Players and fans are making a strong stance for greater inclusion in the game through their guernsey designsWith only three rounds remaining in the regular season of the AFLW, this weekend’s Pride round is pivotal as teams make their last dash for the finals and look to cement their place in the top eight.That this round, which is important to so many fans and players of the women’s game, comes at such a meaningful time adds to its gravity and underlines the seriousness with which the issue of LGBTQ+ inclusion is taken within the sport. While rainbow flags, guernseys and socks will add colour and joy across all the grounds during round eight, the white-line fever will step up a...
The Geelong captain entered the MCG carrying Gary Ablett Jnr’s son and exited it handing his boots to the Auskick boyThe team Joel Selwood led out on Saturday was the oldest to ever take the field in a VFL/AFL game. It was his 40th final. At the top of the race, Gary Ablett Jnr nodded to his former captain and handed over his son, Levi, who has a rare degenerative disease. Selwood, one of the most booed footballers in the history of the game, could have been elected, unopposed, the first Australian president at that exact moment.Thirty years ago, almost to the day, young Levi’s grandfather ran onto the MCG with murder in his eyes. He spent the first half...
The compelling storylines recede and the bread and circuses all seem a bit silly given what we now knowEverything was going so well for the AFL. They’d just signed off on a mind-boggling TV rights deal. The football had been exquisite. The stadiums had been heaving. The Brownlow Medal count was compelling. The outgoing CEO was on a giant victory lap. The grand final was one of the most eagerly anticipated in years.That all changed with Wednesday morning’s piece on the ABC website. It evoked a sense this entire competition is built on bullshit, that it’s hard to take anything coming from the mouths of clubs seriously. Football clubs, and the entire industry that feeds off the game, throw around...
There was no need for any fun facilitators in a game that stacks up alongside classics of the pastBefore we get to Saturday’s preliminary final, forgive me as I shake my fist at a cloud. For reasons no-one can explain, or take responsibility for, they now blare music after every goal at the MCG. The stadium was one of the last to succumb to this execrable trend. But in a finals series where more than quarter of a million people have turned up to three MCG games, apparently the atmosphere needs to be augmented with lashings of Kool and the Gang, Kenny Loggins and Chad Kroeger. Preliminary final weekend is supposed to be the people’s round. The following week is...
Collingwood’s now trademark energy will be tested in Sydney, while Brisbane again look to take their chances against a refreshed GeelongWhen Collingwood crapped out against Sydney in round 22, there was a sense of a run having come to an end. Yes, they had won 10 in a row by a cumulative margin of 79 points, but a post-to-post 27-point loss proved that the house always wins.When Craig McRae responded by saying he “coached really poorly” by failing to properly account for the dimensions of the ground there was a whiff of herring. The SCG is, after all, only about two-and-a-bit metres shorter at either end and either wing. Instead, it felt like a deft stage magician’s trick. Continue reading...