The first thing I heard after getting back to my car at last was that the Crows were pissing it in, confirming it's the Wildcard life for us. I hate it so much, but that's reality. Let's hope to look back on this as the loss we had to have en route to the unexpected rebound run of a lifetime.

2026 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Max Gawn
4 - Harrison Petty
3 - Koltyn Tholstrup
2 - Jack Steele
1 - Kysaiah Pickett

Apologies to Bowey, Fritsch, Jiath, Lever, Sparrow, and Turner.

Leaderboard
Maximum is obviously going to romp this in now, the only question is whether he does it with games in hand or has to accept the virtual trophy in the wasteland of a pre-finals 'finals' defeat. No action in the minors, though it would be tremendous if someone who has never featured in the conversation before comes along at just the right time to launch a challenge for the Rising Star. 

64 - Max Gawn (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
--- Needs five finals. I'd like to see him try---
41 - Kysaiah Pickett
--- Kaput ---
29 - Tom Sparrow, Jack Steele
22 - Daniel Turner (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
19 - Jacob van Rooyen
18 - Jake Bowey
16 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
14 - Kade Chandler
13 - Bayley Fritsch, Ed Langdon, Koltyn Tholstrup
12 - Harvey Langford
6 - Caleb Windsor
5 - Harry Sharp
4 - Brody Mihocek
2 - Blake Howes, Matthew Jefferson, Jake Melksham
1 - Jai Culley, Joel Fitzgerald (LEADER: Nathan Jones Rising Star Award), Bailey Laurie

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
Despite doing nada otherwise, Windsor's goal from the boundary line was a belter. But not as beltish as Sharp vs Freo, which retains the lead.

Next week
I've got so little respect for the Wildcard Wankfest that I'm not dignifying it by altering my life schedule to attend. Apologies to Steven King and everyone else who helped make this season a whole lot more enjoyable than expected, but it's not a real final and I decline to participate. 

In the absence of Jefferson, I demand another round of Forward Sizzle. It wasn't a barnstorming success, but he did enough. To complicate the process even further, let's introduce the dark art experience of Melksham to the forward line. He comes in at the expense of Salem, who they have NFI what to do with. I think that's enough surprise veteran action for this occasion, even if I'm half-interested in a death or glory Viney selection. But that's just The Fear talking, making me want to wrap myself in the comfortable old ways of crash and bash, instead of trusting the process that got us 15 wins.

Still, he'd be a good news story, and even if they're completely different players he couldn't possibly provide less than Lindsay did in his game. I've talked myself into it now. And, not playing a second ruckman in a final against Carlton? I don't care if the circumstances bear no similarity to three years ago, or that Heath has been out of the senior side since the North game, get him in. I trust selection will be conducted in an atmosphere free of the sort of white-hot panic I bring to the conversation.

On paper we should win, but without Lever and JVR at opposite ends, and against a form team I reckon a great season might end in sad circumstances. I'll be overjoyed to be proven wrong, and will get interested again if we get through to the real finals, but I'm so flat about landing in the fake round that my enthusiasm and belief for this season has gone straight down the toilet. 

IN: Heath, Melksham, Taylor, Viney
OUT: Jefferson (inj), Lever (inj), Lindsay, Salem (omit)
LUCKY: Windsor
UNLUCKY: Teams that finish 7th. 

The All-New Bradbury Plan
Far cough

Final thoughts
If I cark it during the week, avenge my death.