Aaaaand we’re down to two.
The race for the most hotly contested premiership in decades will conclude with Collingwood and Brisbane at the MCG on Saturday, and it’s set to be a beauty.
The two top teams after the home-and-away season – the first time that’s happened since 2014 – the Magpies and Lions will be looking to crown superb seasons with the ultimate prize.
But grand final week is about more than just the big game: there’s also the Brownlow Medal to consider, plus the fallout from the two losing preliminary final team. There’ll be selection debate, previews, ticketing fiascos, and all the anticipation you could ever want.
Here are five burning questions ahead of the AFL grand final.
Had he not been injured with three rounds to go in the home-and-away season… quite possibly.
As it stands, though, Nick Daicos is only the slight favourite to take home Charlie in PlayUp’s official odds for the 2023 Brownlow Medal, coming in at $2.80 to Marcus Bontempelli’s $3, with the pair comfortably ahead of Christian Petracca and Zak Butters ($6) in third place.
Only time will tell whether the younger Daicos had banked enough of a lead up to Round 21 that missing the last three games – and being tagged to oblivion by Finn Maginness in the round he was injured in – to hold off the likes of Bontempelli, Petracca, Butters or maybe even Lachie Neale or Caleb Serong – history suggests the Brownlow predictors will be way off and we’re in for surprises galore from the umpires’ votes.
Perhaps a better question is this: can Daicos, or Bontempelli, or someone else, come close to the 36 votes that stand as the most recorded in a single Brownlow Medal count – jointly held by Dustin Martin in 2017 and Ollie Wines in 2021.
Across the last decade, Brownlow winners have been steadily needing to poll more and more votes: just 18 years ago, Ben Cousins claimed the 2005 medal with 20, a tally that would be lucky to get you into the top 10 these days (last year, it would have slotted him into eighth).
I’ve long felt that umpires are influenced by the knowledge of which players in every game are the likeliest contenders for the Brownlow at season’s end, and as such are more likely to give those known vote-getters two or even three for even run-of-the-mill games by their lofty standards. 2023 is as good a count as you could get to test that theory out.
Statistically, Daicos’ year was a marvel: booting 18 goals despite playing much of the year at half-back and averaging over 31 disposals a game are obscene figures for anyone, let alone a 20-year old in his second season.
Helping him out further is the fact that he’s been touted as a Brownlow candidate as far back as Round 2, a status that regularly coincides with a spike in two- or three-votes games. Ollie Wines in 2021 is a perfect example: first raised as a contender mid-year, he racked up 24 votes in his last 12 games, including five best-afield efforts and failing to poll just once, compared to 12 votes in his first 10 games and polling in just half those games.
Looking over Daicos’ games individually, I can see five certain three-vote performances: his Anzac Medal-winning masterclass against Essendon, a 42-disposal display the week prior against St Kilda, 30 and three goals against West Coast, the 29-touch, two-goal effort against the Western Bulldogs that earned him the Rose-Sutton Medal for best afield, and 36 and a goal against Fremantle.
But on the other hand, of his 20 home-and-away games, having amassed at least 25 disposals in all but one of them – when Maginness and that knee injury restricted him to five – it’s impossible to know how many times Daicos will benefit from the ‘Brownlow favourite’s boost’.
Will 41 disposals against GWS in Round 9 earn him the maximum three, despite Jordan De Goey being a clear best afield to anyone who watched that game (and Mason Cox being a close second)? Does 38 touches and two goals against Brisbane in Round 4, the Pies’ only loss in their first 12 games, outweigh bags of goals in a winning team from Charlie Cameron and Cam Rayner, with no Lion winning the ball more than Will Ashcroft’s 26 times?
Having crunched the numbers, there’s a legitimate possibility that Daicos could crack 40 on Monday night.
If he does – and keep in mind, I’m wrong a staggering amount of the time – then not only will the Brownlow be a foregone conclusion, but we’ll have further proof that the mid-season favourites are just going to keep piling up more, and more, and more, votes in the years to come.
Nick Daicos. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The short answer? No.
The long answer?
Anyone calling for Daicos to have either been suspended, or at least closely scrutinised, for his tackle on Brent Daniels in Friday night’s preliminary final should note that it fails two basic elements that constitute grounds for a ban – and no, neither of them are ‘he plays for Collingwood’ or ‘no one gets a week going into a grand final’.
The first is technique: Daicos tackles Daniels in the way AFL players have been encouraged to do so, leaving one arm free to brace any potential fall. The Magpie doesn’t realise, in the heat of the moment, that Scott Pendlebury is holding that arm to leave the Giant defenceless, and nor can he be expected to anticipate that happening.
Unlike James Sicily’s much-debated three-week ban for his tackle on Hugh McCluggage, there is no slinging motion, nor driving force into the ground like Will Day on Brad Close that earned the Hawk two weeks on the sidelines. This is a player wrapping up another player while both are falling forwards, and leaving one arm free in the process.
(It should be noted as well that I decried both those earlier suspensions here on The Roar when they were handed down – Sicily’s ban was a particular disgrace.)
The second factor is consequence. 2023 was the year that a lack of concussion from a tackle became no longer a protection from suspension, but for Daniels to get up like normal, play out the next six minutes before being taken off for a HIA assessment from Giants doctors, and to then pass said tests with flying colours, is enough in and of itself to take the ‘impact’ segment in the Match Review Officer guidelines back to ‘low’ even if Michael Christian had deemed it a suspendable act.
I maintain Sicily wouldn’t have even been cited, or been reprimanded at worst, had McCluggage got up and continued to play on rather than lying prone for several minutes as the stretcher came out (even though the Lion refused to leave the MCG on a medi-cab).
There were just no grounds for Christian to suspend Daicos in the least; more to the point, what he did was pretty much bang on what the AFL has mandated players to do to ensure the rivals they tackle can still adequately protect themselves.
Having said all that… it was an obvious push in the back free kick that the umpires didn’t pick up on, right?
Charlie Curnow did not have a great finals series. Actually, he didn’t even have a good one.
For the most devastating forward in the game all season to muster just a single goal in each of the Blues’ three September appearances, and average fewer than 11 disposals a game, is both a dire stat line for Curnow on a personal front, and a significant achievement from the Blues that they were able to make and compete in a preliminary final regardless.
Still, the Blues spearhead has, for maybe the first time since his return from two season’s worth of injuries in late 2021, begun to attract criticism for his performance.
“He hasn’t had a good finals series… you know that you get judged by how you perform in finals, not just how you perform in home and away,” was Jason Dunstall’s assessment on Fox Footy after the Blues’ season was ended at the hands of Brisbane.
“There’s no good being a good home and away player and not being able to take that form and apply it in finals, when the heat’s on and it matters the most.”
Hopefully, though, Curnow and Carlton aren’t looking at his quiet September as a point of concern, but rather as the next challenge for one of the game’s most talented players to unlock going into a 2024 season when repeating their preliminary final appearance will be a nice starting point for expectations.
One poor September does not a finals choker make, especially when it’s your first ever and you come up against some of the game’s most miserly key backs all in a row. It makes sense that Curnow, for all he achieved in his back-to-back Coleman Medal seasons of 2022 and 2023, would have some trouble adjusting: if anything, it’s a good reminder for us that he isn’t infallible.
Goals are hard to come by in finals series, but Charlie Curnow has been tearing home-and-away games apart for nearly two years now. Going into a new season with something to prove, even if his chance to make amends for it is another 12 months off, might turn out to be quite troublesome indeed for 17 other clubs.
Charlie Curnow. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
The calls seem to have grown louder this year than at any other point for the AFL to scrap its pre-finals bye and replace it with a pre-grand final bye instead.
Why? Well, the fear a star player could be ruled ineligible to participate in a final while under the mandatory 12-day concussion protocols is real and profound, and bringing in a week off immediately removes that from being an issue for all but he most serious of concussions.
On paper, the notion makes sense: as far as logic goes, though, I just can’t wrap my head around it. Thank goodness the chances of the AFL taking heed of it are about as low as they could be.
For starters, I think whoever came up with that idea forgets that the AFL regard the pre-finals bye as a necessary addition to preserve the integrity of the competition, rather than as a fun gimmick in their usual style.
It’s not there to build anticipation for finals, nor to give community footy its day in the sun: it’s there because before it was brought in, clubs were resting players en masse in the last week of finals when their ladder position couldn’t change, and in so doing infuriating bookmakers and others in the gambling industry by all but gift-wrapping victory to their opponents.
If it weren’t for that, we’d still be humming along with the home-and-away season feeding directly into the finals without the need to put the league on hold for a full week. Far from bells and whistles, or something that can be shifted willy-nilly, it performs, to the AFL, a crucial role in maintaining competition integrity, something that a pre-grand final bye can’t claim in any meaningful way.
It’s honestly more likely that the AFL scraps the pre-finals bye altogether than moves it. And having personally experienced a pre-grand final bye in 2021 (set in because of the league’s fear of COVID delays) I can safely say this: no sane person barracking for a competing team in a grand final wants an extra week, or hell, an extra day, of worrying over the outcome.
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I wrote at the start of the finals series that I felt we were due for a grand final fizzer – and I’ve still got that sinking feeling now.
Collingwood and Brisbane are evenly matched in a lot of ways – the problem with that is, it only takes one of them rocking up to the MCG this Saturday well off their game for the other to utterly dominate, just like what Geelong inflicted on Sydney in a similarly anticipated grand final just last year.
One of the drawbacks of an even competition – and I’d argue the AFL has never been more even than it is right now – is that big games like grand finals only stay even if both teams perform to a similar level of output.
Compare 2022 – a strong Geelong side playing scintillating football compared to an equally impressive-looking Sydney team that put in a howler – to 2012, in which a rampant Hawthorn played beneath themselves and faced a Swans outfit far less impressive on paper but one that simply refused to give in and played wonderfully well to boot.
One of those is an underrated modern classic, the other a miserable affair decided by quarter time which no one but hardened Geelong supporters will ever watch a replay of.
But back to the original question: both the Magpies and Lions have points in their favour.
Home ground advantage has to count for something for the Pies, given both their familiarity with the MCG and the Lions having scarcely won at the ground under Chris Fagan; for Lions supporters, there’s the stacked nature of their playing list that really should have the power to overwhelm Collingwood anywhere and everywhere on the field.
The Lions haven’t lost to the Pies since 2019, in the earliest days of their surge up the ladder; but they haven’t played the Magpies at the MCG since before then. And especially not under the bright lights of a grand final, with the crowd at fever pitch and millions watching on TV.
All up, I’m comfortable with that home field advantage earning the Pies ever so slight favouritism over the Lions: that might change if, say, Taylor Adams can’t return, or if there’s a secret injury on either side we don’t know about yet.
Gut feel? Mine says Brisbane, mostly because I think their list is starting to need a premiership to be taken seriously, rather than having one be a brilliant bonus.
The Lions have a better list than Collingwood, a strong record on the road everywhere but at the MCG, and an excellent recent record over their grand final opponents.
On the other hand, interstate teams against Victorians in grand finals haven’t done well in recent times – since 2012, six of seven grand finals to feature a Victorian and non-Victorian side have seen the former win, with West Coast and Dom Sheed in 2018 (over, it must be noted, the Magpies) the one exception.
It should be close. The stage is set for a great grand final either way: which means, knowing how I’ve tipped this year, it’ll be a blowout.
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