Collingwood’s Brianna Davey, a star on Sunday, shapes to turn her Melbourne pursuant, Lily Mithen. Photo: GETTY IMAGES.
Half the AFLW season is now in the books and the top six is starting to crystallize.
Collingwood, now standing alone on the ladder’s top rung, one game clear, is shaping as a premiership fancy after an impressive 35-point dispatching of Melbourne.
Across the country in Fremantle, as if following a perfect script for Indigenous Round, two Lions representing native clans from opposite sides of the land combined to end the Dockers’ record-setting 11-match win streak.
The Bulldogs, Crows, and Kangaroos all won, and alarm bells have to be sounding at Carlton. And there was absolute euphoria in Tigerland, as the black-and-yellow mob made history with their first-ever win, coming against Geelong.
And Round 5 wrapped up with another ice-breaker, West Coast also posting its first win of the season in a thriller decided by just one point against Gold Coast, inflicting more pain on the Suns, who along with Geelong, sits winless at the bottom of the ladder.
RICHMOND 9.6 (60) d GEELONG 2.1 (13)
The way the Tigers leapt into each other’s arms on Friday night under the full moon, embraced, and even shed a few tears at the end of this one, you’d have thought it was a flashback to the 2017 grand final at the MCG, when Richmond’s men mauled Adelaide’s to end a nearly 40-year flagless famine. But how could anyone with even half a heart blame the overjoyed ladies in yellow-and-black boisterously celebrating their first win in AFLW competition after 10 straight losses, spanning a season-and-a-half? And how appropriate was it that Tigers’ captain Katie Brennan — who before Friday night hadn’t savoured a victory since round two of 2019 as a Bulldog in a win over the Cats — put the exclamation mark on her team’s decisive victory with a dying seconds long-range snap for goal, her third of the match? Long before that moment and all night, the Tigers had fire in their eyes. With Monique Conti clearing seemingly every stoppage and vacuuming up 26 possessions, Courtney Wakefield strongly marking just about everything kicked her way and booting two goals, and prized draftee Ellie McKenzie and Sarah Hosking getting 17 and 16 touches respectively, this was about as dominant a performance as there could be. Richmond was full of self-belief after coming within a whisker of upsetting Carlton in the previous round, and in this contest amassed a 39-point half time lead while holding Geelong scoreless. A brilliant snap from the Cats’ Richelle Cranston finally got her side on the scoreboard in the third term and their leading ball-winner on the night, Amy McDonald (17 touches), added a major in the fourth. But that’s hardly consolation for star midfielder Olivia Purcell’s trainer-aided exit off the ground in the second term, as she suffered what scans revealed to be a season-ending anterior cruciate ligament tear in her right knee.
WESTERN BULLDOGS 7.5 (47) d GWS 3.4 (22)
The Bulldogs hosted a workshop Saturday on rebounding from their defensive 50 and playing end-to-end football. In one second term on-field seminar, Naomi Ferres hit up captain Ellie Blackburn (17 touches), who kicked to a contest Izzy Huntington created. After she brought the ball to ground, Danielle Marshall quickly threw it on her boot and got enough to send it into the forward 50. From there, Bonnie Toogood did the rest, beautifully. She got on her bike on the boundary line, burned off one Giants’ defender, had a bounce, then kicked a goal from a tight angle. That was the second of Toogood’s three majors, which helped the Doggies build a four-goal buffer by half time. Huntington, the converted All-Australian defender-turned-forward and comp leader in contested marks finished the day’s scoring with her personal best third goal, slotting a set-shot from a tight angle. The emergence of former Pie Katie Lynch (12 possessions) in the Doggies’ backline essentially allowed senior coach Nathan Burke to move the magnets and send Huntington forward, with sublime results. The Doggies’ backline nullified Giant Cora Staunton’s influence, limiting her to one scoring shot, after she had torched the Eagles last week for four goals. Staunton’s teammate Alyce Parker had — by her own lofty standards — a quiet match, picking up 16 possessions and laying eight tackles, Giant Rebecca Beeson led all players with 24 disposals.
BRISBANE 3.7 (25) FREMANTLE 1.8 (14)
The headlines will say it was a pride of Lions who upset the vaunted Dockers and ended their 11-game winning streak, but in reality, it was a turtle and an emu. The turtle is Courtney Hodder, Brisbane’s jet half-forward and rugby code-switcher of Noongar and Yamatji ancestry, who returned home to Perth to play in front of family and friends. Hodder wore the club’s Indigenous round jumper she helped design, with Indigenous teammates Dakota Davidson and Alexandra Anderson, which partly features a turtle, Hodder’s family totem. In a match in which wayward kicking made goals precious, in the first term, Hodder won a free kick for a push in the back, then kicked a brilliant banana set shot from the boundary to open the Lions’ account. Late in the final term, a long-range Roxy Roux set-shot gave the Dockers hope, bringing them to within five points. But seconds later it was Anderson, of the east-central Queensland, Ghungalu mob — whose family emu totem adorns the jumper — snapping the sealer. The Dockers continued a disturbing recent trend of unproductive first quarters. After going scoreless in the previous two matches’ first terms, on Saturday Freo won eight clearances, went inside their forward half eight times, but netted a mere two behinds. The third term this year usually has been the Dockers’ most electric, but in this match the Lions held them scoreless, dominating the inside 50 entries, and with an Orla O’Dwyer major, built a two-goal lead. The Lions’ Emily Bates was tremendous, gathering 26 touches and Brisbane frustrated Freo forwards by having numbers back, creating a bottleneck around the goal square. Defender Sophie Conway (13 touches) often played the de facto goalkeeper role and Kate Lutkins (13 touches) took three intercept marks. Skill errors doomed the Dockers’ effort. If their goalkicking wasn’t poor enough, they turned over the ball a shocking 41 times by three-quarter time, and star forwards Gemma Houghton and Sabreena Duffy went goalless for the second straight week. Brisbane, meanwhile, proved it truly can match any team in the comp, home or away.
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NORTH MELBOURNE 9.5 (59) d CARLTON 6.1 (37)
Across Bass Strait in Hobart, the Roos showed absolutely no ill effects from last week’s dreadful 0.8 against Collingwood, kicking six majors in the second half to belt a Carlton side whose top six hopes took another blow. The Roos’ midfield, which came off second-best against the Pies, ran rampant against the Blues. Jasmine Garner led all players with 32 possessions and added a goal, Emma Kearney added 28 touches, and Ashleigh Riddell and Jenna Bruton had 23 disposals apiece. Their prolific ball-winning helped North kick five goals in the final term, including two to Sophie Abbatangelo and one to Tassie-born Mia King, one of the designers of her club’s Indigenous jumper. King wasn’t the only Tasmanian Roo to get in on the scoring, as Daria Bannister took a “speccy” from a Garner kick to the goal square, then converted a set shot. The Blues, despite another scoreless first term, actually led by four points at half time, thanks to a few minutes of brilliance from mercurial pocket rocket Darcy Vescio. She snapped for one goal, then cleverly hit up teammate Lauren Brazzale, who slotted another major. Seconds later, Vescio took a leaping contested mark, then booted a set-shot of her own. The Blues, though, couldn’t ride the momentum into the third term and again went scoreless, while North opened up an 11-point lead. The Blues got a major scare when tall forward Tayla Harris went off the ground for a concussion test after running headfirst into the Roos’ Vivien Saad’s knee. Harris, though, later returned to action and appeared unscathed.
ADELAIDE 8.13 (61) d ST KILDA 1.2 (8)
To say the Crows dominated this match would be the season’s biggest understatement. Adelaide won at home for the first time in just over a calendar year, held St Kilda to its lowest-ever score, and handed the Saints their biggest-ever defeat. The Crows not only kept the Saints from scoring in the first half, their team defence was about as liberal allowing them to enter their forward 50 as North Korean immigration officials are at granting tourist visas. While Adelaide ran away to a 30-point advantage at the main break, the Saints didn’t exactly go marching into the scoring zone — making just two entries, while the Crows flew into their end of the ground 29 times. The Saints didn’t register an effective disposal in their forward half until two minutes before three-quarter time, when Georgia Patrikios (24 touches) lobbed a kick teammate Kate Shierlaw ran on to, then booted into an open goal. While Adelaide usual suspect Erin Phillips (21 possessions) opened the goal-kicking for her team with a major on the quarter-time siren, Teah Charlton bobbed up to bag two goals in the second quarter, the first of which was a snap from a nearly impossible angle in the forward pocket. Ebony Marinoff ran riot as usual for the Crows, gathering 23 possessions, but Adelaide celebrated the unusual, too. Two-time Crows’ premiership player Justine Mules kicked her first career goal in 32 matches, and her teammates mobbed Jess Sedunary, an inaugural Crow who returned this year after playing one year in St Kilda, after she goalled.
COLLINGWOOD 7.7 (49) d MELBOURNE 1.8 (14)
The Pies now stand alone atop the ladder, cruising to a fifth consecutive victory after outclassing the Dees in every part of the ground. Collingwood brought a potent cocktail of ferocious pressure without the ball and polished composure with it, skilfully attacking, fiercely defending, and pouncing on the Dees’ miscues. Electric forward Chloe Molloy ensured she’d be the first AFLW player ever to kick goals in eight consecutive matches after taking advantage of a free kick paid to her, then slotting a goal. Aishling Sheridan perfectly read the ball off the Dees’ Daisy Pearce’s boot, chopping off a rebounding kick, then drilling a goal on the run. Molloy added a second major with a sweet banana from a tight angle on the back of a Sophie Alexander handball. Magpie defenders Ruby Schleicher and Stacey Livingstone both were instrumental in negating Dees attacks and propelling the Pies forward, while ruck Sharni Norder’s tap work helped the Pies’ A-grade midfielders get busy. Brianna Davey was one of them, getting 25 touches and kicking two final term goals, while Britt Bonnici gathered 24 possessions. For Melbourne, it was another disappointing day in front of the sticks, kicking just 1.8, to follow-up a 2.12 showing the previous week. In the third term, with the Dees building momentum with repeat entries, they missed four consecutive set-shots, before finally landing a major in the dying minutes, through a Lauren Pearce long-range, running goal. The Pies got a scare in the dying minutes of the final term, when Molloy left the ground in the hands of trainers after appearing to suffer a right shoulder injury in a collision with an opponent — moments after converting a set-shot, following a diving mark. Molloy, though, in a televised post-match interview, insisted the blow to the shoulder was just a “stinger” and that she’d be right to go next week.
WEST COAST 5.4 (34) d GOLD COAST 4.9 (33)
It wasn’t exactly an intercept mark of Leo Barry 2005 Grand Final significance, but the Eagles’ Ashlee Atkins safeguarded her club’s first win of the season after five rounds, cradling a desperate Suns’ kick in her chest as time expired. It ended a thrilling match between two winless sides that leaves Gold Coast as the comp’s only team without a victory. Moments before Atkins’s intercept mark, Imhara Cameron — who kicked a goal earlier in the match — laid a crucial tackle on a Sun trying to exit her defensive 50 in an attempt to make a last-ditch, attacking run. But the Eagles were led by young Mikayla Bowen, who had 21 touches, seven marks, three tackles, and kicked a crucial, last term, snap-around-the-body goal. If that wasn’t enough, Bowen’s long, multi-bounce run through the guts and long kick helped set up another Eagles’ goal to Grace Kelly. The Suns, though, refused to fade and fought to the bitter end, with Kalinda Howarth putting though a goal of the year contender, snapping Jackie Chan-style right at the goal line, from teammate Sally Riley’s long kick, that brought Gold Coast to within two points. The Eagles were jubilant, but the Suns were left more than heartbroken, though, as goal-kicking forward Sarah Perkins left the ground with a knee injury.
