AFL - Notes from Pig City

AFL grand final 2023: the advantage call that wasn’t

AFL / January 9, 2024 / 4 minutes of reading

In a game of centimetres and seconds, and less than a kick in it, it mattered: With one minute and 18 seconds to go, Lachie Neale was legged by Oleg Markov. And then the whistle blew.

No one heard it. Zac Bailey, who’d kicked two incredible early goals, grabbed the ball and hoicked it forward.

The umpire called advantage, but there was none, and Bailey’s ball landed harmlessly. The game played on.

Half an hour later, in the Brisbane Lions’ rooms, children ran amok – playing kick-to-kick across the room, heedless of the adults in various states of mourning around them.

Lachie Neale embraced his wife, Jules. He was quiet, but his body shook with sobs. To his own surprise more than most, he’d won his second Brownlow Medal early in the week.

He’d played in one grand final before – as substitute, for Fremantle in 2013 – but the biggest prize still eluded him.

By the far wall, his co-captain, Harris Andrews, lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling. When he had composed himself, he stood taller than ever after a superb season – his back straight and chin up.

“It was a fantastic game. I thought the boys really rallied hard,” Andrews said.

AFL grand final 2023: burning questions

AFL / January 9, 2024 / 4 minutes of reading

Collingwood held top spot on the ladder for almost the entire season, finishing minor premiers, while the Brisbane Lions steadily closed the gap to eventually finish runners-up. On Saturday, natural justice has been served, with the two teams playing off in the big dance for the biggest prize.

The Lions have had the easier passage into the grand final, while the Magpies have ground out narrow wins against Melbourne and GWS. Can Collingwood hang on, or will the Lions finally run over the top of them?

Last time they played

Round 23: Brisbane Lions 19.10 (124) d Collingwood 15.10 (100) at Marvel Stadium.

Will Collingwood bottle the game up?

This Collingwood team forged its reputation in late 2022 and most of 2023 playing football that could induce whiplash, based on lightning rebound from half-back. Lately, though – as the competition has caught up, and with Nick Daicos out for six weeks – they’ve looked more like the Sydney Swans under Paul Roos, grinding out close wins with highly contested play.

The Lions, conversely, are used to playing fast and loose football on fast tracks, and Saturday will be hot and dry. Heat won’t bother the Brisbane Lions, but will the Magpies force them into a war of attrition?… Read more..

AFL grand final 2023: burning questions Read More »

Michael Voss and the new tattoo blues

AFL / January 9, 2024 / 5 minutes of reading

Michael Voss was in a deep hole. It was 2011 and the Brisbane Lions, the team he had captained to three premierships, had lost the first seven games of the season. He was coaching the club, and pressure was mounting ahead of a game against fellow strugglers, North Melbourne, then coached by former teammate Brad Scott.

The Lions prevailed by 14 points. After the match, Scott was asked if there was any consolation in his old club breaking the drought. Scott, as notoriously ruthless a competitor as Voss, scoffed and shook his head in disgust. “Is that a serious question?” he asked. “People don’t understand this – because you played for another club is irrelevant. We came here to win.”

Twelve years later, Voss will return to the Gabba for a preliminary final, now as the coach of Carlton. He, too, will be playing to win against the club that appointed him coach (without interviewing any other candidates) in September 2008, then sacked him in early August 2013 in a fruitless pursuit of former Swans coach Paul Roos.

That’s all water under the bridge. “I think it’s a lot of what other people talk about,” he said at the Gabba on Friday.

Chris Fagan: the last step is the longest

AFL / June 8, 2023 / 5 minutes of reading

Chris Fagan lets a long pause hang in the air. It stretches for 15 seconds, 20, 25, over 30. The Brisbane Lions coach knows what he wants to say about the AFL’s investigation into allegations of systematic racism during his time as general manager of football at Hawthorn, alongside four-time premiership coach Alastair Clarkson.

But for as long as the investigation remains ongoing, he is bound by a confidentiality agreement that prevents him from saying anything. Coming into his seventh year in the job, he has resigned himself to controlling the things he can control. “Just being able to get on with the job here, day in and day out, takes your mind off it,” he says.

Fagan is simmering. He is not good at hiding his emotions. Sometimes things boil over, something fans often see as he coaches from the sidelines. “That’s just me being me – it’s not a show, it’s who I am,” he says. He allows himself a grin. “I’m 61! I reckon changing that’s going to be tough to do now.”

Fagan knows he’ll likely never get a better shot at a premiership than in 2023. He has also never entered a season under more pressure.… Read more..

Chris Fagan: the last step is the longest Read More »

Tom Boyd lived the dream. Now let him live his life

AFL / May 21, 2019 / 4 minutes of reading

There’s a moment in David Williamson’s play The Club where Geoff Hayward, Collingwood’s prize new recruit, is confronted by his coach, Laurie (played in the 1980 film by Jack Thompson) after a game which he’s mostly spent watching a seagull while stoned out of his gourd. “Marry-a-wanna?” asks Laurie, incredulous.

Hayward is unrepentant. He identifies the absurdity at the heart of what he does. “It’s a load of macho competitive bullshit,” he says. “You chase a lump of pigskin around a muddy ground as if your life depended on it, and when you finally get it, you kick it to buggery and then go chasing it around again! Football shits me.”

“Well, I wish to Christ you’d told us that before we paid out 120 grand for you,” Laurie replies.

I thought of The Club when I heard of the retirement of Tom Boyd, a former No.1 draft pick, his enjoyment sucked from the game after 61 matches, only nine of them with his first club Greater Western Sydney, before the Bulldogs landed him on big money. At that time, like Hayward, he was just a kid with potential. He ended up winning them a fabled premiership.

I see a lot of parallels between Boyd and the fictitious Hayward.

Going public, or private, on mental health in the AFL

AFL / May 21, 2019 / 6 minutes of reading

Let’s say a player at an AFL club has a mental health issue. He, or now she, may be struggling with depression, or clinical levels of anxiety, or even one of the more complex conditions recognised in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

They go to see the club psychologist, and talk things over with the coach and footy manager. It’s agreed some time out of the game is required, just as effectively as if the player was physically injured.

The club and player concerned then face a difficult decision. Should they go public, as Alex Fasolo, Tom Boyd, Lance Franklin and (going back further) Mitch Clark and Nathan Thompson have all done?

In Franklin’s case, he may hardly have had a choice: his enormous profile meant that any absence from the game leading up to the 2015 finals was always going to be heavily scrutinised and would require a public explanation.

Most of us, in less public lines of work, don’t face that question. If we’re lucky, we may have access to stress or sick leave, and we go home to fight our battles privately, hopefully with the support of family and close friends.

Let’s now say a player wants to take this latter option: to keep his or her struggle under wraps, after making the decision that going public will only exacerbate the stress and pressure they’re already under.