This Week In Football

Tag: AFL

  • Finals Week 1, 2025

    Finals Week 1, 2025

    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

    After what feels like near endless football, the men’s AFL finals are finally upon us. The game has successfully made it’s way to another finals series almost untouched.

    With the exception of the introduction of a video boundary review system. In response to making 48 errors over 7,500 boundary decisions (or an error rate of 0.64%), the AFL has decided to unilaterally introduce the video review of boundary decisions in finals.

    It’s unlikely to have a significant impact on how the finals will play out, and the review may not even be used in anger through the last month. However, there is something odd about introducing new rules for the finals without prior testing inside of the season to look for secondary impacts.

    Or: why now?

    This week (and for the rest of the finals) TWIF will look at each men’s final and preview what might turn each game. Our own James Ives has created “opposition analysis” style dashboards that provide a brief overview of how each side has played through the year and how they can be beaten.

    This Week In Football we have:

    Adelaide v Collingwood Preview

    Words – Joe Cordy . Image – James Ives.

    Since the beginning of the 16-team era in 1995, there have been 15 instances of teams playing each other in the last two weeks of the Home & Away Season and then immediately again in the first week of finals. Adelaide and Collingwood’s Qualifying Final will be the first of the 2020s however, and the first time either club finds itself in such a situation since 1995. 

    While a trip away to the minor premiers is a daunting task for anyone, Collingwood will be coming into it with the knowledge that they’ve already knocked off Adelaide once, and came excruciatingly close to completing the double in a game they won the Inside-50 count by 34. If they can recreate a similar volume of entries, it becomes a straightforward task of figuring out how to take advantage of them. 

    The most obvious answer is to incorporate the 211cm Mason Cox, who’s been brought into the side following the injury to Dan McStay, but it seems unlikely the 34 year old American is still up to the level. He’s only recorded 3 or more marks twice in the 2025 season, and only neither of his two in Collingwood’s round 10 victory against Adelaide came inside-50. A much more likely route to victory for Craig Macrae’s side is spreading the space at Adelaide Oval as much as possible to create uncontested marks inside 50, getting the ball into the hands of Elliott and Membrey who are both enjoying massively accurate seasons in front of goal. 

    For their opponents a much more difficult problem stands between them and a home preliminary final: how to execute their slingshot footy without Izak Rankine. A large part of what makes Adelaide so effective in games they lose the territory battle (currently sitting on a 6-3 record in 2025 when recording less inside-50s than their opponent) is their propensity to flood their D50, and then attack on the rebound with isolated tall forwards, elite kicks and sheer pace. 

    They’ll still have their pair of All Australians in Jordan Dawson and Riley Thilthorpe available in the early and finishing parts of these chains of possession, but Rankine created a connective tissue between midfield and forward areas that’s not easily replicated by others. In their first game following his suspension for using a homophobic slur, they were nearly caught out by perennial cellar dwellers North Melbourne. Even with two more weeks to recuperate and plan around Rankine’s absence, it may prove even more impactful against elite opposition.

    Neither of the two sides are coming into the clash near full health or their best form. While the deciding factor could come from one or two moments of individual brilliance from the remaining stars on either side, it seems more likely it will be found in which of the two coaching groups better adapts their gameplan to compensate for the absence of key figures. 

    Geelong v Brisbane Preview

    Words – Sean Lawson . Image – James Ives

    Brisbane have already beaten Geelong twice this year, including a comprehensive defeat at Kardinia Park in June. In both games, Brisbane have been able to get their possession and marking game going, moreso than the Cats. These two teams take the highest number of marks per game in 2025, with the Cats also the best marking side inside 50.

    The difference at Kardinia was a combination of Geelong’s well below par goalkicking and Brisbane’s ability to transition on the Cats. A full third of the Lions defensive half chains went inside 50 – roughly average for the season as a whole for them, so holding up against strong opponents on their idiosyncratic home deck is a big positive.

    A fun element to watch will be the midfield matchups byplay. Last time around, Lachie Neale was relatively well curbed and the Lions found success through others, especially as they looked to make Bailey Smith accountable with a Hugh McLuggage matchup, while the Cats tried to work their defensive midfielder Mark O’Connor onto him instead.The confusion this created led to a number of solid clearance opportunities for Brisbane, and surely Geelong will have something different up their sleeve this time around.

    GWS v Hawthorn Preview

    Words – Cody Atkinson . Image – James Ives

    Hawthorn and GWS might not be footballing twins, but there’s parts of each side’s game that might cause you to do a double take every now and again.

    There’s some elements that look similar. Both like to throw at least an extra behind the ball. Both sides look their best when they transition up the ground with some pace.

    Neither side focuses on winning raw numbers of clearances, instead focusing on the stoppage rebound. When both sides win the ball from stoppage, they tend to put more points on the scoreboard than most sides.

    Both sides tend to deploy a very tall set up in the forward line, boasting relatively mobile key position players that can cover pressure gaps.

    But there are some differences at play.

    Hawthorn places more pressure on the ball when they don’t have it, while GWS tends to protect valuable space and folds back a bit more readily. GWS tackles slightly more than Hawthorn, while the Hawks hold space and block escape routes for the opposition.

    The Hawks also tend to prioritise raw territory a little more than the Giants, with the Sam Taylor led backline allowing the Giants to soak up repeated entries at will.

    Both teams can occasionally look mercurial to the outside, or flaky to critics. They are both prone to putting runs of goals on the scoreboard, or allowing them going the other way. Part of this is down to both sides’ brands of footy.

    The last two times these sides played saw these intense swings. In round 4 this year GWS got out to a 35 point lead in the first quarter before Hawthorn wiped out the advantage by halftime. The Hawks held on narrowly there, but it was a close encounter.

    In round 22 last year Hawthorn took a 28 point lead into the last quarter before getting run down by an increasingly urgent Giants side.

    There might be some fireworks in this match.

    Fremantle v GC preview

    Words – Jack Turner. Image – James Ives.

    Fremantle and Gold Coast enter the finals as the two least experienced teams and the two regarded as least likely to win the flag. Each boast a talismanic veteran and former captain who is set to retire upon their next loss. Fremantle is looking for the fairytale finish for Nat Fyfe and the Suns for David Swallow. Both men needing to at least make a preliminary final to reach 250 games before retiring.

    Fremantle have been somewhat of an enigma this year, with inspiring wins against Collingwood, the Suns, and Adelaide, countered by confusing and disheartening losses thumpings at the hands of Geelong, St Kildaand Brisbane, and an equally perplexing close away loss against Melbourne. 

    The Dockers’ best football is fast and highly skilled, utilising the outside run of Shai Bolton and Murphy Reid to create scores, the utility of Luke Jackson in their divisive two rucks setup, and their well drilled midfield group to make them the second strongest centre clearance team in the finals this year – behind only their opposition in the Suns. 

    Early in the season, the Suns looked as if they were destined to be a team that beat up on lowly opponents but couldn’t stand the heat when it came to the big boys – with the exception of a controversial win against Adelaide in Round 4 – but this proved not to be the case. They won games post bye – a time they have been historically poor – against Collingwood and Brisbane to sure up their spot in the finals, and despite a loss against an inspired Port Adelaide side in Hinkley and Boak’s farewell match Gold Coast dished out the biggest win in their club history to wrap the season, confirming their first ever finals berth.

    The last time these two teams met, Fremantle proved too strong, winning out by just 11 points in a seesawing contest in the wet, where the Suns surged back to within a goal with just minutes to go. If you’re a believer in xScore – or even someone who likes using it as a tool – then it makes this matchup even more interesting to know that Gold Coast won on xScore by four points the last time they met, with a 15 point turnaround from the actual scoreboard. 

    Keep an eye out not only for the obvious matchups between these two midfields, as names like Serong, Anderson, Brayshaw and Rowell go head to head, but also on Alex Pearce lining up on Ben King, and Sam Collins trying to outmuscle the goliath that is Patrick Voss. That may well be where this game is won and lost. Harris Andrews recently took Voss out of the game and disrupted Fremantle’s forays forward, and we saw Sam Taylor force Ben King high up the ground, ruining Gold Coast’s structure inside 50.

    Will either team go all the way? Can either retiring veteran prove to be the spark or motivation their teammates need to find that extra level? Only one team can keep the fairytale alive, and we will know which it is by 9pm AWST on Saturday night.

    The AFLW’s Scoring Boom

    Joe Cordy

    When the final siren went on Gold Coast vs Sydney, the Swans’ 103 points was the third highest score in the competition’s history, and only the fourth to reach triple digits.

    Eight days and fourteen games later, it’s not even on the podium for the 2025 season. 

    It was knocked out of the bronze spot for all-time scores on the same day by Brisbane’s 35-105 victory over Walyalup, before Yartapulti’s 108-40 game against Gold Coast and the Kangaroos’ 14-114 demolition of Walyalup each set a new gold standard less than 24 hours apart. 

    The Kangaroos’ win was so comprehensive they set three other scoring records: the longest single game goal-streak in AFLW history (15), the highest margin in league history, and the first game to ever record a 100-point margin.

    These four games are part of a wider trend of increased scoring across the AFLW. The league has gone through several massively impactful transformations in its first nine seasons, both planned and unplanned, but despite some volatile year to year variance scoring per game has generally trended upwards.

    While the lack of location data prior to the 2025 season precludes anyone making an xScore model for the AFLW, a rough approximation of it from points per shot shows that accuracy has remained reasonably stable across the league’s lifetime, typically hovering just under three points per shot.

    The bigger indicator in the rise of scoring has come from volume, rather than quality or execution, of looks at the goal.

    The 2025 average of 14.5 per game is over a whole shot higher than the previous high watermark set in 2023, and thus far six of the eight highest volume shooting teams in league history have all come about this season.

    While this is obviously going to regress back towards the mean as the sample size grows and the good teams play more against each other than bottom of the ladder opposition, it does match the eye test of the dangerous teams looking more co-ordinated than ever. 

    Gemma Bastiani on Deep Dive broke down how Sydney work as one to create space, thinking two and three disposals ahead in the chain to support each other and pull apart opposition defences. It’s a level of tactical sophistication and cohesion that’s only been able to be achieved with significantly longer pre-seasons and contact hours with the club, which itself is downwind of salaries making footy viable as a full-time career. 

    In 2023 the AFLPA signed the first ever joint Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the players of the men’s and women’s competitions. The joint bargaining power led to a breadth of changes for the AFLW, but the most important was the staggering increase in guaranteed payments for each player. 

    The AFLW doesn’t have a salary cap, instead opting for a tiered structure where clubs can offer two Tier 1 contracts, six Tier 2 and Tier 3 contracts, and sixteen Tier 4 contracts. Until 2022, the Tier 4 contracts that made up the bulk of any club’s list were below the tax-free threshold in Australia. Immediately following the joint CBA, Tier 4 contracts became worth more than Tier 1 contracts the year before by over $14,000.

    While this was still only marginally above minimum wage for full-time work in 2023, 2025 has seen a significant jump within the five-year lifespan of the CBA. Tier 4 contracts are now competitive with starting salaries in most industries, and Tier 1 contracts for each club’s best and brightest have now reached six figures for the first time. 

    Unsurprisingly, giving all players enough financial security to focus on footy as a full-time profession has given them a strong base to build off for the season, and their newfound fitness and preparation time as groups has created the best footy the competition’s ever seen.

    The Race to 100 AFLW Goals

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    We’re in the tenth season of the AFLW and there’s a solid chance this is the season we see someone break the 100 career goals barrier.

    The increase in scoring, as Joe talks about above, has lead to individual players kicking more goals.

    There are four players who, if they maintain their current 2025 goals average for the rest of the season would hit 100 goals before finals.

    We should place an asterisk on Jasmine Garner though, as she’s set to miss two to three weeks through injury so would need to pick up a couple of goals when she returns.

    How did we get here?

    There have been a total of 8 players who have held the careers goals record at some point, either jointly or by themselves. From Lauren Arnell sharing it for three minutes in game 1 of season 1, to Darcy Vescio holding it a combined three and a half years.

    It is a seriously accomplished list. Darcy Vescio, Erin Phillips, Tayla Harris, and Jasmine Garner are among the most recognizable players in the competition’s history. 

    Kate Hore is a club captain, premiership player, and three-time All Australian. Danielle Ponter was a key part of Adelaide’s 2019 and 2022 premierships, while Jess Wuetschner is one of the most dangerous small forwards the league has seen. 

    Lauren Arnell isn’t notable as a goalkicker but is a premiership player, three-time all Australian, and the first AFLW player to go from playing in the league to coaching in it.

    Here’s the progression of those eight players goalkicking tallies – goal by goal, minute by minute.

    There’s also some worth in seeing who had the goalkicking title and for how long.

    If there was a favourite right now for who’s going to get to 100 goals first, Kate Hore seems like an easy choice. Whoever it is it will be a moment for the whole competition to celebrate.

  • Pre-finals Bye and AFLW Round 3 2025

    Pre-finals Bye and AFLW Round 3 2025

    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

    Finally, a break.

    For the last 24 weeks there has been end to end men’s football. This is the last pause in that competition before the race for finals heats up.

    This is the last moment of calm before the storm, before the stakes get raised.

    Meanwhile, the AFLW season hits starts to hit full stride with clear air for the league to bathe in. The footy is good – probably better than it ever has been before. If you’ve got a hankering for footy, get to a game this weekend (or flick on the TV).

    This week in football we have:

    The TWIF MVP

    Adrian Polykandrites | fromthetopdeck.com | @fromthe_topdeck 

    The home-and-away season is done and dusted, which means it’s both finals time, and awards season. 

    On Thursday night, Nick Daicos was named MVP by his peers, while Noah Anderson and Bailey Smith were joint winners of the coaches award. In a few weeks the league will crown another Brownlow medallist (or multiple). There’s also a bunch of awards handed out by some of the major media companies that cover the game.

    And while they all carry a certain level of prestige, they’re also a bit eye of the beholder in terms of how much they mean.

    While it’s ingrained in footy to use weekly votes to decide most of those awards, there’s the inherent problem that not all best-on-ground performances are created equal, but the votes don’t know that and can’t distinguish.

    When done well, the best awards serve as something of a time capsule. They (should) tell us who mattered most in any given season.

    The This Week In Football gang has had a crack at determining who that should be for 2025. 

    Following NBA MVP voting rules, each voter named their five best players for the season. The top player received 10 points, seven points for second, five for third, three for fourth and one for fifth.

    Without further ado …

    13th – 1 vote: Matt Rowell, Sam Taylor and Max Gawn

    Three very different players each received one fifth-placed vote. 

    Emlyn Breese said of Gawn: “There are few players I’ve ever seen who have the capacity to shape a game and do so regularly as Gawn still does.”

    While James Ives thought the GWS key back was worthy: “By far the best interceptor in the competition. And while GWS get a high volume of numbers back to support, I’m not sure they can get away with their style of play without Taylor.”

    12th – 2 votes: Caleb Serong

    “It’s almost a 15-way toss up at this point. You can make a good argument for Pickett, Taylor, Green and less convincing but still solid for another dozen. Serong has been impressive, shook tags and stood up when it’s mattered most for a success-struck side.” – Cody Atkinson

    11th – 3 votes: Luke Jackson

    Ryan Buckland had the Fremantle big man fourth on his ballot: “Can’t help but think without his versatility and skill the Dockers would not be in the position they are in. Underrated aspect to his game: he allows Fremantle to play Sean Darcy as a pure ruck which allows ~him~ to be the best he can be.”

    10th – 5 votes: Kysaiah Pickett

    Joe Cordy gave the Demon his third-place vote for a “Career season as the best mid-forward in the game, keeping his level while the team falls apart around him.”

    Ninth – 6 votes: Bailey Smith

    The new Cat and now coaches award winner received fourth-place votes from two contributors.

    The Back Pocket’s Jack Turner was one of them: “Has genuinely transformed Geelong’s midfield and run.”

    Seventh – 7 votes: Sam Darcy and Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera

    Two players from the 2021 draft who had breakout seasons, with Wanganeen-Milera earning his first All Australian blazer on Thursday night.

    The Saint featured on three ballots with Emlyn Breese voting him third – “I think he’s the model of what you want in a footballer right now.” – and two other voters placing him fifth. 

    James had Darcy second on his ballot: “His contested marking is unparalleled. You only have to look at Naughton’s numbers with and without Darcy to see his impact. Nullifying Darcy goes a long way to nullifying the Dogs.”

    Sixth – 15 votes: Harris Andrews

    James thought the Brisbane key defender worthy of maximum votes: “He’s the best two-way key defender in the competition and his ball use is severely underrated and critical to what Brisbane do.”

    Fifth – 20 votes: Nick Daicos

    I had Daicos fourth on my ballot – he’s the beating heart of a top-four side – while two others had him third. Ryan, however, had him as the season’s second most valuable player: “ Even in probably his most disappointing year to date … Daicos still managed to be the electrical rhythm that reanimated an otherwise corpse-like Collingwood side.”

    Fourth – 29 votes: Noah Anderson

    I was one of three voters to have the Suns’ skipper third on my ballot. He’s one of the most complete players in footy. 

    “It still feels like he doesn’t get talked about enough for how good he is,” said Emlyn, who had Anderson second. 

    Third – 30 votes: Jeremy Cameron

    I had the Geelong superstar second. The Cats are stacked, but Cameron raises their ceiling more than any other player on their list. He’s the biggest reason they’re the team to beat over the next month.

    Cody had Cameron first – “The most important player in probably the most complete team. Was asked to do far more than his position suggests. Didn’t miss a game which also helps.” – as did Joe.

    Second – 49 votes: Jordan Dawson

    I was one of two voters to have Dawson at the top of my ballot. The Adelaide skipper made a habit of stepping up in big moments in leading the Crows to the minor premiership. There might be only one onballer more well-rounded. 

    Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo had Dawson second, but had similar praise: “He’s the captain (and best player) for the side that just completed the largest single-season rise up the ladder in AFL history. Consistently produces his best football in the most important moments.”

    First – 58 votes: Marcus Bontempelli

    The Dogs’ skipper will be watching the finals, but that didn’t stop four voters putting him at the top of their ballot. I had Bontempelli fifth, while only one voter left him off entirely.

    Voters were similarly aligned as to why the seven-time All Australian should get top votes, but Ryan perhaps summed it up best: “This guy is still so obviously the only answer to the question of, ‘If you could pick any player in the league for your team, who would you pick?’ There’s a gulf between him and the rest.”

    Who was the biggest All Australian snub?

    Jack Turner | The Back Pocket | TheBackPocketAU

    While we are only at the squad stage at the moment, there are already some players who fans are shocked to see have been left out. But who were the biggest snubs from this squad of 44 – 22 of whom are set to receive new or updated blazers tonight.

    Of the 44 player squad, 28 have never made an All Australian team, meaning at least 10 players will receive an All Australian blazer for the first time. Some of the more surprising players to miss out are also yet to receive an All Australian selection.

    While there are cases to be made for nearly a dozen players to be very unlucky, we’ve narrowed it down to three big misses. For any stats referenced below, they will include only players who have played 16 or more games, as this seems to be the unofficial cutoff point for All Australian selection guidelines.

    Callum Wilkie – St Kilda

    Callum Wilkie received his first and only All Australian blazer in 2023, and was arguably unlucky to miss out on both squad and team last year. In both 2023 and 2024, Wilkie was supported down back by Josh Battle, who left as a free agent to play at Hawthorn this season, and was instead supported by the much less seasoned – though still serviceable – Anthony Caminiti.

    Amongst eligible key defenders, Callum Wilkie has the third highest Player Rating, the second most Coaches Votes, and of players averaging 2+ Contested Defensive 1v1s he has the 7th best record. He is behind only Harris Andrews for kicking retention rating amongst key defenders, and inside the top 10 for threat rating amongst the same group. He has also taken more marks than any player in the competition in 2025.

    There are only two players averaging 15 disposals, have a less than 25% CDOOO loss rate (2+ avg) and have received 30+ coaches votes in 2025. One is Callum Wilkie. The other is his former teammate and 2025 AA squad member Josh Battle.

    Oliver Dempsey – Geelong

    This one is a little more complicated than the other two I’m going to write about here, because there is a fair argument to be made that Dempsey clearly has not been in the best 40 players in the AFL this season. But I think it’s also fair to say that players like Lachie Ash, Sam Collins and Josh Worrell wouldn’t fit that criteria either, and have been selected based on their position.

    And this is where we face the All Australian team’s biggest issue in recent years head on; the All Australian team simply refuses to pick genuine wings in the team, and this year that seems to be true for the squad. Not a single midfielder in the team has a Centre Bounce Attendance percentage of less than 50% – with the exception of Wanganeen-Milera, who was used as a half-back for much of the year. The main candidates are outside midfielders such as Bailey Smith, Finn Callaghan or Nick Daicos, but none of these players are wings; they are centre bounce specialists. Rovers and receivers.

    Of players listed as a midfielder who have attended less than 25% off their team’s CBA’s, Ollie Dempsey has the second highest Player Rating, the most goals, the third highest contested possessions, the most score involvements, the third highest goal assists and has the fourth highest threat rating per kick.

    Football is a much more complicated game than it once was, but with the introduction of the 6-6-6 rule, and available starting position and matchup data; it should be easy enough for selectors to add players to the squad from a list of genuine wingers.

    Aaron Naughton – Western Bulldogs

    I have saved perhaps the most egregious snub – and maybe the one I am most baffled by – until last. Many are quick to point out that Aaron Naughton started the season off slowly from a goals perspective, but he was still averaging 6.5 score involvements across his first ten games – a figure that would see him in the top 10 key forwards had it continued for the whole season.

    Another critique is that his form improved once Sam Darcy came back from injury, but I think it’s fair to say that most key forwards clearly struggle without a genuine foil, including the others who have been nominated this year.

    Over the season, Aaron Naughton amassed an impressive 60 goals – especially impressive as he had Sam Darcy in there with him kick 48 in the same year – finishing fourth in the Coleman medal, just two goals behind third. He finished behind only Jeremy Cameron and Mitch Georgiades for marks inside 50 and behind only Jeremy Cameron for score involvements by a key forward – finishing 8th overall in this stat.

    Furthermore, of the players who kicked more than 50 goals this season, he led the way for the most score involvements that weren’t from a shot on goal that he took, bringing his teammates into the game just as often as scoring himself.

    The full list of players with 50 goals and 150 score involvements in 2025 is as follows: Jeremy Cameron, Aaron Naughton, Riley Thilthorpe, Jack Gunston.

    The AFLW meta shaping up

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    Note: this article is published during AFLW indigenous round. I have used the names six teams have adopted for the duration of the round. You can read more about indigenous round and those teams here: https://www.afl.com.au/aflw/indigenous/clubs

    As a Narrm (Melbourne) supporter it should surprise no-one that I have been absolutely hanging out for the Women’s season. It’s still obviously really early, so the focus will mostly be on the teams that appear to be separating from the pack two rounds in.

    As per last week, I’m still building a lot of this data gathering infrastructure as I go, so I’ll have more time to dive into what it tells us as that settles in later in the season.

    First I wanted to build upon my very brief look at scoring shots in AFLW last week.

    Sydney and Melbourne have very similar profiles for where their scores are being generated and conceded – big positive turnover differentials, and a healthy stoppage differential.

    Essendon share a similar, but lesser, turnover differential but they’ve actually got a negative differential on stoppage scoring shots.

    Where it gets really interesting though is the Kangaroos. Of their 33 scores they’ve generated 28 of them from turnover, 2 from centre bounces, and just 3 from other stoppages. More broadly, they’re actually in the negative for clearance differential (-0.5 per game). This is a stark difference to the other undefeated sides who make up the 4 best clearance differentials range from +10 (Hawthorn) to +4.5 (Sydney).

    Where the Roos are leading the competition is generating turnovers (1st at +9/game) and uncontested possessions.

    The Kangaroos have had 55.5 more uncontested possessions per game than their opponents, with Sydney and Narrm inches behind at +55. The next best is Brisbane a massive step back with 19.5. To me there’s a clear meta forming around uncontested possession, and I think success will be driven by harnessing or countering it.

    For Narrm this is something of a return to past success. In their flag-winning season 7 campaign they recorded twice the uncontested possession differential of the next best team.

    Even among the three leaders there are significant differences though. Sydney and North are finding a lot more uncontested marks, each about 20% above the league average. They’re also two of the top three teams for retaining uncontested possession from a kick (the third being Kuwarna (Adelaide)). Narrm by comparison find themselves in the bottom 6 for kick retention.

    Accordingly, Narrm are below league average in uncontested marks, despite leading the league in possession differential. Where Narrm do stand out is their handball use and pressure. 46% of the Demon’s disposals are by hand, compared to a league average of 39%. Sydney are at league average while the Roos are slightly below.  Their handball receives are 15% above the next best (Sydney) and 50% above the league average.

    Narrm are also leading the league for opposition disposals per tackle. With the stricter interpretation on holding the ball, a combination of quick hands to release and tackling pressure on the opposition bodes well for them.

    One other thing I found in my travels leads me to giving a shout out to Georgie Cleaver. Waalitj Marawar (West Coast) have some real problems structurally, conceding a mark inside 50 from 36% of their opponent’s entries. But, they’ve had 17 defensive one-on-ones and are yet to lose one. This is led by Cleaver who is 0 from 7. If they can sort out some of the structures they’ve potentially got an elite pillar to build around and she’s only 20.

    Estimating score assists

    Andrew Whelan / WheeloRatings.com

    Following on from last week’s article on score involvements and score launches, this article will explore score assists.

    While there’s no publicly available data on score assists, I wanted to investigate if they could be estimated using available data on goal assists. As score assists include goal assists, we only need to estimate behind assists.

    Firstly, here is the definition from the Champion Data glossary:

    • Score assist: Creating a score by getting the ball to a teammate either via a disposal, knock-on, ground kick or hitout, or by winning a free kick before the advantage is paid to the goal scorer.

    The definition makes no mention of disposal effectiveness or the intent of the player getting the ball to their teammate. Champion Data provides an example on their FAQs page which tells us that if the player’s intent was a shot at goal but the kick fell short and went to a teammate who scored, this would be treated as an ineffective kick and would not be counted as a score assist.

    As such, the definition only tells us that a score assist is limited to disposals, knock-ons, hitouts, and free kicks, but doesn’t provide enough detail about the specific circumstances that result in an assist being credited.

    What does the data on goal assists tell us?

    Using data on goal assists since the start of 2021, we can determine how often a goal assist is credited based on how the goalscorer gained possession and the effectiveness of the prior disposal.

    If we were to credit an assist for all goals above the line and none below, we would be correct for ~94% of goals. This gives us a reasonably reliable methodology for estimating behind assists, which we can combine with actual goal assists to estimate total score assists.

    Score assist analysis

    Hugh McCluggage leads the competition with 54 score assists this season, with a clear lead over Brad Close, Ed Richards and Marcus Bontempelli. Richards leads the goal assists with his teammates kicking 35 goals and only eight behinds from his assists. In contrast, McCluggage’s teammates have kicked 22 goals and 32 behinds from his assists, with all three of his score assists on Sunday being behinds.

    McCluggage is approaching Gryan Miers’ 61 score assists in 2023 with at least two finals to come. This was mentioned on the ESPN Footy Podcast a few weeks ago, and Champion Data’s count of score assists for McCluggage this season and Miers in 2023 were consistent with these estimated counts.

    Here are all players with 30+ score assists in a season since 2021.

    Jeremy Cameron and Brad Close have combined for the most scores (52) over the last five seasons, with Close assisting Cameron for 40 scores and Cameron reciprocating 13 times. Aaron Naughton (39) and Marcus Bontempelli (12) have combined for 51 scores.

    Aaron Naughton (12) and Ed Richards (2) have combined for the most scores this season, closely followed by Jeremy Cameron (12) and Brad Close (1), and Jeremy Cameron (11) and Shaun Mannagh (2).

    More on the best and worst sport cities

    This week for the ABC Cody and I ran a piece looking over the terrible sporting history of the booming city of Gold Coast. As a spoiler, the Suns did indeed break their finals drought with a win over Essendon, which means they slightly improved the city’s nation-worst record of elite men’s football teams making finals in just 13% of the seasons they compete in (it’s now 15%).

    Using all the data compiled for that article – namely finals rates reached by teams based on each city since 1987 – here’s a look comparing cities more broadly.

    First up the Central Coast turns out to be the most successful sporting city in pure percentage terms. That’s thanks to the very successful Mariners winning three championships and making finals most of the time,

    The Mariners are just one regional success story in Australia, with most regional cities other than Gold Coast have at least one club making fans happy. These include the Cats in Geelong, the Sunshine Coast Lightning, the JackJumpers in Hobart, the Illawarra Hawks in Wollongong, and WNBL teams the Fire and Spirit in Townsville and Bendigo respectively.

    Among the “big 5” cities, it’s Adelaide just barely ahead of Brisbane as the top sporting city.

    Here’s a breakdown of the win rates for teams in each city with at least ten seasons under their belt, showing how Adelaide’s all-round selection of decent teams makes them a solid showing in nearly any sport.

    Some of the most successful teams in the country of course lead their cities’ records, including the Sydney FC women’s team, the Melbourne Storm, and of course the frankly astonishing success (missing finals once in 4 decades) of the Wildcats.

    When it comes to the title of best major sporting city, though, individual dominant teams like the Wildcats just don’t quite compensate for struggles in other sports out west, like soccer, rugby, and Dockering.

    Adelaide performs well comparatively in women’s sport, too, which leads us to another breakdown of these records:

    Looking at cities by gender, we can see that mostly due to the Titans women, Gold Coast is faring notably better in women’s sport than in men’s. It may be too soon to say for sure, but there’s incipient signs that the Gold Coast sporting curse may be a single gender affair.

    The city of Geelong have had the best record of success in men’s sport, much more because of the regular Cats of the AFL than the Supercats of the NBL.

    Among the big 5 cities, Perth is lagging in women’s sport performance, perhaps a result of the tyranny of distance impacting harder in the generally less well funded and resourced world of women’s sport.

    Perhaps surprisingly, Canberra is the city with the largest negative gap between women’s and men’s clubs performance, with Canberra indeed having the second lowest women’s sport success rate after Newcastle.

    On the surface this is surprising, given that Canberra is a progressive city with a strong record of supporting women’s sport. Indeed, Canberra is the only multi-team city which has hosted more seasons of elite women’s sport than men’s.

    Many of those numerous women’s seasons are of course the reason for the gap, however. Teams like the Capitals (9 titles) and Canberra United (2 titles) have great legacies of success as standalone teams in cities without men’s counterparts in their sport. However, both have also spent extended periods missing finals in between golden periods.

    Canberra also, for several decades, hosted a mostly forgotten second WNBL team, the Australian Institute of Sport, which was a development side made up of youngsters and basically only made finals when Lauren Jackson was leading them to a title.

    Around the Grounds

    • Marnie Vinall reports for ABC on what Mitch Brown’s announcement means to queer fans.
    • It is very funny that the AFL Coaches Association awarded a “best young player” award to a 28-year old.
    • On Sarah Burt and Georgie Parker’s podcast AFLW Weekly, Georgie worries for the way AFLW salaries, newly outpacing Super Netball pay, are beginning to lure star players across and hurt a well established traditional sport.

  • Round 24, 2025

    Round 24, 2025

    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

    This upcoming round is about to see the maximum amount of elite footy played in one week in the modern football era.

    Nineteen games of elite football will take place in a seven day period out to Wednesday’s makeup game between the Suns and Essendon. With the compressed 2020 Covid season not reaching such levels, the last time top level footy saw so much action was probably in the state league era when three states saw top level footy at once.

    It all gets a bit difficult to keep track of, particularly as the AFLM and AFLW continue to exist, despite some level of web and app integration, in somewhat parallel media and fixturing spaces. Look up what games are on when, and chances are you’ll only see half of them listed.

    Luckily, friend of TWIF Polly Porridge has done something the AFL should have already done via its official app. Polly has put together a match listing for all of the weekend’s games with all AFLW and AFLM starting times with all games listed chronologically (all times AEST):

    It’s a whole lot of footy – fifteen games in two days – for everyone.

    Hope you are ready for Peak Football.

    This Week in Football we have:

    Breaking down score involvements and score launches

    Andrew Whelan / WheeloRatings.com

    For my first TWIF article I will explore score involvements and score launches. What are they and who are the leaders this season?

    Here are the definitions from the Champion Data glossary:

    • Score involvement: Number of scoring chains where a player was involved with either a disposal, hitout-to-advantage, kick-in or knock-on. If a player has two disposals in the same scoring chain, he is credited with one score involvement.
    • Score launch: Scoring chains launched by an intercept possession, free kick, hitout-to-advantage or clearance.
    • Scoring chain: Includes all disposals and possessions for the scoring side that occur between the score launch and the actual score. The chain can only be broken by either the opposition gaining possession of the ball or a stoppage.

    Working back from the score itself, the scoring chain begins at the most recent stoppage, kick-in or when the scoring team last gained possession from the opposition. Only a stoppage or a change in possession breaks the chain – a spoil from the opposition does not break the chain, nor does an ineffective disposal from the scoring team if possession is retained.

    For scoring chains that start with a kick-in or an intercept possession, the score launch will be credited to the player taking the kick-in or winning the intercept possession (which may be a free kick). For scoring chains starting with a stoppage, if there’s a hitout to advantage AND no opposition player took possession of the ball pre-clearance, the hitout to advantage will be the score launch, otherwise it will be the player winning possession pre-clearance and starting a chain of unbroken possession.

    Scores, score assists and (most) score launches are included in the count of score involvements.

    Interesting side note – if a scoring chain starts with a free kick and a teammate takes the advantage, the player winning the free kick gets a score launch but does not get credited a score involvement unless they have another involvement later in the chain.

    One correction I would make to the score involvement definition is changing the second sentence to “if a player has multiple involvements in the same scoring chain, he is credited with one score involvement.” A player with a hitout-to-advantage and a disposal in the same chain is only credited with one score involvement.

    To provide a visual example of scoring chains, the following chart shows all Adelaide’s score involvements against Collingwood in Round 23. Each point represents a disposal, hitout-to-advantage, kick-in, knock-on or spoil, in chains resulting in a score. The tooltip for each data point provides additional detail of their specific involvement.

    Here is a summary of all non-score score involvements by type of involvement since the start of 2021.

    And here are the types of involvements launching scoring chains.

    Who’s leading the score involvements this season?

    Ed Richards and Nick Daicos are first and second in total score involvements this season with a similar breakdown of score launches, score assists, scores, and other score involvements. Next is Jeremy Cameron with two thirds of his score involvements being his own score. Rounding out the top five is Hugh McCluggage, who leads the league in score assists, and Christian Petracca, who’s number one in the AFL for average score involvements since 2021.

    Score assists have been estimated and will be the subject of a future article.

    What about score launches?

    Max Gawn is leading the way in score launches averaging a career high 4.27 per game – the second highest season average since 2012, behind Todd Goldstein in 2015. Witts and Xerri aren’t far behind, averaging 4.15 and 4.05 per game, respectively. Max has launched 17 scores from intercept possessions this season, 32 from hitouts to advantage, and 45 from winning possession pre-clearance.

    Here are the leaders this season.

    Diving into the first week of 2025 AFLW

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    With the first week of AFLW in the books it’s worth spending some time looking at what we can get out of the early data available.

    I’ve started off by trying to identify score sources. This is relatively easy to get for the Men’s competition, but faces some extra challenges in the Women’s. This is still a work in progress, so take with a grain of salt. Because the sources are new, there’s no prior year comparison available.

    Overall we can see scores from kick-in even more negligible in AFLW than AFLM, and we also see a bigger prevalence of scores from turnover.

    Let’s now look at it on a game-by-game basis:

    Port are the only team to have scored a goal from kick in, with Katelyn Pope’s last quarter goal.

    Essendon and Melbourne had the most scoring events from turnover, while the Sydney v Richmond match saw both teams scoring as many times from stoppage as from turnover.

    Winning the ball by degrees

    Cody Atkinson

    All teams want to do two things as much as humanly possible. 

    1. Win the ball
    2. Score

    If you’ve got the ball you can score, and the other team can’t. And – spoiler alert – if you score more than the opposition you win.

    Someone get me on the line to eighteen different clubs, this is groundbreaking stuff.

    But not all won ball is the same. Some is won hard, and some is loose. Some leads to territory gains, others are turned over right away. Importantly – and linking to point 2 above – some ground ball wins lead to actual scores.

    This year Tom Green has won more ball on the ground than any other player. He’s averaging 10.1 ground ball gets per game. If you break it down further, 3.4 of those are classified as “hard ball gets” and the remaining 6.7 as loose ball gets.

    This is where on the ground he has won them this year.

    Green follows the ball – and the contest – around the ground. While there’s an expected cluster in the middle, there’s also a fair bit of action on all four corners of the deck. Note – the ground shape is normalised for the dimensions of the MCG – hence some of the boundary issues.

    If you break it down by scores generated by ground ball wins, something interesting emerges.

    That big cluster in the middle all but disappears. The Giants have struggled to turn Green’s inside ball into points from the middle, despite everything they’ve tried. The Giants are firmly mid-pack for points from stoppages and points differential from that source. That means a lot of Green’s work either hasn’t gotten teammates into space, or the chain of control has broken down towards goal. It’s been a longstanding issue for Adam Kingsley, and one that he needs to resolve to get the most out of the best ballwinner in the league.

    As mentioned above, there are two broad types of ball to be won. The first requires physical pressure and contact. This year, no player has won more hard ball than Tom Liberatore.

    Like Green, Libba follows the ball around the ground when it comes to rest. The second generation Dog has an even more pronounced cluster in the middle, but has a heavy lean to the defensive side of the centre square. That hints to his positioning at centre bounce – at the defensive sweeper side. That job is difficult, and requires balancing winning ball and preventing opposition sides from sweeping through the contest. Few can manage that balance well – let alone winning so much ball themselves.

    Most ground balls are classified as loose balls however. They happen at stoppages, but also often occur in general circumstances around the ground. This year two-time Brownlow Medalist Lachie Neale is leading the way.

    Neale’s loose ball wins are less focused on the middle. It’s a testament to his endurance ability and skill in reading where the play is likely to unfold. Neale has a nose for the ball, and to predicting where it will go before it gets there.

    No matter if it’s hard or loose, straight from a ruck tap or occuring in the middle of a transition chain, every team needs good ball winners. Green, Liberatore and Neale have been the best three this year. All three are reasons that their sides are firmly in the race for September glory.

    How does Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera’s reported contract value stack up?

    Sean Lawson

    With reports saying Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera has just become the first player to earn $2 million in a single season, it’s a great time to try to put that into context and see how it compares to the big contracts of years gone by.

    AFL contract reporting is a very nebulous activity. Reporting around individual player contracts is often vague, misleading, and subject to spin by reporting parties.

    We do know a few things for sure – the salary cap value, the minimum pay for draftees, the rough spread of player contracts.

    We know as of last year the typical club senior list would have been structured roughly as below, with an average of two players on over $1 million a year. This figure is very likely to rise to at least three per team on average in 2026.

    We know that, on average, the top three players might earn about 20% of the salary cap, and the top 6 players around one third of the salary cap.

    We also know that cap keeps going up:

    The salary cap is roughly double what it was in 2012, triple what it was in 2004, and just much larger than the 1990s. The cap growth has outpaced inflation and, in the case of some long deals, even left players behind as the cap grew around them. The AFL-AFLPA CBA has a ratchet clause for insertion in standard player contracts, but league sources indicate that insertion is not universal across the board.

    That leaves the unknowns. Even when news reports appear to carry fairly specific contract values for a player, often this number will be under or over what they actually earn:

    • Agents have incentive to inflate contract values to bolster their percieved effectiveness.
    • Clubs have incentives to hide money or to deflate figures to keep other players happier.
    • The press like round numbers, and sensationalised reporting presenting upwardly rounded multi year payments as a single number.
    • Some contracts have guaranteed and non-guaranteed money, with bonuses based on honours earned or game benchmarks.

    For historical contracts, extra payments outside the cap are obviously a difficult to identify factor. The Anthony Koutoufides contract reported in 2003 of $4m over 5 years turns out according to his agent at the time to have also involved 750k in under the table payments.

    Warwick Capper’s Brisbane Bears deal, already massive, was supplemented by valuable gifts from Christopher Skase such as a $200k vase and a clothing shop.

    So there’s a lot of caveats here, and now we can plough ahead, remembering all this should be taken with many grains of salt:

    As it turns out, Wanganeen-Milera’s two year contract at the Saintswill be roughly on par with the payment of Lance Franklin and Dustin Martin in terms of cap hit in the first year of the deal.

    Both of those were much longer deals with the amount of money managed across 9 and 7 years respectively, during which times the cap increased. At times both of those players may have been forming a smaller or larger share of the cap.

    For Wanganeen-Milera and the Saints, the cap hit is shorter term, which means less flexibility to spread the cap hit, but much more for the Saints to manage other cap space and recruitment.

    One player filling 10% of the salary cap may not be especially unreasonable considering we know that the top 3 players at the average club might get 20% and the top 6 might get over a third. The Saints have reportedly used salary cap banking in previous years to open up space for their current recruiting decisions, and the ability to defer other longer contracts into the future also exists.

    But make no mistake, the AFL’s (probably) first two million dollar man is being paid handsomely for his universally acclaimed talents, on par with a couple of the 2010s’ biggest superstars relative to the salary cap of the day.

    Around the Grounds

    • Gemma Bastiani on the W Show makes the case for recording an inside-30 stat for AFLW after the Crows showcased a lot of deep ineffective inside-50s in their surprise loss to the Saints.
    • Marnie Vinall’s ABC article about the impact of homophobia in sport is essential reading in light of the current situation.

  • Round 23, 2025

    Round 23, 2025

    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

    James Ives

    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.
  • Round 22, 2025

    Round 22, 2025

    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

    Every year football tends to enter a slight hibernation period in the middle of winter before awaking anew as spring slowly starts to poke its head around.

    With just four weeks left the season is very much alive, with some of the finest games of the season being fought out by finalists (think Collingwood v Fremantle) and non-finalists (St Kilda v Melbourne) alike.

    The race is on for most spots that matter – from the minor premier to the last finals spot. While there’s a couple of win break to tenth and eleventh on the ladder, sides right through to 14th have shown at least moments of brilliance.

    But some have claimed that the season has been dull, ignoring much that we’ve observed on the field. Despite renewal at the top end of the ladder and a fair amount of tumult as the season has progressed, there hasn’t been enough for everyone.

    Perhpas some of this is down to the lower number of truly close games than the last couple of seasons. Average game margins are up 2.5 points per game on last season. In addition, the number of games decided by less than a straight kick is down to 10% from last year’s 19%.

    But it’s worth noting how unusually close the past four seasons have been. Normal can sometimes be skewed by the extraordinary. And while there are fewer games that are extremely close, there are more than normal that are very close.

    And things only seem to be getting tighter week on week.

    As a famous philosopher once said: strap yourselves in.

    This week in football we have:

    Breaking Down Brisbane vs Collingwood

    James Ives

    It started with a deep intercept mark in defensive 50 by Harris Andrews, followed by six quick-release kicks to uncontested marks as Brisbane sliced through the corridor. Callum Ah Chee then found space inside 50, setting up Logan Morris to assist one of Henry Smith’s three goals.

    It was a stark contrast to the Easter Thursday match-up at the Gabba, where Collingwood’s defensive dark arts were on full display. They forced Brisbane wide at every opportunity and preyed on the umpires’ tightening of the 15m rule. Brisbane struggled to adapt to Collingwood’s aggressive front-half press and often found themselves caught in-between lengthening the ground and providing overloads on the 45s, making them vulnerable in transition when they turned the ball over. 

    This dichotomy in performances can be attributed to combination of factors; greater scrutiny of the stand rule; greater leniency of the 15m rule; Collingwood’s lack of speed in the front half, missing McCreery and Hill (sub); Brisbane making offensive adjustments to stay more connected to their deepest forwards; and finally, the MCG factor. 

    The last point is somewhat provocative and counterintuitive. How can a team based in Brisbane be better suited to the MCG than the primary occupants in Collingwood. Part of the answer lies in Brisbane’s style. At the beginning of 2024, they doubled down on their kick-mark approach, leading the league with 110 marks per game. They entered the Grand Final of 2023 winning only one of their last 11 games at the home of footy (which was the previous week’s preliminary final against Melbourne). Since the Grand Final loss, they’ve won six out of seven, turning the MCG into somewhat of a mini fortress. 

    The MCG provides Brisbane with the extra width and length to maximise the benefits of their control game. Give them too much space and they’ll pick you apart.  Over-correct and they’ll just play around you.

    Look at the video below, which analyses two plays that highlight the differences between Brisbane’s approach in round 6 at the Gabba and round 21 at the MCG. 

    To further emphasise the point, take a look Brisbane’s kick map across both games. In Round 6, Brisbane often got caught on the flanks, happily taking what Collingwood were willing to give up. Their profile looks like a two-hour session of circle work. 

    In contrast, round 21 looked a lot more like the Brisbane of 2024. Changing angles, attacking the corridor, using the full width and length of the ground, quick release kicks and still undefeated on the MCG.

    Maybe I’m wrong and guilty of being a resultist. Maybe I’m right, and Collingwood delivers another beatdown at the Gabba. Or maybe we’ll have to wait until Grand Final Day to find out.

    Luke Beveridge, enigma of the West

    Jack Turner | The Back Pocket | TheBackPocketAU

    As a player, Luke Beveridge never really planted his flag successfully.

    Beveridge played 118 games across three clubs (Melbourne, Footscray and St Kilda) without reaching the half century at any of them. No real personal accolades aside from making the Greek Team of the Century, almost purely to make up the numbers.

    His rise as a coach followed a less traditional pathway also. He didn’t move from playing into the assistant coaches box or try his hand coaching in the VFL, SANFL or WAFL. Instead, he went back to dig his heels in at grass roots level coaching St Bede’s Mentone in the VAFA. 

    When Beveridge arrived at St Bedes, they were competing in the C Division. His now-trademark style of emotional buy-in, and building a theme around the season took the Mentone Tigers to the Division C premiership in 2006, the Division B premiership in 2007, and ultimately on to the Division A premiership in 2008. If we paid as much attention to our amateur or semi-professional leagues in Australia as they do in some other sports, this would be the stuff of folklore.

    It became obvious to those paying attention that he had a knack for coaching, and was quickly snapped up by Collingwood’s AFL program alongside legendary coach Mick Malthouse, and was a part of the coaching panel that led the Magpies to their droughtbreaking 2010 premiership. St Bedes Meltone have still not won a premiership in any division since 2008.

    Beveridge then took a break in 2011 – a year that an “unbeatable” Collingwood side couldn’t get the job done against Geelong three times – before returning to assistant coaching at the top level, this time under Alastair Clarkson at Hawthorn, helping oversee the first two of the now famous threepeat, before a coaching spot opened up at the Western Bulldogs due to the retirement of Brendan McCartney. 

    When Beveridge took over at the Bulldogs, they were coming off of one of their worst three season runs in the modern era, with many tipping them to win the wooden spoon, due to just seven wins for the season and Adam Cooney and Ryan Griffin departing to Essendon and GWS respectively.

    Instead, the modern Docklands marvel that is Luke Beveridge impressed right from the get go, taking a plucky young Bulldogs side to a sixth-place finish. In just his second season, Luke Beveridge famously won a flag for the Western Bulldogs, something his predecessors had failed to do for 62 years prior.

    Since then the Bulldogs have continued to be thereabouts, but never quite finished the job. Even in 2016 they flew home from 7th to win the flag, and nearly did the same in 2021. One thing he does have over many other coaches who get scrutinised for getting the job mostly done but never completely is that he did win that first flag.

    The intangible that we have to consider when it comes to Luke Beveridge is the strange and nigh unexplainable Docklands effect. No Docklands tenant has made the Top 4 since 2009, and the Bulldogs are the only Docklands tenant to win a premiership since its first year of operation when Essendon had their famous 2000 season run and resulting premiership.

    This weird and near incomprehensible Docklands statistic makes it difficult to judge Luke Beveridge’s tenure when compared to other coaches. Against coaches who have lined up against him on multiple occasions, only five have a positive win-loss ratio, a further five have broken even at 50-50, and twenty-two have lost more than they have won against Beveridge’s Bulldogs.

    Another common criticism of Beveridge is his willingness to throw the magnets around and play players seemingly out of position. A phenomenon that has come to be known in footy circles as “Crazy Bevo”. But for any of the failings of Crazy Bevo’s magnet switches, there are just as many – if not more – success stories.

    Rory Lobb has been a revelation in the backline, Ed Richards was being touted as a Brownlow fancy a mere month ago after being moved from the backline to the midfield. Aaron Naughton and Sam Darcy were both seen as key defenders in their first seasons and yet the two look set to combine for over 100 goals this year.

    Outside of positional switches, there was outcry and mockery at the fact Beveridge didn’t have Daniel or Macrae in his best 22, especially once they were traded and were looking to have an impact at their new clubs early this year. In their stead has come the clear reason why. Freijah has been a clear upgrade on Daniel and Kennedy on Macrae, as the shunned two sat on the bench at their respective new clubs for much of the final terms in Round 20.

    The Western Bulldogs haven’t lost a game by more than ten goals since the 2021 Grand Final. No other team has a streak that extends back further than the start of 2024, with only seven teams – Bulldogs included – having not lost by ten or more goals this season. In fact the Bulldogs haven’t even lost a game by 50+ since their back to back 50 point losses to start off 2023 – a year they still almost stormed home to make finals.

    For all the talk of the miraculous list that the Bulldogs possess, people fail to look past the stars and into the role players. The team that just last week dismantled an in-form GWS side to the tune of 88 points included names like James O’Donnell, Oskar Baker, Lachlan McNeil, Caleb Poulter and Lachlan Bramble. At times this year, they have been joined by Nick Coffield, Ryan Gardner, James Harmes and Harvey Gallagher. This is meant as no disrespect to these players who have done a great job under Bevo’s guidance, but they are by no means walk up starts at any other club in the AFL.

    It is important to factor in many of these things when discussing both Luke Beveridge and the Western Bulldogs. It is easy to get caught up in their ceiling to floor ratio, and the games they have lost in recent years that they should have easily won, but when it is all laid out, Beveridge has one of the better modern coaching records, and remains the Bulldogs only AFL era premiership coach.

    Will Luke Beveridge’s Bulldogs side cause havoc in the finals series this year, and win another unlikely flag? It’s probably less likely than it is likely, but they boast two of the most unstoppable players in the league in Bontempelli and Darcy and nobody loves an underdog story more than Bevo. I don’t think many teams would be excited to face them in a last chance final.

    History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    This is an excerpt from a longer piece published on CreditToDuBois

    Simon Goodwin’s tenure as coach can, more than any other, be defined by a rule. Fitting for the coach of the Demons that this rule would be 6-6-6.

    Round 1 2017 – Simon Goodwin’s first game as Melbourne Coach. The Demons take on Alan Richardson’s St Kilda. All time Saints great Nick Riewoldt kicks two goals in the first quarter continuing his long-running torment of Melbourne. The 6-6-6 rule isn’t even a gleam in Steve Hockings eye and Goodwin has up to 9 players starting in defence at times.

    This isn’t a flooding strategy though – as the ball bounces the spares move through the centre square to provide attacking options. It sees them win 10 consecutive centre clearances and helps turn the match with a run of 10 goals.

    Image: Fox Sports

    Four years later and as far away from a Round 1 twilight game at Docklands as you can get – the 2021 Grand Final in Perth. We turn to the middle of the match. Marcus Bontempelli has put his Bulldogs three goals up and Melbourne are on the ropes. A goal to Bayley Fritsch sees the margin closed and the ball returned to the centre. In less than a minute of game time the Demons rip the ball out of the middle and score a further two. Even more astoundingly, ten minutes later they do the same again, scoring three goals in the final minute of the quarter.

    The 6-6-6 rule means nowhere to hide and few ways for the Dogs to mitigate the damage. The result is the most astounding display of pure football since the peak of Geelong’s time under Mark Thompson, and possibly ever. Melbourne score 100 of the last 107 points of the match and Goodwin breaks the longest active premiership drought in the league.

    We move forward another four years, but like many stories we return to where it started. Docklands. Twilight time-slot. The opponents are once again St Kilda, although faces have changed or moved roles. Alan Richardson now plays confidant to Goodwin rather than competitor. Nick Riewoldt provides commentary as Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera anoints himself as the heir to St Nick in the St Kilda mythos with two last quarter goals.

    Like the Bulldogs four years prior, Melbourne finds their options limited in blunting a withering 9-goal onslaught. However, 6-6-6 still has an even more central role to play. Melbourne goes where few teams before have tread, and none with such dire consequences. They concede a free kick for a 6-6-6 infringement at the final centre bounce with scores tied. This leads to a Wanganeen-Milera mark and a goal after the siren to seal Goodwin’s fate.

    He would go on to coach the following week, and Brad Green denies the result played a part in his sacking, but it’s plain to see this is where Goodwin’s career at Melbourne was decided

    Throughout Goodwin’s coaching tenure his contribution to his game and club have continually and unfairly been diminished. Now is as good a time as any to look at his legacy.

    Taking the team to a preliminary final in 2018 was largely credited to the framework Paul Roos set up. Make no mistake though, this was light years away from anything Roos had coached.

    People finally gave Goodwin ownership of results when Melbourne finished in the bottom two the following year.

    The ultimate success of 2021 was attributed to hyperbolic assessment of Melbourne as one of the greatest playing lists ever assembled. Yet it was seen as Goodwin’s failing when those same players kicked themselves out of consecutive finals in 2023.

    Simon Goodwin took over from one of the more defensively-minded coaches of the modern era. Within two seasons he had forged the team into one of the most potent offences we’ve seen in a decade. He was then able to transform it once again into one of the greatest defensive sides in the game’s history. Most coaches don’t succeed in one style, yet Goodwin appears to be criticised more than anything else for not being able to guide a playing group through a third successful metamorphosis.

    Does a radically smaller ground change how AFLW games are played?

    Sean Lawson 

    A common take on social media is that AFL Women’s games would be better or higher scoring if played on a much smaller field. Presumably this notion is based on a perception that regular fields take too long to traverse for AFLW players’ kicking distances and running speeds.

    For people who believe in shrinking AFLW grounds, the first round of the AFLW presents a very special opportunity to watch some women’s footy under these very conditions.

    When Sydney host Richmond in their Round 1 clash at North Sydney Oval next Friday, viewers get to see the women’s game played on by far the smallest oval ever featured in either the AFLM or AFLW .

    North Sydney is uniquely small, and more distinct from other venues than anything else seen in the AFLM or AFLW. At 125 metres, it is a full 25 metres shorter than any other AFL ground in use in either league, and 35 metres shorter than the average ground.

    At 108 metres, it’s narrower than anything else except North Hobart Oval, though it’s relatively close to the narrowness of Norwood Oval’s width, a venue used in both the AFLW and AFLM.

    In terms of area, using the simple formula for an ellipse, North Sydney Oval at about 10,600m² is about 58% of the area of the largest ground (Cazalys in Cairns), and only about two thirds the area of a standard ground like Docklands. 

    For reference here is a sortable list of all the grounds being used in the AFLW this year and their dimensions:

    The centre squeeze

    So, how does the wildly small field at North Sydney impact footy? Most obviously, the shape of the centre square changes. A typical modern footy field features a 50 metre arc at each end and a 50 metre centre square, which obviously will not all fit here.

    Following the pre-2007 SCG strategy of arcs overlapping the square would look very odd here, and also create issues adjudicating the AFLW’s 5-6-5 centre bounce starting positions. 

    Instead, the solution devised is to squish the square end-to-end.This creates the opportunity for very unusual setups such as that employed by Chloe Molloy here:

    The truncated “square” means a starting forward like Molloy can get to the bounce well before the wings do, and even beat midfielders to the ball.

    Sydney don’t run this sort of approach as a full time measure, but here’s an example from 2023’s comeback win against GWS where Brooke Lochland comes in from the forward zone and gathers a hitout which on a full-sized field probably would have been collected by a midfielder:

    Tactical exploration of the centre rectangle has probably been limited by there only being one game per year at NSO. After round 1, the Swans move over to the vibes capital of the AFLW in Henson Park, while North Sydney Oval groundskeepers start developing a cricket pitch for Sixers WBBL games.

    As such, there’s only a modest benefit to spending very much time getting deep and creative on different centre bounce strategies which only work for the first week of the season.

    However, the very close arcs do remain available for centre bounce tactical switch ups, and are something to watch for from Sydney and Richmond at North Sydney Oval on Friday night.

    Footy’s dead space

    Does the tiny ground impact scoring? There’s only a small sample, but what we can say is is these games have not been especially high scoring so far:

    Teams have scored more at several much larger grounds, including the 2024 Swans v Richmond result game at Coffs Harbour. Coffs appears from footage and Google Maps measurements, to be a bit under 180 metres long, good for the longest venue in either league.

    A primary reason why NSO doesn’t see more scoring is probably that large parts of a footy ground are dead space at any given time. Most footy is played in an effective area quite a bit smaller than even the tiniest AFL fields. Here’s a shot from last season’s game at North Sydney Oval, ahead of a throw-in at the forward pocket:

    All players are bunched into roughly one quarter of even this very small playing surface. 

    Consider how we expect play to unfold here. A throw-in possession can only be kicked a certain distance, and players are positioned to get wherever a kick could go. At that point, there could be a mark or free kick, or a spilled ground ball. In either case, players will already be running to maintain the bubble around that new situation.

    There’s only so far, and so fast, the ball can go, and players work to keep ahead of that action. At all times, the players’ reading of the situation, their structures, and their anticipation, define the active play area, and it’s always an area much smaller than the entire field.

    Fully using the entire field all at once means getting the ball truly to the outside of the active bubble, which eventually results in a released player running into an open goal. It’s difficult to engineer that, and if it happens, the empty grass ahead of the play works the same and plays the same, regardless of dimensions.

    Vertical and horizontal space

    Intuitively, though, one would think that 35 metres less distance goal to goal would result in far more scoring just because less kicks are required to get there.

    Quick-end to-end play does occasionally take place at North Sydney, if things break correctly:

    If a team can chain together long kicks either by winning a few contests or well executed leads, the shortened space is certainly there to exploit, and the game will have moments of very rapid transition from end to end.

    However, just as often, the narrow width and short length of the ground combine to crush the available horizontal space and congest the game. Here’s Collingwood exiting defensive 50 towards the very shallow wings and finding themselves immediately with little room to move:

    This is fairly normal coverage by Sydney on a wide Collingwood ball, but note how in this smaller ground, the Swans players pretty comfortably occupy space all the way to the corridor and a little beyond. Switching play and shifting defences will be relatively difficult with only 109 metres of width.

    The lack of width, and the temptation of that short vertical distance, should often allow teams to hedge more strongly towards defending down the line roost kicks.

    All in all, when it comes to a shrunken AFLW field, there doesn’t seem to be a particular reason to think that knocking 30 metres off the end-to-end distance is enough to make up for the relatively easy width coverage also allowed. That roaming bubble of footy action can move both directions, but when it overlaps with the edges of the ground, it can afford defending teams more capacity to congest ahead of the ball.

    This isn’t to say that a smaller ground can’t have high scores, rather it’s just to say that like any other ground, scoring levels are probably dependent  on tactics and team attributes rather than the amount of raw physical space.

    Around the Grounds

  • Round 21, 2025

    Round 21, 2025

    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

    Sometimes good moments in footy are good.

    Sometimes they come on the field, but there’s the rare off-field moment that raises a smile.

    Trigger warning for Demons fans.

    The utter insanity of the St Kilda comeback against Melbourne has to be seen to be believed. For all bar the most one-eyed of Melbourne fans it’s an example of footy at its electrifying best.

    That led to one of the better off-field moments of the season too.

    Lyon. Nas. Pub. Shoulders.

    There’s going to be a lot written on the future of St Kilda, Ross Lyon, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera and physiotherapy treatments for men in their late 50s lifting other men on their shoulders, but sometimes you just need to enjoy the game as it comes.

    This week in football we have:

    Winning the close ones

    Joe Cordy

    After a bumpy start to Craig McRae’s first season at the helm of Collingwood that saw them struggle to a 4-5 record, success quickly followed. The Pies stormed home in the back half of the season, winning 12 of their last 13 home & away games to secure a top four spot with the lowest percentage since North Melbourne in 2007.

    What was truly remarkable about the run wasn’t the stark change in fortune, it was the trend that would come to be the defining factor of McRae’s tenure thus far: his side had a preternatural ability to win close games.

    In what must’ve felt like cruel irony, it all came apart in September. Collingwood lost to both of the eventual grand finalists by single goal margins.

    Season over.

    What seemed at the time like the beginning of a regression to the mean failed to materialise the next season however. Collingwood finished 8-1 in single-digit margin games, all culminating in the lowest combined margin from any premiership side to win three finals. 

    Even as their premiership defence fell apart due to an injury crisis that saw them miss the top 8 the next year, their record in close games held mostly steady (albeit allowing a couple of draws and just barely non-qualifying losses through the gates).

    Following their six-point loss to Gold Coast away and subsequent one-point loss to Fremantle at home, 2025 became the first time that this era of Collingwood have ever had a losing record across a season in games decided by a single kick.

    Some analysts of the game would tell you this was bound to happen eventually. There’s plenty of evidence that on a long enough timeframe, any team’s record in such games will regress towards a 50/50 W-L split, and that the results of such games are “mostly luck.” 

    Football, though, is first and foremost a game of skill. While there’s always variance game to game and moment to moment in how well a given player or team executes those skills, as well as elements completely out of your control, you can control enough to tip the scales in your favour. 

    What McRae and his coaching staff have identified and drilled into the team is the effects of chaos and control in close-game scenarios; namely, how much variance you let into the game. 

    When Collingwood are chasing a lead late they want to play as open and expansive as possible, even to the point of counterintuitiveness.

    Time is the enemy, and so congestion and stoppages must be avoided at all costs, even if it means letting the ball spill out of a tackle. You’re more likely to win back clean possession in open play than a stoppage, and if you’re going to lose anyway it doesn’t make much difference if it’s by one goal or two.

    Conversely, when Collingwood are aiming to defend such a lead, they want to reduce the variance by restricting the amount of football that can possibly happen.

    Time is the enemy, and so congestion and stoppages are the best way to kill it. Search for the boundary, eschew first possession at stoppages so that you can descend on your opponents when they win it, and either continue to clog up the game or win possession back via free kick.

    The principles of it are simple, but nothing comes easily after being physically and mentally drained by running a dozen kilometres and making thousands of small decisions in a brief 2-3 hour window.

    The importance of keeping your clarity of mind was arguably never clearer than during the last ten seconds of Round 20, when Melbourne had lost sight of their rotations so badly they gave away game-defining 6-6-6 free kick, while St Kilda’s star ruck and midfielder coordinated a set play to create an uncontested marking opportunity inside forward-50.

    However, Collingwood’s edge in this area has started disappearing. Not due to fatigue or absentmindedness, but opponents copying their homework. Some of the earlier adopters have looked pretty inelegant, like Sam Draper diving onto the footy and seeming to dare the umpire to call him out on it. 

    Collingwood’s recent match against Fremantle must’ve felt like looking into a mirror.

    While they tried to open up space and get the ball forward by any means available, they faced a team running McRae’s “kill the game” playbook almost to perfection: pinning the ball at arm’s length to create stoppages without dragging it in, hanging off opponents and conceding first possession in order to wrap them up, handballing along the ground to keep the game congested, even descending on their own grounded teammates to make sure the ball doesn’t go anywhere they don’t want it to. 

    It was a genuine masterclass on both sides of the equation, but more importantly it was the clearest example that the tactical niche McRae has carved out for himself is quickly vanishing.

    Collingwood will still have a massive edge in these situations against disorganised, flustered opponents, but they’re unlikely to ever put up records like 8-1 in these situations again. It’ll probably look like a run of bad luck.

    How about a 186cm Full Forward?

    Cody Atkinson

    Are we ready for Jake Melksham, key position forward?

    Well it doesn’t really matter if we are ready or not – the time is here.

    source: afl.com.a

    But how did we get here – whatever this place is?

    When this TWIF correspondent watched the surprisingly enjoyable Carlton/Melbourne game at the MCG in round 19, something slightly peculiar stood out. No points for the guess here – it’s how Carlton responded to how Melbourne were using Jake Melksham.

    The Demons planted the former Bomber deep in the forward line – often as the closest forward to goal. That’s not particularly unusual across the league. Many sides throw a smaller option deep towards goal to throw the traditional defensive set up off kilter. Charlie Cameron played that role regularly for Brisbane’s most dangerous forward lines, for example.

    Usually this attempt succeeds, and the tall defender usually assigned the deep anchor role is forced up the ground to follow taller timber. In theory it diminishes the ability of the attacking side to take contested grabs inside 50, but it helps generate space and cause disruptions.

    Melksham has also been one of two dangerous forwards for the Demons all year – alongside Pickett. Fritsch has had his moments, but the stocks have been pretty bare this year.

    As alluded to above, Carlton didn’t respond in the usual way. They didn’t stick a small or medium sized defender on Melksham. Instead, they tasked All Australian key position defender Jacob Weitering on him. In isolation this matchup worked for Carlton – Melksham managed just one goal for the game and one mark inside 50, with Weitering hoovering up 6 intercept marks.

    TWIF asked Voss about the match-up after the game.

    “How important is it to have a tall (Weitering) that is mobile enough to go with someone, I guess, you know, half a foot a foot shorter than him? 

    Yeah, he’s a big man. So to get past him is a bit of a challenge. You want to be able to build a defense that can play tall, small – take their turns when they need to. That seems to be what modern defenses are all about. Play a little bit more with where your relevance is to the ball and where your strengths lie…At the same time, we’d like him further up the ground doing what he does best, which is obviously generating and interrupting opposition’s passes of play.”

    For the Demons the tactic is likely bourne out of desperation – a lack of reliable talls to direct traffic through. This make Voss’s response to the situation easier – without multiple credible tall targets deep, it becomes easier to place the most mobile one on the deep anchor – even if that anchor is on the smaller side.

    So how does this all relate to Jake Melksham, 186cm KPP?

    It’s worth noting this is the first year that Melksham is considered to be a tall forward. That’s down not to just how Melbourne have used him, but also how teams like Carlton have responded in kind.

    It turns out that some player classifications are determined not just by position on the ground and particular nominated roles (such as ruck), but also by the players that are determined to match up on them. Champion Data employees callers at the ground to not only determine what happens on the field but also on field matchups. These matchups are relatively rigid and static. The nature of the role perhaps doesn’t reflect how modern footy is played – but that’s a tangent for another day.

    @sportsgrad_

    So, you’re telling me I can get paid to watch footy 🤯  We went behind the scenes with Champion Data to see just how they tell the story of the game and deliver live stats to you in seconds ⚡️  Follow us to learn more of some of the most epic jobs in the sports industry! #jobsinsport #championdata #afl #aussierules #analytics #dataanalytics #fyp

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    It’s these matchups that feed into the player classification model. The type of forward (key or general) is determined not just by where they line up on the ground, but also who lines up alongside them. Because sides like Carlton have sent KPDs to mind Melksham, Champion Data have determined that the small to medium sized forward is actually tall.

    Determining player positions is tough in modern footy. The days of the standard footy field grid are long in the past when looking at how teams actually operate on the park. Interim measures – such as the Champion Data classifications – are increasingly being stretched by inventive coaching and game evolution.

    Further research is being done at both club level and by independent analysts. TWIF’s own James Ives has teased different player classifications, while former legend The Arc developed his own model way back in 2016.

    Or maybe Jake Melksham is just a 186cm KPP? Probably not, but maybe?

    In the margins

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    What statistics are correlated with winning and losing in season 2025? And how do those correlations differ for different teams with different strengths and game styles?

    This article comes with an acknowledgement and a few disclaimers. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without the incredible work of Andrew Whelan of WheeloRatings.com – having such a rich data source as a base meant I could take the time to pull together the analysis.

    The disclaimer, for the purposes of this piece, is that I’ve used really simple linear regression with r2 as the basis for determining correlation. It’s not something you’d use to try to put a predictive model together, but it does enough to allow us to draw some interesting points.

    Another disclaimer is that correlation is not causation, and doesn’t establish directionality. For example, West Coast’s margins are more strongly correlated to their ruck output than the rest of the league. Is that because when Bailey Williams and Matt Flynn have managed to win the battle, Harley Reid is able to go to work, or is it that an opposing ruck getting bested by them is emblematic of a team ripe to be beaten by West Coast?

    It could also be that a given stat is a real non-negotiable for a team, it’s something they can be relied to win week in week out regardless of the end result – which would be reflected in a low correlation. The data can hopefully lead us to some interesting points for discussion, but can’t be definitive one way or the other.

    Lastly,it is worth noting that I have used stat differentials (team minus opponent) rather than raw stats when correlating to margin, so keep that in mind.

    With that out of the way, let’s get into the statistical correlations.

    As you’d expect, kicking more goals than your opponent is very strongly tied to the final result. Champion Data’s rating points are also very closely correlated.

    We can see that xScore has a higher correlation with victory than the pure number of shots, which we’d expect from a measure that incorporates not just the volume but the level of difficulty of shots taken.

    Among score sources, Points from Turnover appear more valuable than Points from Stoppage, unsurprising as turnover is the primary scoring source. Points from forward half are a better predictor than points from defensive half.

    xScore rating, that is how well the teams are executing on the shots at goal they generate, appears to be worth about as much as a gap in uncontested possessions, which is a better predictor than contested possessions or clearances.

    Commit more clangers than your opponent and you’re likely to lose, however the correlation is relatively weak (to have a clanger you’ve generally got possession first).

    Defensive half pressure acts is a rare example of a “positive” stat with a negative correlation to margin. If you’re racking them up, it means both that the ball is in your defensive half and the opponent has control of it.

    We’ve got the league averages, so where and how does each team diverge on individual statistics?

    The arrow indicates the direction a team diverges from – a red arrow to the left means that stats correlates less (or more negatively) with margin for the team than for the league at large and blue indicates stronger correlation.

    Adelaide win through having a better spread of goalkickers than their opponents. They’ve had more unique goalscorers on 10 occasions for an eye-watering average margin of +62 points. Handballs are more valuable in their games than average, and kicks less so. The gap in value of points from forward half compared to defensive half expands.

    They also don’t rely on a high mark inside 50 differential as much as the rest of the league. To revisit our disclaimer, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad at it, just that it hasn’t correlated with winning and losing to the same degree it has for other teams. Adelaide has lost 5 games for the year – in three of them they won marks inside 50 and in a fourth they drew. They’ve lost marks inside 50 three times, and won two of those games. They’ve drawn it three times for a three point loss and two 10+ goal wins. They’ve also managed to win by 10+ goals with a +0,+0,+1, and +2 marks inside 50.

    Brisbane aren’t converting xScore into wins particularly well (because they’re 4th worst in goal accuracy this year). They’re getting more value from centre clearances than most teams, and appear to not be as affected by turnovers. This is partly driven by the fact that they haven’t had a turnover differential larger than 8 in the positive or negative whereas a quarter of games league-wide have blown out past this.

    Carlton don’t often lose more defensive 1 on 1s than their opponent, only on four occasions so far and never by more than two. Their biggest wins against West Coast and North saw them win the stat by 6 and 4 respectively. When they’ve been required to make more defensive half pressure acts than their opponent however they’ve got an average margin of -24 compared to +20 the other way. 

    Similar to Adelaide, Collingwood benefit from having a better spread of goalkickers than their opponents. All of Collingwood’s losses have come while winning the inside 50 count and three of the four came while also winning the marks inside 50 count, including a three point loss to Geelong while recording their best differential for the year (+9).

    They’ve only lost the tackle count once all year, in their opening round drubbing by GWS. While they recorded a solid +21 tackles in their 1 point loss to Fremantle, the other two losses saw low differentials (for Collingwood) of 8 and 10. Three of their four biggest wins have matched up with their three biggest tackle differentials. Their pressure game also helps explain why they can lose the kick count convincingly and still come out on top. 

    Essendon want clean hands. Their average result is a 47 point loss when recording more ineffective handballs than their opponent, compared to just a 9 point loss when recording fewer. This is mirrored in effective disposal tallies. It’s not surprising, decimated by injury my best guess is that they just don’t have the drilled structures in place to respond to errors so when things go bad there is little damage mitigation.

    It’s been a common theme of criticism that Fremantle can tend to rack up meaningless uncontested possessions. They’re 7-3 in games they win the count and 6-3 when losing it, but with a slightly better average margin. By comparison their average margin when winning contested possession is +26.2 compared to -10 when losing it.

    Geelong benefit from winning the intercept game as well as tackles inside 50. When the Cats have recorded +8 tackles inside 50 or better they average a 65 point win. On the two occasions they’ve achieved -8 or worse they’ve lost by 18 and 41. They also don’t mind getting on the positive end of some xScore variance. Points from stoppage aren’t as big a predictor for them as others.

    Gold Coast are towards the bottom of the league for post-clearance ground ball, but they’re 8-1 when they’ve won the stat. They boast the same record when winning crumbing possessions, but are dead average in the stat across the season.

    GWS have only won points from centre bounce in 6 games this season, but they’re 6-0 with an average margin of +45 when doing so. They’re not as dependent as most teams on building an xScore advantage to win, because they outperform their opponents on xScore rating by a maddening 10+ points per game.

    I’ll be back next week to step through the remaining nine teams as well as hopefully looking at which teams do or don’t have their performance captured well by Rating Points.

    Comparing this year’s finals race

    Sean Lawson

    The race for finals is down to 9 teams with a month left to play in the regular season of 2025. Sydney’s loss to GWS dropped their already remote finals chances to the purely mathematical realms involving multiple wooden spooner upsets, two collapsing teams, and improbable percentage boosts.

    The remaining equation is pretty simple. One team from the top 9 is going to miss out, and after the Dogs smashed GWS last night, there’s 4 teams (GWS, Hawthorn, Freo and Bulldogs) with a decent chance of missing the cut.

    With 4 weeks of the season to go, this is unusually early for so few teams to be in the hunt for finals in the 18 team era.

    The peculiarity of this season’s ladder is naturally being used to argue for an expansion of the finals to ten sides, so more teams can avoid dead rubbers for longer. However, Greg Swann appears to see the 10-team finals series as a change to be made when there’s 19 teams.

    Most years since 2012 have seen several clubs still in close contention for catching 8th spot. Indeed, some recent seasons have still seen the team as far adrift as 13th a viable chance of qualification, although on average, the top of the bottom 6 has been more than three games behind the pace.

    2016 was the last year where so few teams were in contention for finals a month out. In 2016, there were three games separating North Melbourne in 8th from St Kilda in 9th. Funnily enough, this was the season where North opened by winning 10 of their first 11, and by August were in open free-fall. North failed to win another game after round 20, and the Saints only missed finals on percentage.

    If making up 1 or 2 games on 8th is reasonably possible with a month remaining, most years we can expect up to four teams to still have fans furiously running their ladder predictors and death riding certain opponents.

    This year, all of the calculation of permutations is confined to the top 9 sides. The big reason there’s such a small chasing pack this year is that the fringe finalists are simply losing fewer games.

    This year is the first season since 2018 where the team in 8th has only lost 7 games to this point. Further, with the longer season thanks to Gather Round, the Suns on 12 wins are the winningest 8th place team yet seen in the 18 team era.

    A further consequence of the success of the teams ranked 5 to 8 is that a winning by teams outside the top 4 is that the actual positional spread within the top 8 is quite close at the start of Round 21.

    Those stronger results for the bottom few teams, and the lack of a runaway ladder leader, mean nearly everything is still up for grabs.

    The last few weeks of the season should be a tight jostle for home finals and double chances, everyone in the finals race has winning form to point to, there’s no clear single standout leading team, and it’s honestly strange that so many commentators seem to think that this all constitutes a “dismal” or “boring” season. 

    Around the Grounds

  • Round 20, 2025

    Round 20, 2025

    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

    A small moment in the aftermath of Carlton’s win over Melbourne last weekend went largely unnoticed except by those who pay attention to post-match press conferences.

    There’s a good reason that most people don’t pay attention to press conferences. This was one of the exceptions.

    At the end of the journalist questions, Michael Voss took a moment to speak about the Carlton Respects program, a community program the football club funds, focused on educating about gender equality as a tool to combat gendered violence.

    It is a serious subject that requires more focus, and more broad attention. Gendered violence is a societal problem that requires real discussions and policy solutions. Football is a just a game, but it is at its best when it mirrors and assists society at large.

    It probably says something about the perfunctory and rote nature of many press conferences that this went by without much further attention.

    This week in football we have:

    A deeper dive into the Threat Index

    James Ives

    Last week, I unveiled the Threat Index, which attempts to identify how threatening teams are across the course of a match. The Threat Index can also guide us on how well teams capitalise on a combination of territory, possession and shots at goal.

    This week, I will detail which teams concede the most goals against the run of play and the games with the biggest margin-threat differentials where a team has lost the game with greater threat.   

    Part 1: Brisbane’s Achilles Heel 

    For years, Brisbane have been dominant in both their transition ball movement and their ability to generate forward half turnovers. If there is one criticism of their game, it’s their inability to capitalise on their field position. In season 2025, almost 40% of opposition goals are scored while Brisbane has greater threat. This is one of the highest returns over the last five years.

    It helps explain why I’ve left a couple of Brisbane games wondering if I read the scoreboard incorrectly.

    Part of this is a result of their aggressive front half press, which explains why we also see other dominant front half teams, such as Collingwood, with high percentages. Interestingly, Melbourne and Carlton both concede similarly high percentages, albeit with much less territory and possession than the likes of Brisbane and Collingwood. 

    Part 2: The Back Breakers 

    That leads into a broader type of game – where a team wins despite the flow of game being against them. Here is a list of games with the biggest differentials between threat and margin.

    Gold Coast’s round 19 horror loss against Adelaide comes out on top.  We can see a critical period early in the game between Adelaide’s 2nd and 3rd goal in the visualisation below.

    In this five-minute stretch, Gold Coast had eight inside 50s to Adelaide’s two, and three shots to Adelaide’s one – which was generated from a kick-in and resulted in a Tex Walker banana from the pocket with an expected score of 2.3. A truly soul-crushing goal against the run of play. 

    Part 3: The Threat Leaders 

    The threat ladder shows Brisbane sitting atop, led by their dominant possession and front half game.

    Carlton and Melbourne sit just inside the top 8, highlighting their inability to convert territory into scores. While GWS sit 13th, highlighting their ability to absorb positional pressure and their counter-attacking prowess. 

    As always, please send through any requests, feedback or questions.

    Where it all begins

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    Centre bounces are one of the things that sets Australian football apart. Not so much for the novelty of the bounce, but because after a major score possession is reset to neutral. In most sports play restarts with the ball in possession, whether alternating (e.g. netball) or given to the team who conceded (e.g. basketball, soccer).

    That makes centre bounces an incredibly potent weapon. There aren’t any brakes that the rules applied, only what the opposition can summon. A patch of dominance can reshape the course of a game in mere moments.

    Who’s delivering at centre bounces this year then?

    Getting the clearance isn’t the only way a player can contribute at a centre bounce. First possession is important, rucks can add a lot through hitouts to advantage, and defensive pressure is critical. For the purpose of a single number to measure impact though clearances work pretty well.

    Centre bounce attendance and clearance rate, 2025

    As expected, down the bottom right in the “high attendance, low clearance” group we see the primary rucks. Solo rucks are there 80% or more of the time, but they’re generally not going to be winning clearances themselves at a high rate.

    Above that we’ve got some of the other heavily used midfielders. Caleb Serong stands out among them as the only player attending a high number of clearances to keep a clearance rate (clearances / bounces attended) above 15%.

    The top left is where things probably get the most interesting. We’ve got three players who have attended (relatively) few bounces this year but when they do are making things happen at an alarming rate.

    Going back as far as 2021 (and limiting only to players with 100+ CBAs in a full season (or 75+ so far this year), Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, Joel Freijah, and Cam Rayner are the only players to have a clearance rate above 20% across a season (Paddy Dow finished with exactly 20% in 2023).

    How these three got to their CBA numbers is quite different though.

    Centre bounce attendance by Freijah, Wanganeen-Milera and Rayner by round, 2025

    Wanganeen-Milera has had four games with 40%+ attendance, including 79% last week, his other 14 games have seen two in the 20s, three below 10%, and the rest with no attendances. It seems clear the Saints are looking to build into him the capacity to be an elite primary midfielder, rather than a half-back who rotates through.

    Freijah on the other hand has seen between 20% and 40% of bounces in 11 of his 18 and attended at least 5% every week. Rayner is somewhat similar, although with a higher floor and lower ceiling, all of his games falling between 7.7% and 25%.

    This brings us to the question of how teams are sharing the load more generally.

    Club centre bounce attendance distributions, 2025

    The chart is ranked in ladder order as of the end of round 19. Teams where the dark colour extends further right represent a higher concentration of CBAs among a smaller number of players – for example 93% of Brisbane’s CBAs have been taken by 6 players – Neale, Dunkley, McCluggage, Ashcroft, and the two rucks in Fort and McInerney. By comparison Essendon and West Coast use 13 and 12 players to fill out the first 93% of CBAs.

    What does it mean to have a settled centre bounce lineup? To be able to distil down into a single number I’ve chosen a measure of what % of centre bounce attendances are filled by the first 8 players across a season. This is arbitrary to an extent, but looking through the data appeared to give a reasonable point of separation between teams. It then allows us to compare it to an output – centre clearance differential.

    Centre bounce attendance differentials vs centre bounce attendance concentration since 2021

    We can see two things. Firstly a higher proportion of CBAs from a core group appears to correlate to a better centre clearance return. This matches intuition, one of the primary drivers of a high concentration of CBAs is health. Having your top tier midfielders available throughout more of the season will naturally yield better results.

    The second is that over the last 5 seasons CBAs have become more concentrated among a smaller group of players. Four of the 9 most concentrated CBAs occur this year – although for very different ladder results with the teams being Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, and North Melbourne. 

    We also see Richmond and Port Adelaide as the most concentrated teams to have averaged a -1 differential or worse further showing that consistency alone isn’t a guarantee of even centre bounce results.

    Big Docker has you fooled

    Sean Lawson

    What’s a “big club”?

    There’s a well understood hierarchy in Victoria with the “Big 4 clubs” at the top being Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton and Richmond. These clubs have the largest fanbases, long histories of success and the most money. At the other end are the Docklands tenants (derogatory) who have small fanbases, lower profiles and more difficult histories. Regional Geelong and nouveau riche Hawthorn somewhere in the middle.

    But what about the rest of the country?

    It is generally also understood that West Coast and Adelaide are very rich and powerful clubs, by virtue of their large market share in the second and third cities of Australian football. After that though, perceptions and characterisations by fans and media tend to get a lot murkier.

    I decided to test public perceptions of the middle cases by asking twitter followers:

    As it turns out, most people see the second teams in Adelaide and Perth as “small” clubs, but quite a few more see the Lions in Brisbane as a bigger club.

    This didn’t surprise me because I think it quantified something I’ve long noticed about the Dockers: most fans think they are effectively a “minnow” club, and this may even include a bit of an inferiority complex within their own fanbase.

    The reasons for this perception aren’t difficult to understand. The Dockers had a tortured early history, while existing in the same city with the bank-breaking death star of a club that is West Coast.

    And of course, the Dockers haven’t won a flag, whereas the Lions have won 4. Premierships create the perception of power and size, even if Essendon exist to remind us that money doesn’t buy football happiness in the modern world.

    To a certain extent this underdog branding is also how the club positions itself – scrappy battler, ignored by other fans and the media, set up to fail from day 1, disrespected and treated poorly, starved of success.

    This perception is, however, all an illusion. By most reasonable metrics, the Dockers are not just middling, but a powerhouse of a clubs.

    Most obviously, Freo are one of two teams from a pretty big city, one not much less than half the size of Australia’s largest city, Melbourne.

    Perth is footy’s second city and quite a lot larger (and richer) than Adelaide. If we assume the club split in both cities is about 60:40, then the smaller share of Perth is larger than majority share of Adelaide.

    On the strength of this background alone, we have to suspect that even the smaller team based out west has to be doing pretty well for itself.

    And that scale of population translates into fans. Fremantle’s crowds have been persistently huge for years now. They used to fill Subiaco pretty well and right now, with the Eagles at a low ebb, they’re even outdrawing the cross-town megaclub.

    Indeed, Freo are outdrawing everyone else except Collingwood right now. That’s when we measure each club’s own fanbase in isolation by excluding games where both teams are based in the same city and both fanbases are contributing to the crowd figures:

    Money-wise, Fremantle is a fairly well-off club, too. The AFL distributes shares of broadcast revenue to all clubs to enable them to fully fund their football programs to clubs. Small needier clubs receive more revenue and larger clubs receive less.

    These distributions serve as a rough (but not exact, given differences in operating costs and the like) guide to how the AFL has measured each club’s financial capacity:

    Fremantle are among the clubs considered to need the least support, as befits a big team in the second city of football.

    Note that on the other hand, the Lions receive a lot of support from the AFL, as they have done since equalisation really took hold around 2015. The Lions are based in a development market and were heavily impacted by the introduction of the Suns, with membership and crowd data indicating that perhaps a quarter or more of the Lions’ attendance base (presumably concentrated in Gold Coast) was lost to the Suns. That impact would have amounted to several million dollars of revenue a season.

    Fremantle’s financial health is of course largely because, with those huge crowds and a large, rich and football-obsessed city at their back, they generate simply a lot of money from football.

    This is my best estimate of the relative “profitability” of each club’s football operations, from an article earlier in the year. It is the money they make from sponsors, memberships, gate, merchandise, after the costs of providing these things are deducted:

    With their lack of silverware, their powerful neighbour, their off-broadway TV timeslots and low profile in Melbourne, Fremantle might not feel like a powerhouse club. But perception isn’t reality. They aren’t West Coast, but the Dockers are massive. Don’t let them or their enemies trick you into thinking otherwise.

    Around the Grounds

  • Round 16 2025

    Round 16 2025

    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

    And just like that, there’s only two months of the season left. As the nights get colder, the battle for finals gets hotter.

    Something else that is getting hotter is the seats of several coaches are getting warmer. After an offseason where only one coach stepped away (John Longmire) relatively late in the process, we could be entering a summer with several job opening across the league.

    One of these changes is already confirmed, with Port’s Ken Hinkley stepping away after the season and Josh Carr taking over. Several others, such as Carlton’s Michael Voss, North’s Alistair Clarkson, Fremantle’s Justin Longmuir, St Kilda’s Ross Lyon and Melbourne’s Simon Goodwin have been mentioned by fans or media as having some threat to their job.

    There’s a very real chance that most of these coaches will stay in their jobs, and most clubs will deny that there was any threat to their employment.

    Idle speculation is cheap, all around.

    There’s also a chance that conversations are being held about other coaches across the league. This job uncertainty adds an extra dimension to the final weeks of normal AFLM football for the year.

    This week in football we have:

    The Joe Daniher (or Buddy) replacement nobody suggested

    Jack Turner | The Back Pocket | TheBackPocketAU

    The Lions look ominous in their premiership defence, but the absence of an experienced key pillar is still notable

    I know I’ve been critical of trade discussion slop during the season, but this article has become topical this week despite my plans to keep it in the barrel until the season was over.

    Take two hypothetical key forwards. Both 26 years old, and have had many seasons interrupted by injury, including their most recent one where they only managed four games.

    The first player averages 1.79 goals, 4.5 marks and 5.1 Score Involvements over his 70 game career.

    The other averages 1.76 goals, 5.8 marks and 5.5 Score Involvements over his 108 game career.

    They each have a career high of six goals, and have kicked bags of five multiple times. 

    Who are you picking? The numbers probably sit slightly with Player Two, especially considering that on average the first player would kick just the one more goal per season than the second if they played a full 23 games.

    But if you missed out on the first one, you would likely be happy to take the second, wouldn’t you agree?

    So as you may have guessed, the second player is Joe Daniher – specifically at the point of his career when he left Essendon. He had only played four games that year and four games the year prior, never able to get his body right.

    Then he moved to Brisbane, kicked 46 goals from 24 games, and you know the rest of the story.

    The other player is forgotten Hawks forward Mitchell Lewis. Came back last year only to be felled by injury again, but his best has been clearly good enough – and he’s still only 26. Recently he has been back in the news as he has been eying a VFL return.

    This isn’t to suggest that Mitchell Lewis is the talent that Joe Daniher was. Daniher was a game breaker in a way that many key forwards struggle to be. But as the saying goes, “we can recreate him in the aggregate,”.

    Mitchell Lewis hasn’t played a game at any level since he ruptured his ACL against Geelong in Round 17 last year, in what was his first game back after a cartilage problem from a past partial ACL tear kept him out from Round 3.

    In the 2022 and 2023 seasons, despite managing just 15 games, Lewis tallied 36 and 37 goals, finishing runner-up in the Hawks goalkicking both years and averaging the most goals per game in the team.

    With Sam Mitchell and the Hawks courting Oscar Allen, and with Calsher Dear and Mabior Chol already making that forwardline their own, you wonder if there is any room for a fit Mitch Lewis in 2026 anyway.

    Brisbane have somewhat of a recent history of getting players bodies right, with Joe Daniher the obvious example, but even Lincoln McCarthy – despite unluckily getting injured in their premiership year – strung together five full seasons at the Lions having never played one at Geelong.

    The Lions have looked intimidating at times this year, and short of firepower or accuracy in front of goal at others. Logan Morris is starting to come into his own as a key forward, but is a little more one-dimensional and less crash and bash than Lewis can be and Daniher previously was.

    This may all be a different story if Brisbane instead get Oscar Allen this year, as is now being rumoured more and more as the season goes on, but there is another club who could use a replacement key forward – for both structure and marketing purposes. That team is the Sydney Swans.

    Sydney’s forwardline has been their weakest link since Buddy left, with a combination of injuries and form preventing any of Logan McDonald, Hayden McLean or Joel Amartey from really stamping their authority over it, with the Swans forced to throw key defender Tom McCartin back at times this season.

    Pairing a (hopefully) fit Mitch Lewis with a slightly less wayward Joel Amartey would make for an imposing forward pairing, and might be what gets the Swans to take that final step in 2026.

    Now this might all be pointless if Hawthorn don’t land Allen or chase another key forward in the off season this year, or Mitch Lewis may simply want to try a change of location in an attempt to get his body right – either way, don’t be surprised if Mitch Lewis finds himself a new home in 2026, or at the very least has his name come up in discussions during trade week.

    Until then, lets just hope that Lewis gets through this weekend of VFL unscathed.

    What goes around comes around (once in a blue moon)

    Lincoln Tracy | @lincolntracy

    One of the much talked about inequities of the AFL fixture is who plays who twice, and when they do so. For example, Carlton has played both West Coast and North Melbourne twice in their 14 games so far this season, while Geelong didn’t play either team until Round 12 (when they played the Eagles).

    Here’s a list of teams that have played each other twice to this point of the season, prior to the start of Round 16:

    Brisbane and Geelong, Carlton and North Melbourne, Carlton and West Coast, Port Adelaide and Sydney, and the Western Bulldogs and St Kilda.

    Three of these pairs of teams had their second meeting in Round 15 (Brisbane/Geelong, Carlton/North Melbourne, and Port Adelaide/Sydney), but there was something about the Power and Swans game that caught my attention – and no, it wasn’t Joel Amartey’s abysmal night on the goal kicking front.

    Last week Sydney’s Justin McInerney put his side in front when he kicked the opening goal in the first minute of the match; a lead the Bloods would not relinquish for the remainder of the game. The Power got within three points partway through the second quarter but never got things back on level pegging (or held their own lead at any point during the game).

    Source: afl.com.au

    This is the opposite of what happened when the two sides met in Round 6, where Sam Powell-Pepper registered the first goal in the fourth minute. The Swans never held a lead at any point after this, although they did draw level with the Power in the first quarter, which I suppose is an improvement compared to the more recent game.

    Source: afl.com.au

    After looking at scoring chain and match result data for nearly 350 matches going back to the start of the 2018 season, I believe this is the first and only time this reversal of fortunes has happened during that particular period of time.

    The two teams will most likely take little notice of this incredibly useless finding, given Ken Hinkley and Dean Cox have bigger issues to deal with. Something to add to their summer reading piles, perhaps?

    Which clubs have a lot of player contracts expiring soon?

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    Player contracts have obviously been in the news a lot lately, particularly in the wake of Melbourne signing Kysaiah Pickett to the end of 2034.

    Using Footywire’s database of contract status I thought it would be interesting to look at how each list shapes up in terms of who is locked away and for how long.

    To the left, in the faded area, you can see how long a player has been on that club’s list. The right shows how far into the future they are contracted.

    Let’s also get a quick summary of who has the most potential fluidity in their list over the next few years.

    For this year, Port Adelaide and Collingwood have the highest proportion of their list unsigned.

    If we look forward to the end of 2026. Carlton, Port Adelaide again, as well as Hawthorn and West Coast all have 70% of more of their players yet to extend.

    At the three-year mark we’ve got Richmond, St Kilda, Carlton and Hawthorn with 90% of their list potentially out of contract by then, with the Bulldogs just shy.

    Going from the opposite direction Fremantle, GWS, Collingwood, and Brisbane have the highest proportion of players contracted out past the end of 2028.

    West Coast, Essendon, Gold Coast, Hawthorn, and Collingwood are the only clubs with no players contracted beyond 2030, with West Coast’s longest current commitments ending with Jake Waterman, Jack Hutchinson, and Liam Baker in 2029.

    Attacking off the mark

    Cody Atkinson

    If you watch enough footy on a weekend, you’ll likely hear the commentators implore players to attack quickly after taking a mark. Attacking instinct has always been envied in football, but the “stand” rule has seen some see attacking directly from marks as a priority.

    There’s a couple of quick ways this can happen. Teams can either look to play on immediately after marks, with the running finding space and ideally bouncing the ball before kicking, or they can look for either an overlapping or forward handball. This is an example of what the latter looks like.

    The concept is that decisive movement forward can catch the defence before it can settle, especially early in chains after intercepts or stoppage wins. Although the clip above didn’t end up in a score for Brisbane, it did give them a clear look inside 50 – about as good as you can get in modern footy.

    The second benefit is that it can often leave the man on the mark as a passenger in play, looking to cover off two different objectives without moving.

    Some teams look to attack this way more than others. TWIF have looked at how often teams handball directly or bounce from taking marks. 

    While a couple of very solid sides rely on this type of movement, two of the league’s teams to beat (Collingwood and Brisbane) sit near the bottom. This shows that instead of a universal strategy, it’s more situational. Too many overlap handballs can leave you exposed the other way if the subsequent use isn’t accurate. Unlike what is often discussed, handballing or playing on straight from marks is a “sometimes” activity.

    It also inherently takes away the biggest advantage of a mark – a pressure free disposal. Pressure on kickers has been shown to increase the likelihood of turnovers and reduce the accuracy of kicks. Players and teams need to be sure that the trade off is worth removing this advantage.

    Another angle to this is when attacking from marks lead to scores.

    Adelaide and Brisbane don’t go hard after marks as much as other teams, but when they do it comes off more of the time. By contrast Port Adelaide and Essendon probably go to attack too often based on their ability to score from these types of attacks.

    So what’s the lesson from all of this? Maybe it’s that there is more than one way to get the ball through the goals, and attacking all out isn’t always the right move.

    Which players love the tough conditions?

    Sean Lawson

    Following on from our look at weather impacted footy for the ABC, Emlyn suggested we have a look at individual player data related to the weather. It turns out there’s some poor schmucks have played in the muck much more than others. And some players go their best when conditions are far from ideal.

    The players who have played in the wet since the most since 2022 are mostly Crows players – namely those who have played in all their 16 rain affected games. But there’s one non-Crow on the top.

    Daniel Rioli’s move from Richmond to Gold Coast sets him apart from the rest. The Suns have played 5 games in the wet this year, to add to his steady diet of soggy MCG games in previous years.

    Rioli also tends to have a bit more impact in the wet, improving his average AFL Player Rating from about 12 to about 14. The picture of which players go best in the rain is just a who’s who of pretty good AFL players more generally, but Christian Petracca stands out as a genuine mud pig, having rated a little higher in the rain than even Marcus Bontempelli since 2022. 

    Many of the top players are skilled or powerful midfielders, but two relatively mobile big men in Luke Jackson and Tim English also stand up in the rain. Jackson, in fact, is one of the biggest wet weather improvers overall since 2022, behind only the surprising name of Jake Lever whose player rating in wet games goes to 14.5 against 8.9 on other occasions.

    Living up to their hydrophilic club mascot’s identity, two battling Swans talls, Hayden McLean and Aaron Francis, also seem to have a knack for impacting plenty in the rain.

    At the other end of the scale, a number of very skilled forward half players and some other more traditional rucks historically fail to impact as well when there’s rain around.

    As far as heat goes, Murphy Reid has started brightly at Freo and stands out as having played nearly half his games this year in temperatures hitting above 25 degrees. Suns and Dockers players dominate the list of players who have spent the largest share of their games in the heat, and the Suns completely monopolise the list of most games played hot conditions.

    As noted in the ABC article, hot weather games tend to lend themselves to open running as pressure and defensive running gets harder to maintain. The list of players to improve the most in these conditions tends to be a list of players who benefit from finding some space to create and attack in.

    Finally, in cold weather, the biggest improver is Bulldogs runner Jason Johannisen. Amusingly, there are a number of Brisbane players who show large increases in performance in the cold weather.

    Perhaps, with Tasmania on the horizon, a few of these cold-weather Lions might consider a move southwards.

    Around the Grounds

  • Round 15, 2025

    Round 15, 2025

    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

    Peter Ryan at The Age has reported this week on a potential revival of State of Origin, but this time in Australian Football form. Yet again the thirst for seeing the best against the best has raised its head.

    Despite the Origin format of interstate football becoming ubiquitous in League over the years, the concept started out in Australian Football originally a few years beforehand.

    Since then Origin has become nearly bigger than the rest of league in this country itself, with its devotion to mates, states and mates going against mates who come from different states.

    There is also no Gus Gould to set the mood in Australian Football.

    ‘The statement she made is in its narrow sense true, but also in a broader sense impossible, it defies history and the future at the same time, it asks us to challenge our own senses of what is expected of us in life, and isn’t that the beating core of football? After the break we return to ORIGIN’

    — Liam Hogan (@liamhogan.id.au) 2025-06-11T06:19:16.459Z

    But AFL administrators have seen the impact of Origin on the slightly differently shaped ball game, and the broadcasters have taken note of the ratings.

    One of the big issues is which states should get a call up for the game. Ryan’s report notes that WA and Victoria have been tabbed for a potential 2026 game, leaving South Australia and a strong Allies side in the cold.

    More important is the timing and potential rewards for playing. Pride only gets you so far in an increasingly professional environment. A preseason game may not drive the level of competition the rugby league origin game drives.

    Whatever the case, we may soon have an even longer men’s AFL season ahead of us.

    This week in football we have:

    The AFL’s Sightseers and Homebodies

    Jack Turner | The Back Pocket | @TheBackPocketAU

    Why has Harvey Thomas maxed out his frequent flyer card in just 32 games?

    Earlier this year, there was a much discussed stat about the fact that GWS youngster Harvey Thomas has played at 13 venues in just 32 games, surpassing Scott Pendlebury’s 11 venues in just his 23rd game. Harvey Thomas is a long way off league record holder David Swallow, who has played at 22 venues in his 245 career games. 

    That’s a record that may be equalled or surpassed by Nick Holman, Jarrod Witts or Touk Miller should the Tasmanian Devils still join the competition in the 2028 AFL season.

    But what is the reason for this? Is it simply Vic bias and the fact Collingwood never travel? Or is there something else at play here? 

    Well, the easiest way to do this is to break down the grounds that Harvey Thomas has played at and why.

    Harvey’s Giants already spread their games across two unique stadia – Manuka Oval in Canberra and Sydney Showground in Olympic Park – while their cross town rivals play at a different ground all together (the SCG). That’s three without leaving the confines of NSW/ACT.

    You can tick off the other major stadiums pretty easily, with the MCG having four major tenants, Docklands having five major tenants, and Adelaide Oval and Perth Stadium having two each. This means every team will play at each of these grounds once a year. Thomas, already a mainstay at the Giants, only missed three games in his debut season. All up, that’s seven grounds without breaking a sweat. Add the Gabba once every year and a half (on average) and that’s eight.

    It is perhaps worth mentioning that Scott Pendlebury too has played at all seven of the grounds listed above in the past two seasons and also at Carrara. Harvey Thomas is yet to play there as the Suns home game against GWS was during Gather Round last year, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

    Now we start to get to the fun part – the ‘bonus’ grounds. Where do we find the four (now five) extra grounds that Harvey Thomas has played at to surpass Scott Pendlebury so fast?

    Well, first up was the aforementioned Gather Round game against Gold Coast. Fair or not, the clashes between smaller clubs are less likely to be played at Adelaide Oval, and the Giants and Suns clashed at Summit Sports Park in Mt Barker last year. This year they faced the Saints at the oddly shaped Norwood Oval.

    Here’s where we get to the sticky part. Some teams – much like GWS – are in the habit of selling home games to regional cities to help generate a little more profit than ticket sales alone can create, but they don’t want to sell their games against Collingwood because they make the big bucks. Why sell a profitable home game when you can sell one that might struggle to break even? 

    Collingwood are the Bulldogs highest pulling home game, while the Giants are their second lowest. This is why Harvey Thomas has now played in Ballarat against the Dogs and at York Park against North Melbourne. 

    The last remaining ground on this list is Kardinia Park in Geelong, where Harvey Thomas has already played twice – for two wins I might add – while Pendlebury has never played there. While many – including myself – think that Collingwood should have to make the trip down the highway at least every second year, (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) there’s a few good reasons why he hasn’t yet. Geelong only play nine or ten home games at Kardinia Park, with the remaining home game/s held at the MCG. The Cats have requested to play the MCG games against large sides – this year Hawthorn, but with Collingwood getting the nod in many years. Collingwood also has a deal for 14 guaranteed MCG games a year expires, it is a no brainer that in seasons where they clash twice, Geelong will continue to host Collingwood at the MCG.

    So is it Victorian bias? Or simply a case of luck? Arguably it’s a bit of both – or neither. Even last year – in a season where they were historically poor – one of the most travelled teams in the country in West Coast only played at eight different stadia, the only difference to Pendles being that they had to play in Geelong.

    The real answer here is that as long as the poorer clubs continue to sell two or three home games a season, the smaller interstate teams and other poorer clubs will continue to play games at more grounds than their opponents.

    Goal kicking isn’t one of the most under-rated stats, but it’s maybe one of the most poorly analysed

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    This article makes heavy use of the excellent wheeloratings.com by Andrew Whelan for this piece (and many other pieces). If you’re not familiar you should go have a look, it surfaces a lot of things that will help you understand the game far better than official league stat offerings.

    Goal kicking, eh?

    Last week for the ABC Cody and Sean poured some much needed cold water on the supposed goal-kicking crisis. More articles followed this week and, apart from the aforementioned, surface level would be a generous description of them.

    Goal accuracy = goals / shots. It’s a simple proposition and attractive because of it. However, like many simple explanations it misses more than it hits.

    I’ve instead measured teams goalkicking performance based on three different attributes:

    • Volume – how many shots is a team generating per game
    • Quality – on average, how high quality are those shots (xScore per shot – xScore is a measure of how many points on average you would expect a given shot to result in by comparing it to similar shots taken previously. A set shot from the goal square would have an xScore of almost 6, a shot under physical pressure from the boundary might have an xScore of under 2.)
    • Execution – is a team making the most of those opportunities (total score / total xScore)

    It’s my tentative view that execution is largely chance based rather than a quality of a given team. Over the past 5 seasons the only team to not record seasons both in the negative and positive is Fremantle. Last year Melbourne were above average in executing while this year they’re abysmal. If you’re going to be weak in one thing you want it to be this because it doesn’t represent a structural problem.

    I’ve then grouped teams on overall performance in these categories:

    • Elite – overperforms in at least two of the categories
    • Poor – underperforms in at least two of the categories
    • Strength outlier – A mixed bag, but defined most clearly by a strength
    • Weakness outlier – A mixed bag, but defined most clearly by a weakness
    • Average – Teams who neither overperform or underperform majorly in any given category

    Some interesting things jump out right away.

    Geelong and the Dogs excel on all metrics. If you need another excuse to hop on their premiership chances, this will help you get there.

    By contrast Adelaide’s quality of shots is lagging a bit. Gone are the days of Tom Lynch or Josh Jenkins getting endless passes out the back to an undefended goalsquare. These “cheapies” have been made up for by volume of shots and maximizing the chances they do take.

    Collingwood’s attacking strength has been predominantly the volume of opportunities they create, with fairly average quality and execution.

    Gold Coast and North Melbourne are both generating their shots in really dangerous places. The difference between the finals fancy and the Roos at the bottom of the ladder is North’s lack of supply – which continues to be a critical problem.

    St Kilda and Hawthorn don’t have a real strength or weakness and hit around average on all three measures.

    GWS and Carlton’s execution has been strong through the year, making up significant ground in their attacking space. Fremantle’s quality of shots has covered a similar role for the Dockers.

    Brisbane are creating a lot of shots at a decent quality. But so far this year their execution has let them down. If their execution lifts they could easily click into another gear coming into finals.

    Melbourne are abysmal at executing on their shots, by far the biggest outlier of any metric by any team.

    Sydney’s quality of shots generated is the biggest thing letting them down. This may have to do with the lack of targets they’ve had up forward for much of the year.

    The bottom six has several predictable tales. Essendon are executing well enough on the shots they generate. Execution is Richmond’s strongpoint relatively but still below league average. West Coast is underperforming on all three metrics.

    We can also apply a similar method to looking at the shots a team concedes. For this one I’m not going to use a three-axis chart, as (in my view) a team has little control over the week-to-week accuracy of their opponent. What is replicable for a team’s defence is how many shots it concedes and where it concedes them.

    Collingwood are clearly the best defending team in the league – outperforming in both restricting the quality and volume of their opponents shots. Carlton are the clear next in line.

    Adelaide and Gold Coast are quite similar – doing quite well in restricting the volume, but around average for constraining those shots to low quality ones. GWS and Essendon are the reverse but moreso – elite for restricting their opponents to low quality shots, but they do allow a lot of them.

    The Dogs and Melbourne can restrict the volume of shots to some degree, but the ones they do concede are dangerous.

    Finals chasers Hawthorn, Fremantle and Brisbane are above average on both axes.

    While at the other end of the scale is West Coast. They are the Melbourne of this chart, a clear outlier that stretches the axis.

    Cooling it all down

    Cody Atkinson

    The last two weeks of footy have seen something that’s usually experienced by players and fans amplified to an extreme

    While footy is meant to be a winter game, the combination of a surprisingly cold start to winter and the perplexing scheduling of two night games in the coldest AFL cities in the country have led to a couple of notably low scores. Sometimes the scoreboard lies about the quality of a game, but both last week’s Hawthorn-Adelaide match and round 13’s game between GWS and Port were scrappy affairs.

    Don’t just take my word for it.

    “We haven’t played a lot of night games here and…I’m sure you saw on the bench there was fair bit of steam coming off the heads of the players and things like that.” Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell said after the match in Launceston.

    “So it was obviously colder than we’ve played. So it was a beautiful day absolutely ma magic um day here today but obviously the temperature drops quite steeply with no cloud cover,”

    “It meant that it was going to be slippery and I thought both teams, I thought, handled it really well early…I think it was the conditions that led to the low scoring.”

    “I think both teams – it was slippery you know. It’s dewy obviously – there’s there’s no doubt it

    was a slippery wet game. So that’s a challenge when it comes to finishing your work off.” Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks added.

    Wet weather gets talked about a fair bit, with a return to first principles and 80s style footy often getting sprinkled amongst more established game plans. Focus around the contest and straight line movement comes back into play, and the ground tends to get “skinny” and long.

    We will get to what that looks like later.

    Cold weather footy gets talked about a fair bit less. That makes sense – we see a lot less of truly cold conditions here given the general climates of where the games are played. It can often be hard to work out why there are issues. In Canberra the dewy surface was noticeable in person, but may have not come across on TV.

    “It wasn’t a pretty game of footy but it’s not a “pretty game of footy” weekend.” It was pretty slippery all over the place this weekend.” Port coach Ken Hinkley explained.

    “Of course you have to adjust to what you play (to) what the conditions are so, you know, it’s something we had to do.”

    When watching the game, one particular attribute came through clearly. That is how “skinny” the game was.

    Playing “skinny” is pretty simple – it generally refers to playing on the narrow side of the ground without looking to stretch through the corridor or the fat side by using horizontal handballs or kicks. Generally, skinny games are also accompanied by a “long” set up, with bookends sitting far deeper than normal to attempt to provide some vertical spacing.

    If you are watching in the stands or at home, an easy test is where the widest players are sitting when the ball is near the boundary. If the wing roles are sitting well inside the centrepoint of the ground, chances are that it’s a pretty skinny game.

    This is one example of Port’s set up when exiting 50 when in Canberra.

    Up the ground the Power crammed hard to the boundary. Another example comes at this midfield boundary throw in. Players are heavily concentrated on the ball, and no-one is sitting on the fat side of the ground.

    I asked Ken post-game about this

    “It seemed like you tried to play a pretty skinny game?” 

    “Yeah we did because the conditions made it a bit more challenging…that’s what was happening, I think, in the second quarter. We were throwing the ball around a little bit too much, boys were trying to probably fight through too much contest.” Hinkley explained. 

    For those who love data to back up the eye test, here it is.

    For the rest of the season, Port and GWS are the two sides most likely to use the corridor when transitioning the ball from their defensive third – or behind the back of the centre square. In Canberra, both sides avoiding doing so stringently, with the exception of the unsuccessful foray that Hinkley mentioned in the second quarter.

    The Hawthorn and Adelaide game last week saw both sides try the corridor more often than in Canberra, but there were other hallmarks of a modified style of game. The sides combined for 16 contested knock ons, well above their combined average of 10. There were also 183 intercept possessions – almost 60 more than the league match average of 128. There was also one passage where interchanges were stranded for about 10 minutes, kicking rotations right out, due to the ball being stuck on the “wrong” side of the ground”.

    By now you might have cottoned on that it sounds a bit like wet weather footy. It’s similar, yet different.

    But sometimes conditions are down to how you perceive them. I also asked GWS coach Adam Kingsley about the conditions in Canberra post game and he had a different view from my frozen fingers.

    Conditions play a bit of a factor with the ball movement?

    “Nope, it’s pretty dry out there I reckon. We may have made it look a bit wet at times but for the most part it was pretty good conditions.”

    Completing the Australian Football Hall of Fame

    Sean Lawson

    The Hall of Fame of Australian Football has an oft-discussed Victorian bias, with statistical analysis showing that, from before the national era, lower levels of achievement will lead to likely induction versus South Australian and Western Australian players.

    Initially dominated by Victorian journalists (the-13 person inaugural panel featured only SANFL president Max Basheer and Perth journalist Geoff Christian), the Hall started with 116 of 136 inaugural names having played substantially in Victoria.

    More recent years have seen some attempt to correct the record, with AFL chair Mike Fitzpatrick ordering a review in 2010 that led to a required 25% minimum of selectors living outside Victoria.

    The Hall then started to belatedly recognise early non-Victorian stars like Tom Leahy (notably an even match for Roy Cazaly at interstate carnivals) and in 2018, analysis by Daniel Hoevenaars and James Coventry in Footballistics showed that since the regime change, WAFL and SANFL nominations had kept pace with pre-AFL names from Victoria. 

    There has also been more effort to correct for the relative under-representation of eras before about the 1970s.

    Keen students of Australian geography will be aware that there are in fact more than three states in Australia. All of them have long football histories, and lost in a lot of the older debates about the relative merit of SANFL and WAFL players have been other worthy candidates across the full geographical sweep of Australian football’s century and a half of history.

    So, what of the Hall of Fame representation of the rest of Australia? What recognition has there been so far, and who might we look to for still-unrepresented regions of the footballing nation?

    For those looking for those overlooked Victorians such as Sav Rocca you have found the wrong article.

    Tasmania

    First up is Tasmania, clearly the fourth state among football states. Tasmanian VFL players Darrel Baldock and Peter Hudson were inaugural legends, and Ian Stewart joined them in the following year. Others like Roy Cazaly, Stuart Spencer and Ivor Warne-Smith developed later ties to the Apple Isle. Several players who began their footy journeys down south have been inducted into the Hall, including Terry Cashion, Verdun Howell and Laurie Nash. 

    It wasn’t until almost immediately after Fitzpatrick’s review when Tasmania finally had players inducted who hadn’t played in the VFL. Horrie Gorringe in 2010 and John Leedham this year are the only Tasmanian players inducted solely on the basis of their play in Tasmania. Several players, such as Cashion, almost exclusively plied their trade down south. Of the states outside the big three, Tasmania possibly is the best represented and needs the smallest correction.

    New South Wales

    The New South Wales Australian Football Hall of Fame features 10 legends in its ranks.The majority of these legends had extensive careers in the AFL/VFL or elsewhere, such as Tony Lockett, Paul Kelly and Terry Daniher, but it also features several names from earlier eras.

    Haydn Bunton Sr is notable in this list of NSW Hall of Fame Legends, because to read the national Hall of Fame Legends entry his career simply starts at age 20 already at Fitzroy. This is despite Bunton having been rather famously the subject of an illegal payments scandal to get him there at all. He played several senior seasons at Albury and West Albury (both former incarnations of the current Albury Tigers) from age 15 until age 20, and won the only premierships of his career there.

    The entry of NSW Hall of Fame legend Ralph Robertson in 2024 arguably broke the duck for NSW footy excellence being recognised on its own terms. Robertson did play 14 games for St Kilda in 1899, but his Hall of Fame case was built on the strength of his contributions to footy in Sydney. Robertson played for East Sydney (now merged into the UNSW/Eastern Suburbs Bulldogs) and North Shore, and represented New South Wales on several dozen occasions. Longtime Swans chair Richard Colless, himself a legend in the NSW Hall of Fame for football administration, publicly lobbied for this inclusion for years. 

    Figures such as leading goalkicker Stan Miller (the namesake of their Coleman), administrators Harry Hedger and Jim Phelan (the Best and Fairest in AFL Sydney is the Phelan Medal) and long term player and administrator Jack Dean may hear their names called in future years. 

    There is also a solid case for the induction of Sir Doug Nicholls, who grew up in New South Wales. While his career was only 11 years long he was successful at both VFL and VFA levels, including representing the VFL and VFA sides in representative matches.

    Queensland

    The Queensland Hall of Fame only has two playing legend – Marcus Ashcroft. The premiership Lion already naturally sits in the national Hall for his exploits at AFL level. Many other Queenslanders also sit in the current national Hall of Fame, such as Jason Dunstall, Jason Akermanis and Michael Voss.

    The lone QAFL-specific entry in the Hall of Fame comes, strangely enough, in the form of an umpire. Tom McArthur umpired 502 games from 1959 to 1985.

    Dick Verdon has arguably the strongest case of the Queenlanders to stay up north to make the national Hall in coming years. 

    Northern Territory

    Neither territory yet has a truly standalone entry in the national Hall of Fame, though there are several players with ties which go unmentioned in the AFL website’s honours lists.

    Curiously, Michael Graham’s long career with St Mary’s is listed alongside his Sturt career, but several other inductees like Maurice Rioli and Bill Dempsey do not have their games for St Mary’s and Darwin listed.

    In the NT Hall of Fame, among the inaugural legends are two Indigenous Team of the Century players, Bill Dempsey and David Kantilla. They played for West Perth and South Adelaide respectively. Rather notably though, both spent substantial parts of their careers playing in the NTFL during the southern off-season. That’s something that’s rather unique to footy in the Top End, and would be worthy of note by a truly national Hall of Fame on cultural significance grounds alone.

    There’s also a wide range of other notable NT players that merit consideration alongside Dempsey and Kantilla.

    The ACT

    Finally, let’s talk about the nation’s capital.

    The most famous name in Canberra football is Alex Jesaulenko. Jezza played in Canberra until age 20, winning three senior premierships with Eastlake before making the move to Carlton, something that is (unsurprisingly) omitted from his Hall of Fame record. His story of migration and only taking up the game at age 14 is well known, but also significant is that he did this on the mere fringes of what could be reasonably considered football heartland. Jesalulenko also returned to Canberra to play and coach after his retirement.

    Among several AFL Canberra Hall of Fame legends (and the strange omission of both James Hird and Jesaulenko) are two names I want to highlight as potential national Hall of Fame candidates based on Canberran exploits.

    The first is Kevin “Cowboy” Neale. Neale was part of St Kilda’s only VFL premiership and played 256 games for them. He’s probably not quite in the frame for Hall of Fame honours on his St Kilda career alone, especially with the over representation of players from his era already.

    However, his contributions to football in Canberra after this were also significant. While serving as captain-coach at Ainslie, he led the Tricolours to four flags in five years, kicking about a million goals in the process. 

    He also led Canberra to this most storied of moments:

    Against a VFL team featuring plenty of legitimate VFL talent such as Malcolm Blight, Merv Neagle, Robert Dipierdomenico, Francis Bourke, Michael Turner and Trevor Barker, Neale led a Canberra side also featuring Jesaulenko, to a hard fought win at Manuka Oval in July 1980.

    If there’s one historical moment worth commemorating in a century of Canberra footy, it’s this moment, and captain-coach Neale was its architect.

    The second name is Tony Wynd, who dominated football in the ACT in the 1980s and early 1990s. As a junior he was selected in national All-Australian sides from junior carnivals, he naturally won a stack of Mulrooney Medals in the ACTAFL and just generally seems to have been about the most dominant player on record in the league among those who never played VFL or similar football.

    What else is notable, though, is that he was also playing to a level that got him selected to represent Australia in a tour of Ireland in 1987, though he subsequently broke his leg and missed out on the tour. As the AFL Canberra entry for his Legend status notes:

    Injury prevented Tony from playing in the All-Australian Representative team which toured Ireland and the United States in 1987. His selection was widely recognised as he was one of very few players from outside the major Australian football league teams to ever be named in an All-Australian team.

    Could Wynd have played successfully in a more credentialled competition in another state? Who knows? He appears never to have considered it. Wynd had a career in the ACT outside of football, working for ASADA’s predecessor, the ASDA and can be found in publications of the era promoting the anti-doping message.

    This highlights a significant problem with trying to assess things like the Hall of Fame in an era before professionalisation and mass media. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the level of pay across senior football competitions would not have made chancing the move interstate a financially appealing prospect for someone already holding a well-paying job such as one in the public service. Indeed, the average AFL salary didn’t pass the average full-time male salary for workers in general until around 1991.

    Wynd, then, represents something of the end of the unknowable hinterland of football talent – players plying their trade well outside the big leagues before professional money and recruiting made talent identification and recruitment all but inevitable. There are probably dozens of  former players out there like him from the pre-modern eras of football, who dazzled onlookers in their own leagues, but played out careers well beyond the spotlights in Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.

    AROUND THE GROUNDS