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It was a busy week both on and off the field for the AFLW in Round 2. Here’s my five quick takes.
Dogs, Dees go to top of the food chain
Last week I said that the Brisbane Lions, off the basis of a single round of play, looked like the best team in the competition.
The results of Round 2 make it pretty clear that one week was not a good sample size to make the kind of call on – and of course, two weeks might not be either.
At the end of Round 1 I thought perhaps a poor Fremantle side had made the Dogs look overly good, and Brisbane’s belting of Adelaide was the bigger scalp.
Not so. Melbourne’s comfortable win over the Crows showed that last year’s premiers are well off the pace without Erin Phillips, while the Bulldogs proved their point in the best way possible with a win over Brisbane at home.
Some credit also has to go to Carlton also for being the only other team to be able to boast a 2-0 record at this point in the competition.
If you wanted to dissect their wins and point out problems and inconsistencies you could make an argument that the results flatter them a little – but wins on the board are wins on the board.
Still, if you were to make a tip on who we’ll see in the decider this year, those two clubs that put in some serious pioneering work to field women’s teams years before any others might be it. Wouldn’t that be a great result?
Of course, the potential concern for the Dogs would be that No.1 draft pick Isabel Huntington went down with what could be a serious knee injury after kicking two goals early in their match, and they couldn’t keep up the scoring without her.
It was a bad week for injuries across the league with Carlton losing their skipper Brianna Davey for the rest of the season to an ACL on Friday night.
Here’s hoping that Davey’s recovery goes smoothly, and fingers crossed that Huntington’s injury proves to be a minor one.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Adelaide need Erin Phillips, and they need her now
In a competition where only the top two teams progress to any kind of post-season, and there are only seven rounds, losing any of your matches is a real blow.
And while there are three teams who are 2-0 after the opening fortnight of the season, that means there are three also who are 0-2, including unbelievably the reigning premiers.
For GWS and Collingwood the hopes of playing in the grand final are probably dead and buried. The Giants could rightfully claim a bit of bad luck – they came so close against Melbourne, and might have had an entirely different result on Friday night under better conditions.
Collingwood, not so much. They’re just not very good.
If you had to pick a team that can do it from an 0-2 start out of this trio though, last year’s champs the Crows are the clear choice.
They’ve been missing Erin Phillips in their opening two matches, and they’ve put in two fairly uncompetitive performances as a result.
4.0 was a nice accuracy line from them this week but it belies the fact that in their opening two matches combined they’ve put up eight scoring shots to twenty seven.
Phillips’ quad injury was said to be one that would only keep her out of one game but it has now cost her two. If it costs her three, given that the Crows play the in-form Bulldogs on Friday night, that will likely be all she wrote for their season.
(AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy)
Could free (or cheap) sport be the future?
All kind of records were broken on Saturday night when more than 40,000 fans turned out at the new Optus Stadium to watch the first game of Australian rules football ever played there – and it was played by women.
Of course, likely the most significant factor in drawing that kind of record crowd is the fact the match give patrons a chance to check out the new stadium for the low entry price of $2.
The situation got me thinking about the future of sport and whether lowering the cost of entry to a game of footy might be the way forward.
Technology and media are only going to become more developed over time and make the home experience better and better. Speaking as someone who got rained on at Drummoyne on Friday night, the home experience definitely has its perks.
For those who weren’t there on Friday night this is why the game was delayed!
Thanks to midfielder Tait Mackrill’s sister, Jemma, who snapped this incredible pic. #NeverSurrender pic.twitter.com/0VQnZty2eG
— GWS GIANTS (@GWSGIANTS) February 11, 2018
Someday probably not too far from now you’ll be able to plug in your VR headset and get a view from the boundary line without having to leave your home, wait in a line to go to the bathroom, or pay for a bottle of water.
It’d be kind of a shame if footy matches turned into two teams playing in an empty stadium in front of a high-tech camera, though.
So what about letting people into the ground for free, or a small fee? I know if I could go to a football game for no or low cost I’d feel a fair bit more open to buying a feed at the ground or splurging on some merchandise.
A lot of thinking outloud here and I’m by no means enough of an economist to tell you whether or not the numbers would add up well, but something to think about maybe.
In the meantime, congrats to both the AFLW and Optus Stadium for the record crowd and what I’m told was a great atmosphere at the game.
(Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
A memo on your memo, AFL – here’s why people really love AFLW
The AFL’s memo released during the week to AFLW coaches looking for a change in tactics seemed to suggest they don’t really have much of a clue as to why it is that fans enjoy footy.
Their insistence that the memo was not a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ despite it coming after just 240 minutes of footy in the new season – the equivalent of deciding to change AFL rules two games into Round 1 – also suggests they don’t really get the phrase ‘knee-jerk reaction’, but we’ll leave that be for now.
I’m very much the kind of person who enjoys an offensive, high-scoring brand of football more than the defensive game, and I’m glad that my club plays one. But I would support them no less if they didn’t.
The Richmond Tigers won the premiership last year with a football brand the bedrock of which was defensive pressure and strangling away the opposition’s will to score – and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like plenty of fans still turned up to enjoy it.
Passion. Tribalism. Community. Those are the reasons why people turned up to watch the footy in the 19th century and they’re the reasons why we turn up now.
Yes, I’m sure you could find plenty of examples on social media of people complaining about the quality and scoring of AFLW if you looked for it (I’ve seen plenty without looking for it).
Believe it or not, Gillon, the vast majority of those people are not actually prospective hardcore AFLW fans just waiting to be converted – they just have way too much time and negative energy on their hands.
Aliesha Newman kicked a goal that you’ll be seeing on highlights reels for years to come this weekend and there were still complaints on social media about it. You can’t please these people, because they don’t want to be pleased. Don’t waste your time on it.
Celebrate the fact that you already have a passionate community around the women’s game – thousands of people buying club memberships to a sport where the entry fee is zero, just because they want to support it and be involved – rather than focusing on the whims of casual fans, and the AFLW will go far indeed.
That’s enough from me on the memo, but Joel Shepherd’s piece on it this week was a very good read.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Media/Getty Images)
Carlton don’t belong in a pride match
In September last year as the nation voted on whether or not to allow same-sex couples to marry, Carlton released a statement saying they would not be supporting either side of the debate.
Now, less than half a year later, the Blues AFLW team has confirmed it will play a pride match against the Western Bulldogs later this year.
I am certainly in support of a pride match – but it’s a poor decision to have Carlton be a part of the fixture when you could easily find two clubs who did support same-sex marriage to take part.
If you’re not willing to support something when there’s a real and present chance to actually do something about it, do you actually support it? No.
If Carlton are genuinely regretting a missed opportunity and looking to make up for it, that’s great – but they should say so publicly and find a way to take real action in supporting the LGBT community (there’s still plenty of work to be done), rather than go straight to what comes off as a disingenuous PR stunt.