Category: AFL – Australian Rules

• AFL star speaks about struggles for the first time since taking a leave of absence

• He says there were times he ‘didn’t want to leave the house’ but he wants to play football again

The Western Bulldogs forward Jamarra Ugle-Hagan has opened up about his mental health struggles for the first time since taking a leave of absence, saying there were times he “didn’t want to leave the house”.

The former No 1 draft pick is hoping to make his AFL comeback after recently visiting a health retreat in northern New South Wales.

In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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The Cats midfielder has starred since moving from the Bulldogs as his frantic, full pelt way suits the way his new team seeks to play

Bailey Smith could easily have coasted along against Essendon on the weekend. He could have racked up a few dozen disposals for Geelong and saved his hamstrings for the far more onerous challenge of Brisbane this Friday. But that’s not how he’s wired. Everything is at full throttle. There is not a lot of craft or guile to how he plays. He simply runs the opposition into the ground. With apologies to Shane Crawford and Robert Harvey, he runs harder than any footballer I can remember.

Prior to his knee injury at Western Bulldogs, Smith had been gradually squeezed out of favour. The coach Luke Beveridge didn’t quite know what to do with him. The fanbase was increasingly frustrated with him. He was a hard footballer to place. He was a subdued, resentful figure.

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The 30th Australian Football Hall of Fame was a reminder that there’s more to the sport than the AFL. It was a reminder that the talent in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania was at various times every bit the equal of what was coming out of Victoria. Last night’s inductees included a five-time All Australian, a self-described “little fat kid from Colac”, and a man considered the best ever Tasmanian footballer never to play on the mainland. They included a man who took more marks than anyone else in the history of VFL/AFL football, a giant raconteur from South Australia who reflected that “football was simply something I did on a Saturday,” and a seven-time premiership player in the WAFL who later umpired five grand finals. A goalkicking machine from South Australia during the Depression years was also elevated to legend status.

But last night’s event did something very different to the preceding three decades – it inducted two AFLW players. Erin Phillips won two WNBA championships, a basketball world championship gold medal and represented Australia at two Olympics. But until just over a decade ago, the idea of playing Australian football professionally seemed fanciful. “I never wanted to be a boy,” she said last night, “I just wanted the opportunities they had and that was footy.” Her dad, Greg, a Hall of Famer himself, was a fine footballer for Port Adelaide and Collingwood. He had thighs like John Nicholls, the sort of legs that could prop up jetties. Last night he was a blubbering mess. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to tell your 13-year-old daughter that she can’t play the game she loves any more,” his daughter said. “Now she’s standing next to you in the Hall of Fame.”

This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions

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• Pair join trailblazer Debbie Lee in Australian Football Hall Of Fame

• Nick Riewoldt, Luke Hodge and Garry Lyon also inducted

Erin Phillips paid an emotional tribute to her father Greg as she joined him in the Australian Football Hall Of Fame. Phillips and Daisy Pearce are the first AFLW players to be inducted, joining trailblazer Debbie Lee as female inductees.

South Australian goalkicking machine Ken Farmer was elevated to legend status at Tuesday night’s annual dinner in Melbourne.

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No team is better than Collingwood at adapting to the needs of the moment – and the ladder leaders keep on winning

With a point in it and half a minute to go in the King’s birthday clash, Scott Pendlebury stood at centre half forward, pointing like Babe Ruth. He had no intention of taking the shot of course. He dinked it sideways, and bought a little bit more time. A few precious seconds later, Max Gawn completely shanked his kick and Melbourne’s final chance had been extinguished.

The final moments, and indeed the entire game, was an example of quality over quantity. The Pies managed their moments, they kept their heads, and they deserved their 11.6 (72) to 10.11 (71) win. Melbourne tried their hearts out but will rue several moments in the final term. Kozzie Pickett plonked the ball on the ground, handing a needless 50-metre penalty to Nick Daicos, not the sort of man you want to give an inch, let alone 50 metres. Bayley Fritsch ran into an open goal but sprayed it. Clayton Oliver sent a 9-iron sailing out on the full. There were countless other moments throughout the game, moments where they failed to lower their eyes, moments where they bombed on the heads of their forwards, moments where they failed to man the mark properly.

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It starts with a sore toe, difficulty tying a shoelace, a tingle in a finger. Author Joe Hammond found himself “like a passenger in the aisle of a plane going through gentle turbulence”. For Ross Lyon’s mum, Louise, it started with a twitch in her calf muscle. Within a few months, she couldn’t move her arms or legs. Within a year, it was in her throat, and she was unable to breathe.

For Don Pyke’s father, Frank, it started with difficulty swallowing. He was a professor and a sports scientist and a member of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. In the early 1970s, he played a key role in rehabilitating Dennis Lillee’s back. Motor neurone disease (MND) killed him in 16 weeks.

This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions

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GWS Giants veteran sustaining a potentially career-ending knee injury delivers a tender, human moment that shines a light on the player and his club

AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon would have to rank among the most wooden media performers I have seen or heard. Many in the industry speak highly of him and his ability to distil and diffuse, the sort of operator every leader wants by their side. But he is no frontman. Last week, he did the radio rounds justifying the latest executive shakeup. As always, it sounded like he was reading off well-thumbed, suggested speaking notes. Look, he droned; crowds, ratings and revenue are all up – we’re doing so much right!

It was an AI response to a very human sport. The best of Australian rules football can’t be explained in media releases, or in org charts, or in SEN Fireball Friday hot takes. The best of this sport can be found at the grassroots level, or on hall of fame night, or in thousands of little moments around the country each weekend.

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• Laura Kane demoted and Tanya Hosch to depart organisation

• Movements are ‘the right thing for the AFL’, says Dillon

AFL chief Andrew Dillon insists there’s nothing personal in the demotion of Laura Kane while brushing off fierce criticism of the umpiring standard.

Dillon has gone on the Friday hustings after his reshuffle of the AFL executive cost Indigenous identity Tanya Hosch her role and pushed Kane down the pecking order.

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Three of the best marks I’ve ever seen on a footy field were from players sprinting back with the flight of the ball. If I was trying to explain the appeal of the sport to someone who’d never seen it, I’d show them the marks of Mark Harvey, Nick Riewoldt and Jonathan Brown. But why? I’d probably mumble something about courage and commitment and any of the other cliches peddled by coaches and commentators. The truth is there is something visceral about an act like that, a sort of car crash fascination that gets us out of our seats even more than a screamer or a close game.

It’s a young man’s act. Young men will do silly things under orders and out of fear of embarrassment. One of the first things you notice about older footballers, at least when the prefrontal cortex fully develops, is the different way they assess risk. Even Harvey, as reckless and as fearless a footballer to play the game, had a measure of restraint and self-preservation in his later years.

This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions

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A stellar performance at the MCG that included five goals – and much more – helped put the Dees’ early-season rut in the rear-view mirror

Kozzie Pickett’s dad Kevin is an artist, a sculptor and perhaps incongruously, a stand-up comedian. He also designed the Demons’ Indigenous guernsey. His son sculpted the game to his will on Sunday, booting five goals, having a hand in many more and playing a major role in a 53-point trouncing of Sydney.

The little missile of muscle began to impose himself on the game at the MCG early in the second term – a burst out of a stoppage here, a rundown tackle there. Alan Jeans once said that Gary Ayres was “a good driver in heavy traffic” and the same could be said of Pickett, albeit in a completely different way. Ayres navigated traffic with minimum fuss, eyes in the back of his head and an imperious air. Pickett is more like a dragster in the way he explodes out of heavy congestion.

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It was all trundling along nicely for Essendon. The club spent the past month gently tempering expectations, reminding everyone that this is a long-term project, that there will be bad losses and barren patches, but to stay the course. On field, they weren’t beating much, but they were winning, they were defending, and they were having a crack. Coach Brad Scott was getting the most out of a limited but willing team.

That all came unglued on Saturday night, when they were trounced by a red-hot Western Bulldogs. Essendon reverted to type and sank back into the pack. Almost immediately, the club was batting away suggestions that Scott’s coaching tenure was under threat, and that Bombers great James Hird was the man to replace him.

This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions

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After the death of Adam Selwood followed that of his twin brother Troy, all we can do is afford the family the full measure of their unspeakable grief

The great Scottish newspaper writer Hugh McIlvanney often spoke of “the magnificent triviality of sport.” He wrote beautifully on so many things, but especially boxing and horseracing, sports where death is always at your elbow. He saw boxers die in the ring and jockeys die at the track, and he wrote about them with the right mix of detachment, precision and compassion.

Those columns were thankfully rare. Underpinning everything else he wrote was the belief – that agreement between writer and reader – that the great joy of sport lies in its insignificance. We obsess over it, analyse it, and argue about it, but ultimately, it really doesn’t matter.

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• Midfielder played 187 games for Eagles, including 2006 premiership
• Selwood family says ‘words cannot express the grief and sadness we feel’

The West Coast premiership star Adam Selwood has been remembered as the ultimate teammate with an infectious personality, after his death aged 41.

Selwood’s death in Perth on Saturday came three months after his identical twin and fellow former AFL player Troy Selwood died.

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Walls, who has died aged 74, will be remembered as a teacher, a competitor and a hard but fair man after he chose voluntary assisted dying over a second cancer fight

The Walls family statement was succinct: “Robert did it his way and chose to end a fight that had seen him spend more than 250 nights in hospital in the past two years.” He always did it his way. But there were other influences that shaped the way he played, the way he coached, the way he lived and ultimately, the way he died. It was the uncompromising ways of Ron Barassi. It was the imperial Carlton of the 1970s. It was the pitiless, often violent sport of that era. It was the wretched death of his wife, Erin, who succumbed to lung cancer in 2006. It was the Brunswick he grew up in. It was the French village he retired to.

As a 15-year-old, he was gawky, gangly and nervous as hell as he rode his bike to training at Princes Park. But he had good timing. It was the summer of 1966 and Carlton was poised to be a powerhouse. Ron Barassi – much like Walls himself as a coach later on – was not a man to be trifled with. He demanded perfection and total commitment. He had some of the greatest footballers of the generation at his disposal. But he also had young players like Walls – players who were malleable, who would run through brick walls for him and who could be relied upon on the big stage.

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The two clubs that won all four AFL premierships between 2017 and 2020 squared off Sunday in a clash that didn’t look particularly enticing when the fixture was released last November. Heading into 2025, there were predictions of winless seasons and comparisons with the darkest days of Fitzroy. But the game between Richmond and West Coast boiled down to a last-gasp tackle. It was the kind of tackle that was supposedly given its last rites a fortnight ago, a tackle that saw a goal-bound but moribund fourth gamer ambushed like a cheetah on an impala. These things are a mix of technique, speed, luck and, most crucially, will. Tom Brown had all four in spades, and Richmond had another win.

Back in early March, if the Tigers’ coach, players and supporters had been offered three wins by Mother’s Day, they wouldn’t have hesitated in accepting. All they really wanted was to be as competitive as possible, to get some games into their draftees, and to steal four points here or there. They’ve achieved all of that already. Hell, they achieved that in their first game against Carlton. Throw in an unexpected victory over a not entirely beloved triple-premiership coach now at the Suns, and a hard-fought win over the Eagles, and the Tigers have much to be positive about.

This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions

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