It feels a little dumb writing about sport when everything else is going on, but maybe this is exactly the time when we need our entertainment more than ever.

Mental health in the general population is a genuine concern at times like these, and football makes people happy.

On the other hand, there’s a worry about playing these games even without crowds, because this virus is super infectious. Players make some gestures about not shaking hands, but the next moment they’re jumping all over each other in tackles or celebrations, so they’re not fooling anyone.

The danger to any sporting competition that continues to play under these circumstances is that one infected player would probably take out their entire team, because everyone in close contact with that player would have to isolate, and coronavirus tests are currently slow to implement. Maybe if the tests got faster, and the player was revealed to have the virus on Monday, the whole team could be cleared (or not) by the weekend. But what are the odds of that?

And that would be the end of the season, because the fixture would be ruined, and the players and the players’ union would start wondering if all this tackling and hugging was really worth it, considering what else is at stake.

The women might make it to the end of their season – there’s only a few rounds left, plus finals where the number of participants will fall and thus improve the odds again, so cross your fingers and maybe we’ll make it to the grand final without a shutdown. But good luck making it through the entire six-month AFL season, with 18 teams, larger lists and an exponentially bigger chance that people are going to catch it.

Brisbane versus Collingwood
The Brisbane-Collingwood game was just as instructive as I thought it would be, and demonstrated that for all their successes so far, Brisbane still aren’t quite ready for the big time. The Lions still haven’t lost their old defensive habit of worrying more about stopping their opponent than scoring themselves.

Their midfield invested a big effort into stopping Collingwood’s midfield, with Cathy Svarc doing a big defensive job on Jaimee Lambert, and certainly succeeded in slowing Lambert down in the first half. But to do that they took Emily Bates off the ball, which meant the Lions’ second-best midfielder this season only got 11 touches instead of her usual 21, and Ally Anderson only got seven, and the Lions didn’t score a goal until halftime, mostly because they were getting flogged in the midfield.

I’ll keep saying this until I’m blue in the face, but in today’s AFLW, robbing your offence to pay into your defence doesn’t work. It used to work in the past, but in the past Collingwood would have had only one player of the calibre of Jaimee Lambert. In this game, Brit Bonnici stepped up with 26 touches, and showed why she’s one of this season’s biggest improvers, because not only is she racking up big numbers, she’s hitting targets too, which used to be her problem in the past.

(Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images)

Bri Davey also had her biggest game yet for the Pies with 22, Steph Chiocci had 17, and any coach who reckons he can shut down the best modern AFLW midfields by concentrating on defence at the stoppages rather than getting the ball himself hasn’t learnt anything.

In fact, the Lions were lucky the final margin was only 29 points, because Collingwood kicked 5.13 and could easily have had ten goals to two. For Brisbane to be a genuine threat in the finals, they need to go into these games against the top teams not just planning how to stop their opponents, but figuring out how they can score even more goals than their opponents. Stopping Collingwood, North Melbourne, Carlton and Freo from scoring when they’re playing well is these days probably impossible, and is the kind of thinking coaches did several years ago. Further pursuit of that strategy is banging your head against a brick wall. But if Brisbane threw caution to the wind and all out attacked, with this line-up, scoring more points than those teams becomes entirely feasible.

The Pies now look almost certain to make the finals, given they play St Kilda next week, and Geelong the week after that. St Kilda has been the best of the expansion teams, but Collingwood in this form will be big favourites, and Geelong – having lost Nina Morrison – would appear to have barely a prayer.

Melbourne versus Carlton
It’s looking scarily familiar for Melbourne fans. Always they’ve looked amazing at various points of a season, then just missed the finals by a whisker. Now they’re in a four-way scrap for the top three finals spots in Conference B. Currently they’re tied with Collingwood and only in the three on percentage, but Collingwood’s next two games are very winnable, while Melbourne have Fremantle and Gold Coast.

Of course, Melbourne could win both… but if they can’t beat Carlton they’ll certainly struggle against Freo. They were out-muscled by the Blues in Alice Springs and Freo are even more physical than Carlton are. Even if they did win both, their percentage will likely suffer, while Collingwood’s will probably increase against two teams who’ve struggled to put scores on the board all season.

As for Melbourne catching either Carlton or Freo — well, Carlton have West Coast at Ikon, which is the kind of game where they could almost invoke a mercy rule at half-time, and then Freo and Carlton play each other, the result of which might not matter so much for the loser at that point.

As for the weekend’s game, it was pretty much the same thing we’ve seen from Melbourne for a number of years now: excellent skills and ball movement, but a tendency to kick short (51 marks to 35) and depending more on ball movement than foot speed to make the breaks.

Carlton’s superior running power began to exert in the second half, because for all the Dees’ great midfielders, they don’t have as much line-breaking speed as Carlton. In the second half, Carlton began to rediscover their lateral ball movement, and when that happens, there are few teams who are quite as punchy and direct, and Melbourne only scored one more goal after halftime.

(Photo by Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)

Melbourne have tremendous depth, but when they get into trouble, there’s really only one go-to player in the midfield and that’s Karen Paxman: 27 possessions in this game, and 22 for the season. Of the old midfield firm, Elise O’Dea is down from her previous career average of 18 to just 15 as the increasing speed of the AFLW begins to overtake her, and Daisy Pearce is of course playing in defence, and doing a very good job of it, but it’s not a position from where she can exert the same leadership as she once did.

Maddy Gay is becoming very good, but still only averaging 13 disposals, and the Dees have a whole bunch of good players who average about eight to 13 touches, but no one who can put the team on their back in hard times and carry them.

Carlton, on the other hand, have Maddy Prespakis, and although she’s averaging the same number of disposals this season as Paxman, she’s more damaging in what she does with them, and in the way she simply injects herself into the game when her team need her.

For Carlton, Chloe Dalton and Grace Egan are both averaging 14 (and had 17 and 11 respectively in this game), and the Blues finally discovered where their top draft pick Lucy McEvoy belongs, after a couple of quiet weeks, when they threw her into the middle with zero possessions after halftime, and she ended the game with 19. If she can keep producing in the midfield at that rate, then the Blues’ midfield becomes seriously impressive, with Prespakis, Egan, Dalton and McEvoy all in good form, and Breann Moody solid in the ruck.

In the second half, Carlton simply had too many players who won their direct match-ups, grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck and shook it. For all their skill, grit and hard work, Melbourne just lack that same muscular intensity when the going gets tough, and it’s been the story of their entire four years in the AFLW.

Western Bulldogs versus Fremantle
Firstly, it was a ripping game of football, the highest aggregate score in the AFLW so far at 66 to 51, and Exhibit A against all those clowns who insist women’s football isn’t both fun and improving.

Whatever their current position on the ladder, the Dogs are going to be just fine. Under Nathan Burke they’re playing a fast, open style, which at the moment might not be the best defence you’ve ever seen, but it is teaching this young team to play the style of game they’re going to need in a year or two when they come into contention.

Because in a couple of years, this team will certainly be in contention, possibly as early as next year. Against the ladder-leading Dockers, the young Dogs looked formidable, sticking with the far more experienced ladder-leaders for the first three quarters before fading in the last as the Dockers’ size and maturity began to tell.

Down back, Isabel Huntington is probably the best defender in the competition, and is the AFLW’s version of Jeremy McGovern with her intercept marking and superior athleticism. The other kids are all improving fast, and in her debut, Nell Morris-Dalton showed some serious promise with game-awareness and fast hands.

There’s a dangerous thing that happens with young, developing sides that are already loaded with young talent, but are not yet good enough to win many games – they get a great draft next year and get even more loaded, so when they start winning games, all the young talent starts maturing at once and they get seriously dangerous. I’m not sure exactly when the Dogs will start peaking, but when they do, they’re going to get very hard to beat.

(Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Eagles versus Tigers
The Eagles have won a game and the Tigers haven’t, but I reckon the Tigers will be fine next year, while the Eagles could be in real trouble. I’ll have a longer analysis later, but for now, let’s just say that the Tigers’ back line is talented but very inexperienced, their forward line is fine but no one can get them the ball, and their midfield just consists of one player: Monique Conti. Next year, the back line will improve a lot, so all they need to do is stock up on the coming draft’s many talented young midfielders, and we’ll see an enormous improvement.

But the Eagles aren’t even getting much out of their current kids. Sophie McDonald shows promise down back, and Mikayla Bowen will be a midfield gun, but McKenzie Dowrick is getting shown up for pace and Emily McGuire is struggling. The Eagles already have one of the oldest lists in the country, and they desperately need the Western Australian junior girls talent pool to improve. And even then, they’ll have to share half of it with the Dockers, just not the best half.

There are a few good youngsters on the radar for next year, but currently not nearly enough. With no expansion next season, the league’s playing standard hitting a new high this year, and the approaching draft set to be easily the biggest yet, the increase in standard in 2021 could be enormous. If the Eagles can’t even match that leap in standard, let alone surpass it like they need to, they could be left even further behind than they currently are.

And lastly, because this seems the season for feeling miserable, let’s spare a paragraph for poor Nina Morrison. It’s very sad when any player gets an ACL, but two in a row for one of the brightest young stars in the competition just absolutely blows. It looks like she did everything too, not just the ACL, so there’s almost no chance she’ll be back next season, which could actually have a silver lining, as it will mean no pressure with approaching dates and deadlines, she can take it easy and live her life for a while without hearing that ticking clock at every rehab session.

Also, a NAB League girls update to note that in most previous years, there might have been about ten or 12 top-age girls (draft-eligible for next season) averaging 17 disposals a game or more. Currently this year there’s 20, and some of them are new surprises who weren’t on many people’s radars. Talent levels next season are going to go boom.