A dramatic penultimate round of AFLW action has set up an exciting five-team race for the grand final.

Fremantle vs Adelaide

Adelaide were lucky to get away with this one. Fremantle beat them convincingly in the pre-season game also held in Darwin, and again seemed to handle the hot conditions better than the Crows.

As I’ve observed before, Adelaide last season seemed to have a speed and fitness edge over much of the competition, but this season that edge is gone — Fremantle out-possessed them 205 to 161, including 118 contested to 91, and smashed Adelaide in the clearances 26 to 13.

Fremantle’s work rate was superior, but once again, Adelaide were more direct, choosing to handball only 36 times to Fremantle’s 74.

Inside 50s were nearly even, Fremantle leading 30-to-28, but Adelaide converted slightly better kicking for goal, and won by four points, so it’s logical to blame Fremantle’s forward line for the loss.

This seems fair, given not a single recognised Fremantle forward scored a goal — yes, Dana Hooker got two and she’s technically a half-forward, but she really plays as more of a goal-kicking midfielder. The others went to Ebony Antonio, Lara Filocamo and Ashlee Atkins, a defender and two midfielders.

But still it seems fair to point out that if it weren’t for Erin Phillips, Fremantle would have won and people would have been questioning whether Adelaide’s long-kicking style is really the most effective.

\Yes it’s effective when Phillips is one-out in the goal square, because in dry weather there’s not a defender in the competition who can handle her, but it doesn’t change the fact that Fremantle beat Adelaide in most areas of play in most parts of the ground.

But Phillips got 3-goals-1 from nine possessions — her usual ridiculous conversion rate as a forward — and that was the end of Fremantle.

The result, I contend, is that Fremantle are probably a better team than they look at this point in the season, while the Crows are probably worse.

The gap between Adelaide’s core group and the rest is enormous — aside from Phillips, Foley and Randall were phenomenal, Sarah Allen and Courtney Cramey were solid, Marinoff was quiet with the ball but had her usual 16 tackles, and Eloise Jones had some dazzling first-half touches before fading in the heat.

After that, without wishing to be cruel, there are some promising up-and-comers (Wallace and Hewitt) and then a big bunch of players who won’t be able to make an AFLW list in a few years.

Fremantle, on the other hand, have been close a number of times, but we have to remember are missing Kiara Bowers, Brianna Green, Kellie Gibson and Kirby Bentley.

They had more impactful players than Adelaide, with Hooker and Antonio particularly outstanding, but notably none of that top-line talent is a key forward, and therein lies Fremantle’s problem.

On the other hand, you might question why Michelle Cowan dropped Ashley Sharp and Emily McGuire given that Sharp is one of the few Dockers with an established history of scoring goals, and McGuire, though quiet in the last game, only needs two possessions to kick two goals and change the match. Certainly their replacements did no better.

Next weekend the Dockers should have too much for Carlton, particularly at home, while the Crows will need another massive effort from their stars against a radically improved Collingwood.

Collingwood could probably lose any single player to injury without damaging their chances too badly, while if the Crows lost Phillips or Randall, they’d be stuffed.

Collingwood vs Brisbane

If you’d told me after Round 2 that Collingwood would be involved in one of the most entertaining and high-skill games of the season, and that the game would be wet (when most wet AFLW games end up as messy brawls) I’d have laughed.

And yet Collingwood’s skills have improved that much. There’s never been anything wrong with their hardness and athleticism, in fact they’re probably one of the most athletic teams in the competition. Add that to this sudden burst of skilful ballhandling, and the Pies look very, very dangerous.

All of which raises the question — where the heck was this in the first few rounds? And why did exactly the same thing happen in Collingwood’s first season?

Most amazingly, Jamee Lambert only had 12 possessions, so most of the Pies’ midfield drive is coming from elsewhere, with Christina Bernardi starring with 16 possessions and three goals, and Amelia Barden also with 16 and five tackles.

With the midfield firing, suddenly the forward line looks transformed — Mo Hope is getting decent delivery from fast movement, and with three-goals-one in this game, and multiple in goals in prior games, is now looking like the player the Pies always hoped she’d be (and makes me smugly pleased to have never joined the chorus of galahs bagging her).

Partly this is the result of a rationalised forward line, where space has been created by moving Molloy and Duffin down back, though Jasmine Garner came back to the forward line in this game after a stint down back in the last, and kicked 1-3 from 18 possessions and six marks.

The forward line is open now, and when the Pies get the ball in there quickly, they score often.

The Lions actually had 14 scoring shots to 13, and 31 inside-fifties to 21, but a lot of those behinds came from poor quality flying shots at goal, while Collingwood got better opportunities.

Ditto with the inside-fifties — the Lions play a lot of players behind the ball, meaning they can load up and push the ball forward often enough, but rarely have key forwards in good position to take best advantage.

Indeed, the Lions have been struggling to kick big scores all season, so this is nothing new. Having gotten the ball inside-fifty, they’d push their zone high up the ground and trap the ball in — thus winning the inside-fifty count with rebound entry after entry, but always to a contested zone stacked with Magpie defenders, leading to poor quality shots at goal under enormous pressure.

And when Collingwood finally did get out, they’d find the Lions’ backline exposed with a paddock behind them, leading to an open Collingwood forward line and thus much better scoring quality.

Like a lot of the AFLW’s most congested teams, the Lions struggle to find open ground to run in, and thus suffer from poor delivery into the forward line, with low resulting scores.

They’re not as bad as Carlton, but the problem is essentially the same, and the Lions will have to find ways to keep more forwards at home if they’re going to kick threatening scores in this competition.

Next weekend the Lions get GWS in Blacktown, and while both teams are great defensively, GWS are far better in attack. The Pies get the Crows, a match for which in this form, they’d have to start favourites.

GWS vs Western Bulldogs

This wasn’t just a game between two of the competition’s best teams, but between two of the competition’s best coaches. Prior to this game, most would have said that Paul Groves was the coach of the season, but now it’s clear that Alan McConnell is closing fast.

Until now, only Adelaide* have managed to shut down the Dogs’ short kicking options, but the Giants strangled the Bulldogs’ short options and forced them to kick long to contests that they rarely won.

The Dogs are not a tall contested marking team, they need space to run and move in. You’d think any team pressing up so high to cut off the Bulldogs’ short passing would be wary of getting beaten out the back, particularly with speedy forwards like Lochland and Conti lurking. But that didn’t happen either, and the Dogs began to look lost for options.

There’s an argument to be made that Erin McKinnon won this game for the Giants — she had 33 hitouts against 11 from Asta O’Connor and 7 for Kim Rennie.

Next season, a specialist ruck will be top of the Bulldogs’ draft priorities, because they got smashed 40 to 20 in this game, and their previous tactic of staying down and sharking the opposing ruck’s taps did not work, partly because of McKinnon’s quality, and partly because the Giants’ midfield pressure after quarter time wouldn’t allow it.

Not only did the Dogs lose the clearances 17 to 23, they lost much of their drive through the midfield, unable to sprint away from stoppages and struggling to find avenues to goal.

The loss of Aisling Utri’s tackle-busting power to a pre-game injury hurt, but GWS began to make the Bulldogs’ gameplan look quite two-dimensional.

The Dogs like to kick short in order to maintain possession and control the ball, but as any forward will tell you, if you’re going to get a mark on a lead, the other players need to clear that area first or else their direct defenders will break off and intercept.

Against the Giants there were too many Bulldogs just standing around within twenty meters of the ball, unable to take a mark due to the Giants defender sitting on their shoulder, and thus preventing anyone else from taking a mark nearby as well.

If the Bulldogs are going to play their short-passing game against tight defensive midfields like the Giants, their players need to work harder to clear space twenty meters ahead of the ball for players to lead into.

Also, the predictability with which the Dogs continually kicked the ball into the most congested part of the ground up the wing also made life easy for GWS, creating great mauling swarms of players fighting over the ball.

The Dogs midfield are good, but at that hard, physical inside game, the GWS’s midfield are better, with Gum and Eva in particular probably more effective inside than either Kearney or Blackburn, who are better when they get to run.

The Dogs keep possession like a men’s team, but a men’s team would have switched play and even kicked backwards rather than constantly feeding the ball into mauling stoppages they weren’t winning… but when it wasn’t working, the Dogs had no plan B.

Worse yet, under the Giants’ unrelenting midfield pressure, it became clear that the Dogs’ generally-high skill level isn’t uniform, with a large number of clangers from their second-tier players resulting.

In fact, the Giants even revealed previously unseen cracks in even Emma Kearney’s armour, showing that her disposal under pressure can be suspect.

If Katie Brennan returns against the Demons, it will be interesting to see where Paul Groves plays Monique Conti.

Earlier in the season, it seemed that the Dogs’ gameplan involved putting Ellie Blackburn up forward, but it’s quickly become apparent that against great opposing midfields, the Dogs need all their best mids on the ball.

In this game, Conti demonstrated that she’s probably the best player in traffic not only in the Bulldogs, but in the competition.

Numerous times when she received the ball in heavy traffic, she danced, weaved and dodged her way through, then hit a target further upfield, where even Kearney and Blackburn would have been tackled and dispossessed.

But it only happened a fraction as often as it might have, because for most of the game, Conti was standing in the forward line waiting for a ball that never arrived (and yet still had 14 possessions).

Conti’s been great in the Dogs’ forward line, but playing the competition’s best in-traffic midfielder up forward is a luxury you can only afford when you’re certain you’ve got the midfield contest covered without her. In this game, the Giants had other ideas.

Damien Hardwick would no doubt like to play Dustin Martin permanently forward too, because he’d kick a ton of goals… but opposition midfields would rejoice at his absence, so Hardwick would be nuts to.

Conti isn’t the AFLW’s Dustin Martin yet, but she’s showing signs that it might only be a few years away — she moves with the ball like nothing else the women’s game has ever seen.

In the meantime, the Giants have accumulated a rare combination of experience and youth, skill and strength, offence and defence, that could conceivably see them all the way to the Grand Final and the championship.

They have Adelaide’s structure of an exceptionally talented core group that hold up all the rest, but their ‘rest’ are arguably quite a bit better than Adelaide’s ‘rest’, and with a lot more upside to come in an ever-improving competition.

And after she finally retires, the Giants should name their club’s best-and-fairest medal ‘The Gum’ after it’s inspiration, a 36-year-old SANFL player who the Crows rejected, and is now not only probably the team’s best player (with Alicia Eva) but one of the very best in the country.

For sheer hard work and leading by example, there’s no one better.

Melbourne vs Carlton

It was a stunning first quarter from Melbourne, but overall an indifferent performance.

Melbourne have struggled to put four quarters together all season. In their first quarter they blitzed Carlton, and showed just how superior they are as a team, scoring six goals to nothing.

But for the rest of the game, they scored only two goals more, and showed again their tendency to get bogged down and to struggle to put together strings of possession through the middle.

There’s no question that Melbourne would like it much better if everyone played open football against them. In the first quarter Carlton did this, and got crushed.

From the second, the Blues played much tighter defence across the ground, and Melbourne struggled to find their first-quarter fluency. It may sound like nit-picking against a team that won by 35 points, but we’re about to hit the business end of the season, and Melbourne next play the Western Bulldogs.

When the Bulldogs played Carlton in Round Four, the score was 86 to 13, because the Bulldogs didn’t take their foot off the gas after one good quarter.

Elise O’Dea — we, the collective commentariat, apologise for not giving you more attention this season, it’s just that there’s so many players in that midfield who steal the spotlight.

O’Dea was magnificent with 19 possessions, seven tackles and three goals… but that only makes the Demons’ inability to blast Carlton off the park as the Dogs did all the more concerning.

O’Dea had a field day because the Blues were preoccupied with Pearce (17 possessions) and Paxman (15) — there’s too many top midfielders for Melbourne’s opponents to cover all of them, and this time it was O’Dea’s turn to get loose.

But the Demons are not getting full benefit from their total midfield dominance, and while it mattered little against the Blues, it might matter a lot more against the Dogs.

I called them soft before, and it certainly seems that when the midfield pressure gets turned up, Melbourne’s cohesive play breaks down.

Tegan Cunningham again laid a claim for being the competition’s leading key forward, with 3 goals 2. When she learns to start grabbing those contested overhead marks, she’s going to be terrifying — she got her hands to at least another five that could have been goals had they stuck, and at this point I’d name her the player most likely to beat Brooke Lochland’s record haul of seven in the next few seasons.

Though when she has her first injury-free season, Katie Brennan may have something to say about that.

As for Carlton, well, I’ve been beating up on them since they first made their disastrous pre-season trades, so I think that’s enough of that.

I don’t actually think the Blues are too many new players away from being a decent team — just a couple of first-tier midfielders to give structure and support to their current list of decent-but second-tier mids, and the whole team would transform, since the key talent at both ends seems pretty solid.

For the Blues, a lot of next season depends on what concessions the AFLW gives to the expansion teams in the draft.

Word from the Victorian junior development coaches is that the next draft will be stacked with far more talent than anything previous, including lots of midfielders… but if they all disappear in concession picks to North Melbourne and Geelong, Carlton could be left with little to rebuild their team with.

Next weekend, Carlton will be underdogs in the West against Fremantle, and Melbourne play the Western Bulldogs for a place in the Grand Final. I have no idea who’s going to win, but the Dogs have a better history of four-quarter efforts and I’ll give them the edge.