Four finals across four nights, and by Saturday night the eight was down to six, two clubs had a week on the couch, and the team that finished on top of the ladder was one loss from being finished.
That is what the first week of a finals series is supposed to do. This one did it with unusual violence — the biggest winning margin was 53 points, the smallest was 22, the minor premiers were beaten by 32 at home, and the two clubs that fought their way through the new wildcard round both went out immediately.
Here is the whole weekend, and the bracket it produced.
The weekend in four lines
Qualifying Final 1 — Thursday 3 September, Optus Stadium: Hawthorn 10.12 (72) def. Fremantle 5.10 (40). Crowd 59,446.
Elimination Final 1 — Friday 4 September, MCG: Geelong 14.23 (107) def. Carlton 11.8 (74). Crowd 96,680.
Qualifying Final 2 — Saturday 5 September, SCG: Sydney 21.15 (141) def. Brisbane 13.10 (88).
Elimination Final 2 — Saturday 5 September, Adelaide Oval: Adelaide 14.6 (90) def. Western Bulldogs 9.14 (68). Crowd 51,370.
Hawthorn 72 — Fremantle 40
The result that reshaped the top half of the draw. Fremantle finished the home-and-away season as minor premiers, played a home qualifying final in front of nearly 60,000 people, and scored ten points in the first half.
Hawthorn led by 19 at quarter time, 33 at the main break, and never gave a metre of it back. James Sicily had 26 disposals, 10 marks and 12 intercepts and shut the corridor entirely; Nick Watson kicked two including a soccered goal from 20 metres that started a run of four straight. Gunston, Moore and Watson kicked two each, with Chol, Ginnivan, Mitch Lewis and Morrison filling out the ten.
Fremantle managed five goals to five different players. Josh Treacy’s came from his first kick of the night, with five minutes left and nothing on it. The full match review is here.
Geelong 107 — Carlton 74
Carlton’s season finally ran out of road, and it took the best part of an hour of football to stop them.
The Blues led by 21 points in the second quarter at a 96,680-strong MCG. Geelong then kicked ten goals to six across the second half and won by 33 — a 54-point swing from that early high-water mark. Patrick Dangerfield, in his 378th game, kicked five. Shaun Mannagh had 25 possessions and six clearances, with Gryan Miers and Shannon Neale prominent.
Geelong’s 14.23 is worth noting: 37 scoring shots, 23 of them behinds. They won by 33 anyway, which tells you how thoroughly they owned the territory once the game turned. If they kick straight in Perth, the semi-final looks very different.
For Carlton, a season that produced a wildcard win over Melbourne from tenth ends here — a 12-win turnaround under Josh Fraser after one win in nine rounds. Nobody in the competition improved more.
Sydney 141 — Brisbane 88
The most extraordinary performance of the weekend, and it is not close.
Sydney went into a home qualifying final without five players who were sidelined by club-imposed suspensions, lost captain Callum Mills to a serious right knee injury in the first quarter, played through sunshine that turned into wild wind and heavy rain — and kicked 21.15 (141).
Logan McDonald kicked six. Charlie Curnow and Tom Papley kicked five each. Errol Gulden had 34 disposals, 915 metres gained and eight clearances. Sydney won inside 50s 69 to 52, clearances 45 to 35, and were more efficient with what they created (55.1% to 48.1%).
Brisbane got four goals from Oscar Allen and very little else that mattered. They are still alive, but they now play a home semi-final having been beaten by 53 points by a side missing a third of its best twenty-two.
Adelaide 90 — Western Bulldogs 68
Adelaide’s first finals win in nine years, and the first of Matthew Nicks’ coaching career.
The Crows built a lead and then had to hold it. The Bulldogs came at them early in the last quarter — Will Lewis kicked back-to-back goals to make it genuinely uncomfortable — before Riley Thilthorpe, Taylor Walker and Darcy Fogarty answered with the three that finished it.
Josh Worrell was enormous down back with 34 disposals and 19 intercept possessions. Izak Rankine had 34 and two goals, Josh Rachele kicked three. Ed Richards had 27 and two for the Dogs, who lost Michael Sellwood to concussion.
The scoreline flatters nobody: Adelaide 14.6, the Bulldogs 9.14. The Dogs had more scoring shots and lost by 22.
The wildcard verdict: both survivors are gone
This is the structural story of the weekend, and it is worth sitting with.
The AFL’s new wildcard round sent two clubs — Carlton and the Western Bulldogs — into the finals proper via a sudden-death play-off. Both won that play-off. Both then lost their elimination final a week later, away from home, to a rested opponent.
That is a small sample and it proves nothing on its own. But the shape of it was predictable: a club that plays a knockout game in late August arrives at an elimination final with one fewer week of recovery than the side waiting for it. Carlton had a five-day turnaround. The Bulldogs travelled. Neither got out of the first weekend.
The wildcard round’s first year delivered exactly what its critics said it would — two extra games of jeopardy, and no change to who was still standing in week two.
Week two: the fixture
First Semi-Final — Friday 11 September, Optus Stadium, 6.10pm AWST: Fremantle v Geelong.
Second Semi-Final — Saturday 12 September, The Gabba, 7.35pm AEST: Brisbane v Adelaide.
Hawthorn and Sydney have the week off. Hawthorn will play the winner of Brisbane v Adelaide in a preliminary final. Sydney will host the winner of Fremantle v Geelong.
Two clubs go out next weekend. Both semi-finals are hosted by the losing qualifying finalists — which is the reward for finishing top four, and this year it also means both hosts arrive off a bad loss.
