Category: AFL – Australian Rules

Melbourne and Collingwood let their attacking football do the talking as 90,000 at the MCG felt the absence of the AFL great and MND advocate

There were more than 88,000 people at the MCG on Monday. But there was an absence, a void. There was lots of money raised, and celebrities and comedians of various grades sliding for laughs and donations. There were entire bays of supporters wearing blue beanies. There was Neale Daniher’s daughter, heavily pregnant, the spitting image of her dad, and now very much the public face of Fight MND. There was Jai Arrow, a 30-year-old former NRL player who was recently diagnosed with MND, tossing the coin. There were doctors and researchers talking about the disease with an optimism that we hadn’t heard in previous years. There was talk of significant progress in prognoses, in improving quality of life and in tapping into gene therapy.

But there was still that pall. When Daniher was wheeled around the MCG boundary line this time last year, it felt like a farewell. Such was his personality, you checked yourself whenever you felt pity or sorrow at what he was going through. Only in his absence could we get a proper appreciation of how much he’d done, how much he’d endured, and how much we’d lost.

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Club and AFL condemn messages received by Hawks forward, who told social media followers ‘don’t be like this guy’

The AFL and the Hawthorn football club have condemned “vile and appalling” racial abuse sent to player Mabior Chol via a series of direct messages on social media.

Chol, a Hawthorn forward who is of South Sudanese heritage, posted a screenshot of the comments he received on Instagram following his side’s loss to the Western Bulldogs on Friday night. The language contained in the comments were not fit for publication.

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Some of the best football of Patrick Cripps’ career has come in the wake of coach sackings. In 2019, after Brendon Bolton had finally been shown the door at Carlton, Cripps played one of the best games of the century. His statistics, astonishing as they were, don’t quite do justice to how well he played that day. “It’s probably one of the best individual performances I’ve ever seen on a football field,” his Brisbane opponent Dayne Zorko said.

Cripps was a wreck heading into that game. The final few months under Bolton had been a slog. The team was hopeless. Cripps was the youngest captain in the AFL, had two opponents hanging off him every week, and then had to go and say what a great job the coach was doing. On a miserable Sunday afternoon, he’d been held to 11 possessions by Essendon second-gamer Dylan Clarke. To watch him six days later was to watch a completely different athlete. It was the fusion of rage, relief and release. It brought to mind one of those corporate smash rooms, where burnt-out white-collar workers don overalls and face masks and take a crowbar to a room full of crockery.

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Brisbane threw a lot at Fremantle but the visitors had the answers. There’s a whiff of history about this side

“Flagmantle” is no joke now. There are some outstanding teams who haven’t really got warm yet. But the Dockers are the ones with the best and the most even spread of talent. The Dockers are the ones who have met every challenge, who can win in a dozen different ways, and who have reeled off one of the more impressive three-month streaks of recent years. The Dockers are the ones with the whiff of history about them.

A trip to the Gabba is no picnic and there was a view that the visitors could be got at on the weekend. Bookmakers, bless their benevolent souls, installed Brisbane as favourites. Fremantle had been up for a long time, were flying to the opposite point of the country, were missing several of their most important players and were up against a proud, still smarting opponent.

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Brad Scott’s exit from North Melbourne in 2019 was very different from his sacking at Essendon this week. “Brad’s offer to step aside is nothing short of selfless and honourable – terms befitting his character,” Kangaroos president Ben Buckley said at the time. “There’s nothing but blue sky for North,” Scott said. He said it three times. He thanked the individual board members, the coterie groups and even the media. But many thought he had left North’s list in tatters. David King called him “a visitor”. Certainly the backside completely fell out of the Roos in the years after he left.

Scott wasn’t at the press conference announcing his departure from the Bombers on Tuesday. Most agree that he wasn’t the right fit, and probably never had been. He’d never been fully embraced by Essendon people, or the senior players. There was always a lingering doubt over the state he left North Melbourne in. There was always the sense that he was an outsider.

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• Scott leaves after run of just one win in 11 games in 2026

• Dean Solomon looms as a potential interim boss at Bombers

Essendon are not ruling out a return of James Hird as head coach, despite president Andrew Welsh insisting he’s not just bringing back an old Essendon boys’ club.

Welsh, who stood by the call to block Zach Merrett’s trade request last year, is adamant the Bombers “won’t be pushed around” even as they have sunk further into the doldrums.

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• Former player and coach was diagnosed with MND in 2013

• Family confirm Daniher died at home

The former AFL player and coach Neale Daniher has died, 13 years after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

The 65-year-old’s family issued a statement on Monday confirming Daniher had died at home.

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A record third quarter at Engie Stadium was akin to a flawless training session for the Giants while the signs are there that all is not well at the Lions

Few AFL coaches go the full Krakatoa quite like Adam Kingsley. The Giants uploaded footage of him going off his rocker at the main break of the Sydney derby last year, a game where they’d been largely uncompetitive in the opening half. Sunday’s first half against Brisbane didn’t warrant that kind of outburst. They’d been playing well against the reigning premiers, a team that always seems to bring out the best in them. But they need a follow up documentary on what was said at half-time, or what changed. They unleashed the kind of artillery barrage we rarely see in the modern game, and the kind we never see against the team that has won the past two premierships.

Their semi-final clash in 2024 was one of the more remarkable games of the modern era. This one didn’t have any of the wild swings, just half an hour of one-way, downhill, all-out attack, like one of those country footy games where a bunch of former AFL players feast on a team of 45-year-old farmers. With very little resistance, they strolled into goal in the first 20 seconds. They then unleashed the kind of football we saw from the Giants in 2016 and 2017 – long, sweeping waves emanating from half back. It resembled a flawless training session.

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• Collingwood veteran sets new VFL/AFL benchmark in 433rd match

• Pies teammates wear gold numbers in clash with West Coast Eagles

After an intense build-up, Collingwood veteran Scott Pendlebury has run on to the MCG to break North Melbourne legend Brent Harvey’s AFL/VFL games record.

Scott Pendlebury has run out alongside his children Jax and Darcy for his AFL/VFL record-breaking 433rd game for Collingwood in front of a huge MCG crowd.

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Even his most ardent admirers may admit to a case of Scott Pendlebury fatigue right now. So let’s begin by getting a few words out of the way. Time. Space. Basketball. Saunas. Ice baths. Let’s also put aside some of the more tedious elements of the buildup to his record-breaking game – the gold-plated number, the multiple and lucrative costume changes, the signature wine range, the standing ovation at the 10-minute mark, and the discussion over whether he should have been rested or not.

Emotionally, technically and physically, Pendlebury has much in common with his fellow 400-gamers who gathered at the MCG this week. All of them were wily enough to avoid grievous harm on the field. All of them were temperamentally sound, and weren’t the type of personalities to let the outside noise seep in. And all of them avoided the kind of vices and distractions that can curtail sporting longevity.

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This isn’t the dead cat bounce of a new coach. They smashed Hawthorn in every facet of the game to show they are a serious AFL team

“Do you know what you need in a new coach?” interim president Brad Green was asked at the press conference announcing Simon Goodwin’s sacking last year.

“No,” he said.

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• Round 17 fixture to instead feature Western Bulldogs against Sydney

• Saints player Collard banned for use of homophobic slur

The fallout continues from the Lance Collard AFL tribunal case, with St Kilda cut from the annual Pride Game against Sydney.

The fixture, which celebrates LGBTIQA+ inclusivity, was supposed to take place when the Swans were hosting the Saints in round 13 at the SCG. Instead, the fixture has been switched to the Swans’ match against the Western Bulldogs in round 17.

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When John Elliott died in 2021, the old, dark, imperial Carlton was dead. The new Carlton was grounded on “respect, humility and integrity”. The new president was a master networker. The new chief executive was the best administrator in football. The new coach had been one of the great players of his generation.

The Blues were a terrific team to watch in Michael Voss’s first year as coach. He had a lot to work with in 2022 – a pair of No 1 draft picks, two Coleman medallists, a captain who would win two Brownlow medals and a list that had been built from the spine since Brendon Bolton’s first year in charge. They spent almost the entire season in the top eight, and most of it on the cusp of a double chance.

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• Blues confirm departure and appoint Josh Fraser as interim coach

• ‘We have not seen the intended evolution in our game,’ club says

Michael Voss has quit as Carlton coach following a disastrous start to the AFL season, the Blues admitting the club is in “genuine transition”.

Out-of-contract at season’s end, Voss decided to move on with the Blues 1-8 and effectively already out of finals contention.

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What stood out in both the AFL and Carlton’s statements regarding what happened to Elijah Hollands at the MCG three weeks ago were the things that weren’t and couldn’t be said. There were legal restrictions. There was medical confidentiality. There was a WorkSafe investigation. There was a universal acceptance that the privacy and wellbeing of the young man at the centre of all this was the most important thing.

The AFL did what they usually do in matters of the utmost complexity – they issued a fine. In fact, it was more of a donation. How much of a dent $75,000 makes in Carlton’s hip pocket is not for me to say, though a club whose four pokie venues raked in nearly $20m in the last financial year can probably afford it. The AFL also announced a series of measures to ensure this never happens again – mandated club phycologists, stronger industry healthcare governance standards, and a “mental health media roundtable”, which itself probably warrants a separate column.

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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