Fried Round

Contrary to popular belief, you can win every week. But only under the name North Melbourne. In the week of an absurdly premature story about looking ahead to playing them in finals, it turns out we're still vulnerable to middle of the table opposition in alternative timezones. Doesn't help when four top players get stuck in some bullshit faulty lift, but we've had games this year where they could've walked across hot coals and still romped to victory  

Like the Port game, it involved failing to chase down a bad start, but in this case against opposition who suffered a 186-style blowout on the same ground earlier in the year. Unlike certain other teams that were slaughtered after running into a juggernaut at the wrong time, they didn't respond by blowing the club up for years to come. Which is nice for them, not much help to us now.

Before commencing usual programming (now with much less mockery of underwhelming opposition), can I risk straightsplaining Pride Round and ask why we didn't wear the special jumper here? I guess the idea is to debut it at home, but isn't a bit weird to have a jumper for a cause, then deliberately not wear it in the round dedicated to that cause? Why not just have it in both games, it's not like they're going to debut it at Casey Fields for the benefit of thousands of people ready to trample each other for the chance to buy one. (Update - ok, it's a two round thing. So wear it in both? Update update - possible jumper clash issue. Needs to go full rainbow next year for the benefit of people who'd unnecessarily blow their stack).

Lucky it wasn't 'Survivors Of An Air Raid' Round, because we were back at the place where the siren makes a noise like the warning of imminent nuclear attack. And it may as well be for Mick Stinear, who has a 70-something percent winning record, a flag, and a life membership waiting for him, but hasn't coached a win at Fremantle Oval since 2018. We've won once there since, but he missed the game because his wife was giving birth (and fair enough too), and I'm sure the nearly seven year old kid is gutted that dad has never coached another win since - including two consecutive losses by under a goal.

Last year's loss in this fixture could be blamed on injuries before the game, this time you could argue we were hurt by injuries during, but both times we could've and probably should've won regardless. The key difference is this time we've already done the work to get established in the top eight (let's dial it back a bit on the top four hopes), while last year there was a lot more injury crisis to get through before we ran out of time to rescue the season. It was a cock-up, but as long as do the right thing for the rest of the year the only serious implications on our finals chances are an enhanced chance of having to play North first up.

The ground didn't just have a novelty siren, in the first quarter we kicked towards a sign suggesting 'The best things in life are Freo'. This was appropriate, because our performance was heavily influenced by the latter part of the surname Vandross. It was, as they say in the classics, flatter than a plateful of piss. Looked good in the opening minutes mind you, where we went forward and did everything but score. In warm and windy conditions (only one of which we'd be familiar with), I'd prefer to put the fear of god into the underdogs ASAP than leave the door open for an upset. That's how you end up relying on Collingwood to miss multiple set shots in the last minute to hang on and win.

Instead, this was less thrashing through bulk goals against hapless opposition and more the 2nd-4th quarters of last week. For all my propaganda about having two divisions, maybe it's good that we get to enjoy clobbering some strugglers instead of risking having to prove ourselves every week. Sorry for not getting more excited by humiliating Gold Coast at the time, but I'm happy to settle for something in the middle. It wasn't happening here, because the Dockers came up with the most effective way of beating us - taking your chances. Expected score can generally get in the bin, but I'd like to know the chances of our previous opposition this season kicking any of the first goals Freo got here. And they were deserved, but many other goals against us this year would've been if the chances hadn't been butchered in spectacular fashion.

The first came from a nice set shot, and by the time the second we'd lost Georgia Gall to an ankle injury where nobody knew who it was because the commentators were calling off a screen in South Melbourne, and they couldn't get a shot on her face or number. You couldn't even tell it was a tall player from the angle she'd collapsed on, so as far as viewers knew it could be anyone from Gall, to Hanks, to Helen of Troy. As it happened on the far side of the ground the in-person boundary rider was no help either, and as she had earlier gone with the formal but lesser used 'Elizabeth McNamara' earlier, I suggest she'd have been about as much use identifying our players without their number as I would be picking Dockers players from a lineup. 

Eventually somebody thought to show a replay, which dramatically solved the mystery like the all-time least watched episode of Law and Order. We were down one of our (literal) Big Four forwards for the rest of the game, but look at our points for column, what could possibly go wrong? Turns out the answer is 'playing against competent opposition'. Like when their second goal was delivered on a platter to a leading forward. If we kicked like that, Gold Coast would've lost by 300. Now it was "I didn't think this would so difficult" panic bombs inside 50 for no score. 

The spirit of just hoofing it wherever transferred to the backline, where a clearing kick was stuffed right down the gob of somebody - and if you've watched any version of Melbourne this won't surprise you - somebody who previously had two goals in 73 games but easily steered their set shot through. There was too much Chaplin up the ground for my liking, regularly taking our steadiest hand away from defence, and creating an eligibility headache for our Defender of the Year award.

We finally got a chance via a Wotherspoon free, but the thinnest headband in footy missed the lot. She did make amends with a very good mark of the top of the square. With respect to Gall, this was Ryleigh's chance to really get amongst it, but after a promising first half she disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.

The comeback was shortlived before we conceded a goal to somebody called 'Tunisha', which is also the answer to a drunk person's favourite North African country. And as proof that inside 50s can go and piss up a rope, we'd had more of them by quarter time despite conceding a higher score than some fortnights this season.

You'd almost think all our problems were wind-related based on the second quarter, if the fourth didn't exist to contradict that theory. After a week stuck in the goal waiting queue, Bannan got a much needed one, before we got lucky when a Freo player was coathangered in a tackle and somehow deemed to have been holding the ball by an umpire standing a couple of metres away. Thanks for that. This led to a Zanker shanker set shot that was fortunately near enough to goal that it didn't matter, and we were 2/3 of the way to filling the remaining tall forward bingo card.

Now the margin was under a goal but things still looked ropey. But before long, as my Kayo feed went on and off like a tap, the scores were level. It came good just as a Hore set helicoptered into the hands of bingo wildcard Pearce at the top of the square. I've seen her miss from closer, but through it went and via a few awkward minutes at the end we got to the break just a point down. It was hardly hurricane force breeze, so time to go on with it yeah? Not really. Various early chances went awry, but at least for now our attacks were better value than just generating scores at the other end. In one way you could see us running away with it, in another it makes sense that we lost a thriller.

Our problem was conversion, and after about 12 minutes of attacking for no reward, Freo kicked one against the run of play. The coverage nearly missed the kick while replaying the mark, then celebrated the heartwarming return of a 3x ACL victim by cutting to a glum-looking Melbourne child who clearly couldn't give a fat rat's clacker about the comeback story. 

The kid would've chucked his hat over the fence if the Freo player hadn't missed an absolute sitter straight after, doing that classic AFLW move of turning around to find an empty square then excitedly botching the snap. A second goalless quarter to the left of screen had us five points down at the last change, but there was always the wind to save us. That didn't take into account giving away a free and 50 from the first bounce. Another player with two goals in 70+ games missed, but our reply was to kick OOF, then they did the same, and the contest was in full 'hardcore fans only' territory.

Finally, it was the old 'everyone get out of the way and leave it to the stars', when Hore snapped the goal to put us ahead. Harris will get the goal assist, but it never happened without our flavour of the month Fitzsimons standing up in a tackle and keeping the ball moving. It was very much not over, especially when they got a free in the middle of the ground and the player metres away from where it was paid got to pelt off - about 25% further than you're allowed to run without bouncing - and punt it inside 50. There it rolled into the behind post, preserving our one point lead.

We'd probably have sealed it if the ball didn't take a comedy bounce with Bannan running onto it inside 50, but instead it went down the Vandross End and they got a goal to make things difficult again. The challenge of kicking a goal against non-dreck opposition went up when Harris departed after a heavy collision, and you'd like to think if either she or Gall had been out there we may have got better value from the last two minutes of optimistic long kicks straight to Freo defenders. 

Sadly it was not to be, and we ran out of time. If the Pakistani cricket team did it you'd call for an enquiry, but we'll just put it down as not travelling well and hope for better next time. 

2025 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Tyla Hanks
4 - Lauren Pearce
3 - Sinead Goldrick
2 - Eliza McNamara
1 - Ryleigh Wotherspoon

Apologies to Chaplin, Fitzsimon, Hore and Paxman. 

Leaderboard
Assuming there are 25 votes still available (three scheduled games and a minimum of two finals), it's cactus for anyone more than that far from the lead. Now that Hanks holds a lead of +1 BOG she'll be hard to shift from here. But if anyone can do that it'll be Hore, despite long-term evidence of underappreciation in this award. In minor categories news, congratulations to Pearce for staking a claim on the ruck award. 

30 - Tyla Hanks
23 - Kate Hore
21 - Maeve Chaplin (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Defender of the Year)
16 - Tayla Harris
12 - Eliza McNamara
6 - Olivia Purcell, Eden Zanker
5 - Megan Fitzsimon, Paxy Paxman
--- Abandon all hope below here ---
4 - Lauren Pearce (LEADER: Ruck of the Year)
3 - Sinead Goldrick, Shelley Heath
1 - Saraid Taylor (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Ryleigh Wotherspoon

Goal of the Week
None of them memorable, so you know Hore vs Collingwood is still the clubhouse leader. Writing this bit the next morning (and depending on how long it takes to do the rest of this post that will give an insight to what order things are done in) I had to go back and check who kicked them and how. On the occasion of her first career vote, let's go for Wotherspoon due to the quality of the mark which preceded it.

Next Week
It's 9th placed Sydney, as we finally complete the set of playing all 17 opposition teams. On current interstate form, if it wasn't at Casey I'd be worried about a fiasco. For the endless shit I pour on our home ground, at least we win there much more often than not. Here's to ending next weekend completely overinflated about our flag prospects based on beating an average team. I assume Gall will be out, and probably Harris too, which will require some rethink about the forward line but this may not be a bad thing because there's no way one of the (literally) big four isn't getting cashed in for shitloads of picks and/or players at the end of the season. 

And if Gall and/or Harris are out, any danger of just playing Pisano no matter what? She hasn't done much yet, but is a high draft pick and isn't going to develop kicking the ball around at training. There are players elsewhere on the ground getting games due to lack of other options, I feel bad for her being regularly shelved because we've got 500 forwards. The question of "but who are you going to drop?" has been answered for the next couple of weeks at least, time to invest in her future and related cliches.

In other news, I'm just about cooked for writing about Australian Rules football in 2025, so if you're amongst the handful of people who read this far and want to have a crack at immortality by doing a guest report get in touch via email, socials, or by knocking on the front door. Usually I'd say your votes could be decisive in deciding where the Daisy goes, but at this stage the best you can do is keeping the race alive.

Final thoughts
Even with the injury excuses and travel considerations, this was crap performance against a fringe side but like the Port game it need not be fatal to the rest of the season. Still, I wouldn't be whacking your next house payment down on us winning any final, let alone the flag. But, in a generally predictable competition we represent the 'this could go anywhere' party so keep calm and hope that this turns out to be the loss we had to have, before eventually romping through the finals in swashbuckling fashion.

One piece at a time

In a week where our men's team tried to shed as many premiership players as possible, the job of temporarily calming things down fell to the section of the club that pioneered the old flag 'n turf. There was a time early in the 2024 season when Birch, Gay, Sherriff and West were gone, half the list was broken, and things looked extremely ropey. Adjusting for a lot of cardboard cutout style opposition so far this season, things seem to have turned out ok. Which is something to consider when you're about to drink furniture polish around June next year.

For all the excuses about a 'see attached pages' injury list, the lowest point of that season was when Essendon tore us to shreds. It says something for how well we've done in practically every other game played in competition history that despite being our all-time biggest loss and lowest score, we've done a lot worse to many opposition sides. Clawing back to the edge of the finals after that was impressive, and in just over a year we're back to where we were against the Bombers before that fiasco. Melbourne is the good team, Essendon is the mid-tablish side we should beat without it being detrimental to the league's reputation. 

On the occasion of randomly playing a home game at a decent venue in whatever level of prime time you get on 7Mate immediately after a show with somebody called 'Chumlee', it would've been good for football if we'd been dragged into a high quality thriller. So apologies to the AFL and Channel 7 for all but winning the game with three quick first quarter goals, then holding the opposition at bay until most neutral viewers had gone to bed or opened their third slab. Personally, I'd have been happy to win by 87 again, but never let it be said that I'm not thinking about the health of this competition.

Improvements to the viewing experience from not playing in a public park were offset by the putrid Essendon clash jumpers, with a sash randomly ending near the top instead of looping around. It was a fashion crime on the same scale as that silver shit our men used to wear in away games back when we struggled to pay the electricity bill.

Despite what happened last time, it briefly looked like another five star thumping was on the cards when we went three goals up in the blink of an eye. The most fascinating thing about us this year is how the forwards are rotating the goals between them, this week it was the turn of Harris x2 and Gall, while Zanker, Bannan, and for once Hore went home empty handed. I don't want to lose any of these players but something has to give at the end of the year, because it's an absurdly top heavy attack that will surely (hopefully not) come back to haunt us in the end. 

All this and you've got Campbell out of the team when she's the medium (?) term replacement for Pearce. Love for the club and all, but at least one of them has to decide they don't want to be second or third banana at the end of the year. I'll be sad when they go, but bring on the top draft picks from teams desperate to get off the bottom of the ladder. I'm sure if Daisy coached a Victorian club she'd have talked a few of the stars out by now, so thank god she's in charge of the geographically equal least appealing club in the competition.   

The answer of 'how many more people can you get to attend by playing in a stadium' was only about a thousand, and I don't know if makes it more financially rewarding to battle bullshit wind at 1pm in Cranbourne but every extra person also added a percentage point of how much more professional it looked. There was also a Taylor Swift album promotion featuring two Las Vegas showgirl characters standing behind Tom McDonald, which you'd never have seen at Casey.

Best wishes to Ms. Swift in making a billion dollars, but the only Tayl* I'm interested in following ends in 'a Harris'. By now the ad with the eye jumper has surely been seen more times than the video for Shake It Off. Speaking of things my kid likes, I was baffled that she suddenly wanted to watch this game instead of muppets talking shite on TikTok. In absolute 100%, no DNA tests required proof that this is my offspring it turns out she was trying to pay off a gag that involved the numbers six and seven standing next to each other. There were a couple of post-goal moments early on when Bannan and Harris just needed to turn their back to camera and all would be revealed, but sadly by the time it actually happened child had lost interest and gone off to do cyberbully somebody/whatever else 11-year-olds do on the internet. 

Forget whatever's funny about 6 meeting 7, I'm only into MFC related gimmicks. Like how we always facilitate great moments for random players. In this case it meant conceding the first career goal to a former New Zealand rugby international. To be fair it was via a thumping set shot, so as we seem to have given up on Ireland maybe this could be the next frontier in recruitment. The players may also be sturdier and not break down all the time.

That goal may have been the trigger for Essendon to invoke the spirit of '24 and storm back into the game. But it wasn't. The next three quarters was basically just them thumping the ball forward hoping for the best and seeing it turned back immediately (usually by 'All Australian Or We Riot' Maeve Chaplin), while holding up well enough to stop us romping away with it.

Other than winning, the best part of the night was commentators going rogue and hanging shit on the new holding the ball rule. At least until realising they might get rotated off the coverage if anyone from the AFL was watching and throwing in disclaimers about how we have to get used to it etc... There was also a halftime interview with Gawn where I'm pretty sure they'd been told not to ask any difficult questions about his teammates disappearing like South American political dissidents in the 1970s.

Though we'd only conceded one goal in a half again, the door was ever so slightly ajar considering the better standard of opposition. Then we kicked the only goal for a quarter and a half, the game was won a mile out, and as the commentators couldn't make spicy comments about rule interpretations anymore but didn't have the BT style buffoon rating to fill time by talking crap, it all went a bit going through the motions. So with nothing else to say, as she kicked our only goal of the second half I'd like to announce that Megan Fitzsimon has officially achieved Neville Jetta status as somebody who is so underrated that they've become rated. She is having her career best season by some distance, and has years left for further development. Which is nice.  

All that was left to do was run out the game, and for a return to our early season policy of players mysteriously carking it. The Rent-A-Player rewards card has been packed away for now, but best keep the Medicare one hand with this side because something unusual is always just around the corner. Just weeks after Heath had to depart a game with Super Heart Rate, Goldrick departed midway through the final term with illness. Essendon got their second goal not long after, making the margin 19 with nine minutes left, and while a comeback was unlikely there was more chance than the 0.0% when we got that far in front against either Coast but more chance than the 0.0% percent when we were that far in front against either Coast.

More concerning was the sight of Heath regaining the strange injuries title when seeing lying down with legs elevated on a seat, hooking into the green whistle. Turns out she was just coping with a dislocated finger and there's no long term issues. Digit injuries give me the ick so I can sympathise with her, if mine ever go out of place I'd need the whistle, Lifeline, and a near-fatal dose of heroin. 

The incident also offered a perfect 'over it' picture for future use, so not all bad news eh Shelley? He says forgetting she used to be a taekwondo champion and may kick my head in.

At two players down and with the game long won, we reintroduced the "that'll do" spirit of the West Coast game and let them kick another goal. That cut the margin to 13 with a couple of minutes left, and talk about your handy point because I'd have been packing it at the prospect of being mown down in another epic comeback. I bet Maeve Chaplin wouldn't have let the Docklands Disaster happen, and there was to be no such fiasco here. The ball spent enough time at our end to run the clock down and all was well. 

Bit of a change from last week to be semi-falling over the line instead of booting an opposition to death, but you can't play flotsam and jetsam every week. Put it down as a good, honest, important win and cross your undislocated fingers that we got something out of it for the important end of the season.

With four games left we're three wins and a couple of hundred percentage points ahead of 9th, so you can lock away a return to the finals. As we know North will finish top unless DQed for salary cap violations or witchcraft, so it's just a matter of landing second or third and avoiding playing them in the first final. If I was paid to be peppy and positive I'd say bring it on, let's embrace the challenge of trying to KO the big hitters as soon as possible but no thank you, we've lost six consecutive finals across the genders so while nothing's guaranteed I'm happy to embrace the less treacherous side of the draw if possible. 

2025 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Maeve Chaplin
4 - Tayla Harris
3 - Kate Hore
2 - Megan Fitzsimon
1 - Eliza McNamara

Apologies to Gall, Hanks, Heath, Paxman and Pearce

Leaderboard
Suddenly, a new contender emerges, just weeks after I said there was no chance of anyone other than Hanks or Hore winning. Now, watch them both poll solid numbers in the league B&F while Chaplin gets nil. If nothing else, she'll romp the Defender of the Year award here. Still, it's on like the proverbial in this one. Even Harris is within striking range of making it interesting.

25 - Tyla Hanks
23 - Kate Hore
21 - Maeve Chaplin (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Defender of the Year)
16 - Tayla Harris
10 - Eliza McNamara
6 - Olivia Purcell, Eden Zanker
5 - Megan Fitzsimon, Paxy Paxman
3 - Shelley Heath
1 - Saraid Taylor (LEADER: Rising Star Award)

Goal of the Week
The Wotherspoon one was enjoyable, but Hore from the Pie pocket remains your clubhouse leader.

Next Week
First leg of our (hopefully) gentle ride into finals is a return to Fremantle Oval, scene of last year's after the siren disaster. They lost to North by 100 at the same venue earlier this season and sit 13th but are still a chance of sneaking into the eight due to the ludicrously top-heavy nature of the competition. So after we did all our best scoring work in about eight minutes this week I'm not taking anything for granted. Can win, should win, but after Richmond pulled off the one massive upset of the season I need to see hard evidence that this is going well before getting excited.

Final thoughts
More of the same please, and I hope Charlie Spargo takes up all North's AFLW parking spots.

Black Hole Suns

For all the piss taken out of the AFL's scheduling, I wouldn't want to be the person trying to make a 12 round, 18 team competition fair. Still, now that we've walloped the Suns in near record fashion you've got to feel sorry for them having to play last year's 4th, 9th, 3rd and 2nd teams in a row after finishing 17th, while we stormed back from the dead to nearly make finals and only have to play four sides who finished higher all year. It makes it hard to take this any more seriously as a finals trial than our last pulverisation of a team called Something Coast. 

The next five weeks will give a better idea of whether we're legitimate flag contenders, but this was such a ridiculous mismatch that Walt Disney came back from the grave to give it official Mickey Mouse status. I'm happy to keep thumping lowly sides and hoping for the best against the rest, but in a competition where North has won 20-something games in a row, and it took a Black Death injury crisis to briefly bring us back to the field after eight years near the top, the AFL is negligent for allowing such a massive gap between best and worst. After a decade you can't have teams kicking 13 goals to nil, and while every team has a handful of promising prospects it doesn't do the league any favours to have already paper-thin lists filled with players who are just holding a spot for five years until development catches up. 

Can't blame the league for Gold Coast going from finals in 2023 to a percentage of 40.2 in two and a half seasons, but what good does a walkover like this do for anyone? Except if you like watching teams called Melbourne win by shitloads. That I do, but even I felt a little bad by the end of this when the Suns were losing players to injury at a quicker rate than World War II. I thought how I'd struggle to watch every week if we were that uncompetitive, but at the same time was fanging for one more goal when we were within a kick of our record win.

The 2022 (Summer) Fremantle Dockers remain the worst team we've ever played, but at least they kicked multiple goals despite losing three players to COVID (remember that?) an hour before the bounce. They had a trio of first gamers, one who they literally had to ring on the day and say "do you fancy a game?", but while Gold Coast 2025 had to deal with in-game injuries and wind they were still close to bringing the game into disrepute. But if you're going to be involved in a LOTS vs NOT MUCH scoreline, it's better to be on the positive side.

In the interest of competitive balance, it was nice that the opposition got to kick with the famous Casey Fields wind this time. Then Fitzsimon bounced one through an open square about 20 seconds in, achieving what turned out to be Gold Coast's entire four quarter score. Then their ruck fell over at the centre bounce, the ball was immediately inside our 50 again, and the PA system was heard paging a Mr.  Michael Mouse. At that moment I thought we were going to win this by 200, but the Suns survived and went on to their best five minutes of the match. Which is like saying you had a best five minutes of going to the electric chair, but it was something.

Even if the Suns had converted either of their early sitters I like to think we'd have found a way to win comfortably, but they were (in a word surely never used on here before and probably not even properly in this context) profligate with their chances and paid a savage penalty. The first miss was by somebody called Havana Harris, which is appropriately the most Gold Coast name of all time. She was quite good despite teammates capsizing like a stricken oil tanker, and may have added some much needed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vibes to the event if it wasn't being played at 1pm in Cranbourne.

This was followed by an even better chance, as someone with a much less exciting name absolutely butchered a chance after turning around to find nobody between her and the goal, then slicing it through for a point at near-right angles. Waste not want not etc... because this turned into the first and last 'against the run of play' goal for the day. I'm pleased to announce that it involved crumb, which has been the only missing element in our otherwise shit hot but potentially downhill skiing attack so far this season.

Standing (sort of) in our way were a plethora of former Demons, headlined by the returning Lily Mithen but also featuring 'enthusiast only' ex-players Charlotte Wilson (eight games), Claudia Whitfort (four), and Maddy Brancatisano, who was drafted from the nearest club to Demonblog Towers in 2018, probably said "fuck off" at the idea of regularly driving to Casey for training and got delisted after one season. 

Considering how many of our players have gone to other clubs, not many of the exes have come back to haunt us (in fact, other than Eliza West for Hawthorn last year has it ever happened?) and this was no exception. I felt bad for Whitfort because she missed a shot, then went off hurt almost immediately after so the conditions for the injury might not have existed if the game was restarted after a goal. But that's enough deep philosophy, let's get back to footy cliches - because missed chances came back to haunt the Suns when Wotherspoon's snap gave us a decent buffer while kicking to the alleged non-scoring end.

While the scoreline implies industrial scale of slaughter, the Suns had been ok after those disastrous centre early bounces and were having a few wins at stoppages, it's just that they converted chances like players from the 1860s. Like Mithen sticking a bullet pass straight onto the chest of a leading forward, only for the ball to be comically split in the style of a waiter in a sitcom dropping a tray of drinks.

After the first two disastrous centre bounces, they'd been pretty good around the stoppages and we had to survive another quick forward entry, ultimately ending with Mithen sticking a bullet pass onto a leading forward, who comically spilt it like a waiter in a sitcom dropping a tray of drinks. It left us three goals to nil up at quarter time, and there's never been a smaller margin that I've been 100% convinced of winning from. AFL (M) readers will know that the Chris Sullivan Line has been disbanded due to some late-season unpleasantness at Docklands, but even after keeping the opposition to 0.0 and losing multiple times over the years, the Suns would've needed a surprise outbreak of Montezuma's Revenge in our huddle to get within a kick.

Any concerns about a false flag wind was dismissed when we kicked another three goals to nil in the second quarter. It helped that our representative of the extended Harris family got a free and goal for a suspect push in the back, but even if questionable umpiring got us six points here, it wasn't at fault for the Suns scoring six points in total. The party atmosphere continued when Gall offered the Suns a demonstration on what to do when you've got the ball with nobody between you and the right of screen goal. 

A pummelling was back on the cards, but if the Suns did want to issue a Chris Scott "I hope this doesn't come across as sour grapes but..." style whinge about umpiring I'd have some sympathy after we got away with three blatant holding ball/dropping ball/incorrectly disposing of ball frees in front of their goal, then conceding one at our end. We did the fair and moral thing by missing, but that wasn't much help to opposition that was still 0.4 approaching half time. And they didn't even double that for the rest of the game.

The Suns did have a set shot that looked like going through before the wind killed it dead at the last minute, causing the ball to drop like a bowling ball thrown from a scaffold into the arms of surprise defensive option Tayla Harris. Who knows why she was there, but who else would you rather kicking out of defence into a strong wind (which is probably why she was there now that I think of it), and the thumping clearance led to Bannan running an opponent into the ground in the forward pocket before kicking the sixth. 

By now, I'd have offered to put my head in a guillotine with the blade set to drop if the Suns matched our score, let alone won. To demonstrate how much work there is to be done, our very good friends at LiveLadders were showing that even after playing .5 games more than North, we'd still need to kick another 151 points to overhaul their percentage. I had places to be and no time for delayed viewing, so followed the third quarter via the obscure (and possibly illegal) method of listening to the commentary on my phone while driving. Please note, if you're some sort of Highway Patrol rozzer I couldn't see the screen so technically wasn't using the phone. And if all else fails I'll be launching a Dezi Catman-style 'sovereign citizen' defence.

Last time I did this we made such a hash of the last quarter against Collingwood that I had to pull over and watch the last few minutes in a generic suburban street, this time we got another early goal into the wind, Gold Coast didn't get another goal with the wind, and a bunch of shots were missed. If you have additional insights from this quarter please send to the usual address, but I suspect if we all just get on with our lives and forget it happened society will remain intact.

By the start of the last quarter this may have been the first ever game where more people were watching in the ground than on TV. I was back in position to watch live, and was thinking about how much I'd (relatively) crack the shits if we did a repeat of last week and let the thrashees kick a few token goals. The interview as Mick Stinear came off the ground revealed that he'd mentioned this to the players, which was ordinary news for Gold Coast as they spent the next 25 minutes falling to bits both spiritually and physically.

Not since those Lockett/Dunstall etc... state sides has a team had too many potential goalkickers for the number of goals available in the game, so you never know who's going to cash-in, and who'll go home empty handed. After five in a half last week, it was Zanker's turn to stand back and let the others do the job as she finished with zero of our 93 points. Never mind, there's always Harris for a second, and after three behinds Hore cropped up for two in a minute and the margin was starting to get perverse. 

Then we entered the 'reward for effort' portion of the afternoon where Hanks and McNamara each got one, and on the occasion of Bannan's second our score had gone past the Casey Fields record set all of five weeks against St Kilda, and the margin was beyond the 79-1 dismemberment of West Coast in 2022. If there was any room for traditional Melbourne thinking at this stage it would have been the perfect time for the Suns to get a goal in cheap and nasty fashion via a 50 or a lucky bounce. 

Instead, their already shit day got even worse as two more players went down to injury, and as bad as I felt about them losing players while already vigorously pushing shit uphill, I'd have loved to get the record margin. Alas, Wotherspoon's dual attempts to catch in on party time missed and fell one point short, having to 'settle' for 'just' an 87 point win. Which was nice, but you can guarantee the next time we lose a game I'll be going full Geelong fan, forgetting the years of armchair ride this team has given me as a fan and having a sook. Until then, live the dream of having a percentage just short of 300 after seven games. I'd like to say you'll never see anything like this again, but that woudl require faith in the competition being evened up anytime soon.

2025 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Tyla Hanks
4 - Maeve Chaplin
3 - Eliza McNamara
2 - Megan Fitzsimon
1 - Kate Hore

Apologies to Gillard, Harris, Paxman, Pearce, Rigoni and Wotherspoon

Leaderboard
There are five games left in what it would be sarcastic to call the 'home and away' season, and we'll assume at least one final so technically this is still anyone's award to win outright but Hanks opens a handy lead at the top in the quest for a third title.

25 - Tyla Hanks
20 - Kate Hore
16 - Maeve Chaplin (LEADER: Defender of the Year)
12 - Tayla Harris
9 - Eliza McNamara
6 - Olivia Purcell, Eden Zanker
5 - Paxy Paxman
3 - Megan Fitzsimon, Shelley Heath
1 - Saraid Taylor (LEADER: Rising Star Award)

Goal of the Week
Plenty of decent contenders, but because I want more crumb it would be rude to go beyond Pisano. Hore from the pocket vs Collingwood retains the lead.

Next Week
It's our first chance to redeem that DEBACLE of a performance against Essendon last year, and thank god sanity has prevailed and it's being played at Princes Park. Why do we have to wait for the men's season to end before playing the game of the round there? And if we take it as Richmond's home ground this season, why is it the only neutral game for the year at the best available stadium? Hopefully it draws more than the 1500-2000 we've been getting to Casey this year and makes clear that playing games at decent locations around the Melbourne CBD is a good idea. Ironically, after endlessly whinging about how they should do this I can't go. It's still a good idea, so get amongst it.

Unlike the previous meeting, our injury list is not 'see attached pages', and Essendon has reverted to mid-table mediocrity but I'm still not counting chickens pre-hatch. We're coming off two all-time classic glorified training runs, and they did kick the first three goals against North Melbourne last week before normal service resumed. I know (famous last words) that it won't be as bad as last time, and would like to win so the legacy of outscoring the opposition 167-29 over the last two weeks isn't tainted by falling over at the first sign of a competent team like the Port game.

Final thoughts
For the good of the competition I'm prepared to compromise. Instead of winning 93-6, next time we'll make things look a bit more respectable and do it 117-30. 

Driving Off Miss Daisy

* Headline presented for novelty purposes only, we encourage Daisy to return to Melbourne as coach eventually.

After publishing last week's post, I felt bad about getting frustrated at the giant gulf between the top and bottom AFLW players. It's true that over-expansion created a ridiculous gap between the league's best and worst players, but after 9.5 years of loyal league patronage it felt like the sporting equivalent of saying you don't like the people marching for [insert your least favourite political cause here], but "they have some good points". Obviously, I'm pro-W, I just think there's about 100 players who'd be better served playing in a second division competition than on national television. Also, fair chance I was just sour after an unexpected loss. 

The moral ledger was corrected this week when I went to some of the most extreme lengths to avoid spoilers in AFLW history. I was always going to be watching on delay due to family commitments, so thought there was no point rushing home and I might as well go full Fat Parent and take the kids for a Maccas on the way home. And of all the things they could be showing on the TV with the sound up, you can guess what was on.

Given that the result was never in doubt, would it have really hurt to know the score at what I think was just before three quarter time? Well, a little bit yes because I'd probably have gone home rubbing my hands together in glee about kicking six goals to nil in the last quarter and winning by a hundred only to see us go into "that'll do" mode and let the Eagles kick several token goals. As I somehow managed to lock eyes on the screen without taking in the score, the poor baffled children were reversed out the door and forced to eat chicken nuggets in the car via the drive-through. Fairly shit parenting, but score blackout integrity is important.

I could've guessed that the score at that point of the game was going to be Melbourne LOTS, West Coast MUCH LESS, because that's happened every time we've ever played them. After a break last season when we probably couldn't take advantage anyway, this was a return to the series of games now stretched over seven seasons where we'd previous won by 59-79 points and restricted them to three goals in twelve quarters. It says something when this became their best ever performance against us after no goals for three quarters, and letting Eden Zanker put frighteners into the estate of Fred Fanning before half time.

Like all the dud sides in the competition, they'll be good eventually and all we'll have is the memory of the walkovers. Fortunately, we've now got four of them to consider. The last quarter wasn't as violent as it might've been, but it would be rude to complain considering the level of domination before that. This is one competition where you can honestly say the Eagles are a better side than ever, and we wish Daisy as well as you can anyone associated with such a born to rule operation, but it was still going to take a major reversal of fortune and/or disaster to beat us.

With the Eagles already up against it, the interests of competitive balance were not served by us kicking with a four goal wind in the first quarter. Obviously, both sides would get their chance to use it etc.. etc.. etc.. but the last thing they needed after playing Darryl Cullinan to Shane Warne in our previous meetings was to be chasing down a big lead. 

For once, the wind was blowing practically straight down one end instead of east, west, north, and south at random times, and the chance of the visitors kicking a competitive score was made more difficult by the return of Australia's all-time #1 most popular Gillard to our backline. So when we kicked three goals in the opening minutes it was thanks heaps to the opposition for travelling across the country and then taking the more arduous journey to Cranbourne, but they were designated as cannon fodder. I can't argue their commitment, and keeping us down to four goals despite the breeze was a reasonable achievement but you could fit Argentina through the gaps they left for the goals to Zanker x2 and Harris, so it didn't bode well for keeping scores respectable.

At least they could look forward to a bit of wind-assisted attack in the second quarter, and though I doubted they had it in them to take full advantage there was a mark at the top of the 50 from the first bounce. That only turned into a point, before they got a reminder how futile their task was when we went down the other end and a Hanks snap that was never going to make the distance bounced over a defender and into Zanker's hands for a third. Then, after a West Coast player randomly kicked backwards from the next bounce Paxy stuffed the ball down Zanker's throat for four, and Daisy was in danger of becoming surely the first coach in history to preside over the loss of their own club record for most goals in a game.

When Zanker's fifth goal went in halfway through the quarter, the record she jointly held with Pearce, Bannan and Hore looked like being demolished by half time. Especially with the use of the wind in the third quarter, and the way she beat multiple defenders to pull down an up the chimney snap by Bannan on the line when they had every chance to punch it through. It's a miracle and/or credit to the fighting spirit of the opposition that she only had one more decent chance for the rest of the game.

Those of you who watched live would have been aware long before me that we'd already done our best work, but unlike last week there was something to be said for having so many talls. They could switch their entire backline onto Zanker and it would just open the door for Bannan, Gall, Harris etc.. to run riot. The record nearly went before the break, but as Zanker's shot fell short, Channel 7's effects mic started picking up random conversations of fans on the boundary line. We must be close to a repeat of that time the live feed of the draft caught a kid saying they'd shit themself. Based on things heard later in the game these voices may have been coming from the West Coast bench, which makes the "oh no" even funnier.

Due to watching on a savage delay, there was no time for the quarter break festivities. These appeared to be a non-stop tribute to Daisy Pearce. Fair enough as far as I'm concerned, the more talk about that Grand Final the better. If you ever needed proof that the AFL don't really care about this competition, it's that they didn't find a way to direct her to a coaching job in Victoria. Whether she can coach or not I have zero idea (and won't base anything on this fiasco), but how do they let the biggest name in the code waste away in the provinces when there's promotional opportunities to be had in the game's heartland. Not to mention the opportunity to retain one of the few people on Channel 7's coverage who don't make you want to put your head in the dishwasher.

The Eagles finally got a spot of luck at the start of the third quarter when a Wotherspoon shot that could easily have bounced through sat up and allowed them to escape. Except that kick didn't go far enough to a defender who refused to believe it hadn't been paid, and was pinged holding the ball. Somehow they got out of all this by only conceding points, but for all their tackling intensity and what I'll patronisingly call 'endeavour' they didn't look likely to reach their one goal a game average. 

This was more of a glorified training drill than a serious trial for playing finals, but it was another four points towards qualifying, which is better than trying to storm back from disaster last year. West Coast managed to hold us out for the first few minutes, at the expense of never looking like kicking a goal of their own. Our non-stop attack finally turned into Harris booting the shit out of a snap and the margin went beyond 50. I'm surprised Lower Plenty McDonalds still had it on at this point and hadn't switched to ads for Fillet O'Fish. 

On a day where our best players had the opportunity to fill their boots, it was pleasing that for once Hore and Hanks were just guests at the party rather than the driving forces. Still, Hore nicked out the back for a second goal, and when Pisano got one too we were half a chance of a record score. Sadly (for us), the wrong half. 

There was still a wind to kick into in the last quarter, but as it didn't make much of a difference the first time you could see it getting ugly. Especially when into-the-breeze specialist Zanker marked directly in front, but despite huge post-mark celebrations by Bannan (showing full team spirit considering her part of the record was potentially about to disappear), but she pushed it wide and never went close again. From here it was - against the odds - all West Coast. They finally got a goal, and just to prove that we can be charitable even while winning in a canter, it went to somebody who had previously kicked one in 30-something games.

This kicked off a bit of junktime, which led to West Coast's second goal via a free kick that would never be paid if the result was doubt. The season is a marathon (well, a lengthy fun run) not a sprint etc... so I won't hold it against them for not going full pelt to the final siren. Other than seeing if Zanker could kick six, I was most interested in the people chatting on the boundary line, including the guy angrily telling somebody (or perhaps a dog) to "get off" something. That's all the publicity the league needs in Grand Final week, footage of a canine vigorously humping someone's leg on the boundary line. 

Sadly there was to be no record-breaking goal, but we did our bit for the credibility of the competition by letting the Eagles kick as many goals for the quarter as their previous 15 against us. Bit of a flat finish, but it's a fifth win out of six in a 12 game season, and I'm not suggesting we're going to win anything this year but the opposition ahead for the rest of the season is flat enough that I'm sure we're going to get a shot in finals, hopefully relatively injury free, and here's hoping to catch the otherwise unassailable North on a bad day. 

2025 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Eden Zanker
4 - Eliza McNamara
3 - Maeve Chaplin
2 - Tayla Harris
1 - Tyla Hanks

Apologies to Fitzsimon, Hore, Gillard and Taylor

Leaderboard
A week after declaring the rest of the list NO CHANCE of catching the leaders, Chaplin and Harris chip slightly into the gap and keep it interesting. Hanks narrowly pinches the lead, and in this shortened season of 12 games + surely to god at least one final, we're not far away from shutting the gate on anyone who hasn't scored yet. No change in the minor awards, but we're not far away from Chaplin being declared provisional DOTY winner. 

20 - Tyla Hanks
19 - Kate Hore
12 - Maeve Chaplin (LEADER: Defender of the Year), Tayla Harris
6 - Eliza McNamara, Olivia Purcell
5 - Paxy Paxman, Eden Zanker
3 - Shelley Heath
1 - Megan Fitzsimon, Saraid Taylor (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Eden Zanker

Goal of the Week
No offence to any of the Zanker Five, but I love when somebody kicks a snap like it owes them money so this week's winner is T. Harris. Hore from the pocket vs Collingwood still leads.,

Next Week
We complete the Coast to Coast at Casey double with a visit from the Gold variety. As much as I usually despise any type of double header, explain how it makes any sense to be playing a public fixture on Mt. Variable Weather when Princes Park isn't being used until 5pm? Sorry to the people who live locally, but you can either have 2000 of the same people who go every week, or at least the same number of fans from around the city at a ground not generally subject to gale force winds.   

On paper, Gold is even worse than West, but I'm taking nothing for granted. To be fair, they did nearly beat Adelaide this week before dead-set evapourating in the final quarter. We should win, and hopefully after Daisy's unhappy return, it's Lily Mithen's turn to get flashbacks to past thumping wins at Casey.  

Final thoughts
Don't know if this did anything for the league's credibility, but it was more fun than losing.

Gravity catches up

It took five weeks of the season, but we've finally got some sort of answer to "what happens against decent sides?" If our inaugural game against Port is anything to go by, we'll have a fair crack and look good for parts of the game, but find out that you can't play [unfurl long list of shite teams] every week. I doubt Port will go anywhere near the flag (and aren't we all just playing to be in the right place at the right time if North stack it) but they had us covered here more comfortably than the margin would suggest.

I've got some sympathy with Port as a club due to the Choke Yourself With A Tie incident in 2004, but can't take the nuffies who express themselves via middle finger and community singing. It helps that I've still never met a genuine Port Adelaide fan since 1996. It made sense to do the scarves aloft power balladry for a game at their spiritual home, but it did come off a bit sad compared to a (relatively) full stadium doing it. 

Their cheersquad also had a self-promoting banner that included adjectives about what they offer to the supporting experience, which is the supporter version of having to explain a joke. Who am I to try and analyse what's going on in that part of the world. All I know is that they went home on the winning side, and I don't know whether it's full "back to the drawing board" stuff with us considering how limited the range of options are, but it's confirmation as far as I'm concerned that we could make finals, but are STUFF ALL chance of a flag unless North go into recess mid-season.

The camera angle at the centre bounce was another South Australian innovation, with the diagonal angle their most novel contribution to footy since calculating percentage in an offbeat way. The non-traditional viewing continued once play started. All non-centre camera shots came from the usual side-on viewpoint, but we were being put under an uncharacteristic level of pressure. I don't think we've struggled to move the ball like this since last year's Windy Hill Massacre. Port put the brakes on our ball movement, causing mass panic to break out.

We survived two early behinds before concededing after what looked suspiciously like one of those throws where the other hand is held close enough to the ball that the umpire fools themselves into believing it was real. Non-stop whinging about umpires having to make interpretations is what's going to land us with this nonsense last touch rule in the men's competition, and the way holding/dropping/disposing of the ball is umpired in AFLW they may as well cut out the middle person and introduce the old VFA throw pass.

I may be against the last touch rule (partially because of the stupid pantomime motion the boundary umpires have to do), but it did set up our first chance. In a sign of things to come, Zanker missed what I would deem - as an unfit, middle-aged man with knees you'd shoot a racehorse for - an easy shot. You already got the idea that this wasn't going to be a classic by the time we'd struggled to match their two behinds.

Other than the Zanker miss we hadn't looked remotely dangerous going forward, and I thought there was going to be dual umpiring chaos when the Port forward turned/ducked into a ripper of a tackle from Heath, but sanity prevailed and it was called holding the ball. Bannan nearly nicked one during some sustained pressure at the end but missed her snap from the square.

They got the only goal of the quarter, while we'd kicked the least scary 0.4 of all time. The ludicrous idea of "if they'd kicked 4.0 instead they'd be miles in front" has been discussed before, and you never know what one goal will lead to, but we just looked inept forward. Strangely, Gall nearly got her career high disposals in the first quarter while playing into a reasonable wind, before proceeding to go without a touch once we were kicking with the breeze.

This was all ok if we took advantage of the wind. Which we didn't, and the second quarter was more missed shots until it got to the same 0.6 I was ruthlessly extracting the piss out of Richmond for last week. We did get a goal, but the best bit was Harris taking personal offence to a smothered kick and BURYING her opponent after they picked up the ball. That was about it for highlights, and by the time Port got their third goal we were on the verge of folding before half time for the first time since the original Great Injury Crisis last year. 

We stayed alive from the next bounce when Harris landed a lovely kick on Wotherspoon, who handballed to a passing Hore for the much-needed goal - and as it turns out our only one for the half. Sure we nearly came back to win this, but it was still as convincing as a get well card from the Tobin Brothers. The margin got to 17 points in the third quarter before, having failed to create goals via all the usual methods, we had to wait for Hore to get clubbed in the head by a tackle for a second goal. 

Under normal circumstances you'd say at least we were coming home with the wind, but it didn't do us much bloody good the first time. I may have been more confident if we'd got one goal closer by three quarter time then hope the opposition died in the arse due to furious pressure, but we blew multiple chances with forward entries that failed to recognise that the best thing about our attack is their marking. Individually, I think all our forwards are great, but there's no doubt the forward line is too tall - especially when they have to send Pearce and/or Campbell down there as well. Not a lot we can do about this now, but for god's sake please scour the lands for a crumber in the off-season.

Any hope of The Great Escape in the last quarter started with shoelace headband enthusiast Wotherspoon, then seemingly ended when we conceded about a minute later. But all was not lost, Harris kicked a ripper of a set shot from distance to make it 10 points with nine minutes left. This was hardly insurmountable, but required two goals without answer after making the previous four look more complicated than the space program.

By now Port were holding on, lucky to be playing against a forward line converting chances at sarcastic 'much vaunted' levels. Our last hope was a free to Hore on an obscure angle, and she kicked a ripper to bring the margin under a goal with 90 seconds. After assuming we'd lose for about 2.5 quarters, it was carn the reverse mozz as we threatened a daylight robbery style pinch. And cripes, it almost happened, as we went forward again but Fitzsimon's poked kick at an open goal missed. If Port had any hospitality they'd have stuffed the kick-in straight down the throat of one of our players 20 metres out directly in front, but disappointingly they prioritised winning and survived until the final siren. 

Is this the first time we've lost our inaugural game against a side since kicking ourselves to death againt St Kilda in their first year? On to the next one I suppose, where hopefully both Melbourne AFLW and I find more inspiration.

2025 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Kate Hore
--- The distance you'd get by lining up every human to have lived since the dawn of time ---
4 - Tayla Harris
3 - Tyla Hanks
2 - Maeve Chaplin
1 - Eden Zanker

Apologies to Gall, Heath, Paxman, Taylor and Zanker

Leaderboard
There's as much chance of somebody outside the top two winning this as there is of world peace breaking out by lunchtime Thursday, so strap yourself in for an epic Clash of the Titans from here. 

19 - Tyla Hanks, Kate Hore
10 - Tayla Harris
9 - Maeve Chaplin (LEADER: Defender of the Year)
6 - Olivia Purcell
5 - Paxy Paxman
3 - Shelley Heath
2 - Eliza McNamara
1 - Megan Fitzsimon, Saraid Taylor (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Eden Zanker

Goal of the Week
It's obviously the Hore set shot, why wouldn't it be? Does not topple her own clubhouse leader from the Collingwood game.

Next Week
It's the day you've been waiting for, Daisy Pearce Medal Contenders vs Daisy Pearce Coached Team. We've treated the Eagles like roadkill, never losing by less than 59 points and holding them to three goals total across three games, but while they're clearly improving we should still start red hot favourites. There's even good news on the injury front, with Gillard and Goldrick both a chance to return. Cancel your Rent-A-Player annual subscription. He says before 14 players get hurt in the first quarter.

Final thoughts
In the spirit of openness and honesty for the three people who read this far, I'm getting a bit frustrated watching this league due to the enormous gap between best and worst players. Obviously it's on the way to being more balanced thanks to increased pathways etc... etc... but 10 seasons in teams are fielding players who may have looked perfectly reasonable in the early days, but now look like they won a competition to be out there. I swear this has nothing to do with us losing for the first time all year.

Off off off Broadway hit

It's been another week of seismic shocks and surprises in the football world, but none bigger than the Melbourne W injury list shrinking. Surely this unprecedented turn of events involved a few near misses and burst organ scares at training, because this season playing for us has had a lower survival rate than the Eastern Front in World War II. The sick list still says [attach additional pages], but we were down to one Rent-A-Player on the bench and even had the luxury of omitting somebody.

Our slightly less cobbled together than usual lineup took care of Richmond, but while I'm usually fanatical about scheduling the AFLW season after the men's competition is over, it's probably a good thing that this game was overshadowed by finals. Pick your own combination of our diminished lineup, enthusastic but ultimately crap opposition, and/or the usual spectacle destroying Casey wind, but the life choices of any neutrals who watched from start to finish are in question. Late in the third quarter, even a tragic consumer of MFC-related games like me thought it might be better off if the captains just shook hands and agreed on a margin.

I choose to take the safe option and lay most of the blame on the venue. Lucky nobody is reading this, because I wouldn't want the club to be connected to my hatred of Casey Fields but the only good thing about this windswept, turd of a place is our winning record. One day the galaxy of stars will be gone, we'll be the ones with 0.5 at three quarter time, and everyone will be able to admit how crap the place is. But not this week, as we still had enough quality to kick eight goals via brute force forward entries, and opposition that incinerated chances at the temperature of an industrial smelter.

God only knows how many were watching, but for Melbourne fans it was a case of 'we happy few' as the usual legends ran riot. The first bounce went through the hands of Hanks and Hore, and that's pretty much all you need in a game like this. North Melbourne, Hawthorn (?), Adelaide (??) Brisbane (???) etc... will ruthlessly exploit us for reliance on stars, and Collingwood nearly got away with it last week, but you could tell pretty quickly where this game was going.

Getting the ball forward inside 50 is a piece of piss, but conversion could become a problem against non-flotsam/jetsam opposition. This one nearly landed with Zanker, which was the story of the day for most of our forward entries. The diagonal wind didn't help, and yes all outdoor grounds are subject to variable conditions etc... etc... but some of them are more affected than others, and when you're already dealing with thin playing depth stretched across 18 teams, this is just mocking the players and counterproductive to the image of the competition. Even the banner went to bits, and as only 150 more people turned up last time when there were helicopter hijinks, I'm sad that we're probably only playing there because it's cheaper than renting Princes Park.

We had what advantage there was from the wind, but it took a couple of half-chances, and just as many blatant holding/dropping the ball decisions in our favour, to finally remind Richmond that they were engaged in a futile task. Enter Bannan, to casually rip a snap around the corner for the opening goal. All the talls would subsequently get involved, and they'll get the job done against lesser teams most of the time but the lack of crumb will come back haunt us eventually. 

Shame you can't do mid-season trades, because we've got so many KPF options that one could turn into multiple players to fix potential problems around the ground. As the game went on I felt a little guilty at having all these forward riches that we couldn't fully take advantage of, while the opposition attack was  so comically bad. If you believe Nathan Burke, the AFL blocked trades that didn't benefit expansion clubs, but were obviously having a sickie when we got Harris, Purcell etc... for relatively bugger all. I know GWS aren't allowed to be controversial because they're a protectorate of the league, but I'd like their thoughts on this as a foundation club that celebrated the expansion years by losing a game 97-1.

Don't feel too bad for Richmond though, they played finals last year so technically we were the plucky underdog in this contest. Not that you'd have known watching their struggle to get anything happening here. Other than one burst down the other end, where they likely would've marked in range if the wind didn't drag the ball away from a free player, they barely went across halfway. On some days we'd have blasted through five goals before quarter time, but the door was left open for Richmond if they could get it together. Which they couldn't, but you'd have thought the same last week before Collingwood dug in and had a crack.

They did have one late chance, but it only fed us for a lightning counter-attack which should've ended in a Gall Goal after she stepped around a befuddled opponent, then missed an open goal. They held out for the rest of the quarter, and despite scoring NIL could claim to have done well kicking into the wind. Not like we haven't lost a game before after holding a side scoreless in the opening term. All's well that ended well, but it was a colossal waste of dominance. 

Which continued from 0.01 in the second quarter, when we exited the middle at top speed again but it came to nothing. We looked so much better in the middle that this is a game you could imagine us turning one goal into another via centre bounce dominance. Finally, after missing the allegedly 'easy' one at the other end Gall made amends by mastering the conditions with a set shot that hooked violently on the wind. It was a great finish, but showed how difficult it was going to be to convert in the conditions, and suggested we weren't going to win by an enormous margin unless most of the goals were walked in from the square.

Now that the game was obviously slipping away from them, Richmond came up with a new centre bounce strategy and just waited (to put it generously) for Hore to get the ball, then pounced on her. Via various detours, this led to a shot on goal. It missed, but it removed the prospect of them finishing on 0.0.

I think Fitzsimon is our most underrated player, after some obscure off-the-ball free kick her choice of a set shot into the wind seemed optimistic. However, after grabbing a couple of extra metres by playing on, she got her kick high enough to beat everyone and go through. Except apparently she didn't, because once the players were back in the middle we were reminded that there's some sort of Skynet technology in the ball to determine if it was touched or not. 

It was obvious what the result of the review was when the umpire took a call from the reviewer (who must have the easiest job in Australia, considering how few times this gimmick has been activated) and gestured for players to return left of screen for a kick-in, but to add to the confusion the first replay showed this:

... when the replay didn't matter because everyone already knew what was happening because the ball chip had already made the decision. Just as the Richmond player was just break protocol by kicking in after this alleged goal, they found the right button and this came up.

I assume the chip prompts somebody to manually review the footage, but if it works properly the 'goal' graphic shouldn't be needed, so we may have witnessed something that will never be seen again. We'll take their word for it that the ball was touched, but the super technological innovation couldn't definitively say by which player and where.

Ironically, I'm writing this bit while the first goal in the Adelaide/Brisbane game went through, and they had an overhead view telling us how much 'target width' there was on a set shot, so maybe this is the next big thing for footy viewing. I dare them to rush introduce this technology for the last three weeks of the men's finals, in the hope that it will decide a game after the siren and cause a riot that leads to the season being cancelled and no premiership award.

This stroke of luck nearly turned into a Richmond goal, as they went down the other end and got a free 30 metres out. With the use of the wind, this was a viable distance for a set shot. Except we'll never know, because another player got a rush of blood, snatched the ball off the ground, and tried to thrash it through off a step. Not the best decision they'll ever make, especially after it led to us going the other way for Hore to kick our third. I'll never trust an M lead again, but for an AFLW game this was as close as I'd ever get to betting a kidney that we'd win when just 23 points up. 

Or 29, when one of their rare promising attacks fell to bits, and a botched handball sent us the other way where Pearce was just hanging out in the square on her own. They had another shot at the end but missed the lot, and that was it for the half as the umpire wasn't stupid enough to fall for the player going to ground in a theatrical Cam Rayner style under light contact.

The only non-participant fans watching would be lovers of the game, and I'm sure they were hoping Richmond was going to find inspiration during the break and come out firing. Kate Hore said "lol, no" and kicked a goal in the first minute. It didn't have the power and fury of North beating Freo by a hundred, but was still threatening to get perverse. Richmond wasn't that bad, and we weren't that good, but they were so poor in attack that even I was starting to get frustrated. Finally, they landed a mark on a player right in front of goal. It missed, but they got a free in the pocket to make up for it. And that missed too for god's sake.

The backline was a little big more traditional this week with Colvin back, but for all of Richmond's botched attempts at goal they were still under regular pressure and held up well. Fitzsimon may be our official most underrated player, this was Saraid Taylor's best game by a mile, unlocking the coveted 'stitch up the club that sacked you' achievement. And it goes without saying that Chaplin was ace as always.

After all their struggles to introduce ball and middle posts, there was further insult to injury for the Tigers when Campbell went forward, took a mark, and kicked straight. We already had the tallest forward line in history, now the rucks had two bonus goals. There was a chance for old mate G. Train and her zany, hunched over run-in, but that went the same way as all their other shots. Not that we were piling on misery at the other end, but they were 0.5 at three quarter time and should file an official complaint to the league if any more "how grouse is the high scoring?" propaganda pieces come out of head office this week.

By now I was happy just to avoid injuries, which wasn't helped by footage of heart rate fiasco survivor Heath hobbling around with a sore ankle. Turned out to be nothing and she was back for the start of the last quarter, but I'll be expecting to find out there's been a midweek amputation. Considering our record with these things, it'll turn out that all the damage was done by coming back onto the ground in a dead rubber.

Richmond finally brought up six points, but unfortunately for them that was entirely made up of behinds. They were well beyond the solitary, sad point of the 2022 Eagles, and their next miss moved them the long way into equal second with the 1.1s previously kicked by West Coast (them again), and GWS. The good news is that point led to a goal, albeit to Zanker, who became the latest player to waltz into an open goal. 

Meanwhile, they had a chance to kick one entirely by fluke but as it bounced towards goal the ball took a big comedy leg break. They did get a real one not long after, which was probably good for football but disappointing for fans of novelty statistics. Fitzsimon got her stolen goal back, but sadly our percentage dipped below 300 when they got a second one later in the game. No need to show off, the job had been done long before then.

This was quite good considering the shouse conditions, but it's hard to judge how good we are while playing against the equivalent of cardboards cutouts. One day we'll be on the other side of the ledger, and I'll be sure to show humility then. Or blame outside forces and conspiracies.

2025 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
5 - Kate Hore
4 - Tyla Hanks
3 - Maeve Chaplin
2 - Eliza McNamara
1 - Saraid Taylor

Apologies to Ebert, Fitzsimon, Gall, Harris, O'Hehir, Paxman, Pearce, and Rigoni.

Leaderboard
It's already a two-person race at the top, and Chaplin is building a handy lead in the defender award, so all the action this week is in the Rising Star. Taylor qualifies under the four games or less at the start of the year rule, and while I think she'll probably be overrun by O'Hehir at some stage it must be a real highlight of the career CV to have temporarily led one of these awards.

16 - Tyla Hanks
14 - Kate Hore
7 - Maeve Chaplin (LEADER: Defender of the Year)
6 - Tayla Harris, Olivia Purcell
5 - Paxy Paxman
3 - Shelley Heath
2 - Eliza McNamara
1 - Megan Fitzsimon, Saraid Taylor (LEADER: Rising Star Award)

Goal of the Week
The Bannan opener, even if her goals are always boosted by the elite celebrating advantage. Hore from the pocket against Collingwood retains the overall lead.

Next Week
It's Port Adelaide for the first time in a league game. So far, they've lost to the very good North by 70 and beaten the very bad Gold Coast by 70 so it would be an understatement to say anything could happen. If Heath's ankle is fine and nobody is hit by flying debris during a Casey hurricane, we'll be able to field pretty much the same team, which is a luxury considering the extensive collection of players you won't be seeing for several weeks/at all. I like to think we'll win, but am also concerned we're vulnerable to playing an absolute stinker at some point.

Final thoughts
I got nothing. Up the 'mons.

Yeah Nah < Yeah Narrm

Remember when I implied that injuries were the only thing that could stop us this year? Forget our first two games being against glorified byes, it was premiership glory if everyone remained healthy right? Well, we nearly had to activate Rent-A-Player in Round 3, and only survived a scare against the reigning wooden spooner because they missed two set shots in the last minute. This could go anywhere.

According to this, Collingwood have provided the 'blueprint' on how to beat us. Not to downplay their performance, but I reckon losing five premiership players from the warmup of one game to quarter time of the next had a bit to do with it. For now, we only had to name the fill-in players as emergencies, but their time is coming. I'm not saying the club is ready to field randoms, but one of the ringers already has an official profile picture.

First, Lampard went before the bounce last week. Usually when somebody's hurt in the warmup they're removed as a precaution, miss a week then come back. In this case, she's out for a week x7, so that's a bit shit. Then Purcell's knee exploded, and we'll be lucky to see her again by Round 1 next year, which is even shitter. We knew about those injuries, but were obviously distracted clapping like seals at St Kilda being demolished to notice Mackin B following the lead of Mackin A and suffering a knee injury which will effectively end her season. Then, to prove that Lady Luck is a filthy anti-Irish racist, sometime between our already massive injury list being posted and selection, Goldrick did a shoulder.

Other than Purcell and Gillard, the rest of the A+ inner circle has survived until now, but soon there'll be six of then turning up to training and meeting the rest of the list for the first time. That's if the fill-ins don't stop answering our calls because they don't want to play in such a dangerous environment. People will be more interested in being recruited bythe Russian Army than us if this goes much further.

So, with all that going on and a few players who would have to admit they're only in the side because everyone else is hurt, I had no expectation of another rampant victory. I'm sure the opposition also had a few novelty players in their side, and one player who ended up with zero disposals, but considering who was missing and that we were fielding the tallest forward line in history when it had been pissing down raining all morning, I had some concerns. Gambling on AFLW is morally one step above shoving $50 notes into a poker machine but when I saw we were $1.05 favourites, I did wonder what sort of point start you could get on the Pies.

My spidey senses about an upset went into overdrive when rain started banging down again at the first bounce. It didn't stop us getting the ball inside 50, but while you could understand two dropped marks in the conditions, we had bugger all going on at ground level to compensate. On our third attempt, Bannan held one and converted from almost the same spot I did in a half-arse game on the same ground 15 years ago. This one went through the traditional way, unlike when I got ludicrously close to the mark, booted it practically straight up in the air, and relied on wind/divine intervention to carry it through. Also, Bannan is getting paid to be a professional athlete while I was a fat bloke already past his limited best even then.

We seemed the better team, but the lower the scores on a wet ground, the more chance of the opposition pulling something out of their collective arse. Just because the first two opponents of the year had been run into the ground until they lost the will to live, it didn't mean the same thing was going to happen now. It still appeared to be heading in the right direction when Zanker gently shifted her opponent out of the way like a cardboard cutout to kick the second. Alas, the two goal advantage didn't last long. From the bounce, Collingwood went inside 50 where Campbell spilt a mark at full extension and the ball fell straight into the path of a forward to be wobbled through. 

It was a good reminder not to let them get too many long kicks into attack, especially with the most homebrand backline we've ever fielded. It was Chaplin, and teammates with about 12 games combined experience. Adjusted for the opposition having nearly zero firepower in attack, they did very well. The obvious emotional highlight was the father/daughter debut of Jemma Rigoni, but after a season of Langdon and Culley wearing beach-towel sized headbands I was right into Wotherspoon reemerging as a defender with a shoelace tied around her head. She looks mean, and in an unrestricted, WWE-style atmosphere you could imagine her slipping it off and strangling an opponent behind the umpire's back.

The fun thing about father/etc... selections is thatit means heaps to the father, his teammates, and the fans, but generally stuff all to the new player's teammates. Hardly any of our side were aged in double figures when Guy played his last game, much less in his earlier peak. They're hardly likely to get misty eyed about the romanticism of it all, and are more likely to care that Rigoni held her own in a drastically understrength backline.

I know the broadcasters are a bit half-arsed in their commitment to AFLW but you can never fault the enthusiasm of the commentators, so I felt bad for them when they kept referencing 'pressure' figures that were never shown on the screen. In isolation the pressure gauge is worth as much as hitouts or inside 50s, but they did well not to crack the shits at being hung out to look like they were just inventing these already basically made up numbers.

With a final scare at Collingwood's end in the dying seconds, we got to quarter time more than a goal ahead. On recent results you'd think this was just the warm-up for pissbolting away with the game later, but given our rapidly diminishing lineup I was lightly bricking it. Just when you thought we'd had enough injury drama, it was red-alert at Rent A Player HQ when Heath departed with what later was revealed as an elevated heart rate. That's a new one. The only fit player left on the list without a game is called Dethridge, and she's going to get a game due to a Black De(a)th style injury crisis.

You'd think we'd be able to win just by brute force getting of the ball inside 50, but this didn't take into account shitloads of dropped marks (understandable in the conditions) and the ball exiting at full pelt when we didn't kick goals (understandable given the lack of small forwards). A surprise, short-lived burst of sunshine came at the start of the quarter but the ground and ball were still wet, and the forwards struggle to hold the ball. 

We almost got lucky when Zanker dropped another mark, but it spilt into the path of Harris storming the goalsquare. Who am I to tell her what to do, but a kick off the ground may have done more than trying to pick up and being tackled. Otherwise, Harris didn't kick goals but did some great work further up the ground and earned the rare distinction of 2/3rds of the week's Mark of the Year nominations. More importantly, she even looked like being injured but will presumably trip over the couch and do an everything mid-week.

Hore finally held a mark but missed her shot, and the door remained wide open. It was left swinging off its hinges when Collingwood kicked a goal from a difficult angle to cut the gap to a point. Forget the point start, now it looked like anyone who backed the Pies at the full $10.50 would get a run for their money. The Chaplin + randos backline had to hold out under pressure for several minutes, before we nearly pulled off a counter-attacking coup in the last minute. It died when Gall's choice of kick while too far out to score was a 10 metres pass to Pisano, but that helped run the clock down to half time. We were a point up, but goalless for the term and in a fair old spot of shit if it started raining again.

It didn't, but we still were, and Collingwood could not be run off. All of a sudden we looked absolutely no chance of kicking a goal from open play, and it took a miracle snap by Hore to get us on the board again. This was much to the delight of a guy in the crowd, whose joy was strangely heard again both times the replay was shown. We nearly got another from the next bounce, but Gall became the latest member of the dropped mark club. Then she benefited from somebody else doing it, as Hore spilt one then set Gall up in the square.

This was all very good, except for conceding one from a scramble not long after. After spilling a couple of regulation marks, Zanker obviously preferred the higher degree of difficulty because she pulled down a contested grab over two players instead. Alas that one, and another shortly after, both missed. We got to the last break four points ahead, but were lucky not to concede a 50 metre penalty right at the end when Pisano blatantly charged off the mark well before the umpire called play on.

Everything got a bit silly for me at this point (even more than writing this post on a keyboard where the spacebar only works about 6/10 times), as I had to drive somewhere but wouldn't have time to do the traditional media blackout/watch the rest on replay. Instead, I listened while driving in the hope that we'd kick a couple of early goals and run out easy winners. 

So for the next 15 minutes all I could hear was Collingwood missing chances, until the point where I had to pull over and watch the rest in a generic suburban street. This was good timing, because not long after the ball was finally landed with Hore to goal from close range and give us a six point lead with practically no time remaining. With a six point lead you'd think we could do no worse than a draw, but I've thought that before in 2025 and been disappointed. 

The crowd was going as boonta as you can with 2500 people present, and say what you like about Collingwood fans, but I've never seen an anti-social behaviour hotline advertised at a suburban ground before. They nearly pulled off a miracle, first missing a set shot for a BULLSHIT free kick well within range, leaving us just having to get the ball as far away from goal in the final seconds as possible. Which we did, but that wasn't nearly far enough and it came straight back in for another free, and a kick after the siren.

Ludicrously, this was the fourth time we'd faced this situation since 2021. It was a much more difficult shot than the previous one, but their version of a G. Campbell gave it a decent ride before it jointly fell short and hit the post. And thank god for that. Now, let's wrap this up before I drop punt this bloody keyboard over my fence.

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

Apologies to McNamara, O'Hehir, Taylor and Zanker

Leaderboard
Arise the biggest of big hitters, and best of luck to anyone thinking of challenging.

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

Goal of the Week
Hore from the pocket was at least 50% more arse than class, but it looked good so ironically in the game where we stopped kicking goals it takes the clubhouse lead in this competition.

Next Week
It's Richmond, who are not very good but perfectly capable of matching us if we don't convert chances and/or lean heavily on the surviving stars. I think we'll win, but while gambling is evil etc... definitely have a responsible bit on Richmond at the line if it's anything under 40 points. At which point I'll hope you lose the lot and we win by 76.

Final thoughts
Enjoy it while you can I reckon.

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.