It is down to four. Two games this weekend, a fortnight of rest on one side of each and a fortnight of finals football on the other, and a Grand Final berth on the end of both.
Friday 18 September, SCG, 7.40pm AEST: Sydney v Fremantle.
Saturday 19 September, MCG, 5.15pm AEST: Hawthorn v Brisbane.
The Saturday game starts early by design — the AFL scheduled it at 5.15pm so that if Brisbane win they can fly home the same night rather than Sunday morning, with the Grand Final seven days later. That is the sort of detail that sounds administrative until you remember what a week of recovery is worth in late September.
Here is how the four of them got here, and what each has to solve.
Semi-final one: Fremantle 120, Geelong 106
Two weeks after scoring 1.4 (10) in the first half of a home qualifying final, Fremantle kicked 18.12 (120) at the same ground and survived a genuine finals epic. A club-record 59,725 watched it.
The Dockers were 31 points up at quarter time (6.2 to 2.1) and looked like they might end it early. Geelong then came right back and actually led midway through the third, before Luke Jackson produced a five-minute passage — two goals and an assist — that decided the match. Jackson finished with 25 disposals, 35 hit-outs and two goals.
Patrick Voss kicked four, Shai Bolton had 26 disposals and two, and Hayden Young was prominent. For Geelong, Ollie Henry kicked five, Bailey Smith had 29 disposals and Shannon Neale three goals. The game also produced the week’s controversy — an ARC review that denied Ollie Dempsey an acrobatic third-quarter goal in a match ultimately decided by 14 points.
Semi-final two: Brisbane 144, Adelaide 91
Brisbane lost their qualifying final to Sydney by 53 points. A week later they won their semi-final by 53 points. The symmetry is almost too neat.
The Lions kicked five goals in seven minutes and 13 seconds to open the game — reported as the fastest opening five goals this century — and led by 27 at quarter time. Adelaide got within 10 in the second when Darcy Fogarty kicked back-to-back, and never got closer.
Charlie Cameron kicked five. Zac Bailey kicked three days after signing an extension. Kai Lohmann, Logan Morris, Cam Rayner, Eric Hipwood and Hugh McCluggage got two apiece in a 21-goal night. Will Ashcroft, Bailey, Dayne Zorko, Josh Dunkley and Rayner were the best of them. Logan Morris came out of it with a calf strain.
Adelaide’s season ended at 36,026 at the Gabba, and with it the career of Taylor Walker — 319 games, 715 goals.
Friday: Sydney v Fremantle, SCG
Sydney arrive as the team that beat Brisbane by 53 while missing five players to club-imposed suspensions. They also arrive without their captain.
Callum Mills ruptured the ACL in his right knee in the first quarter of that qualifying final. Scans confirmed it, he needs surgery, and he is out of the finals. A club does not simply absorb losing its captain to a season-ending knee injury in the week it wins a qualifying final, and the Swans have had a fortnight to work out what the midfield looks like without him.
What they still have is a forward line that kicked 21.15 (141) in its last outing. Logan McDonald kicked six that day, Charlie Curnow and Tom Papley five each, and Errol Gulden had 34 disposals and 915 metres gained. Sydney won inside 50s 69 to 52 and clearances 45 to 35.
Fremantle come in the hard way. They have played two finals in three weeks, they are the only remaining club that has to travel, and 7.40pm AEST is 5.40pm at home — a body-clock shift on top of a five-hour flight. Against that: they have just beaten a genuinely good Geelong side in a shootout, and Luke Jackson v the Sydney ruck is the matchup that will decide how much of the football Gulden and company actually see.
The question the game asks is simple. Is Sydney’s fortnight off rest, or rust — and does a team that has already found a way to win without its captain need to find it again?
Saturday: Hawthorn v Brisbane, MCG
Hawthorn have not played since 3 September, when they went to Optus Stadium and beat the minor premiers by 32 with one of the defensive performances of the season — James Sicily alone had 26 disposals, 10 marks and 12 intercepts. That review is here.
They get a home preliminary final at the MCG, a fortnight of freshness, and a shot at their first Grand Final appearance since the 2015 premiership. Sam Mitchell’s side have earned every part of that.
Brisbane are chasing a three-peat, and they are the most volatile side left. In the space of eight days they were beaten by 53 and won by 53. A team capable of five goals in seven minutes is capable of ending a preliminary final before the rest of the ground has settled — and a team that shipped 141 points at the SCG is capable of the opposite.
The matchup on paper is Hawthorn’s intercept defence against Brisbane’s scoring speed. Sicily, Tom Barrass and Josh Battle conceded five goals in a final a fortnight ago. Brisbane kicked 21 in their last one. Whichever of those numbers is closer to the truth on Saturday wins the game.
Rest versus rhythm
Both preliminary finals have the same shape: a rested, higher-ranked host against a visitor in form. It is the oldest argument in September and there is no settled answer to it.
What can be said is that the evidence so far this season has cut both ways. In week one, the two rested qualifying-final hosts split — Fremantle were beaten at home, Sydney won by 53. In week two, both semi-final hosts won. The clubs that came through the wildcard round both went out immediately, but the club that lost a qualifying final by 32 has just won a semi-final by 14 and is still alive.
The honest read is that form and freshness are both real and neither is decisive on its own. What has actually correlated with winning finals this year is the same thing that usually does: control of the ball going inside 50, and what your defence does with the opposition’s entries.
