There is mounting evidence that this rule is working and essential to the overall health of the gameOn Easter Monday, the general consensus seemed to be that football was stuffed. Halfway through the third quarter of the Hawthorn-Geelong clash, the gentleman in front of me announced to the entire bay that he was going home. Ripples of applause broke out, for he had been an insufferable twit all afternoon. Hell, if an absurd 50m penalty was the price we had to pay for ridding him from our lives, so be it.The Easter round had been a mix of the piddling, the bewildering and the infuriating. The crackdown on dissent meant the game was suddenly bogged down in the most pettifogging...
The Bombers were finally willing to get their hands dirty and showed enough at the MCG to suggest 2022 is not a complete write-offAt 3:15 at the MCG on Monday, the only sounds were a bawling baby and the Australian, Aboriginal and New Zealand flags flapping at half-mast. As a fan, it’s the one minute where the AFL and its sponsors aren’t trying to flog you something. For the Essendon players, it was a momentary respite from what had been a noisy week. Former players, ex Collingwood coaches, fans, pundits, panellists, professional fault finders – they were climbing out of trees to bag them. The Bombers were too soft. They were too nice. They had no depth. They had no...
Ken Hinkley’s boys should have beaten Carlton. They blew it, and are now up against it to salvage their seasonPort Adelaide simply had to win yesterday. Lose, and it was curtains for season 2022. The task before them was enormous. The Blues have an abundance of talent and play the MCG very well indeed. They were smarting after dropping a game to Gold Coast. And they were desperate to get one back on Port, after their Adelaide Oval humiliation last year. That was the day David Teague’s papers were stamped. There were plenty of Port players in downhill mode – slaloming into easy goals, dishing out the lip. Michael Voss, who was wearing a Port polo top that day, would...
Adelaide’s dominant grand final win over Melbourne has set the benchmark for the heights an AFLW side can achieveA third premiership won on Saturday by the Adelaide Crows, who now boast more trophies than the club’s men’s side, is just reward for their investment in women’s football, the ability to retain star players and the importance of sound leadership.Adelaide were amongst the first AFL clubs to feature in the inaugural AFLW season – beneficiaries of the hard work of Gina Dutschke and others who established women’s football in the state after founding the South Australian women’s football league in 1990. Many doubted the state’s ability to produce a quality women’s side when the AFL announced plans to fast track a...
In 2019, Richmond and Scott Morrison claimed miracle wins. And with canny leaders like Trent Cotchin, we should beware these wounded Tigers Just before half-time of Saturday night’s game at the MCG, two very different footballers went toe-to-toe on the members wing: Trent Cotchin, who looks like an articled clerk but plays a blue collar game, and Bailey Smith, who looks as if he’s just stepped off a float at Royal Randwick.With Cotchin right on his hammer, Smith spilled a chest mark. The 32-year-old Tiger, who recently relinquished the Richmond captaincy, has always excelled at ground ball scrimmages. On this occasion, he was better balanced, a bit cannier and that little bit more ferocious than his 21-year-old rival. Cotchin got...