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.
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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
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.
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
- Andrew Barr, Chief Minister of the ACT, made that government’s most concrete statement yet about being in the mix for the next expansion to team 20, assumed likely to come if/when Tasmania is locked in as team 19.
- Speaking of Tasmania, post-election government formation is inching towards happening via testing confidence on the floor of parliament. The Liberals will get first crack but at this stage either major party may end up forming, and prospects for the stadium are unclear.
- Razor Ray Chamberlain is returning from retirement to officiate the AFLW season, a league which notably does not have physically taxing centre bounces.