This Week In Football is a collection of some of the best in football currently outside the walls of AFL clubs or broadcasters. Each week a curated grab bag from regular contributors and special guests will provide insight into and beyond the game on subjects of their choosing. For more about our contributors, click here.
Banner images by Polly Porridge of the True Bloods Podcast. Check out her other design work.
Before the Bounce
There’s hype, then there’s this.
Friend of TWIF Len Phillips found one of the weirder articles written on a AFL club website in recent years. Here’s a sample of it:
TWIF can’t link you to the whole article because it has been nuked from the Lions website this morning. It is a wild ride of alleged bias and player acclamation. Luckily, it has been archived here.
The article is somewhat emblematic of the race for AFL awards at the end of the year. In order to win many of the major panel-decided awards, clubs develop packs of support for nominated players. It’s arms length, but to best support the interests of fans and their players, clubs have to do a job in selling the strengths of each player.
But that article is beyond that – a few steps past that line.
Peter Blucher wrote that article, and one with a very similar tone about the snubbing of Harris Andrews from the All Australian team.
That name may sound familiar to diehard, slightly older footy fans. The AFL Queensland Hall of Famer has had a long involvement in the game, from journalist to club media manager and finally player agent.
It’s that last stop that was the one that drew the most public attention. In 2013 Blucher was suspended for a year for his involvement in the Kurt Tippett scandal, which caused Tippett to be suspended for half a season as well.
That case was the linchpin on a crackdown on the behaviour of agents as well, although the actual face used for the crackdown was that of Ricky Nixon.
It also wasn’t the last time his behaviour was questioned. In 2015 GWS asked for an investigation into his conduct relating to a hip operation on Adam Treloar around the time he was traded to Collingwood.
A few years on, The Age’s Daniel Cherny broke the story around the alleged reasons around Joel Wilkinson’s failed return to the AFL. Blucher also features prominently in that one.
This is all somewhat a distraction from the real issue – namely whether Ashcroft is in the mix for the Rising Star. Time will tell if that blank website can sway the voting panel.
This week in football we have:
How each AFLW side has been constructed
Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com
With Season 10 of the AFLW launching this week I wanted to have a look at how the 18 squads for 2025 have come together.
There are 22 players still with their original Season 1 clubs, and each of the founding clubs has at least one original player – Adelaide having the most with 5.
Carlton have made the most new additions for Season 10 with 10 new players – only one of whom comes from a previous club (Tara Bohana having played 31 games for Gold Coast).
Brisbane have made the fewest changes with just three additions to their list – Neasa Dooley, Lilly Baker, and Claudia Wright all new to the AFLW.
Melbourne have the most homegrown talent with 27, while Richmond and Essendon have the most players with prior club experience at 17.
Essendon and Carlton both enter the season with 10 players yet to play a game for the club (Sophie McKay, Poppie Scholz, and Tara Bohana all played in the opening match of the season, so Carlton are already down to 7 uncapped players).
AFLW State(s) of Origin
Sean Lawson
This is not an article about state of origin football, but rather a bit of a chart dump about where the current players in the two AFL leagues come from.
So to start with, here’s how that looks. Thanks to Emlyn for supplying AFLW data to which I applied states of origin, while the AFLM data is slightly edited state of origin data from Fanfooty.
The most notable difference between the two leagues is that Queensland is, pretty simply, not a development state in the women’s game. There’s almost as many Queenslanders as Western Australians in the AFLW, buut there’s nerly 4 times as many Western Australians in the men’s league.
Queensland is not a part of the “Allies” at the girls’ under 18s championships but competes solo, finishing second in the standings this year.
NSW and the ACT are also relatively better represented in the women’s game, which is in line with higher participation rates in adult women’s footy in the northern states.
Western Australia’s relative lag is interesting here, and this may paint a picture of a relatively struggling women’s game out west. I noted with interest an interview with Canberran Swans player Lexi Hamilton, who described their recent star Western Australian recruit Zippy Fish as “raw” in coming from Perth instead of the development pathways in Victoria.
The stronger women’s presence in NSW is especially the visible with regards to players from the north of the Barassi Line. A majority of male NSW AFL players (27 of 44) are from the south and west of the state, in line with the traditional strength of the Riverina and Murray regions and centres like Albury and Wagga.
By contrast, a large majority of NSW women in the AFLW (30 of 38) are from Sydney, or otherwise coastal or northern NSW. Riverina women’s football has been less developed until recently compared to, say, AFL Canberra, and most current AFLW players from southern NSW were recruited through intermediary periods playing in Canberra or Sydney.
Unsurprisingly, the big states who play lots of football produce the most players, and when we convert over to per capita terms, the usual suspects predominate.
Northern and southern NSW are shown separately here to give an indication of that traditional productivity below the Barassi line, where the Murray region is every bit as productive in men’s footy as Victoria itself.
Also notable here is Ireland, not a state of Australia, because the roughly 7 million people in Ireland currently have produced the same number of current AFLW players (38) as the similarly sized New South Wales.
With such a lopsided talent balance across the country, one of the big points of difference for clubs is how many locally recruited players they have.
Overall, AFLW squads are generally from closer to home, which is a product of the state-based drafting across the history of the league until last season, where clubs often could not recruit interstate players at all. The lower payscale and short contract periods also made making long distance moves less feasible until very recently when pay (now 60k to 100k in four tiers) started to get into “living wage” territory.
Only three clubs – Hawthorn, Essendon and Geelong, have a more local squad in the men’s competition than the women’s and the Hawks stand out for having the highest percentage of Victorian players in both the AFLW and the M.
In line with Queensland’s much stronger women’s footy presence, the situation for Brisbane is completely inverted between the two teams, with one of the highest local content factors on its women’s team and one of the lowest in the men’s.
In the AFLM, every Victorian club has more locally recruited players than every non-Victorian club, and the four clubs in NSW and Queensland all found over 70% of their playing lists in other states.
On the AFLW side, North have the most international players, but with a strong Irish contingent taking professional opportunities on our shores, only four clubs lack any overseas players at all.
Essendon has the most Tasmanians right now, with the likes of Ellyse Gamble and Daria Bannister probably on the phonecall list for the Devils in a couple of years.
Away from their home states, Port Adelaide is a hotspot for Western Australians like Gemma Houghton and Abbey Dowrick, St Kilda has a contingent of Queenslanders including Jesse Wardlaw, and Richmond has a number of NSW/ACT players
In the AFLM, both Carlton and Collingwood have lots of South Australians and the Dees, Dogs and Kangaroos all have 8 Western Australians. The Crows, partly with their Broken Hill connection, have the most NSW players away from Sydney.
Finally, on the types of players recruited from different states, it turns out clubs are more interested in scrounging up talls from non-traditional markets such as Queensland, with over a fifth of all Queensland players being of the two metre variety, compared to 11% in the league as a whole.
Men over 200cm tall are exceptionally rare and sought after by all sports. The AFL has pursued entire pathways in US college sport just to source more meat for the ruck grinder.
Oddly enough, South Australia has 17 men over 2m tall playing in the AFL compared to the larger Western Australia having just 11. TWIF’s own Joe Cordy has proffered the theory that the constantly successful Perth Wildcats are monopolising Western Australia’s limited supply of tall buggers, leaving the AFL coming up a bit short, and I am not going to argue with this assessment.
King’s working forward in different ways
Cody Atkinson
There’s been a bit of a debate occurring through different parts of the footy community, particularly the one existing online and in talkback spaces. It centres around Ben King and what makes a forward valuable.
Firstly, a tweet in minimal context (and a shout out to ESPN and what they do in the footy space – this isn’t intended as criticism or shade, just an example).
This is indicative of the thinking – if a forward like King is just getting shots on goal and providing nothing else by foot, is he doing enough to be considered valuable. Are Gold Coast getting enough off a player as dynamic as King if all he is doing is getting shots on goal?
This hits at an issue that Sean Lawson and I have explored in part before, but in relatively disparate ways – the lack of homogeneity of jobs across the ground, and the hidden parts that make players valuable.
In short, not all tall forwards in a team are asked to play the same role, and not all tall forwards across the league are tasked to do the same thing.
In fact, it’s a question that we’ve asked AFL coaches over the past five years. Almost universally, it’s not goals or marks that matter the most, but instead playing the team role and competing. Here’s Dean Cox explaining what’s important from earlier this year:
No – the competing part and getting the ball to ground (is the most important). So say a player takes two or three contested marks in a game – it’s a pretty good game you know. But the difference between not losing them or at least having them is really important because we want you to get the ball to ground.
“You want to be dangerous in the air and at ground level. The forwards are aware that it’s not just about their contested marks they take, it’s about how many times the opposition take it on us and we don’t get an opportunity to get inside and score from that.
Without being in the huddle with Hardwick, there’s a fair indication that the job being asked of King is very different to that of other key forwards. Hardwick’s teams, whether yellow and black or red and red, have tended to anchor players deep to stretch defences.
As footy has evolved it has become increasingly congested – vertical spacing forces defences to either leave dangerous players unattended or leave room for dashing runs and leads. Richmond used to isolate Martin, Riewoldt and Lynch, while King and Long seem to be the main options on the Coast so far.
This chart shows the top 20 goalkickers this year in terms of total marks and the average distance from goal that their marks were taken. You’ll note that King is almost 30m per mark closer to goal than a player like Riley Thilthorpe. It’s a similar story when you break it down by contested marks too – King does his work deep, as he is asked. He’s also been one of the best talls at winning ground balls inside 50 – of that list of 20, only Jack Higgins has won more per game.
He’s also one of the most clearly targeted inside 50 this year. Only Mitch Georgiades has been targeted more in total (noting potential issues with the data). When they’ve kicked it towards King when going inside 50, the Suns have been able to rack up 326 points – the most of any respective forward/team relationship in the league. This has come at the cost of raw efficiency, but sometimes there’s a place for raw volume as well.
King is doing those little things right – maintaining space, providing a contest, preventing rebounds. Beyond his actual goal totals, he’s providing that focal point necessary for the Suns to start actually climbing up the ladder. We know that King can play higher up the ground and contribute more, as he’s done it before. But that’s (likely) not the job in front of him right now.
The shift appears to have worked for the Suns. They’ve gone from having the second worst rate of generating scoring shots per inside 50 to ninth in the league. They’ve also gone from being one of the worst sides at allowing sides to march from their defensive 50 to attacking 50 to one of the better teams. The Suns are also generating the deepest contested marks of any side on average of any team, providing a clear indication of how they try to attack the field and protect on the way back.
So let’s loop back to the question above – is King doing enough? The natural reaction might be no. But given how much better the Suns have been going forward (and the role he has played) the answer is likely yes.
More precisely, due to the difficulty of assessing how players are actually operating in different systems and how they contribute to success, we probably can’t get closer than “maybe”.
Which would be the second most unsatisfying way to finish the article.
The adjustment that could win the Western Bulldogs the Flag
As the top nine AFL clubs prepare for one of the most even finals series in recent memory, the smallest improvements can be the difference between a first-week exit and a place in the Grand Final.
At this stage of the season, dramatic transformations are rare. You are what you are. Health remains the most obvious factor in any late-season surge, but more subtle edges can be found in detailed opposition analysis, targeted role tweaks, and exploiting specific matchups.
For the Western Bulldogs, their weaknesses are there for all to see. Opponents can exploit matchups in their backline, and their aggressive press leaves them vulnerable in transition.
Luke Beveridge has experimented with solutions, such as redeploying their spare across different lines and adjusting the way they use their wings, but the problem is stubborn enough that some fans have resigned themselves to hoping the Dogs can simply out-attack their opposition.
But perhaps the answer is simpler than it seems…
A small role adjustment for one of the AFL’s elite rucks, inspired by Collingwood’s use of Darcy Cameron.
Tim English is far from a defensive liability. He averages 2.8 intercept possessions per game (6th among rucks) and 1.4 intercept marks (4th). He’s also kicked 13 goals this season, ranking 2nd in total goals for ruckmen. The issue isn’t what English lacks, it’s that he’s too balanced.
The Bulldogs’ real problems lie in defence and transition. They don’t need their ruck drifting inside 50 to compete with Aaron Naughton and Sam Darcy. They don’t need him functioning as an extra midfielder on the spread. They need him prioritising defensive positioning and lending consistent support to an underweight backline.
Cameron offers the blueprint. He positions himself behind the ball at all costs, rarely caught in between his opponent and his defensive responsibilities. This often places him in prime spots to intercept on the flanks and across defensive 50. English, by contrast, tends to generate most of his intercepts deeper inside defensive 50 or along the back flanks. Less proactive, more reactive.
Possession heatmaps tell the same story. English gathers 14% of his disposals inside forward 50 and shows a higher concentration through the corridor compared to Cameron
His mobility makes him a genuine asset around the ground, capable of presenting as an option forward or tracking back to defend. It’s his greatest weapon. But when deployed more like a pseudo-midfielder than a pseudo-key defender, it can create problems.
Take a look at this Melbourne transition on the weekend. After losing a post-clearance ground ball, Melbourne transition through the wing. English works back to support but is pinned to the boundary after an aggressive back-45 lead from Tom Sparrow. As Jack Viney is held up, English stays pinned to the boundary instead of switching and repositioning himself into the dangerous space. Viney attacks the hotspot, drawing the Bulldogs’ defenders towards Max Gawn, and Melbourne have just enough coverage to crumb and score through Harrison Petty.
In finals, where margins are extremely fine, the Dogs can’t continue to be exposed inside defensive 50. By adjusting English’s role to mirror Cameron’s, sacrificing some forward forays for consistent defensive positioning, the Bulldogs could address their most glaring weakness without overhauling their system. In a finals series this even, that single tweak might just be the difference between another year of frustration and winning the flag.
Around the grounds
- Here’s another plug for the W Download podcast by Sarah Black and Gemma Bastiani, which now has all 18 teams previewed in its recent back catalogue. A must to know what to expect from each team this season.
- Ever see a scorpion kick goal kicked by a player jumping for a hanger? Now you have.
- On The Shinboner, Ricky Mangidis breaks down how Collingwood have used Dan Houston away from his former role, Carlton’s two gameplans, and Geelong’s use of the Jeremy Cameron attention.
- The latest Footy A2Z video is about how the rules of the game looked back in 1859. Footy A2Z is a youtube channel with simple informative animated videos about the game’s history and mechanics.
- Squiggle Football is out! This is author and footy analyst Max Barry’s AFL deckbuilding football management roguelike and it’s pretty good.
