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The first of three days of wall-to-wall AAMI Community Series action is done, with six teams – including several serious premiership contenders – working the rust off with their final proper matches before the real stuff starts in a fortnight’s time.
As with every pre-season, there were plenty of highlights, the odd talking point, and a swathe of goals – and you’d be mad to give most of it any meaning whatsoever.
Here’s what we learned from Thursday night.
There’s life in James Worpel yet
After winning a best and fairest in just his second season, I’m not sure any player in the game has nosedived quite as dramatically as James Worpel.
Sliding down the midfield pecking order, he struggled to find the footy – falling from 26.55 disposals a game in 2019 to just 15.36 last year – lost form and seemingly belief in himself, and spent time in the VFL last year. Quite the fall from grace.
But with Tom Mitchell and Jaeger O’Meara traded last year, opportunities are there in 2023 for the ‘Worpedo’ to re-establish himself in the Hawks’ first-choice midfield. And if his encouraging display in a narrow loss to Collingwood is any guide, he’s still got plenty of life in him yet.
Worpel managed a team-high nine clearances and 17 contested possessions from his 30 touches – nearly double that of his nearest teammate – to be the driving force out of the middle for the Hawks. Just as impressively, he gained 624 metres with his disposals, far and away the most of anyone wearing brown and gold.
He finds himself as the most experienced player in a young, raw midfield, with third-year jet Jai Newcombe the only other proven AFL-calibre talent. But with top draft pick Cam Mackenzie (24 disposals and a goal) showing encouraging signs and Josh Ward (18 disposals) ready to build on a solid debut season, a return to peak form from Worpel could see the Hawks surprise plenty of pundits this year.
James Worpel of the Hawks breaks a tackle. (Photo by Simon Sturzaker/Getty Images)
This is Sean Darcy’s year
If you were a ruckman and watched your club spend a million dollars plus to bring in another giant from a rival club, you’d be forgiven for taking it personally.
That’s what it seemed like for Sean Darcy against Port Adelaide, at any rate. With new teammate Luke Jackson missing due to a head knock sustained in last week’s practice matches, the big Docker relished the chance to do it solo.
He bullied an accomplished opponent in Scott Lycett to an alarming degree – more on that later – winning 38 hitouts and throwing his weight around at the coalface with eight tackles. More to the point, Freo look comfortably a better side with Darcy’s considerable size around the footy.
Whether Jackson can act as a supersized midfielder, a key forward with stints on the ruck or some other role, it’s going to be hard to take ruck minutes off Darcy if he keeps playing like he did on Thursday night. And with the game’s resident number one ruckman in Max Gawn set to share the role with Brodie Grundy at Melbourne this year, there could be an All-Australian gong up for grabs for the Fremantle No.4 as well.
(Photo by Daniel Carson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Port have a ruck conundrum
As good as Darcy was, the failure of Scott Lycett to offer any resistance whatsoever should and will be a point of deep consideration for the Port brains trust heading into the season.
At his best, Lycett is a strong presence in the ruck and mobile enough to hold his own around the ground, but he was neither on Thursday night, mustering only eight disposals to go with his 19 hitouts – half what Darcy managed, though admittedly from just 60 per cent time on ground.
Making things even more concerning for Lycett, the number one ruck position is a spot he has to win back. When Port went through a ruck crisis last year after he went down with a season-ending shoulder injury, they found a way to not just cope without a recognised big man, but thrive.
According to the AFL’s official Player Ratings, Jeremy Finlayson was the number one ruck in the game in the last two months of the season, with his athleticism, follow-up efforts and breakaway pace more than making up for his limitations when it came to winning hitouts.
With Round 1 fast approaching, Ken Hinkley and co. are running out of time to decide whether to stick with what worked last season, or go with a more conventional set-up with Lycett as the main man. But if they were looking for a reason to put their faith in the former West Coast premiership ruckman, they certainly didn’t get it.
Get ready for the tags, Nick Daicos
Nick Daicos looked good in the Magpies’ intra-club scratch matches. Like, frighteningly good.
But clearly Hawthorn were paying attention, because wherever the reigning Rising Star winner went on Thursday night, Finn Maginness followed. And it worked a treat.
Daicos’ numbers didn’t end up looking too terrible, but 17 disposals and zero – yes, zero – marks are a long way short of the stats he produced last year. It was notable how little space Maginness gave him away from the contest – similar to the shutdown job he did on Melbourne’s Ed Langdon last year, he lived in Daicos’ back pocket and forced Craig McRae to shift him up the ground as the match wore on.
It should be a feather in Daicos’ cap that he’s already attracting this much attention from opposition taggers, but it’s something he’ll need to get used to and fast. There are enough opposition teams who have a run-with player or two on the books, and at the moment the No.35 is just about top of the list of Magpies you’d want to keep under wraps.
The Lions mean business
As much as you shouldn’t read anything into the pre-season – especially when Geelong were quite clearly just going through the motions – Brisbane sure did look mighty slick on Thursday night.
The Lions have everything you’d want from a premiership contender – a bevy of options both tall and small in attack, a star-studded midfield that ticks all the boxes, and a competent defence anchored around one star. All were on display as they routed the Cats in Springfield.
Josh Dunkley immediately looked at home at the bottom of every pack, and eased the reliance on Lachie Neale that left the Lions so vulnerable at times last year; while an extra pig at the trough didn’t hurt Hugh McCluggage at all, who would have been best afield but for some patchy work by foot.
As for Will Ashcroft… you don’t want to hype the kids up too much, but he shrugged a tackle from none other than Patrick Dangerfield early on, so he’ll probably win the Brownlow, the Coleman and the Norm Smith this year and anything less than that he’ll have underachieved.
(In all seriousness, he was pretty great, and will be a perfect occasional injection into the Lions’ on-ball brigade in his debut year).
Harris Andrews’ form would have been most pleasing to Chris Fagan; while yes, the Cats didn’t have either Jeremy Cameron or Tom Hawkins for him to worry about, he read the play excellently all night and backed himself to take intercept marks, a long-term bugbear for his detractors.
Joe Daniher, too, looked at home in a rangy role further up the ground than usual, with Jack Gunston and Eric Hipwood providing the deeper options. Daniher has always had impressive mobility for a man his size, and could really do some damage driving the ball inside 50 to his fellow talls – the added benefit is it will significantly reduce the number of set shots he takes from inside 40.
The Lions have had stacks of talent for a while now and never really had it gel; it’s early days, but they now look a cohesive unit ready to take the new season by storm.
The Cats have bigger fish to fry
Some teams head into the pre-season matches with something to prove: a new coach to impress, fans to sell hope to, or even a sign that you’re ready to take the next step.
For other teams, like the Cats on Thursday night, it’s just an AFL-mandated touch-up that happens to be on live TV.
With no Jeremy Cameron or Tom Hawkins, the Cats looked toothless in attack, even throwing Sam De Koning forward in the second half. A second-string midfield missing the likes of Isaac Smith and with Patrick Dangerfield spending plenty of time in attack was taken to the cleaners, and it’s rare for the Cats to look as disorganised in defence as they did early, when the Lions booted four goals from just six inside 50s, compared to zero from 20 for Geelong.
And it doesn’t matter one iota. The Lions had a preliminary final to avenge and a point to prove; the Cats just wanted to get through unscathed. When one team is at 80 per cent and the other barely mustering 40, things can get very one-sided.
So no, the Lions aren’t premiership favourites now. And no, the Cats dynasty isn’t collapsing around them. Let’s at least wait until Round 1 to make those judgements.
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)
Forward line Fyfe has legs
Nat Fyfe’s overhead marking prowess was supposed to be the major weapon to turn him into a capable forward in the twilight of his glittering career. But against the Power, the former Freo captain proved he has plenty more strings to his bow than that.
With six marks and five scoring shots for three goals, Fyfe was a difficult proposition for the Power defence to deal with, but it was at ground level where he did most of the damage. All three of his goals came from general play, with two sublime snaps from the boundary line that wouldn’t have looked out of place off the boot of Charlie Cameron.
Interestingly, Fyfe’s presence in attack saw the Dockers move the ball with uncharacteristic vigour, with the patient transition play that characterised their 2022 return to finals looking far more aggressive. We’ll have to wait until Round 1 to see whether this is a new trend or just a symptom of the typical pre-season lack of pressure on display from the Power, but it certainly brought results.
Fyfe doesn’t need to be a spearhead, but alongside another mid-sized option in Sam Sturt, who likewise impressed as part of a smaller Freo forward set-up with Jye Amiss warming the bench all match, he showed enough to suggest teams are going to have a hell of a job finding an opponent who can go with him both in the air and when the ball hits the ground.
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