The management of Demonblog regrets to announce that due to a Self-Inflicted Colossal Kockup (SICK), for the first time, a match review will not be based on thoughts collected live during the game. In the shambolic early years (before the radicalisation of 2007 set my course for the Unabomber Manifesto Era), the odd match was skipped entirely due to competing priorities, and there was that time Kayo fritzed out on delayed viewing and blew the result, but while there have been some really half-arse posts over the years, I've never seen the result first, then watched a replay and reported on it.
Your views may vary, but there was a very good reason why I intended to watch this game on a three hour delay. Insert flashback harp music here, but two decades ago when I had spare time and would've put my head in the oven if you'd told me I'd survive to my mid-40s only to end up living on the urban fringe, I enjoyed several tremendous seasons watching South Melbourne in the late NSL/early state league era. It was the exact opposite of how I view AFL spectating, where other fans are best avoided, the community around that club made it great.
Eventually, life got in the way and I had to pick one winter pursuit (and it's only getting worse, even my MFC membership came out to about $125 per game attended this year), but when South made the Australia Cup final, I morally owed it to the people who have battled on for the last 20 years to watch that live and come back to the top eight grading game at a ground sponsored by a water feature later. I'd still watch as if live, our reporting commitments would be fulfilled for the nine people who care, and we'd get back to the normal schedule next week.
After South won, in circumstances that made it the second most satisfying thing I've ever watched on TV after the 2021 Grand Final, and the joy on the faces of true believers I met 25 years ago had me on the verge of tears for the first time since the blessed 25/09/21, it was just after 11pm and I was finally ready to switch gears back to something more relaxing.
God only knows why, after just watching 120+ minutes of sport on my television, I decided it was a good idea to start the replay on my phone, but picked it up, accidentally opened Twitter, and instead of showing my feed that hadn't been refreshed since before either game started, it showed the dreaded 'For You' list - which decided what I really wanted at that point was a big fuck off graphic saying:
And they're not done yet 😎 #AFLWSunsDees https://t.co/KPaMJEtYzl
— AFL Women's (@aflwomens) October 10, 2026
Not much room for misinterpretation there. So I knew we'd lost, and god bless anyone who has the commitment to knowingly watch the replay of a loss, but for me it's all about the thrill of the chase, so I wasn't going to do even the most brutal time-slicing viewing just to see whether it was close or not. I just went back down the feed, looked at the MFC posts, and saw that after recovering a slow start, the last three quarters involved slow deflation of balloon, and a comfortable defeat.
You could complain about having to play at novelty venues like Mackay, but given how much benefit we've had from the 'unique' conditions at Casey over the years, it's only fair to occasionally get tripped up by playing somewhere exotic. It's happened in Cairns and Darwin before, and we'll probably lose our first match against Tasmania at the site of the Beaconsfield mine disaster, but need not be fatal IF the last three matches of the season can be successfully navigated with an injury-riddled list that required Rent-A-Player to fill the emergencies.
We may have had an emergency Burn, but at least it was the same week that Hose came back. And quite frankly, if this wasn't my only opportunity ever to do that gag then I may not have written a post at all. But, just a few weeks after being talked about as the only hope of stopping a North three-peat, we're in danger of being finished off by injuries. Has a team ever lost three more important players to above-shoulder injuries?
And if you think this post is phoned in, I draw your attention to a) none of the player photos coming through, giving everyone the 'we have no idea who you are' generic silhouette, b) no indication of whether Hore's mystery neck is equivalent to McNamara's shattered jaw, and c) tooltips on the right that do nothing when you hover over them. As flagged last week, before Austin suffered a random case of throatus explodus, we're not even certain of a top four finish.
Our good friends at AFL(W) Live Ladders still predict second, but even taking the risk of assuming avoidance of disaster against Richmond next week, there are big fat danger games against Footscray and Adelaide to follow, and there's still a chance of finishing as low as 7th. This is potentially disastrous considering how the season started, but as AFLW still uses the traditional (e.g. good) top eight, it will give me the chance to reboot all my sour complaints about the men's competition wildcard. So not all bad news then.
To have any hope of getting back to where we were 18 minutes into the game against North, we need Austin and Hore back. We've got top end stars, but fishpond depth = death in this competition. I'm not judging Tahlia Fellows' first club game for obvious reasons, but one tackle in 40% of game time definitely qualifies as an inauspicious debut. She'd best go all out to get picked again, including pushing teammates down the stairs if required, because Hose's successful five touch return from injury leaves Fellows as the only MFCW player on zero career disposals.
If there's any upside, it's that no disposals mean you can't go backwards, so Elise Strachan's 2017 record -10 career metres 'gained' is safe. We're pleased to report that at least one of her two disposals was via an intercept mark, in a close win, so I'll have her negative 10 over zero anything in a loss. It's our duty to follow the Fellows disposal storyline closely for the rest of the season, and we hope she bounces back to challenge her previous career best 11 as a Hawthorn player.
The good news is that I've got to this point without yet having seen anything other than a spoiler, a final score, and out-of-context player stats, and we've still covered more ground than half the matches this year. An emergency committee meeting has determined that the safest way to cover this match under the circumstances is to watch the AFL website mini match and comment on the highlight provided. If I don't throw the internet-connected device out a window when it crashes seven times. This doesn't play to my spectating strengths because it probably won't have any of the stuff that really excites me, like shit commentary or goal umpires copping a bouncing footy in the dick. Nevertheless, it's the best we'll get so here goes - 11 minutes, 36 seconds of carefully curated/created by AI highlights.
First quarter
* Regardless of whatever heartwarming story our pride jumper was telling, it looked shithouse. More fearless fashion analysis in the future.
* I know where it all went wrong - we did the 'win centre clearance, kick it straight to defender' move without even getting it inside 50.
* Suns got a point. NFI how, it just appeared in the next highlight. Fair enough not to include every pissy score in the extended highlights, but I'm already feeling out of the loop. But never mind that shit, because you knew exactly what was going to happen when the next one involved the Suns going forward. Then a player who later continued the great tradition of MFC facilitating Rising Star nominations took a mark, ran off without anyone noticing and kicked the opener. Never mind, plenty of time to get that back right?
* They have goal replays in the mini-match. Why?
* Mackay local Ryleigh Wotherspoon celebrates her homecoming by clotheslining an opponent in a tackle. Gets the free, comes up clutching shoulder, surprisingly isn't horrifically injured like the rest of the list. No score results.
* Next opposition goal features Brancatisano, who I'm sure we've previously discussed is the only AFL player yet to be drafted from my (adopted in 2019 at the last relocation of Demonblog Towers) local team and must've been THRILLED to find out she had to go to Casey for training. Mind you, now that I know where Mick Stinear was coming from, I've got less sympathy for anyone having to get to Cranbourne from this side of Port Phillip Bay. Goal kicked by Havana Harris, which is the most rock and roll/Grand Theft Auto: Vice City name in footy history.
* Sanity temporarily restored after Hanks mows down an opponent dithering in front of goal with a heat-seeking missile of a tackle.
* A special look at one of our behinds, as Mahony put the ball in front of Bannan, only for the second nearest player to my house ever drafted by the MFCW to get BAMBOOZLED by the bounce.
* But maybe the reason they included that was the dramatic foreshadowing of a Mahony/Bannan goal combination in the dying seconds? (Via a dropped Gold Coast mark in the middle). Enter Bannan for a terrific close-range, high-angle snap to put us back in front at quarter time. That didn't get a replay, but we did get to hear the Mackay siren - which appeared to have a lot more bass than the versions we're used to. Should've had one off a ship to continue the nautical theme.
Second Quarter
* Chaplin gets tackled by the future Rising Star. Not really worth including.
* The nautical theme does get a re-run, as we begin to sink without a trace by leaving a player in several regional electorates' worth of space inside 50. They nearly bugger it up with a handball over the top to a player in the square, but there's nobody close enough to take advantage of a fumble.
* Not great signs when the next highlight comes from a centre bounce won by the Suns, but we narrowly survive an attempt at kicking Goal of the Year from a bizarre angle. This player is called Dakota Baron, which is almost as good a name as Havana Harris. They should form a WWE tag team.
* If you didn't know the result of a game, watching it this way would be like playing Football Manager - when you never knew whether to trust the highlight if your team was attacking, but it was probably just to fool you about an upcoming lightning counter-attack. Like when we were going forward, only for Paxy to be clamped in another huge HTB tackle.
* Enter another quality name in Darcy Davis, via a pass from Sunny Lappin - who I would suggest just needs to adopt a more tropical sounding surname and can join in the finest collection of player names in Australian Rules football history. Darcy goals from an angle and the margin is only nine but this is starting to go tits up.
* This is confirmed with three consecutive marks to the Suns inside 50, another goal, and the sense that even though I know what's going to happen now, this was the point where I'd be mentally conceding defeat if watching live.
* Obviously NOTHING happened in the last five minutes of the half, because that's your lot for the second quarter highlights.
Third quarter
* I suppose 16 points should be gettable for a good team like Melbourne, but fat chance of coming back after the Suns' opener involved players freewheeling around the 50 doing whatever they wanted. If you take the view that Bannan is no longer primarily a forward, I don't think I've seen any of our attacking players in this video since the Wotherspoon decapitation tackle.
* Right on cue, there's a cameo appearance by Harris standing somewhere near an intercept mark
* GENUINE HIGHLIGHT ALERT - As Livingstone benefits from an opponent failing to pick the ball up cleanly, receives a neat tap-on from Ebert, storms the 50 and boots one from distance that couldn't have turned any better once it landed in the square. For all the players over the years who've been dudded by kicks landing on the line and bouncing sideways/backwards, this one arrives diagonally, landed, and tracked perfectly through the middle of the goal. Very enjoyable, no bloody help to the result.
* Especially when the next highlight was old mate Baron taking a reasonably simple mark at close range. If that qualified for the highlights, either she was going to kick the goal, miss horrifically, or get punched in the head straight after kicking. Alas it was option A, and Livingstone's goal survived about one minute.
* I got the Football Manager treatment when it showed the Suns pelting forward again, only to be rewarded with a Gillard intercept mark. But then the highlights played the Uno Reverse card, her kick missed the target, and the ball was scooped up for another Gold Coast major.
* The ground announcer appears to have used the line "another great goal by the Gold Coast Suns" every time they kicked one. This would've given me the shits if watching live, but in this format he gets cut off halfway every time.
* Campbell takes an intercept mark, and this time it's not just a way of tricking you before the opposition score again.
* Horisk gets caught in a perfectly normal holding the ball. The Irish embassy should write in and demand this be removed from the clip.
* Gold Coast start to feel sorry for us and give away a silly 50 to Campbell, just as she tries to handball to Hanks anyway. She kicks straight, the margin is back under four goals at three quarter time, and you just never know do you? Except in this case, you do.
Fourth quarter
* With only 1.32 left in the video, and one goal each to be kicked, this should be a quick segment. The first one went - inevitably - to the Suns after Chaplin decked one of them in a tackle.
* So the good news is that the last thing we see should be a Melbourne goal. Alas no, as there's time to see a Suns player leg it down the wing at top speed before flubbing a handball
* But we get the real deal eventually, as Hanks puts through a goal that wouldn't be fair to describe as "rolled" though because you don't often see that much oomph put into a kick that bounces along the ground. She's the best, just needs to get some teammates back off the injured list.
* And, with 23 seconds left in the video, there's one more highlight and... oh piss off it's just the final siren.
As I'm too lazy to look it up myself, does 6-93 to 61-39 represent the greatest turnaround in two matches between teams? I know the Suns have enjoyed a big academy player boost, but their current run is proof that you can turn a side around and don't have to be rock bottom slop for years on end. The youth of South East Queensland must be significantly outperforming the ones in [wherever GWS' zone is]. Meanwhile, we've got the wobbles a bit, so form a prayer circle and hope for an outbreak of good health or we could be in a bit of trouble here.
2026 Daisy Pearce Medal votes
If we'd won comfortably, I'd have been able to flat-out steal from the Coaches' Votes here. As none of our players got any of those, rankings were compiled as a consensus from various sources, and if you have any objections, please send evidence via the normal channels and we'll reconsider/delete without comment/fold like a house of cards.
5 - Tyla Hanks
4 - Olivia Purcell
3 - Tahlia Gillard (see, it's not just me)
2 - Maeve Chaplin (I mean, I could've just cherrypicked the sources, but no this is legit)
1 - Megan Fitzsimon
Apologies (based on the criteria applied) to Allen and Heath-Barker
Leaderboard
Let's put all this unpleasantness behind us and recognise that this is now almost certainly a two player race. The first elimination line is set at 20 points (3x home and away, 1x guaranteed final), but everyone below Purcell is just playing for bronze and/or one of the minor awards.
32 - Tyla Hanks
25 - Olivia Purcell
16 - Tahlia Gillard (LEADER: Defender of the Year)
13 - Maeve Chaplin
12 - Kate Hore
--- Needs two finals ---
9 - Mia Austin
7 - Tayla Harris, Eliza McNamara
--- Needs three finals ---
6 - Jordyn Allen (LEADER: Rising Star Award)
3 - Megan Fitzsimon, Ryleigh Wotherspoon
1 - Georgia Campbell (LEADER: Ruck of the Year), Shelley Heath-Barker
Goal of the Week
The Livingstone one may have been the only thing worth watching for. It seems cheap and nasty to say it when I first saw it on a Twitter highlight clip, but I think this was the best goal we've kicked this season. But I'm hoping somebody goes better, because it wouldn't feel right for this game to produce a winner. Apologies to the Bannan snap, and Hanks taking out her frustrations on a footy.
Next week
It's back to Friday at Princes Park, as we hope for a better result this time against a 4-5 Richmond. They've lost 4/4 against us over the years, but so had Gold Coast before the Mackay Massacre. But only one of them played us off a five game winning streak, at a funky regional venue, so you'd hope this will prove a steadier - unless half the list has to be replaced after suffering mid-week bizarre gardening accidents.
Final thoughts
Apologies for the shambles.
