GuyWhoLikesSport

Chris Fagan and his Lions have essentially stuck to the same set of core beliefs around contest, ball control, transition, and front half footy for his entire reign. A man got to have a code, and their code is defined by those core four principles. It was the theme of my piece after the Lions won last year. But last year, what drove Brisbane was probably the biggest change in identity that the Lions have undertaken under Fagan. When Kidean Coleman went down injured last year, Fagan threw Dayne Zorko to half back. Zorko is astonishingly aggressive with ball in…

We are finally at the last Saturday in September, and the game is between the two sides with probably the highest upside in the competition. The Cats are probably the defining team of the first 25 years of the century, and are as close to the AFL can get to a Patriots-style dynasty. Business as usual for the Cats, but is it time for another premiership? 🏆 pic.twitter.com/d1de0hLU4B— AFL (@AFL) September 5, 2025 They have made wholesale list and game style changes over the quarter century, but they’ve barely been bad for a single season over the last 20 or…

Modern footy is about three central questions: In which parts of the ground do you give yourself a defined numbers advantage? How do you maximise that numbers advantage when and where you have it? Do you have enough players that can make an opposition’s numbers advantage into a weakness? That third question, asked more simply, is do you have enough superstars? Do you have blokes that turn a 50/50 into a 60/40? For Geelong and Brisbane on Friday and Saturday night, the answer was a defined yes. And those superstars were their captains, both of whom played blinders to guide…

Not sure if you’ve heard, but it’s the AFL Preliminary Final weekend of the century. Terrific. Is our 2025 prelim finalists the Big 4 of the 21st Century? pic.twitter.com/hJaWhtrC6P— Triple M Footy (@triplemfooty) September 14, 2025 Heading into the weekend, I used my time to look backwards. Not at the 2008 or 2023 Grand Finals, but instead at the last game that the preliminary finalists played against each other this season. Here’s one burning question I have for each game on the big picture, and one smaller personnel question that has to be answered. Geelong v Hawthorn Last time they…

What if you just put all the best shooters of the basketball on a team and let them shoot? You get the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors. What if you just put the best actors in a movie and tell them to act? You get The Godfather. What if you just get all the best runners in the AFL and get them to run? You get the 2025 Geelong Cats. Bailey Smith slots it on the run 🤩#AFLFinals pic.twitter.com/62xP8FjSlO— AFL (@AFL) September 5, 2025 Man for man, especially in contest and in the midfield, the Lions are clearly better than Geelong…

Well, the season is finally over. After one of the worst seasons in recent memory, where the AFL imitated life and was racked by debilitating inequality, we have the rich guys playing off against each other. It’s Elon v Sam Altman in this great southern land. “I wish he would just compete by building a better product,” Sam Altman says of Elon Musk.“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity, I feel for the guy… I don't think he's, like, a happy person.” pic.twitter.com/VrW26ZurKL— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) February 16, 2025 It should be pretty good. The nine teams that…

This has not been a good year for gameplay in the AFL. Last year, I felt like we hit a happy medium between attack and defence in the game and it was probably the best year of footy I can ever remember. This year, it’s been different. Even though scoring numbers are basically the same, there’s been a profound difference between the haves and the have nots. The league-wide scoring numbers are mostly propped up by good teams demolishing bad teams. This year we have had 20 games decided by 0-5 points, about 10% of all games. Last year we…

This season has felt like the AFL circa 2015: the quality of play has been poor, but the ladder is going to be close enough in the end for the league to spin it as ‘healthy competition’ This was a big weekend for that close finish, though, with three games between top nine sides. Here’s one takeaway from each. Fremantle v Brisbane: Fraudmantle is real Heading into Friday night against the Lions at a packed Optus stadium, Fremantle had won five in a row and three of them by less than three goals. They were in some form, even if…