Category: AFL – Australian Rules

Saints star lopes forward to change the game in win soured by Max King injury. And Jack Gunston outscores the Bombers

It’s exactly a year since Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera played one of the great final quarters of recent years. There was no last-minute mayhem against North Melbourne on Sunday, like their was against Melbourne in 2025. But his game in totality was perhaps even more impressive: 46 touches and four goals in a half isn’t a bad day at the office. He’d collected a stack of possessions in the first half, but he hadn’t exactly bent the game to his will. He won the first few clearances of the third quarter, an area of the game the Saints dominated all day. He then loped forward and totally changed the dynamics of the contest.

The clues to how good Nas could be were evident right at the beginning of his career. Initially it was the way he moved, the way he slalomed and slunk with minimum exertion. Then it was the way he kicked, the way he took the risky options and pulled them off. You could see it all coming together off a bank flank. Then he was thrown into the middle. Then he started drifting forward. Throw in an opposition disinclined to properly clamp him and you have an incredibly dangerous footballer. North sent about half a dozen players to him on Sunday, all with varying degrees of competence and enthusiasm. There were no Irish henchmen to take him down like last week in Geelong.

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The former Carlton co-captain on the hardships that took him to ‘rock bottom’ and the ‘obsession’ that helped him carve out a 13-year AFL career

Sam Docherty always thought it would be his body that would tell him it was time to call it quits. He’d had two bouts of cancer, three knee reconstructions, more than a dozen epidurals and serious injuries to a toe, shoulder and even an eye. In his final AFL game, Hawthorn’s Calsher Dear accidentally kneed him in the nose. Docherty played the rest of the game with a tampon up one nostril to stop the bleeding.

But it was his mind that got him in the end. His final year with Carlton was exhausting. He was dropped twice. The team was hopeless. The coach Michael Voss was under siege. Docherty was told by senior people at the Blues that he needed to come into the club in a better mood. He felt disrespected, detached, angry and confused. Just before he announced his retirement, the club told him they wouldn’t be offering him a new contract anyway.

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Ken Hinkley was in his element. He was in the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, flicking the journos to third man and fine leg. He already sounded like a local. He was already trafficking in the “we”, in the “us against the mainland”, in the “ich bin Tasmanian”. His handover at Port Adelaide had been so scripted, so corporate, so Koschy. He had impressed, and probably burnished his coaching credentials, during his brief stint in the media. But he always seemed raring to get back into the real stuff.

To understand why Hinkley was chosen as Tasmania’s first coach, it’s worth looking at the men who missed out. Nathan Buckley was the firm early favourite, but perhaps lacked the ability to be a salesman, to charm the birds from the trees, to “spruik the gospel” as Devils CEO Brendon Gale says. John Longmire has taken a team to five grand finals, but has a cushy role at the Sydney Swans, and seems more relaxed than he has in two decades. Both Buckley and Hinkley always seemed more prepared to upend their lives, to move to the island, and to start a team from scratch.

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• Former Port Adelaide coach will prepare club for 2028 entry

• Nathan Buckley and John Longmire overlooked for role

Ken Hinkley has been officially named as the Tasmania Devils’ inaugural AFL coach, less than 12 months after being moved on from Port Adelaide.

The league’s newest expansion franchise, who will enter the competition in 2028, announced on Monday that the 59-year-old had signed a five-year deal.

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The sense of doom may be gone but the Blues needed this win against the Magpies more than any other under Fraser – and they weren’t up to it

For any AFL team that considers itself wildcard round material, Collingwood is the doorman. They’ll show the sides in footy’s middle classes exactly where they stand, where their soft spots are, and how far they have to go. For the best part of a decade and a half, Collingwood has been checking Carlton’s credentials and knocking them back. The Pies have beaten them 14 of the last 16 times they’ve met. Nine of those have come under Craig McRae. They’ve included spiflications, capitulations and abominations. They’ve included wayward shots after the siren and last-minute daggers to the heart. In almost every instance, the Blues have shot themselves in the foot to some degree. In almost every instance, Collingwood have forced them to line up for hours, denied them entry, and reminded them they’re not yet ready.

For a few weeks under Josh Fraser, Carlton looked capable of snaring a spot in the AFL’s latest construct. But they’ve met their match against the two clubs that have given them the most grief in recent years – first in the teeming rain against Hawthorn and then on Saturday against Collingwood, where they were defeated 14.6(90) to 10.9(69). Under Fraser, they’ve shed that sense of doom that hung over the club. But they needed this win more than any other under the new coach. And they weren’t quite up to it.

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Do you book your flights, or cool your jets? Is it Wharfie Time, or squeaky bum time? Was it one of the best home and away wins of recent years, or just another four points in the winter grind? It’s hard to know what to do, or how to react, if you’re a Fremantle person right now. Do you go the full West Australian newspaper, or the full Justin Longmuir? Are you still anchored down by the last 30 years? Will you only believe, as some Geelong people only truly believed in 2007, when you’re 15 goals up halfway through the final term of a grand final?

Analysis of recent AFL history is skewed by the introduction of new clubs and new rounds. But the past quarter of a century provides a good snapshot of how clubs in a comparable position to Fremantle right now ultimately fared. Since 2000, only seven teams were in as strong a position as the Dockers at this point of the season. Of those, three ended up winning the premiership, and three lost the grand final. The runners-up included the 2009 Saints, who were undefeated at this point of the season, and the 2005 Eagles, who were three games clear of second.

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• Former player found guilty of three assault charges against woman

• AFL commission says ‘violence against women has no place’

The AFL has removed Nicky Winmar from the Australian Football Hall of Fame after the former St Kilda and Western Bulldogs player was in June found guilty of three assault charges involving violence against women.

Winmar, who retired from playing in 1999 after 251 AFL games, was finally inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2022 after having been eligible since 2005 – a move widely lauded at the time given the Saints great’s feats on the field and the famous stand he took against racism.

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GWS pegged back a 39-point deficit against an injury-ravaged Geelong to add another scalp to AFL wins over Fremantle, Brisbane and Melbourne

GWS Giants are 11th on the AFL ladder. They have the same number of wins as North Melbourne. They have lost to some absolute brumbies. They are still wildly inconsistent from week to week, even from half hour to half hour. But the Giants save their best for the best. They have beaten all the main premiership aspirants. They pegged back a 39-point deficit against Geelong to claim a 12.14 (86) to 11.7 (73) victory on Saturday. If your imagination allows it, and if they deign to turn up, they are not only capable of shaping the final series, but making a deep run themselves.

Cats coach Chris Scott was asked whether he rated the Giants as a contender. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t analysed their season.” To kick off his presser, he had pored over the stats sheet and then crumpled it into a ball. It was as though he was saying “the only statistic that mattered tonight was the number of my players being taken out of Olympic Park in an ambulance”. Tanner Bruhn wrenched his neck, Jack Henry hurt his throat and Jeremy Cameron spent the last quarter in a wheelchair sucking on a green whistle.

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Nathan Fitzgerald was named in the back pocket for the Epping reserves. A teacher, he was looking forward to the second week of school holidays. Early in the morning, he’d watched the Socceroos with his dad and younger brother. He planned to watch Richmond play Carlton on Saturday night. He’d recently proposed to his long-term girlfriend.

There has been big money and high-profile signings in the Northern Football Netball League over the years, but not in the third division and certainly not in the reserves. Almost all of Epping’s players live and work locally, and played their junior football at the club. Mernda Central College, where “Mr Fitz” taught maths and science, has nearly 1,800 students from prep to year 12. Some of those students were at Lalor Recreation Reserve watching their teacher play. They saw the umpires inspect the ground. They saw the away team establish a nine-goal lead. They saw the initial clash of heads. They saw Nathan’s head then hit another player’s leg, before smashing into the “multilayered synthetic surface” that covers a concrete cricket pitch.

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The Collingwood defender’s very being screams imminent confrontation but if the Pies’ opponents show any holes he and his teammates will exploit it

At this time of year there’s usually a story along the lines of “is this the most important game in the history of the Gold Coast Suns?” It’s often trotted out for Collingwood’s annual mid-winter trip, probably because it’s one of the few times they get a half decent crowd. Gold Coast’s problem, among many, is that this Collingwood side treats every game as a matter of grave importance. The Suns are more inclined to pick and choose.

There’s no real enigma to the 2026 version of the Pies. Their list is lopsided. They have significant limitations on every line. They have a few plodders up front and they’re patching holes down back. But their commitment is unconditional. They show the opposition exactly where they stand. If their opponent has any holes, any flakiness, any lulls, the Pies will exploit it. Few teams get more from less.

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Judge finds woman was truthful after the St Kilda star accused her of lying about attack

Former AFL player Nicky Winmar has been found guilty of dragging a woman by the hair and hitting her head against a door.

Winmar, 60, argued the woman lied about the attack but Bendigo magistrate Trieu Huynh on Friday found she was being truthful and convicted him of three charges.

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Monday’s ABC Four Corners episode looked at the life and death of Nick Lowden, who at 23 was the youngest footballer to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE affects participants in collision and combat sports – having been first identified in boxers nearly a century ago – as well as soldiers and domestic violence victims. “Why am I like this?” Lowden asked his mother. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my brain?”

The worst of these stories end up in the flat, neutral tone of coroner’s reports. In 408 subheadings, John Cain’s inquest into the death of Shane Tuck documented what CTE does to the brain, the lives of athletes and their loved ones. The Tuck and Lowden families spoke of young men who didn’t understand what was happening to them, who drew on their athlete’s instinct to fight, and who eventually retreated. Nothing I have read about a footballer has been so crushing as Cain’s detached description of the final 24 hours of Tuck’s life.

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From his first game, the hyperactive Port star has bowed to no one. He played one of his best ever games in Showdown 60

Zak Butters ran on to the Adelaide Oval like he always does: over-caffeinated eyes darting, that Ramsay Bolton face of his beaming. But there was an extra edge to this one. It would almost certainly be his last ever Showdown, and he was determined to make it a memorable one. Two and half hours later, he’d played one of the best games of his career, turned Adelaide inside-out and showed why he is the most sought-after footballer in the country.

From the moment he stood up to Max Gawn in his first AFL game, Butters has bowed to no one. “A competitive little prick,” Ken Hinkley once called him – presumably as a term of endearment – and the 23 Crows players who gave him an unfathomably wide berth would no doubt agree.

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They weren’t thrashed. And they weren’t disgraced. But Richmond’s loss to North Melbourne on the weekend was a cripplingly tedious affair, the sort of day where you wonder whether any progress has been made at all. Games between bottom sides, as the Tigers’ win over West Coast in May demonstrated, can be as entertaining as a top-four clash. But Sunday’s game was blighted by cynical coaching, uncontested marks and a certain futility. A few of Richmond’s older players seemed to have checked out, the forwards barely got a look in and most of their best young talent were watching from the stands.

A team would normally be pilloried for a performance like that. A coach with nine wins from 60 would normally be out the door. But it’s been tempered by their drip feed of injuries, which has featured most body parts and vital organs – hips, feet, knees, collarbones, throats, groins, brains, ligaments and tendons. The nature of the injuries and the protean timelines have only added to the frustration. Tom Lynch lost the use of his voice box and had to undergo speech therapy to rediscover his vocal projection, Josh Smillie was sent to Philadelphia to reprogram his body, and Sam Lalor is still nursing what’s not entirely convincingly referred to as a “partial Achilles tear”.

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The Blues have not found a saviour but five wins in as many AFL matches under Josh Fraser leaves them with an unusually difficult decision to make

Footy can turn quickly. One minute you’re seven goals up at the MCG. The next minute Kozzy Pickett is coming at you with bazookas under both armpits. One minute you’re walking into training with the snout of a microphone in your face, as you apologise for yet another fade out, and yet another coach sacking. The next minute you’re in a circle while one of your teammates belts out the club song on a harmonica.

Carlton really should have beaten GWS Giants by more on the weekend. In the first quarter, they kicked just one goal from 18 inside 50s. They squandered a lot of chances and had the worst of the whistle. But it was exactly the sort of game they would have found a way to lose two months ago.

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