We have our Grand Final and it’s a contest of the two teams most picked to get there heading into the finals series.
Brisbane and Fremantle’s finals series have reflected their seasons. They have boiled themselves down to their essential selves.
All year long, Fremantle has played outrageous patches of footy, while spending most of their games playing just okay, showing plenty of grit to hang in there defensively. It’s why I’ve called them an expeditionary force all year. They get in, kidnap Maduro, and get out.
Against Sydney on Friday night, they did it again. The Delta Force operators Shai Bolton and Hayden Young, ably supported by Pat Voss and Caleb Serong, simply took the game away from Sydney in the final term driving the Dockers to 5.4.
The Dockers have won a total of three quarters over their last three games, they’ve just won them so decisively that it’s been enough to win games.
Brisbane’s essential self is different. All year they’ve been like John Wick post the murder of his dog.
It’s kill or be killed, and the Lions have done a lot of killing.
The Lions have conceded an average of 118.3 points this finals series. Their stoutest defensive performance for the finals was letting Adelaide score 91.
And yet, they’re so brilliant forward of centre that it doesn’t matter. In their 131-122 win against Hawthorn, the Hawthorn key backs honestly played well but it didn’t matter. They still got 20 goals put on them.
So let’s break down the three key phases of the game, what each team does well, and where the other side might be able to exploit them.
When the ball is in the Fremantle front half
Because of Fremantle’s stoppage excellence this year, they’ve spent a significant chunk of games in their front half sitting fourth for the year in time in forward half. However, it’s been their third favourite way to score all year, scoring about 43 points per game across the season from the front half.
Over the finals series that has shifted as they’ve really struggled to move the ball from the back half, scoring 56 and 45 from the front half from their two winning finals. In those games, they’ve shown an ability to grind games down with their front half pressure and capitalise off turnover.
In terms of personnel, the Dockers are a truly excellent front half team. Their three keys in Josh Treacy, Jye Amiss, and Pat Voss have all had good to great years though have been indifferent across most of the finals.
The Dockers would be wise to look at how the Hawks deployed their key forwards to try and get them in the game, particularly given the indifferent form of Fremantle’s keys. Between Mitch Lewis and Jack Gunston, the Hawks tried to manufacture as much space as possible, essentially socially distancing them.
When it worked, that gave Gunston space to lead into while Lewis occupied Andrews and meant that he couldn’t get to as many contests as he otherwise might. The Dockers should try and get a similar look with Treacy and Amiss/Voss then cross their fingers that at least one of them remembers how to catch.
Aside from the keys, the Dockers have a serious collection of great small mid forwards with Shai Bolton, Murphy Reid, Isaiah Dudley, Michael Frederick, Sam Switkowski, and even Hayden Young. We saw on Saturday night that the Lions can be got by small forwards, particularly the ones with explosive speed, so it might be a day for Shai Bolton in particular to play more forward than midfield.
The Dockers’ talls and smalls have worked effectively all year, with the Dockers sitting second only to Brisbane (predictably) in ball retention going inside 50. Their most efficient kicker inside 50 by some margin is Murphy Reid who has retained 56% of his entries, the 12th best rate in the competition among the 85 players who have had at least 60 kicks inside 50 this year.
We’ll get to this in the next segment, but a key goal of Fremantle’s back half ball movement has to be getting Reid the ball moving forward wherever possible and kicking to at least one player stationed in there. Even if Reid’s kicking in the finals has been truly poor, his improvement is a clear avenue to fixing Fremantle’s average form this finals series.
Defensively, the Lions are deplorable.
They’ve conceded 93 points per game this year, which is worse than only Essendon, Richmond, West Coast and North Melbourne. With a fading front half game compared to their standard from prior years, the Lions defenders have seemed to struggle with being forced to defend as close to their own goal as they’ve had to this year. That goes some way to explaining how the Lions concede a goal on 25% of the opponents’ entries, the seventh worst mark in the league.
However, the Lions still do a lot of their scoring from the back half with about 39 points per game this season, and sitting top of the league in moving the ball from D50 to F50. With Dayne Zorko back, he’s retaken the keys to their mark heavy but aggressive back half game. However, through the year we saw Darcy Wilmot in particular grow into the quarterback role, launching 2 scores a game for the year and gaining about 600 net metres per game.
To stop the Lion ball movement, the Docker front half game has to be locked in and sweating on the short kicking the Lions want to do out of their back half. That’s not easy to do, given the Lions are clearly the best in the league at defending front half scores, but it can be done as we saw from Sydney in the qualifying final where their frenetic pressure (and granted highly windy conditions) led them to kick 13.5 off turnover
The Dockers have been good at stopping back half scoring this year, sitting second in the league conceding 28 points per game and third in stopping teams going from D50 to score and that’s largely held up in the finals.
Regardless, Brisbane’s defensive numbers all year are impossible to ignore and the Freo forwards are good enough to take advantage.
Edge: Fremantle
When the ball is in the Brisbane front half
One of the slightly underrated hallmarks of this Brisbane run has been their front half excellence. Since 2023, when they started writing themselves in pen for Grand Finals, the Lions have always spent at least 51% of the game in their front half.
That has shifted this year for the first time, going under that mark.
Part of the reason why might be that they just score so quickly now, including from the front half where they have scored 52 points a game which is second in the league only to Geelong’s vaunted front half method.
This year, including finals, the Lions have averaged 110 points per game. They average 9 separate goal scorers per game. They score on over half of their entries inside 50, at 50.4%. I have that stat going back five years. They would be the first team to score that often when they go inside 50 since 2021.
The Lions’ forward line is largely built on movement. Because the Lions move the ball so effectively and they get such good looks going inside 50, the Lions’ leading patterns are extremely intricate which particularly suits Logan Morris. Nobody retained more of their entries than Brisbane this year and they took the equal most marks inside 50. They’re pretty much impossible to stop.
While they don’t have a behemoth key forward, their forward line is built like a modern basketball team. Logan Morris is a stretch 5 and everyone else is a guard/forward hybrid. Someone like Cam Rayner, who has played like a man possessed at times, is a great example of this. He’s a powerful ground level player who can also seriously compete in the air and is a virtually impossible matchup as a result.
Lohmann has kicked 53 goals this year while turning himself into a true high half forward because of his drastically improved running power. That extra running power has made him a real asset in the mid-forward zone, where he can use his ball use and footy PhD to good effect as he averaged 1.5 assists per game.
But if anyone might be able to do it, it’s Fremantle. Or at least it was Fremantle of the first 20 weeks of the season.
The Dockers have given up just 73 points per game and been the third most efficient defence in football this year, allowing scores on just 43% of opponent entries. The Lions have also been held by the Dockers this year in round 12, where they scored just 78 points for the game. While the Lions kicked 10.18 that night, their expected score was also poor indicating that the Dockers could do what they do to everyone and forced them into tough shots sitting fifth overall in X/S per shot allowed.
The Dockers issues are twofold.
The first is that, as with their key forwards, their defensive form is poor with the Dockers giving up about 95 points per game over the last six games.
Their other issue is that Brisbane is uniquely equipped, beyond simply being the best attacking side in footy, to prey upon that poor form. The way the Lions set up risks the best, most impactful Freo defenders being all at sea. For instance Alex Pearce plays on the beasts, and Brisbane just don’t have one while Luke Ryan might have to chase around someone like Kai Lohmann, which is a recipe for disaster. On the other hand, the guys with obvious matchups, like Brennan Cox, is underdone and may not play, though he was held out of the WAFL grand final which might indicate that he will play on Saturday.
The best way might be for the Dockers to clog up the Lions’ forward line as best they can and try to push the ball wide as much as possible, or at the very least not let them hit up. In those scenarios, Judd McVee will have a big role in following Charlie Cameron around and trying to keep him from the fall of the ball.
In terms of what Fremantle can do from their back half, the answer has somewhat changed over the finals series. All year long, the Dockers have been a brutally effective ball movement team. They kick it long out of defence to their competitors like Luke Jackson or Treacy, they win at ground level with their freaks and then they get out running into open space.
It’s diametrically opposed to the Brisbane short kicking precision, but it’s been almost as effective. The Dockers are sixth last in expected retention per kick, third in contested ball differential, and third in back half scoring.
However, in the finals teams have cottoned onto the Fremantle method.
In the qualifying final, Hawthorn clearly went in with a plan to clog up the middle of the field and bet that the numbers and one-way runners of Fremantle wouldn’t work hard back the other way. They were right, and both Geelong and especially Sydney somewhat copied Sam Mitchell’s homework. As a result, the Dockers have had three of their eight worst back half scoring games for the season in their three finals and have given up at least 10 front half scoring shots in each of those games as well.
While Brisbane has been terrible this year at defending ball movement, there have been a few games where they have really turned it on, like they did against Hawthorn in last week’s final. Against a Fremantle team with such a defined method, and such defined weaknesses, I expect Brisbane to be able to turn it on again by planting Harris Andrews and a stack of other numbers right where the ball looks likely to be going.
Even in a poor defensive year, the Lions have still scored 60 points a game off turnover, second in the competition.
If they get that turnover game going off the attempted Freo long balls out of defence, the Dockers could have severe issues as this would also be the best way to get Reid’s silky ball use into the game.
Fremantle’s inability to work the ball methodically out of defence has come back to bite them in those games with Jordan Clark really their only architect out of D50, and I expect that it will haunt them again. If they can’t come up with a way to beat the numbers, and if they can be beaten there is green grass on the other side, then the Dockers are going to have serious trouble.
You cannot let Brisbane access the easy ones because they will certainly kick the hard ones too.
Edge: Brisbane
When the ball is in dispute
I’ve written about 2,000 words on this game already. But like Logan Roy said, “sometimes it is a big dick competition.”
My bet is that this game is a big dick competition, and the competition takes place in the centre square and at stoppage. This game is full of superstars at either end of the ground, but this is a high concentration of damaging superstars around the centre circle.
This year has been the most prolific since 2021 in terms of stoppage scoring by competition average, and these two teams are among the best at them.
For Fremantle, they have Luke Jackson, Caleb Serong, Hayden Young, Shai Bolton, Murphy Reid, and Andy Brayshaw with a few others rotating in and out. All year, the Dockers have been explosive from centre bounce and stoppage, scoring the third most points from each source.
In the finals, they’ve kicked it up a notch. Over the last two games, they’ve kicked over a combined 100 points from stoppage. They’ve been walking out the front of stoppage consistently over the last two games, particularly thanks to Luke Jackson being able to, at times, strap on the cape and dominate.
They’ve also, crucially, led football in stopping stoppage scoring allowing just 28 points a game from stoppage. Most of that is Andy Brayshaw, probably football’s best two-way runner, but Luke Jackson’s follow up work is also invaluable as is the more unheralded guys like Matt Johnson.
Their structure is also such that when Fremantle gets the ball first, they turn it into clearance, but when the opponent gets the ball first, the Dockers force a repeat. Their explosive power and defensive responsibility is why Fremantle is clearly the leading stoppage score differential team.
But that strong defensive structure and ability to roll the other way will be tested by the Lions, who will figure they can throw more punches. With Sam Draper and Darcy Fort in the ruck, the Lions sacrifice an advantage to the altar of Luke Jackson but have so many players running through the midfield that you can’t even really hope to contain them.
At various times, the following names will roll through midfield:, Will Ashcroft, Hugh McCluggage, Zac Bailey, Cam Rayner, and Levi Ashcroft. Backing them up at basically every opportunity is Josh Dunkley, who is essentially the only one of them that defends.
The Lions clearly believe that the best form of defence is attack, which has proven kind of true. The Lions are third in stoppage scoring differential, which is made up of scoring the most points from stoppage in the competition at 44, and conceding the fourth most points behind only Essendon, West Coast, and Richmond at 37. Hawthorn especially tortured them around the ball with inside 50 stoppages on Saturday night, kicking 11.4 from stoppage.
The elephant in the room is the Lachie Neale suspension which, as at the time of writing (Wednesday night) looks like it’s going to stand up pending appeal. Neale starts so much of Brisbane’s scoring from stoppage because of his excellence at getting to the ball first, and turning those first possessions into clearances. Over the last 5 games, Neale is by far and away Brisbane’s top first possession winner, getting 7.4 a game, 1.2. more than Will Ashcroft at number 2. He also turns 70% of those into clearances and launches, in turn, two Brisbane scores a game.
As we discussed earlier, even against teams at full strength, Fremantle is good at dirtying up stoppage games and forcing repeat stoppages. On the other hand, Neale proved himself excellent at cleaning dirty games in last year’s grand final against Geelong, where he came on as the sub.
Brisbane don’t have a real replacement for Neale’s skillset which is obviously an issue for next year. Will Ashcroft is much better receiving Neale’s handballs than getting the ball first, while Dunkley needs to do all the defending. If they give Dunkley as much license as Neale has to win his own ball, the Brisbane defensive work from stoppage is somehow going to get even worse.
It’d be like asking the bung in the boat if it could also be the motor. Brother she’s going to sink.
The other thing to note is that with no Neale, Caleb Serong wont have a huge amount of first possession competition working off Luke Jackson. Quick ball out of the middle to a dynamic Fremantle forward line could make the Brisbane weakness in defence into a disaster. It could go from bachelor party to getting decked by Mike Tyson and tiger adoption.
In short, a lot turns on Neale’s availability.
If Dunkley is forced to chase more of his own ball, I think I can hear Shai Bolton’s music especially at forward 50 stoppages. Or is it Murphy Reid? Or is it Isaiah Dudley? It might be a tag team match, because all of them will need to get moving when they have a favourable matchup on them at forward 50 stoppages, which they inevitably will at stages.
The stoppage battle is really a battle of one team who does the fundamentals and does them all well, versus one team who does one thing brilliantly. Even without Neale, Brisbane’s midfield is so explosive that when they get out they will do some damage.
If Fremantle are going to get the edge, the biggest place they can get it is in the ruck with Luke Jackson strapping on the cape as he’s done a few times this year. If Brisbane are going to get it, they just need to do what they’ve done all season and back themselves to win more than they lose around the ball.
Edge: Brisbane (Fremantle if Neale doesn’t play)
Summary
I went into this wanting to tip Fremantle, and I want Fremantle to win. But the whole game feels like it’s going to be the Dockers just hanging on the side of a plane waiting for their moment to get into the cockpit and take out the pilot and get out.
But I’m not sure Brisbane is going to give them that moment because of how heavily they score from everywhere, and I’m not sure Fremantle is good enough to force it from them in a game this big. Even if Neale is out, you know that Brisbane won’t be overawed by the moment.
The Dockers have also really struggled this finals series outside of their short patches of dominant footy. If you have a down period against Brisbane, they’re liable to put six on you in short order, as Adelaide found out.
The Fremantle method has relied heavily on their defence holding up while they wait for the attack to hit its straps. That’s a dangerous way to live against football’s death star.
Tip: Brisbane by 25 points (If Neale doesn’t play, I’d pick Brisbane by a smaller margin. Say 13).
Norm Smith: If the best small defender, Judd McVee goes to Charlie Cameron then there’s nobody remotely suitable for Kai Lohmann. I’m picking Lohmann.