Category: AFL – Australian Rules

Excellence has not waned under Chris Fagan and while this is their fourth grand final in a row, it is the first they have gone into as favourites

“Give me 80,000 people at the MCG and I was Hercules,” Brent Crosswell once said. “Give me a grey day at the Western Oval and I wasn’t worth a cracker.” Crosswell, who probably would have won two Norm Smith medals if there was such a thing back then, would have been right at home in this Brisbane Lions team. They need a big occasion. They need the game to have weight. When it’s a sleepy shift in western Sydney or Tasmania, they drift. They drive their coach spare. When it’s all chips in, they are peerless.

This is Brisbane’s fourth grand final in a row. But it’s been seven years at the pointy end of the ladder. In that time, the competition has completely changed. The rules have changed. The way the game is played has changed. Their grand final opponents have all dipped in and out of contention. But the Lions have remained football’s great constant. They too have lost players. They too have shifted the way they play. But their excellence hasn’t waned.

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• Dual Brownlow medal winner to play in match against Fremantle

• Striking charge on Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan downgraded

• Ultimate guide to the flag decider between Fremantle and Brisbane

Star Brisbane midfielder Lachie Neale has been cleared to play in the AFL grand final after overturning his one-game suspension at the appeals board.

The dual Brownlow medal winner will feature in the premiership decider against Fremantle – his former club – at the MCG on Saturday after having a striking charge on Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan downgraded.

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Justin Longmuir stood on the margins of the mayhem in Fremantle’s rooms last Friday night. His Dockers had mown down a willing but truncated Sydney side and Longmuir stood slouched, relieved, knackered. Some people walk into a room and automatically command it. Footy is full of people like that. Some are teachers. Some are generals who never found a war. Some, as Neale Daniher always said, are actors – projecting hope to the players and stability to the critics. Most of them are a bit mad.

Longmuir has always been something of an outlier – a classic introvert who can come across as nervous and awkward in press conferences, a man who had to steel himself to speak to large groups when he started coaching. He’s not a coach who picks fights or creates diversions or speaks in riddles. He says he’s an over-thinker. He says he’s harder on himself than any critic, and there has been plenty of those. As one of just two senior coaches who have never played in or coached a grand final team, it’s something that can make him an easy target when the side are underperforming – that he doesn’t have the playing record, the aura, the eloquence, the polish, the prick in him.

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• Dual Brownlow medallist guilty of intentional striking

• Plea of ‘exceptional circumstances’ rejected by tribunal

Brisbane will head to the AFL appeals board in a desperate bid to free suspended star Lachie Neale for the grand final.

Neale remains banned for the premiership decider against Fremantle after failing to argue his way out of a one-match suspension for a gut punch on Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan.

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• Heeney, Warner, Blakey, Jordon and Bice attend exit meetings

• The five have not been to Swans HQ since August suspension

Sydney’s five suspended players have offered an apology to teammates and colleagues after ending their weeks-long exile from the AFL club.

Swans vice-captain Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, James Jordon and Riley Bice on Wednesday appeared at Sydney’ base at Moore Park for the first time since being banned for breaching club standards in August.

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• Midfielder beats previous record of 45 votes

• Marcus Bontempelli and Bailey Smith are runners-up

Collingwood superstar Nick Daicos has finally claimed his first Brownlow Medal in a runaway victory with a record-breaking 47 votes.

The 23-year-old surged to a perfect nine votes from his first three games, led from round 11, then registered six consecutive best-on-ground performances to seal victory by round 21.

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This preliminary final showcased everything that is exquisite, brutal and cruel about the sport. And how about Nick Watson?

Some of the most memorable games in the history of Australian rules football have come in preliminary finals. Some, like Geelong’s win over North Melbourne in 1994, are remembered as wildly fluctuating, end-to-end shootouts. Some, like Collingwood v GWS in 2023, were hand-to-hand combat. Some, like Hawthorn’s win over Melbourne in 1987 and Sydney’s over Essendon in 1996, are remembered for their dramatic finishes. Some, like the Crows-Bulldogs game in 1997, wrenched the hearts out of the losing supporters. Some are remembered for individual brilliance – Ablett in 1989, Long in 1993, Kouta in 1999 and Cox in 2018. And some, like the 2016 prelim in western Sydney and the Brisbane-Geelong game in 2024, are remembered for the high standard of play throughout.

The Brisbane-Hawthorn prelim on Saturday sampled the best of those and distilled them into one discombobulating, unforgettable brew. It had violent momentum swings, exceptional skills, tactical intrigue and plenty of controversy. And that was just the opening 20 minutes. One of our greatest historians once called Australian football an “emotional bath of agony and ecstasy”. Hyperbole butters a lot of bread in footy. But if ever that phrase was applicable, it was this game. It might be the greatest of all the preliminary finals. It might be the finest exhibition of the code we’ve ever seen.

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• Lions defeat Hawks 20.11 (131) to 19.8 (122) in AFL preliminary final

• Reigning premiers to meet Fremantle in 2026 grand final at the MCG

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Brisbane will face Fremantle for a shot at a premiership “three-peat” after surviving an almighty last-quarter fightback from Hawthorn to win an all-time great AFL preliminary final by nine points.

A controversial holding-the-ball decision against Hawks defender Jarman Impey gave Hugh McCluggage a free kick and he kicked the match-deciding goal with 18 seconds left.

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As Swans turn sights on Fremantle for the preliminary final, their suspended players are still the story on and off the field

Four weeks ago, the Sydney Swans were preparing to play North Melbourne in the final round of the home and away season. By that point of the week, five of their players had been suspended for the rest of the year for a breach of club standards. We’d been bombarded with think pieces. We’d been lectured to by personal injury lawyers. Sydney’s chief executive Matthew Pavlich, who’d previously been reading the sports news on Perth television and reporting on dressage from the Paris Olympics, was central to a national conversation about how we talk about violence against women. The prime minister, the governor general and the Victorian premier had all weighed in.

At that stage, much of the outrage had been directed at the way the story was framed as a footballing story. As a result, nearly every single comment on the Swans by the football media was prefaced by an acknowledgment that our thoughts were foremost with the alleged victims. Most of the time they sounded like one of those disclaimers at the end of a betting ad.

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The Nick Watson moment came on Dustin Martin’s day. It was Dusty’s 300th, complete with pop-up barbers, the opening goal of the game and the final significant act of his career, when he walked to all four corners of the centre square and acknowledged his crowd. Michael Willson’s photo of Martin exiting the MCG perfectly captured the man, the moment and the mood.

It had been a rocky debut season for Watson until that day in June 2024, with injuries, tardy goalkicking and stints in the VFL. Halfway through the first quarter, he anticipated a spilling ball, collected it at full speed, took a bounce, absconded around the boundary line and hit up Dylan Moore with a perfectly weighted kick. It was one of those moments where you were left in absolutely no doubt that the person you were watching was going to be a great footballer.

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Which Brisbane turns up on any given day can be a mystery but after a qualifying final wake-up call they were too good for Adelaide in every area

They’re the little girl with the little curl. When they’re bad, the Brisbane Lions are horrid. When they’re good, they’re unstoppable. There’s a familiar pattern to how this plays out. They need a wound, a spur, a thrashing. They need a blast from the coach, usually delivered via the press conference. They need a game at the Gabba or the MCG, not a snoozer at the Docklands, or Carrara or the Sydney Showgrounds. And most of all, they need to know that they’ll be eliminated if they lose.

They need to be fully invested, right from the opening minute. There’s usually an early pressure act that they celebrate collectively – a smother, a lunging spoil, the type of thing that had been entirely absent the week before. There’s usually a high pressure rating, a measure that is as inexplicable as the score review system, but which is always a good indication of what side of the bed the Lions have woken up on.

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• The Lions defeat the Crows by 21.18 (144) to 13.13 (91) in AFL semi-final

• Reigning premiers to meet Hawks in preliminary final at the MCG

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Seven scintillating minutes set the tone as Brisbane kept their AFL three-peat hopes alive with a 53-point defeat of Adelaide at the Gabba.

The Lions, chasing a third straight premiership, will face Hawthorn in an MCG preliminary final after a rollicking 21.18 (144) to 13.13 (91) Saturday night semi-final triumph.

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• Dockers defeat Cats 18.12 (120) to 16.10 (106) in semi-final

• Minor premiers to meet Sydney in preliminary final

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There’s been some pandemonic nights at Optus Stadium, but nothing that could match this. Fremantle is through to a preliminary final after a semi of the highest quality and the utmost tension. It was simultaneously free-wheeling and nerve-jangling – both high scoring and high pressure. It activated Wharfie Time for just the second time this year, but it wasn’t really needed. The noise was cacophonous, the tension excruciating and the result ultimately just.

There was a period midway through the third term where it looked like Geelong might skip away with this game, just like they did against Carlton a week earlier, just as they have so many times in big games over the years. The spring-heeled Ollie Henry was marking everything, Dangerfield looked menacing, and their fleet of runners were finding space and carving the Dockers up. But if this Fremantle side is truly the one to re-write history, the time-on period in the third quarter will be one of the defining reference points. In particular, Luke Jackson and Andrew Brayshaw were pivotal in this period, blunting the Cats at centre square stoppages and surging the ball forward. They kicked four goals in seven minutes and from that point the game was on their terms.

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Luke Sayers says he accepts Cate Sayers did not post photo of his genitals as she says settlement closes ‘painful and difficult chapter’

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The embattled former AFL club president Luke Sayers has apologised to his former wife for the harm he caused as her defamation case over a lewd photo settled.

Lawyers for Sayers, the immediate past president of the Carlton football club, read out the apology in the Victorian supreme court on Friday after indicating the settlement.

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Every sacked coach reacts differently. Some turn up in civvies and conduct what is essentially a job interview for their next role. Some know their fate 12 months out, grit their teeth and toe the company line. For some it’s a relief, a chance to take a deep breath for the first time in years. Some, like Michael Voss, are let go after months of bad losses. Others, like Simon Goodwin, are sacked 48 hours after an 83-point win.

Every sacking is different from the club’s perspective too. When Brad Scott and North Melbourne parted ways, his chairman said the coach was “nothing short of selfless and honourable, as befitting his character”. When David Noble exited in 2022, president Sonja Hood rejected suggestions he’d been sacked. “We came to an agreement that we would terminate the contract or that the contract would end,” she said.

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