u/TOXICTUNA64

A very disappointing outing today. Weirdly, I think we had some individual performances that us really stood up, but the team as a whole was just completely destroyed by a very strong Blues outfit. The most disappointing part for me was simply the margin in that last quarter. Conceding the last 3 goals of the game for the margin to blow out past 50 was really a punch to the gut after about 2.5 quarters of somewhat competitive footy. Let's see what went wrong.

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Our Attack:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Eagles	18.8	14.3	4.8	30.0	13.3
Eagles’ 2026 Ave	19.7	18.2	8.1	28.9	11.7
2026 League Ave	21.9	23.6	10.3	32.3	13.7

Transition numbers paint a strong picture this week. Chain to score is unimpressively okay. Transition and scoring from defensive half was actually pretty good. But transition and scoring from defensive 50 was abysmal. I’d say that stat has more to do with our defence than our offence this week. With those transition numbers we managed to get the ball inside 50 49 times, which is actually not a bad number. The bad part is our scoring efficiency of just 38.7% and the fact that we only took 4 marks inside 50 for the match. All 4 to Waterman and all in the last quarter.

All this basically confirms what I thought while watching live. Carlton were really good at restricting the speed of our movement, only letting us get corridor ball movement in the last when they were tired. The upside of this is that we were really good at transitioning the ball against a tight defence. The downside is that it shows that our inexperienced forwardline just can’t function with that slower ball movement.

Overall, it was a bad performance, but it wasn’t that far off.

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Our Defence:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Blues	27.7	40.0	22.5	40.0	21.5
Blues Ave	22.1	24.8	11.8	32.3	12.8
2026 League Ave	21.9	23.6	10.3	32.3	13.7

Look at those fucking numbers. Do I even need to say anything? I don’t think I will.

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Our Midfield:

** **	CBA	CC	CC/CBA
Williams	25	0	0.00
Pittonet	24	3	0.13
Reid	24	9	0.38
Gewett	21	3	0.14
Cripps	20	2	0.10
Walsh	20	4	0.20
Yeo	18	3	0.17
Graham	17	1	0.06
Smith	16	1	0.06
Hewett	13	0	0.00
Hough	11	1	0.09
Ainsworth	10	1	0.10
McKay	5	0	0.00
Duff-Tytler	4	0	0.00
Duursma	4	0	0.00

Firstly, holy shit! Reid was good. Getting a centre clearance nearly 40% of the time might just be some sort of record. I’ve never seen someone go that far past 30% before. Other than Reid, Yeo was pretty solid, and then nothing. Amazingly, centre clearances were still even, 14 all, just from Reid’s dominance. Stoppage clearances were much less favourable as we lost them 20-34, but the worst result by far was losing the contested possession count 114-142. Losing the contested count by 28 is just about unforgivable.

** **	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts	-	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts
Williams	25	2	5	Pittonet	24	1	13
Reid	24	3	20	Gewett	21	1	5
Yeo	18	4	15	Cripps	20	6	21
Graham	17	3	27	Walsh	20	4	13
Hewett	13	3	16	Smith	16	3	8
Hough	11	2	13	Ainsworth	10	2	17
** **	108	17	96		111	17	77

Defensively we were absolutely shit house, but it actually wasn’t the midfields’ fault. It’s not perfect. With Carlton having possession for 53% of game time, you’d definitely want more tackles rather than a draw, but with a clear win in pressure acts you can see that at the very least, they were trying their guts out defensively but just couldn't quite get those extras to stick.

Definitely not a good performance, but partially just because Reid was that good, the final score is just bad.

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So where did we lose? Defence

Alright, I will talk about our team defence.

Firstly, those transition numbers are truly the worst I’ve ever seen. Not so much the scores from transition which are awful, but we’ve had worse (I’d like to credit the back six, but that’s more on Carlton). The actual transition numbers show that every time Carlton touched the footy in the back half of the ground there was a 40% chance that the footy would end up in their forward 50. That’s worse than in the Sydney and St Kilda games. That resulted in a massive 61 inside 50s, and concerningly 20 marks inside 50. Because of that, Carlton ended up scoring 52.5% of the time the ball went in there.

So, why was our team defence so bad? First thing that everyone will look at is the tackle count which says that despite Carlton having possession of the footy for 53% of game time compared to our paltry 32%, they actually smashed us in the tackle count 61-48. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. It’s appalling.

There was another reason why we couldn’t tackle at all this game, but doesn’t really make anything better. Despite it being our number one defensive goal, and Mini highlighting it before the match, we were completely unable to prevent Carlton’s uncontested marking game. They average 98.8 marks a game and we conceded 133. That is awful. It was especially bad in the first quarter where we kept giving up uncontested marks in the centre of the ground, and even though we fixed that up as the game went on, they just went wide and outworked our zone defence. If there’s any one part of the game we should be disappointed in. It’s this.

And so overall, I’d say defence was at WAFL level.

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The BOG Candidates:

Harley Reid: No surprises here. Reid was not just the best Eagle, he was the best player afield. He even managed the 5th highest champion data ranking of the entire round. 23 disposals, 15 contested, resulting in 10 inside 50s, 1 goal, and 657m gained. But that’s not all, his contest work was also best afield with his previously mentioned 9 centre clearances bringing his total clearance count up to 12. But even that’s not all because he had 3 tackles, 20 pressure acts, and even 2 spoils. Yes, he actually had more spoils that Starcevich. If it wasn’t for the dire result, this would be talked up as his career best game.

Rhett Bazzo: Shades of that game where we all flipped from “Hedwards is shit”, to “Hedwards is the shit”. In a game where our defence was almost non-existent, Bazoo actually managed to be flawless on the stat sheet. One contested intercept mark, 3 tackles, a game high 7 spoils, and the only player on the ground to have multiple contested one on one wins, finishing the day 3-0. He only had the 6 disposals, when you’re defending that well, it doesn’t matter.

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Great:

Jack Graham: Tied with Reid for our highest disposals with 23 touches, he played a bit more on the outside which resulted in only 6 contested possessions, but he made up for it with his bread and butter pressure. While he only managed to record 3 tackles, his 27 pressure acts meant that he had 6 more than the next best on the ground. All of that with 4 clearances in a game where we were smashed in that area and I can say he had a great game.

Bailey Williams: Only had 11 touches, but from those he had 5 clearances, 2 goals and a goal assist. Even thought thats probably not exactly how we drew it up, that’s a really solid game for a ruckman. Even better is that he actually dominated hitouts 34-22 against a ruckman that I think is really underrated in Pittonet. Still playing great footy.

Bo Allan: Not the best statline this week with only 15 touches, but I thought he was really impactful with them and was really good at winning the ball on his own merits. He had 4 intercept possessions and 5 ground ball gets. His goal where he spoiled the footy, ran forward to get the handball receive and then slotted it on the run should be enough to show even the biggest doubters that there’s definitely something here.

Liam Baker: One of only three Eagles who had 20 disposals this week with exactly that many. Bakes picked up a game high 6 intercept possessions, as well as 8 ground ball gets. His disposal left a bit to be desired, but his ball winning ability on the defensive side of the ground reminded me of his 2025 form.

Hamish Davis: A bit more of a lowkey great game here, but I thought Davis played his role very well, especially as the game wore on. While he only had the 13 touches, he had 5 intercept possessions, 5 ground ball gets, 3 tackles, 17 pressure acts, and most impressively, a game high 3 intercept marks. Same as always for Davis, turning into a really good role player.

Brady Hough: Played the first half on Walsh and was completely ineffectual to be honest, but after half time he was moved onto Jagga Smith and was much better, restricting him to only 8 touches after 15 in the first half. Back the other way, Houghy had 11 possessions for 2 goals, and picked up 3 clearances. Put them together and you’ve got a great game.

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Good:

Tom McCarthy: A bit of a lean game, but still solid. He picked up 19 touches (5 from kick ins) and was a decent distributor off of half back. He only had 1 score involvement from those touches, but that’s more so from his touches being deeper in defence that normal. He was one of three Eagles to win a contested one on one.

Marcus Herbert: Not as flashy as his debut but still a good showing. He picked up 15 touches and really impressed me with his positioning as he picked up a game high 3 intercept marks. He didn’t do much else of note in terms of defending, so that’s an area to improve.

Milan Murdock: Lean numbers by his lofty expectations, but 14 touches still puts him in the upper echelon of Eagles today. He kicked the 1 goal and his pressure was really good with 3 tackles, 19 pressure acts, and even 2 spoils.

Elliot Yeo: Had 15 touches and was the only Eagle other than Reid to have multiple centre clearances with his 3. He also had a team high 4 tackles to go alongside 15 pressure acts. Unfortunately, he only went at 40% efficiency which really hurts his rank.

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Okay:

Willem Duursma: Played predominately forward in the first half and looked pretty good without excelling. After kicking one goal, he was moved to the wing and then the centre, but by then he seemed to struggle with switching gears and didn’t have much influence.

Jake Waterman: Was completely invisible for the first three quarters but saved himself was a worse rating by having a really good final quarter were he picked up 7 disposals, a game high 4 marks inside 50, and kicked... 3 behind. To all the people who have said Waterman was playing like shit because he keeps kicking 3.3, this is what he could be doing instead.

Ryan Maric: Let’s get the elephant out of the way quick. This year, Maric has been playing bruise free footy, and while I noticed it here and there earlier in the year, this game was particularly egregious. That being said, he still had 17 touches on the wing and I believe his good outweighed the bad. But just barely. Needs to do better.

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Bad:

Jack Hutchinson: One of my favourites but my boy was all rust this week. Only had 7 touches and was pretty awful with them. He did still manage 3 tackles and 16 pressure acts which is what I really like about him, but there’s no denying he had a stinker (but it was really fun watching him ruck with a 12cm height difference in the last quarter. Poor bugger).

Elijah Hewett: Starting with the good points. He had the exact same defensive stats as Hutch (3 tackles and 16 pressure acts), but after being backed to play in the middle in the absence of TK, having only 11 touches and 0 clearances is just not good enough. He used to rack up clearances like he was Reid 2.0, but he’s been terrible this year. Kinda concerning.

Brandon Starcevich: Continuing his awful start to life in West Coast colours, Starc had another stinker. Only had 10 touches (2 from kick ins) and seemed to trail which ever forward he had by about 30m as he only managed a pitiful 1 contested one on one (which he lost). He had 0 tackles again, which I know it isn’t his job a key defender, but it makes me wonder what he’s doing if he can’t touch the footy or the forwards. He finished with 1 spoil which means that, Duggan, Reid, and even the 4’8” Murdock had more presence in defence.

The Rest: I normally try to rank everyone, but we had so many passengers today that it was hard to write anything at all about a lot of them. I think that’s what really made the difference today. We actually had some pretty great individual performances, but too many players didn’t put in the defensive effort required.

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Stat Leaders:

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.

Harley Reid - 21.6 Champion Data Rating Points (Walsh 18)

Harley Reid - 10 Inside 50s (Ainsworth 8)

Harley Reid - 657m Gained (Wilson 478)

Liam Baker - 6 Intercept Possessions (Cowan 6)

Bailey Williams - 34 Hitouts (Pittonet 18)

Harley Reid - 9 Centre Clearances (Walsh 4)

Harley Reid - 12 Clearances (Cripps 9)

Jake Waterman - 4 Marks Inside 50 (McGovern 4)

Marcus Herbert & Hamish Davis - 3 & 3 Intercept Marks (Dean 3)

Jake Waterman & Bailey WIlliams - 5 & 4 Shots at Goal (McKay 4)

Jack Graham - 27 Pressure Acts (Cripps 21)

Rhett Bazzo - 7 Spoils (Dean 6)

Rhett Bazzo - 3 Contested One on One Wins (Dean 1)

16 Stat Leaders (+2 from last week) (5 Draws)

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Wuurm Watcher

Jobe Shanahan & Jack Graham & Bo Allan - 32.7km/h & 32.6km/h & 32.6km/h Maximum Speed (McGovern 32.5km/h)

Jack Graham & Hamish Davis - 9.7km/h & 9.5km/h Average Speed (Smith 9.5km/h)

Willem Duursma & Jack Hutchinson & Milan Murdock & Bo Allan & Marcus Herbert - 9.7km/h & 9.5km/h & 9.3km/h & 9.3km/h & 9.3km/h Average Speed in Attack (No Blues listed)

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That was a really disappointing way to end our really good run of form but I’m holding onto the fact that Carlton seems to just match up against us really well. That made 7 wins in a row for them with an average margin of 63 points. While none of our lines played particularly well, it was only our defence that was completely uncompetitive. That gives me hope that we can fix that up before Adelaide next week. Namely with Oli ’11 tackles’ Francou coming in (I doubt that actually happens, but I really hope it does).

And while I'm at it, let's pour one out for Crippa. One of the most underrated players of the last 15 years.

Apparently, my opinion of this game is completely against the grain, so read at your own peril if you’re looking for a crash out. I'm actually pretty damn happy with that performance, well, as happy as you can be in a 1 point loss. I mentioned it last week, but if we aren't making finals, showing we can win while still losing is actually kinda good (albeit frustrating). Give us the pick 3 KPD, Snell.

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Our Attack:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Eagles	21.2	18.8	3.1	29.8	8.8
Eagles 2026 Ave	19.8	18.5	8.4	28.9	11.6
2026 League Ave	22.0	23.7	10.4	32.3	13.8

Transition was stifled a little by North’s pressure, but we were still okay in that area. What hurt us was our low score from transition numbers, which resulted in us only scored 5 times from defensive half (4.1 25). However, despite those issues, we managed 50 inside 50s with an enormous 54.1% of game time spent trapped in our forward half (I think some of that has to do with North scoring quickly from forward half due to our defence, but it’s still an amazing result). When the ball did go inside our 50, we managed to score with an efficiency of 46.0% which is on the low end of good. We also took 10 marks inside 50 (5 to Shana alone) which is actually pretty good, but we still need to be getting more. Despite some of the comments about our inaccuracy, we were only 5.0 points below expected score.

So I’d say as a whole our offence was pretty good, but it definitely still needs improving.

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Our Defence:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Kangaroos	21.8	22.5	12.5	30.3	15.4
Kangaroos Ave	22.1	23.0	10.1	31.4	14.6
2026 League Ave	22.0	23.7	10.4	32.3	13.8

So firstly, in terms of stopping transition, we were good but not great, however you can see that the scores from transition are way worse. That basically alludes to something that’ll come up a lot this week. Our back six weren’t up to the task. In terms of team defence though, we restricted them to only 44 entries which is great, we also kept their marks to 92 compared to their average of 96.1, so a tiny win there. Tackles is an area where we were soundly beaten, 46-72, so team defence wasn’t without faults. When the Kangaroos went inside 50, they took 14 marks from 44 entries (absolutely disastrous) and scored with an efficiency of 54.5% (also absolutely disastrous).

Team defence was actually alright, but when you include the back six you have to grade it terrible.

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Our Midfield:

** **	CBA	CC	CC/CBA
Simpkin	22	2	0.09
Reid	21	2	0.10
Kelly	20	3	0.15
Williams	20	2	0.10
Davies-Uniacke	19	2	0.11
Sheezel	17	1	0.06
Yeo	17	1	0.06
Wardlaw	12	2	0.17
Goad	10	1	0.10
Trembath	8	1	0.13
Hewett	8	1	0.13
Xerri	6	0	0.00
Hough	6	0	0.00
Duff-Tytler	4	1	0.25
Curtis	2	0	0.00

No one really standing out this week. Kelly was our best centre clearance player, but most players were roughly around that same mark, although he did have a game high 3 centre clearances. I’d also like to point out Seedy, who seemingly has the uncanny ability to always pick up at least one centre clearance from very limited centre bounces. I went back and checked, and this is the 10th time this year he’s picked up a centre clearance from less than 8 centre bounce attendances. A minor point right now, but still very impressive for a young ruck.

As a collective, we won centre clearances 11-9, lost stoppage clearances 35-39, lost contested possessions 116-120, but won ground ball gets 69-62. Pretty hard to call a winner from those numbers. I think it’s pretty fair to call this a draw. Unfortunately, we were completely dominating all these stats early, but North managed to fight back hard.

** **	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts	-	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts
Reid	21	2	16	Simpkin	22	3	8
Kelly	20	2	11	Davies-Uniacke	19	9	17
Williams	20	2	7	Sheezel	17	5	15
Yeo	17	4	13	Wardlaw	12	6	26
Hewett	8	3	6	Goad	10	1	1
Hough	6	2	12	Trembath	8	1	10
	92	15	65		88	25	77

Pressure numbers in the midfield is where we were really let down. 15 tackles from our core 6 just isn’t good enough, and in a game where our back six was already down on personnel and also not playing great, this went a long way to being the difference.

Despite all that, I still think it’s a good effort by the midfield. Just nowhere near our best.

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So where did we lose? The Backline

It wasn’t inaccuracy, although it did hurt. North were actually worse in front of goal and expected score had the game as 85.9-78.0 with a margin of 8 points in North’s favour.

Umpiring played a part (not in the way you’re probably expecting), but trigger-happy umpiring giving North 31 frees for the match made it really hard for us to apply pressure to their ball movement. Whether or not they deserved those 31 frees is another issue that I won’t go into. A good team will win regardless of umpiring (but my ‘AFL wants North to win so they don’t fold’ tinfoil hat is firmly on).

The biggest issue, unfortunately, is one we all predicted pregame. Our back six were not up to the task without Ginbey back there. To give them a bit of a break, our pressure on the ball was definitely down on where it needed to be which made their jobs harder, but conceding a mark on 31.8% of their inside 50 kicks is appalling. I really have to question not picking Brock to come back into this line up, as our lack of height really contributed to our defending woes, as well as Starce being an absolute lemon back there. If we could trade all our 2027 picks for a clone of Ginbey, we should do it.

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Everyone felt a little off this game. This was really hard to pick.

The BOG Candidates:

Tim Kelly: In a game where everyone struggled to have an impact for all 4 quarters, TK was possibly the lone Eagle who pulled it off. 27 touches for the match spread out pretty evenly across all four quarters. He had a team high 12 contested possessions, and a team high 9 clearances. Definitely felt a step above the rest with his clean hands.

Jobe Shanahan: Talk about a turnaround. Only had 2 touches to half time and was having an absolute stinker, but his second half was just about match winning. Was sent behind the ball at the start of the third quarter where he took 3 intercept marks (2nd most on the ground) and then moved forward to take a game high 5 marks inside 50 and kick 3 goals. Hanashan also finished with a game high 5 contested marks in just that last half alone. He was on fire.

Harley Reid: Played one of the greatest first quarters you’ll ever see with 11 disposals, 9 contested, 5 clearances, 2 tackles, 1 goal (should’ve been 3). After that? Not much to be honest. For the rest of the game, he had 10 touches, 3 contested, 0 clearances, and 0 tackles. Now he was being tagged to be fair, but it’s fair to say he’s good enough for us to expect more regardless. Feels a little weird still having him in the BOG section, but his first quarter alone was good enough to separate him from the rest of the pack.

Jake Waterman: I have seen so much fucking hate for Waterman this week, I just don’t understand it at all. “His yips have cost us another game”. Did they? He went 3.3, one off his knee, one miss from outside 50m, and one poster. That’s not the yips. That’s an unlucky night. To circle back around to that point. He kicked 21 points, 28% of our score. Him and Shanahan are the only reason this game was close on the scoreboard. It’s pretty bloody unfair that people are pinning the loss on him.

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Great:

Tylar Young: Might seem confusing at first as he didn’t do a lot with ball in hand, only 11 disposals, but check out his defensive stats; 2 intercept marks, a game high 7 spoils, and a frankly ridiculous 7 contested one on ones for only 2 losses. Forgive the blasphemy, but that’s Ginbey-esqe. To further put his 5 contested one on one wins into perspective, North as a team had 6 wins, and the rest of the Eagles had 4 wins between them. His one on ones where brilliant this week.

Marcus Herbert: Had very big shoes to fill in Tmac’s but I thought he did it pretty admirably. Only 15 touches compared to Tmac’s guaranteed 30 but in terms of touch quality, he might have had Tmac beat? I’m not so sure about that call, but it’s a credit to Disco that I’m considering it (I still prefer Love Bug).

Bailey Williams: 14 disposals with 12 of them contested as well as 5 clearances. I thought he really held his own in the ruck against Xerri, but the extra height of Goad gave him a bit of trouble. One of our better players on the day, but still down compared to his best form this year.

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Upper Side of Good:

Liam Baker: 16 hardnosed touches for a goal and another 3 score involvements. To be honest, he didn’t have much else of note on the stat sheet, but I thought his touches were very impactful. Apparently Champion Data agreed, somehow rating him the best player on the field, 20% highest than the next best. He wasn’t that good.

Tom Cole: Laid an extremely important run down tackle to kick a goal early in the third quarter and then was actually sent down back for rest of the game. The result was 12 of his 16 touches coming in the second half where he was a key distributor across the wing. He picked up 2 spoils and a contested one on one win. A very solid game.

Cooper Duff-Tytler: Sort of the same as normal from Seedy. Showed he has the tools to do everything without really excelling at any one thing. He had 10 disposals, 7 contested, 5 ground ball gets, 1 goal assist, 2 spoils, and a contested one on one win. In terms of the ruck, he won the hitouts 22% of the time which isn’t amazing, but considering it’s above his average and he was against Xerri, I’d say that’s a pretty good showing. Unfortunately for him, Willow had one of the best WAFL games you’ll see, so he might still get dropped.

Elliot Yeo: He’s had a lot of games like this recently were he’s been okay at clearances (4), decent at contested possessions (9), good at tackling (4), but he still just doesn’t feel that damaging. At least not compared to his best. He also gave away a game high 5 free kicks, but it felt like just existing was free kick this week so I’m not holding it against him.

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Lower Side of Good:

Josh Lindsay: I thought he was brilliant with ball in hand today, and he was pretty good defensively too with 4 intercept possessions, 3 tackles, and a spoil. The only problem with his game this week was that he only had 15 touches with 4 of them coming from kick ins. Still showing his potential in spades without dominating this week.

Rhett Bazzo: Didn’t really excel but also didn’t really do that much wrong. He had 12 disposals, including a game high 9 intercepts. He also had 3 intercept marks, 2 tackles, and 2 spoils, but what held him back a bit this week was the fact that he didn’t make a single one on one contest. That kinda shows to me that his defending was a lot better than his positioning this week. Still a pretty decent game.

Brady Hough: I’m sure he was tagging someone this week, but I didn’t really notice who it was which I think speaks volumes about his effect in that role. Going back the other way, he collected 12 disposals, 3 clearances, 2 tackles, 4 score involvements, and 1 goal. Still a good contribution.

Ryan Maric: Back to his usual standards with 12 touches at 91.7% for 3 score involvements, but also had a team high 5 tackles and a team high 19 pressure acts, and on a day where our pressure was down on it’s usual standards, that’s really lifting my assessment of him.

Milan Murdock: Was tasked with tagging Caleb Daniel and did really well. He kept him to only 12 non kick-in touches for the game while Milan had 12 touches for himself. But that’s also sorta where my praise for him runs dry because he only had 1 score involvement from those 12 touches (A brilliant bullet pass to Waterman tbf). Played his role really well, but I can’t help but wonder if he would’ve done more damage off the tag.

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Okay:

Harvey Johnston: Only had 5 touches, but what really matters for me is his 3 tackles inside 50 (game high) and his 15 pressure acts. That’s his main job as a pressure forward and he did that well, but don’t get it twisted, having only 5 disposals for 0 score involvements means that this was just barely an okay game.

Tom Gross: 8 touches for Grossy and 2 really nice tackles. He kicked 0.2 but did have a goal assist. Decent enough for his first game of the year, but I can’t have been the only one who expected a bit more.

Elijah Hewett: Finally got a chance to come back in the team via Duursma, and he was… okay? I guess? 16 touches is not bad, but he was playing outside with only 3 contested possessions and 2 ground ball gets and he just doesn’t really have the skills to excel in that position. Possibly a harsh, but I thought he pretty inconsequential despite having a decent amount of touches. Think it was more of a positional problem than a Hewett problem though.

Liam Duggan: Let’s start with the elephant in the room. 9 turnovers from 20 touches is awful. Apart from that, I thought he was alright with 4 spoils in defence despite being severely outsized. I probably should, but I can’t bring myself to drop him down a tier just because his last quarter was really good with 8 touches and 3 score involvements.

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Bad:

Bo Allan: I’m very disappointed to be putting Bo down here because I thought he’d turned a corner. He only had 10 touches at 60% for 1 score involvement this week which is just not good enough. I’ll credit his effort and pressure, 3 tackles and 13 pressure acts, but it really doesn’t make it up for him.

Brandon Starcevich: Somehow even worse than last week. Starce was quite easily the worst Eagle on the ground. He only had 9 touches, 0 tackles, and 4 pressure acts. He was a little better at defending with 3 spoils and 2 contested one on one wins from 4 attempts, but even in those contests he looked unconvincing. But it gets even worse, 6 of his touches were from kick-ins. That’s right, he only had the footy 3 times for the match after the ball was in play and he somehow still managed 1 turnover. Champion Data had his rating at -0.5 and I think that assessment is spot on. Hard to believe someone as good as Starce could play this bad.

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Stat Leaders:

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.

Liam Baker - 17.3 Rating Points (Xerri 14.2) (Champion Data must've been watching a different game)

Liam Duggan - 645m Gained (Blamires 580m)

Rhett Bazzo - 9 Intercept Possessions (Parker 7)

Tim Kelly & Bailey Williams & Harley Reid - 3 & 2 & 2 Centre Clearances (Wardlaw 2)

Jobe Shanahan - 5 Marks Inside 50 (Darling 5)

Jobe Shanahands - 5 Contested Marks (Darling 3)

Jake Waterman & Jobe Shanahan - 7 & 5 Shots at Goal (Darling 5)

Harvey Johnston - 3 Tackles Inside 50 (Curtis 2)

Tylar Young - 7 Spoils (Logue 7)

Tylar Young & Brandon Starcevich - 5 & 2 Contested One on One Wins (Logue 2)

14 Stat Leaders (-13 from last week) (6 Draws)

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Wuurm Watcher

Tom Cole & Marcus Herbert - 3.1km & 2.8km Run at High Speed (Stephens 2.7km/h)

Bo Allan & Harvey Johnston - 22 & 20 Sprints (Stephens 19)

Marcus Herbert & Bo Allan - 4 & 3 Repeated Sprints (Stephens 3)

Marcus Herbert - 9.3km/h Average Speed in Attack (Stephens 8.9km/h)

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I saw a lot of people crashing out after this game, and I can’t say I don’t understand why. A one point loss always really stings, especially when it involves a poster in the last 30 seconds. But if you look at it holistically, this is another good result for a building team.

In 2018, Brisbane had 5 wins and 5 losses by under two goals. In 2019 they finished second on the ladder. So far, we have 4 wins and 4 losses by under two goals. We’re not playing finals this year, so wins don’t matter as much as how we’re actually playing and as you can see below;

Round	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
Percentage	55.8	59.3	60.1	64.2	66.1	70.0	71.3	72.7

We’re really starting to build.

That really hurt. That wasn’t just a loss, wasn’t even an honourable loss, it was a game that we should’ve won. And while that doesn’t change how flattening it feels to go home empty handed, I will say that for a rebuilding side it’s almost certainly the best outcome. It’s giving us evidence that the game plan works while letting us finish lower on the ladder before Tassie comes in. With teams this year sitting in 14th or below receiving a guaranteed end of round 1st pick due to bids, I truly believe this to be the best result… But fuck me getting the win would’ve been good too, (or a 100 point loss with Ginbey’s massive quad intact). Oh well.

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Our Attack:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Eagles	17.2	13.9	2.8	29.7	6.2
Eagles’ 2026 Ave	19.7	18.5	8.7	28.8	11.8
2026 League Ave	22.1	23.6	10.3	32.3	13.8

At first glance these numbers really aren’t great, but in a high pressure game like this they aren’t that bad. In particular, defensive half to forward 50 transition was really good, but our scoring from transition was pretty poor even after factoring in the pressure. We generated a massive 56 inside 50s but only scored 21 times with a shocking efficiency of 37.5% despite our 15 marks inside 50.

Overall, not very good but not very bad either.

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Our Defence:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Power	18.3	14.6	6.2	21.5	8.9
Power Ave	20.9	18.3	9.0	29.8	13.1
2026 League Ave	22.1	23.6	10.3	32.3	13.8

Due to our pressure, Port’s defensive transition numbers were really poor this week, and because of that we managed to keep the ball inside our forward half for 54.3% of game time which is crazy good, and restrict them to a paltry 48 inside 50s. We won tackles by 5 with a nice healthy 68 of them (including 22 inside 50), and we managed to force a huge 79 turnovers from Port. We also restricted Port to 82 marks, which is more than we’ve been conceding in recent weeks, but their average is 100.6, so that’s still a really good result. Team defence was fantastic, but when it went inside 50 we weren’t as good. We conceded an inside 50 efficiency of 45.8% which is pretty good, but conceding 16 marks inside 50 is not nearly as good. We also lost 3 of our 6 defensive one on ones, so not having Ginbey down there was a big deal.

Despite our back six struggling just a little bit, defence as a whole was fantastic.

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Our Midfield:

** **	CBA	CC	CC/CBA
Reid	21	5	0.24
Williams	21	2	0.10
Sweet	20	2	0.10
Yeo	18	2	0.11
Butters	18	2	0.11
Horne-Francis	18	1	0.06
Kelly	17	2	0.12
Drew	12	0	0.00
Richards	12	0	0.00
Duursma	11	1	0.09
Wines	11	1	0.09
Hough	7	0	0.00
Whitlock	5	0	0.00
Duff-Tytler	4	1	0.25
Mead	4	0	0.00
Murdock	1	0	0.00

We dominated centre clearance. Harley Reid had 5 centre clearances alone compared to Port’s 7. Really really good after we were somehow smashed by Essendon in that area last week. The same can’t be said about stoppage clearances which we lost 20-32 leaving the total clearance numbers at 34-39. That sort of a differential is probably a win for us considering how important centre bounces are, but it could clearly be better. Contested possessions were basically even 130-132, which is pretty reasonable. Butters probably being the difference on his own for collecting 17 contested possessions for the match. Ground balls were slightly in our favour 89-85, which while not really noteworthy on its own, shows that our -12 in stoppage clearances likely came from a lack of execution under pressure rather than effort or standard skill errors. We actually outscored Port 4.5 (29) to 2.5 (17) from stoppages, so our pressure even when Port won clearances was fantastic, as we’ll see below.

** **	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts	-	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts
Reid	21	5	22	Sweet	20	1	10
Williams	21	3	17	Butters	18	1	17
Yeo	18	7	19	Horne-Francis	18	3	12
Kelly	17	4	9	Drew	12	5	20
Duursma	11	6	18	Richards	12	7	23
Hough	7	5	17	Wines	11	3	11
** **	95	30	102		91	20	93

Defensively, we were brilliant. 30-20 in tackles is an absolute mauling and is nearly on par with our tackling pressure for the GWS game.

Despite the slip up on stoppage clearances, the midfield was fantastic this week.

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So where did we lose? Turnovers

A lot of people are bemoaning our accuracy in front of goal, but I really don’t think that’s the whole story. Yes, with better kicking in the last we would’ve won, but Port were also wayward earlier in the match and expected score still has this game 79-89 in Port’s favour, so I don't think it's fair to say we only lost because of inaccuracy.

I’ve also heard a lot of people saying that our strategy of kicking it to Ratugolea and Aliir was the reason we lost, and yes, that was incredibly frustrating, but only really a major factor in the first quarter. Ratugolea and Allir both earned half of their rating points in that first quarter alone. It hurt us early, but we figured that out how to avoid them pretty quick.

The difference in the game for me was turnovers, which might seem a little strange since we had 71 turnovers compared to Port’s 79, but the difference was in how we punished them. Despite winning (losing? I never know how to word this) the turnover count by 8, we were actually outscored in this source. Admittedly, only by two scores, 6.6 (42) vs 8.6 (54), but those two extra goals were the difference in the end. I think that shows that our ability to punish on turnover was stifled by Port’s pressure and without that score source we found it a bit too hard to apply scoreboard pressure. Thankfully, I think that’s a problem that will sort itself out with more experience into our players, especially for our young forward line since 56 inside 50s should be enough for a winning score.

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The BOG Candidates:

Tom McCarthy: This was a man who was everywhere. Had a game high 31 touches at 87.1% as he ran hard across the ground, picking up 11 marks as he provided us with a chop out time and time again. He also racked up 7 intercept possessions, 3 intercept marks, and 3 tackles in a really good defensive showing.

Jake Waterman: Some people will say that Snake cost us the game with his kicking, and they’d be half right, but don’t let that distract you from what he did do well. He finished the game with 5 marks inside 50 (game high), 5 shots at goal (game high), 3 goals (game high), 8 score involvements (game high), and 3 tackles inside 50 (game high). Not to mention that he also had 19 disposals as he worked his way up the ground taking 11 marks (Just realised that’s also a game high), and he also had a goal assist just to make an amazing day even better. In this case poor kicking does not equal poor footy.

Tim Kelly: Started like a house on fire with 10 disposals in the first quarter, finishing with 26, 10 contested possessions, and 6 clearances. Especially in the first half when Port’s pressure was exceptional, Kelly was one of our main line breakers, being able to find just enough space to get a kick away which resulted in him getting 572m gained. And while I generally don’t like that stat, it’s much more impressive from a midfielder.

Reuben Ginbey: With only 56% time on ground. Ginbey was still one of the best players on the field, and I don’t mean best while he was on the field, I mean even after everyone else had a second half to try and catch him, he still had some of the best stats. He was the 5th highest rated Eagle on the field by champion data and the 9th highest rated overall. Why? He finished the day with 12 disposals, 10 intercept possessions and 5 intercept marks (team high and 2nd best overall for both), 2 spoils, and even a goal assist for good measure. We can only hope his massive quad heals quickly.

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Great:

Harley Reid: Just the tiniest sliver out of the bog section this week. He started kind of slowly, but built into a really strong game by the end of it. He picked up 25 disposals with 10 contested white still going at 80% and having 7 score involvements. He also had a massive 5 centre clearances amongst his total of 7 clearances for the game and even picked up 5 tackles.

Willem Duursma: A game of high highs and low low, but at the end of the day I still think he was one of our best on (Especially when you factor in that he’s a first year player). He had 23 disposals (16 in the first half) and 12 contested possessions (team high). Unfortunately, he went at 52.2% and had 6 turnovers where he seemed just a touch panicky under Port’s pressure and missed a lot of handballs. On the flip side, he still had 5 score involvements, a goal, 2 clearances, and 6 tackles. Some of his turnovers were just slightly off and he nearly had an all timer.

Liam Baker: Last week he brought the grunt good and proper, but this week he also brought the skills to back it up. 21 disposals with an equal team high 10 intercept possessions, 4 intercept marks, and a rare goal assist. Felt like he faded a little late, but I think that’s more to do with Port’s lack of inside 50s after half time (only 18).

Rhett Bazzo: Career best game for Bazzo hands down. When Ginbey went off injured, I think most of us thought, ‘Pack it up. Go home’, but Bazzo stood up in a big way. Defensively he was rock solid as he amassed 3 intercept marks (2 contested), a game high 7 spoils, and a game high 3 contested one on one wins from 4 attempts. If I’m not mistaken his opponent was Georgiades after The Boy went down so perhaps Bazzo is one of those players who gets better with better opposition? Seems to fit in with his WAFL form probably being worse than his AFL form. Whatever it is, hopefully he can back it up over the next couple weeks while every supporter around the country donates their quads to Ginbey.

Tom Cole: Not a career best game, but definitely career best as a forward. Had 13 disposals, 4 shots on goals (2nd most for the game), and two monster goals. Unfortunately missed the easiest one for the night late, but for a moment there, it looked like Tommy Coleman was about to singehandedly drag us across the line.

Bo Allan: Didn’t have the same impact as last week, but he was still really influential. He had 14 touches (unfortunately at 57.1%), 5 contested possessions, and 5 intercept possessions. Felt like he was forward more than usual, including a great contested mark and goal, and a goal assist. Great running power as always and feels like he’s really building towards his best.

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Good:

Hamish Davis: Considered putting him higher, but I don’t think he was quite damaging enough with his 17 touches. That being said he had 6 intercept possessions, and surprisingly, 9 contested possessions and 3 clearances. He went at 88.2% disposal efficiency, but at times, I actually think he was a tiny bit too safe with the ball, choosing to go backwards more often than not and finishing with -15m gained. Not a complaint, but an area to potentially improve.

Brady Hough: Kicked the first goal of the game for the second time this year, but his main role was tagging Butters, and the result? Basically the same as last time we played them. Butters was best afield again, and while I don’t think Hough did much to stop his inside game (really difficult tbf), he did restrict him on outside game, keeping him to only 10 uncontested possessions at 63%. All that with 5 tackles and 17 pressure acts is a pretty good game.

Elliot Yeo: I potted him last week for having a really down game in terms of his contest work, but he responded really well. Only had 15 touches, but had 4 clearances and a game high 7 tackles. Could not fault him when he was in the middle, but was just quiet enough in the forward line despite kicking a goal for him to move down a tier.

Liam Duggan: First up, 18 disposals at 88.9% with 2 turnovers, resulting in 510m gained. Distribution was great. Defensively though, he was just okay. Only really the 2 tackles and 3 spoils to his name. Not bad, but definitely not great.

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Okay:

Tylar Young: Was playing as more of an intercepting defender than a lockdown defender and he was just okay. He was quite good at winning the ball with 14 touches, 7 contested, and 10 intercepts, but was quite bad defensively with 1 intercept mark, 2 tackles, 0 spoils, and 1 contested one on one for 1 loss.

Jobe Shanahan: By no means a great game, but not a bad one either. Was completely dominated by Ratugolea early, but fought hard to have an impact as the game went on. He had 3 marks inside 50 (2nd most on the ground) but only kicked 1 goal with no goal assists from that work. Seemed to play a more defensive role on Ratugolea in the second half and really seemed to quell his influence. A great bit of learning for Jobe.

Harvey Johnston: Only 8 touches and 1 tackle. That’s his biggest negative right there, but I actually thought he was pretty good when he did get his hands on it with a lovely goal assist and another score involvement which probably should’ve been a goal assist. Don’t blame him for slipping at the end, Tmac’s kick was behind where he was running to and he slipped trying to change direction.

Cooper Duff-Tytler: Did everything this game, but none of them to a great extent. 9 touches, 2 clearances, 4 tackles, and 2 spoils. Where I thought he showed some real growth was his ruck work, where he had a career high 7 hitouts, and 4 hitouts to advantage from 18 ruck contests. That gives him a hitout per ruck contest percentage of 39% (18% higher than his next best), and a hitouts to advantage per ruck contest percentage of 22%, which while not his career best, was substantially higher than Williams (10%) and Sweet (14%). Growing nicely.

Bailey Williams: Was admirable but probably beaten in the ruck this week, but he was also beaten around the ground by Sweet which surprised me. BBW finished with 12 touches, 7 contested, 3 clearances, 5 score involvements, and 3 tackles. He certainly wasn’t bad, but I can’t really say he was good either.

Milan Murdock: Saw some people saying he had a shocker which I don’t agree with, but it was definitely the worst game of his short career. He still had 16 touches at 69% for 3 score involvements which is serviceable, and the saving grace for me was his 6 tackles. Overall still a decent game, but he was kinda invisible.

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Bad:

Brandon Starcevich: Played like a man who hadn’t played footy for 9 months. I might cop some flak for this but I thought he was quite poor. He played exactly as rusty as he was in his previous WAFL game and I’m a little surprised he was selected. He had 13 disposals (3 from kick ins) for 4 turnovers, and defensively had 4 tackles, but 0 spoils and 0 contested one on one wins from just the 1 contest. I know it’s harsh for his first game back, but he is also one of our most experienced players so I think it's fair. He'll be better for it next week.

Ryan Maric: As a long time Maric defender he did as I always credit him for, 16 silky smooth touches on the wing, except… Nah, they weren’t silky smooth at all this week. He only went at 62.5% and had a massive 6 turnovers. I can admit it this week, he had a shocker.

Malakai Champion: Definitely seems to be tiring at the level. Only 4 touches again for Mally, but even worse, for 3 turnovers. He did actually pick up 2 clearances, and had 2 tackles and 11 pressure acts, so I still like what I’m seeing, but he needs to go back to the WAFL for some more development.

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Stat Leaders:

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.

Tom McCarthy - 31 Disposals (Butters 27)

Harley Reid & Elliot Yeo & Bailey Williams & Tim Kelly & Tom Cole - 6 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 5 Inside 50s (Wines 5)

Harley Reid & Elliot Yeo & Bailey Williams & Tim Kelly - 5 & 2 & 2 & 2 Centre Clearances (Sweet 2)

Harley Reid - 7 Total Clearances (Butters 7)

Jake Waterman & Jobe Shanahan - 5 & 3 Marks Inside 50 (Georgiades 3)

Jake Waterman - 3 Goals (Horne-Francis 3)

Jake Waterman & Tom Cole - 5 & 4 Shots at Goal (Horne-Francis 4)

Jake Waterman & Harley Reid - 8 & 7 Score Involvements (Georgiades 7)

Elliot Yeo - 7 Tackles (Richards 7)

Elliot Yeo & Jake Waterman & Milan Murdock & Cooper Duff-Tytler & Jobe Shanahan & Malakai Champion - 3 & 3 & 3 & 3 & 2 & 2 Tackles Inside 50 (Drew 2)

Rhett Bazzo - 7 Spoils (Ratugolea 7)

Rhett Bazzo - 3 Contested One on One Wins (Ratugolea 2)

27 Stat Leaders (+0 from last week) (15 Draws) (Equal highest for the year)

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Wuurm Watcher

Bo Allan & Hamish Davis & Tom McCarthy & Milan Murdock - 9.1km/h & 9.1km/h & 9.0km/h & 9.0km/h Average Speed (Mackinlay 9.0km/h)

Bo Allan - 20 Sprints (Berry 20)

Bo Allan - 3 Repeated Sprints (Bryne-Jones 3)

Milan Murdock & Tom McCarthy & Bo Allan & Ryan Maric - 9.6km/h (Not a typo) & 8.7km/h & 8.6km/h & 8.6km/h Average Speed in Attack (Berry 8.6km/h)

Bo Allan - 8.6km/h Average Speed in Defence (Moraes 8.5km/h)

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A frustrating loss for sure, but I think it’s a really good one for our development. As I said up top, this was a game that we really deserved to win compared to our usual honourable loss. Our number of inside 50s per game in the last month has risen to an average of 54.5 compared to 48.5 in the 9 games prior. That would put us 8th in the comp and above Freo for average inside 50s. Once the forward connection sorts itself out, we’ll be laughing. And now that I’ve gotten to the end of this without breaking down; FUCK! WHY!? GINBEY NO! FUCK YOU INJURY GODS! THE BOY OUTRANKS YOU!

Thanks as always for all the support.

That was a strange game and it left me with a very strange strange feeling. I don’t think we were anywhere near our best and yet we come away with a cruisy 30 point win. It was faint and I might have misheard him, but I believe just before Waterman was interviewed, he said to someone “Don’t care how we played as long as we got the win” and I think that might just sum up my feelings for the match since after Richmond, that was an absolute must win.

EDIT: Sorry to every one who read the first revision. Reddit fucked up the formatting good and proper

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Our Attack:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Eagles	23.1	18.2	15.2	39.4	15.2
Eagles’ 2026 Ave	19.9	18.8	9.2	28.7	12.3
2026 League Ave	22.2	23.7	10.5	32.5	13.9

Apart from a surprisingly low amount D50 to F50 percentage (most likely caused by the wind), our numbers this week were excellent. The scoring numbers in particular were really good and our defensive half to forward 50 percentage was actually better than the Swans when they last played us. From that dominance we had 55 inside 50s and had the ball in our forward half for 56.7% of game time. That’s fantastic. We still struggled a bit with our efficiency which was at a middling 45.5% but it must be said that our efficiency likely looks a lot worse because of the conditions. We had a lot of shots at goal that didn’t score and a massive 16 marks inside 50 (7 to Snakey alone) so in fairer conditions I think we would’ve had a much better showing. It’s also nice to note that even with the shocking conditions, we were only 7 points below expected score meaning that we adapted to the conditions pretty well.

The wind makes it a bit hard to judge, but I’m going to say our offence was superb.

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Our Defence:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Bombers	13.2	20.0	6.7	23.0	9.5
Bombers Ave	20.1	22.4	10.5	29.6	13.4
2026 League Ave	22.2	23.7	10.5	32.5	13.9

Defensively we were also excellent. Again, for some odd reason the D50 to F50 numbers are the outlier, but in this case it’s still a good result and below their average. Because of our fantastic work on restricting their ball movement, and restricting them to 68 marks (We’re getting consistent in that aspect!), Essendon were only able to record 40 inside 50s for the match which is an amazing result, about 14% below their average. When they did get inside 50, they only took 6 marks (amazing) and we kept their efficiency to only 37.5% (also amazing).

Our offence was superb, and I think defensively we were even better. Fantastic result.

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Our Midfield:

** **	CBA	CC	CC/CBA
Reid	20	2	0.10
Bryan	20	1	0.05
Yeo	19	1	0.05
Billiams	18	1	0.06
Tsatas	17	3	0.18
Kelly	16	1	0.06
Merrett	16	1	0.06
Parish	15	0	0.00
Robey	14	5	0.36
Duursma	12	2	0.17
Setterfield	7	2	0.29
Jilliams	5	1	0.20
McKay	3	1	0.33
Hough	2	0	0.00

With our transition numbers being amazing it only stands to reason that our midfield was hmm… kinda shit, actually. At least in clearance numbers. Credit where credit is due, Robey had a ridiculous game in the centre, winning 5 centre clearances to the Eagles’ 9 as we lost 9-13. Reid and Wuurmy were the only two Eagles who even managed multiple centre clearances. Around the ground we weren’t much better, losing stoppage clearances 14-32 and contested possessions 124-126. Those clearance numbers are disastrous. In fact, the deficit of 22 clearances is the second worse differential in the comp this year.

** **	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts	-	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts
Reid	20	2	13	Bryan	20	1	17
Yeo	19	5	17	Tsatas	17	2	17
Billiams	18	0	8	Merrett	16	6	23
Kelly	16	3	17	Parish	15	2	12
Duursma	12	5	19	Robey	14	6	17
Jilliams	5	4	11	Setterfield	7	3	17
** **	90	19	85		89	20	103

Defensively, we were waaay better. Matching them in tackles but losing pressure acts. Before you ask, we had possession of the footy for 49% of game time compared to Essendon’s 36%. Keeping up the tackle numbers in spite of that is a really good effort.

So, in actuality, apart from the clearance numbers the midfield was pretty good, but unfortunately, we were so awful at clearances that I have to say we were bad.

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So where did we almost lose? Clearances

I literally just touched on it, but it was such a significant deficiency that I have to talk about it more. The clearances number were shocking, so why didn’t it hurt us? As I mentioned, our pressure was great. The stat sheet says we lost tackles by 11, but for literally two thirds of the game we weren’t able to tackle. We lost pressure acts 252-254 which again just drives home just how hard we tried on those rare occasions we didn’t have the ball.

Our pressure and offence was so good, that from 23 clearances we scored 4.2 (26). The Bombers? 4.1 (25) from 45 clearances. On top of that, we scored 1.1 (7) from our 9 centre clearances while Essendon scored 0.0 from their 13.

So, while losing clearances by 22 to the second worst clearance team in the comp is absolutely indefensible on paper. Yeah nah, it’s straight indefensible. But it was nice see enough pressure to stop them being able to capitalise on that.

So where did we win? Turnovers

I don’t want to focus on the one negative of the night, because we did basically everything else pretty damn well. Notably our pressure and turnover game.

Because of our pressure (and the wind helped) we kept Essendon to a disposal efficiency of 71.6% and just 68 marks. That’s a good effort on its own, but considering they average 75.6% DE and 91.8 marks it only becomes more impressive. And before anyone just says that’s because of the wind, we had a disposals efficiency of 79.7% and took 99 marks. Because of their disposal efficiency they had 79(!) turnovers. Nearly 24% more than their average. And just in case you wanted more proof that the way we punished turnover was the difference, we scored 7.11 (53) and they scored 3.5 (23). That’s exactly the margin right there.

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The BOG Candidates: It’s Ginbey’s world. He simply allows us to exist.

Reuben Ginbey: Was just taking the piss today. Easily best on ground. It was a performance so good that it might make the Vic biased AA selectors take note. 17 disposals at 94.1% in the wind is insanity and yet the least impressive part of his game. He had 8 contested possessions, 11 intercept possessions, and about 15 knock ons to advantage. Despite playing out of full back, he still had 6 score involvements. The most of any player on the ground who didn’t score themselves. All that and we haven’t even touched on his defensive work. He had 4 tackles, 5 intercept marks (Most on the ground), 3 of them contested (Also most on the ground), 7 spoils (Most on the ground), and a contested one on one win, bringing his streak up to 17 contested one on ones in a row without a loss. I might even go as far to say that was a career best game for Ginbey, but that’s like trying to choose which of his muscles is juiciest. There isn’t a single correct answer.

Milan Murdock: 3 Goals for the first time in his career and could’ve easily had more in better conditions. I believe the Mongrel was supposed to be tagging Roberts who had 31 touches (10 from kick ins) but when you’re arguably the best forward on the ground I couldn’t really care less about the tag. Had 19 disposals with 10 contested and 4 tackles for (I believe) 3 holding the ball free kicks. Aside from 3 goals, he also had 8 score involvements and a goal assist. Buddha was just everywhere.

Harley Reid: I’d argue he had a down night and yet he was still one of the most influential players on the ground. 1 Goal 4 Behinds will do that. 24 touches with 11 contested, and an equal team high 4 clearances. Had he converted better it would’ve nearly been an all timer, but we’ll just have to settle for fantastic.

Willem Duursma: Bit of a low key performance compared to the others, but what he lacked in explosiveness he made up for consistency. It felt like he was one of the more consistent players for the day as he racked up 25 touches, an equal team high 4 clearances, 5 score involvements, 1 lovely goal, and 5 tackles. He definitely had a few questionable handballs late as he tired, but it was still a great showing. I almost forgot he’s still a first year player because he’s already just unbelievably consistent. Onwards and upwards.

Tom McCarthy: I was pretty harsh on Tmac last week, and it was almost like he took the advice directly to heart just to show me. Last week he had 30 touches with 8 kick ins and 4 turnovers. This week? 26 touches with only 1 kick in and 0 turnovers as he went at 96.2% in the wind. That’s more like it. Kicked his first goal in the AFL alongside 8 score involvements and finished the game as the highest rated player on the ground by Champion Data. Brilliant.

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Great:

Tim Kelly: Wasn’t quite at his best, but alongside Duursma, he was one of our most consistent performers. He picked up 28 touches for 6 score involvements and had 3 tackles the other way. Only reason he wasn’t up in the bog section for me was the fact that he only had 2 clearances. I know he’s better than that, but everything else was splendid.

Jake Waterman: At 3.3 it looks like he’s still got the yips, but with that swirly wind I don’t think it was his fault. He had a massive 7 marks inside 50 today. More than the next best three players on the field combined. Also finished the day with 16 touches as he did some more work up the ground which I always really rate.

Tylar Young: Might be owed an apology by some Eagles supporters. He’s really building his game now that he’s gelling with the system. I won’t say it was his best game for the club, but only because he played as if he were in a different role today. He didn’t have a one on one and only had 2 spoils, but he did have 26 touches with 8 intercepts and 2 intercept marks as he played like a lesser Gov. Was really good at winning the ball in the back half to send it forward again.

Liam Baker: He had a flawed game (Those two brain fades to concede Essendon’s first were bizarre), but I think he got better and better as it went on. Finished the day with 25 touches at 92% and a team high 12 contested possessions and 9 intercepts. On a day where we were bullied around the ball, Baker was at his hard nut best.

Bo Allan: He’s had a lot of matches this year where he finishes with 12 or so touches and I think, ‘6 of those touches were brilliant, but he needs more of them’. Well not only did he pick up a career high 20 disposals, I dare say that his ‘brilliant touches’ this week were even more brilliant than normal. Looked like he was inspired by Harls as he burst through packs time and time again. Absolutely no doubt that this was the best game in his short career.

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Good:

Bailey Williams: Coming off of two career best games in a row, he was a little disappointing this week to be honest. That doesn’t mean he was bad though. 11 touches, all contested, with an equal team high 4 clearances, and a goal. He was bullied a little by Bryan in the ruck and so his rating lowers a little.

Harvey Johnston: Only 8 touches but he was really efficient with them, notching 1 goal and 2 goal assists. Not much to his game, but if you’re directly involved in 3 goals as a small forward, you’ve definitely had a good one.

Rhett Bazzo: Was solid down back with 6 intercepts, and 5 spoils, but he didn’t make a one on one. On offence, he picked up 16 touches at 93.8% and was also pretty solid. Did his job well.

Josh Lindsay: Had two shocking turnovers but that was it for the match. The other 17 disposals all hit their target which is excellent. I was also happy to see him put in a bit more defensive work as he picked up 4 intercepts, 2 spoils, and game high 2 defensive one on ones for 1 win. Still looks solid.

Liam Duggan: Coming off a good patch of form, he turned up a mixed bag. Defensively he was pretty damn good with 4 intercepts, 3 intercept marks, and 3 spoils. The issue that returned to his game this week is that from 20 touches he had 5 turnovers. To be fair, only one of them was really egregious this week which is why I still have him in Good, but I’m a bit worried to see him regress in this area after a good couple of weeks.

---

Okay:

Ryan Maric: I’ve seen a lot of people calling for him to be dropped, but like always, I’m a bit confused by the hate. I thought he played his wing role really well as he picked up 17 disposals. Played his role and not much more and I think that’s fine.

Hamish Davis: Just like Maric, had 15 touches as he played his wing role well. But also like Maric, didn’t have too much impact elsewise. He ended up with 5 score involvements compared to Maric’s 2, but I thought Maric won more important 1v1s. Overall, fine.

Brady Hough: Tasked with locking down Merrett which is a hard assignment and I think he was pretty serviceable. Merrett was still pretty prolific with 28 touches, but Hough restricted him to 1 score involvement (his goal with his final touch of the day). Back the other way, Hough was alright with 13 touches and 3 score involvements. Wasn’t a flashy game. Wasn’t an amazing game. But it was a solid game.

Jobe Shanahan: A very tough day for tall forwards which showed with Shanahan only having 6 touches, but he was also very close to having 2 goals from his 2 marks inside 50. He also had a solid 3 spoils down back, so I think he was alright.

Tom Cole: He only had 1 touch at half time, but his second half was pretty good with 11 touches and a lot of knock ons to advantage. Probably saved from a lower ranking by having a game high 6 tackles.

---

Bad:

Elliot Yeo: Thought it was a really dirty day for Yeo. Only 15 touches for the champ but went at 60% disposal efficiency, and managed to miss while running into an open goal. Effort was there with 5 tackles, but ultimately, only 1 clearance for our contested beast is enough for me to put him down this low. This is much more of a 'bad for Yeo' rating rather than just a bad game.

Jack Williams: Like Bailey Williams, he was coming off a career best and couldn’t back it up. He was actually pretty solid in the ruck, but only 7 touches and 1 clearance he didn’t have much impact else ways. I’ll say it again, it was a rough day to be a tall forward so with 4 tackles, I’m not disappointed with his effort, but it wasn’t a great game.

Malakai Champion: Not sure what happened to Mally. He was in some great form but only had 4 touches for the match. Put in effort with 2 tackles and 15 pressure acts but that’s not enough to salvage his day.

---

Stat Leaders:

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.

Tom McCarthy & Milan Murdock & Liam Baker & Reuben Ginbey - 19.7 & 18.8 & 15.5 & 15.0 Rating Points (Merrett 13.1)

Willem Duursma & Bo Allan - 6 & 6 Inside 50s (Tsatas 6)

Reuben Ginbey - 11 Intercept Possessions (Langford 10)

Liam Baker - 11 Ground Ball Gets (Robey 11)

Jake Waterman & Elliot Yeo & Jobe Shanahan - 7 & 2 & 2 Marks Inside 50 (Day-Wicks 2)

Reuben Ginbey - 5 Intercept Marks (Langford 4)

Reuben Ginbey & Bailey Williams - 3 & 2 Contested Marks (Merrett 2)

Jake Waterman & Milan Murdock - 3 & 3 Goals (Day-Wicks 2)

Harvey Johnston - 2 Goal Assists (Caddy 2)

Jake Waterman & Harley Reid & Milan Murdock - 8 & 5 & 5 Shots at Goal (Caddy 5)

Jake Waterman & Harley Reid & Milan Murdock & McCarthy - 9 & 9 & 8 & 8 Score Involvements (Caddy 7)

Tom Cole - 6 Tackles (Robey 6)

Milan Murdock - 3 Tackles Inside 50 (Setterfield 3)

Reuben Ginbey - 7 Spoils (Reid 7)

27 Stat Leaders (+12 from last week) (12 Draws) (Our new highest for the year)

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Wuurm Watcher

Tom Cole & Reuben Ginbey & Tom McCarthy & Liam Baker & Bo Allan - 3.2km & 2.6km & 2.5km & 2.5km & 2.4km Run at High Speed (No Essendon Players Listed)

Bo Allan & Willem Duursma & Tom McCarthy - 9.7km/h & 9.5km/h & 9.4km/h Average Speed (Day-Wicks 9.4km/h)

Tom Cole - 23 Sprints (Caddy 23)

Bo Allan - 4 Repeated Sprints (Roberts 4)

Bo Allan & Tom McCarthy & Ryan Maric & Liam Duggan & Reuben Ginbey - 10.1km/h & 9.9 km/h & 9.5km/h & 9.5km/h & 9.5km/h Average Speed in Defence (No Essendon Players Listed)

---

And that's that. As I said up top, this was a very strange game. We were so bad at clearances that I really can't say we played well, but in actuality, everything else we did was pretty good. I think the biggest take away this week, is that our team defence was once again really good. Our offence was also really good, but for the sake of our percentage, improving our defence is more important.

I also just wanted to say thanks to all the positive comments I always get on these. I don't reply to most of them because I get a bit embarrassed, but I appreciate them so much. Thanks for reading as always.

Really proud of the boys. We went away from home to a crowd of 90k supporters and took a game that most people thought we had no right to win and nearly stole it. This was the first game for the year that I was able to see in person (took a flight down from Brisbane that morning just to see it) and the atmosphere we created was incredible. When we had momentum, the Collingwood supporters were so worried and silent that I could actually hear the players on the ground from the second level. Do the numbers support what my eyes just witnessed? Let’s find out.

---

Our Attack:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Eagles	21.2	19.4	8.3	34.4	11.7
Eagles’ 2026 Ave	19.6	18.9	8.7	27.7	12.0
2026 League Ave	22.1	23.6	10.3	32.4	13.8

Transition numbers are pretty good, but also not fantastic. We were stopped from transitioning from our defensive 50 pretty well, but transitioning from back half was actually great. Above league average even. From this we were able to generate 57 inside 50s, which is fantastic and up there with some of the best sides in the comp. Here comes the bad news. 22 scores from 57 entries comes out to an efficiency of 38.6% which is really bad. We were up against the 3rd best defensive side in the comp, but that’s still 4%pp below what they normally concede.

I still think it was a good performance for the most part, although with one glaring flaw.

---

Our Defence:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Magpies	24.5	15.0	10.0	28.8	12.1
Magpies Ave	21.1	23.3	10.0	32.2	12.4
2026 League Ave	22.1	23.6	10.3	32.4	13.8
This quite clearly shows our strengths and weaknesses this game. In terms of stopping Collingwood from transitioning across the ground, we were excellent. Unfortunately, we were much worse at stopping them from scoring from stoppages, where they scored 5.6 (36). This is also shown by the Chain to Score being the only metric higher than their average. That’s not a good result, but it’s also not too bad. We allowed them 50 inside 50s which is pretty good without being great. From those inside 50s they scored 27 times which works out to an inside 50 efficiency of 54% which is really bad. Collingwood managed to score 10.4 64 points from forward half which is another damning stat for our back six.

Overall, I think it was a really great team effort let down by our back six. So, I think I’m rating it bad, but it was very close to good.

---

Our Midfield:

** **	CBA	CC	CC/CBA
Cameron	27	2	0.07
Billiams	26	5	0.19
Reid	25	2	0.08
De Goey	23	0	0.00
Kelly	23	2	0.09
Naicos	21	2	0.10
Pendlebury	18	4	0.22
Yeo	18	1	0.06
Duursma	16	0	0.00
Allan	10	0	0.00
Crisp	10	1	0.10
Hough	5	0	0.00
Jaicos	3	0	0.00
Jilliams	3	2	0.67
Long	1	0	0.00
McCreery	1	0	0.00
McStay	1	0	0.00
Moore	1	0	0.00

Big Bailey was almost a lone man in the centre bounces today with a game high 5 centre clearances all by himself. Although, Reid, Kelly, and Jack Williams? all helped with handy 2 centre clearances each. Willow even matched the others in centre clearances despite only attending 3 centre bounces. That’s kinda wild. As a team, we won centre clearances 9-13. Excellent. Tied stoppage clearances 29 all. Pretty good. Lost contested possessions 131-138. Bordering on bad. And won ground ball gets 87-81. Pretty nice.

** **	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts		CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts
Billiams	26	3	18	Cameron	27	3	13
Reid	25	5	25	De Goey	23	7	14
Kelly	23	2	14	Naicos	21	0	14
Yeo	18	4	25	Pendlebury	18	2	13
Duursma	16	4	19	Allan	10	5	32
Hough	5	1	10	Crisp	10	9	19
** **	113	19	111		109	26	105

Unfortunately, pressure from the mids wasn’t up to par. We lost the tackle count by 7, but the effort was there as we won pressure acts by 6. I don’t have the numbers on hand, but from watching I think this difference stems from too many of our tackles being broken.

Still a really good performance with only minor faults.

---

So where did we lose? Umpires Pressure

Some of those free kicks were ridiculous! Naicos flopping on the deck like a fish and winning free kicks every bloody time! Alright facetious rant over. I’m not going to claim that the AFL told the umpires to get Collingwood across the line at all costs, but considering they stopped the game for the fans to applaud Pendles which also just happened to allow Collingwood to set up for one of our kick ins, I really don’t think anyone can be 100% sure that they didn’t lol. Okay, onto the real (amateur) analysis.

The real answer to why we lost was pressure. Now that doesn’t that our pressure wasn’t good, just that Collingwood’s was better. I kind of expected this since we would’ve gassed ourselves last week. Now the obvious metric is that we lost tackles 47-77 including losing tackles inside 50 3-21. Those numbers are pretty bad, but that’s not everything. We lost pressure acts 273-326. Again, we were mauled in this number, but I want to point out that last week we had 293 pressure acts. Just showing that we weren’t far off, and Collingwood was just really good in that area.

The other area of pressure that I wanted to point out is that we restricted Collingwood to just 77 marks compared to their average of 103.2 this season. That’s a really good effort, and as I pointed out last week, this is just the 3rd game this year where we’ve been able to hold our defensive structure well enough to restrict a team in this area.

Other than that? We really didn’t do a lot wrong. Pressure arguably played a big part in the inside 50 efficiency numbers which is the only other area we struggled with. Our disposal efficiency was amazing at 77.3%, and expected score actually had the game as a 1 point win to us. It was a really good game by us despite the loss.

---

I thought every one on the team put in a good effort this week. This was actually the first game we’ve had since 2018 where every player had 10 or more disposals.

The BOG Candidates:

Bailey Williams: Backed up his career best game with another career best? Maybe? This week he had 20 disposals with 18 contested, game highs for centre (5), stoppage (7), and total clearances (12), 1 goal with a game high 2 goal assists, game high hit outs (28) and a game high 3 contested marks. Despite those stats, I think his impact might have been higher last week but maybe I’m just stuck on his 9 tackles last week. Regardless, this was an amazing performance. Earned a rating of 23.9 from Champion Data and wasn't just the highest rated player on the field. He was the 3rd highest rated player for the round!

Milan Murdock: The little mongrel was doing what he does best. 22 disposals with 12 contested, a game high 10 ground ball gets, 4 clearances, and finished with a team high 7 score involvements and 1 goal. Watching him live just gave me a greater appreciation of his work rate. Only had 3 tackles on the stat sheet but there must have been a half dozen more where they were only just able to get the ball away in time. Very good. Business as usual.

Jack Williams: This was a surprising one for me. Out of bloody nowhere he just had career bests for disposals (21) and clearances (6). 6 clearances put him above every other Eagle for the night bar Bailey. The Williams had 18 of our 42 clearances (New nicknames unlocked: Serena and Venus?). I thought he was really good in down the line contests where he almost always brought the ball to ground and more often than not also won the ground ball. Seedy might just have to wait another week at this rate.

Willem Duursma: Didn’t have the footy that much with 17 touches but he really made them count. He had 3 clearances and 7 of his 17 touches resulted in scores as he picked up 482m gained at 82.4%. Watching live made me really appreciate his defensive work. He had 4 tackles but more impressively for me was that nearly every time the ball was near him, you could see him putting in a second and third defensive effort.

Reuben Ginbey: I actually forgot to write about him at first but only because it's business as usual for the Boy. 2 contested one on one wins (0 losses of course. Now 16-0 since Geelong), 3 spoils, 2 tackles, and 3 intercept marks. Also led everyone on the ground with his 10 intercept possessions from his 19 touches at 89.5%. Not sure I need to say anything else. Brilliant as always.

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Great:

Hamish Davis: I really wanted to put him in the BOG section but I think he was just a touch below. Finished with 23 touches as he broke the 20 disposal barrier for the first time in his career. Always seemed to be available for a chop out as he picked up 6 marks, and was influential in moving the ball all over the ground with 3 clearances, 3 rebound 50s, and 3 inside 50s. Much like Murdock, his work rate live was exceptional.

Harley Reid: Felt like he was a fraction away from a match winning performance today. Lots of slips and fumbles prevented him from having a bigger impact. Now with that being said, he still had 20 touches with 9 contested at 75%, alongside 4 clearances, and 5 tackles. Was maybe at 70% power, but 0.7 Reids is still great to have.

Elliot Yeo: Big ups and but some lows this game for Yeoy. 16 touches for 6 shots at goals resulting in 3 goals. That’s good. 16 touches for 6 turnovers. That’s bad. 4 tackles and a team high 25 pressure acts. That’s good. Only 2 clearances. (For Yeo) that’s bad. End of the day though, he was definitely a great addition to the team even if he wasn’t perfect.

Jobe Shanahan: Been a couple lean weeks for the ol’ Shanana but he pulled out a great performance today. Took two big contested marks inside 50 in the last quarter and slotted them both, but I also just generally liked his work around the ground where he had 11 disposals, an intercept mark, and 3 kicks inside 50 for 3 scores. Did really well against a team with the 4th fewest points against.

Tim Kelly: Thought he was very quiet in the second half, but he was very good in the first. Finished the day with 19 touches, 7 contested, and 4 clearances. Not his best work, but still a great contribution today.

Brady Hough: In the first half he was tasked with tagging Pendlebury and he did an amazing job limiting his impact while also kicking our first goal of the match (Watching Pendlebury shark kick ins just to get a touch made me so happy). In the second half he was tasked with tagging Naicos and unfortunately he was much less effective there. That’s not a big mark against him, but I don’t think he was damaging enough back the other way to put him in BOG territory.

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Good:

Malakai Champion: I have a general rule that says if a small forward kicks 2 goals, they’ve done their part. Mally did just that with his 12 touches. Plus, I thought he won some crucial balls for us. I actually wanted to put him in great, but I held him back for only having 1 tackle and 8 pressure acts. Big fan of his game today, but with some areas to improve.

Tom McCarthy: Possibly harsh. Finished the day with 30 disposals at 90%. That’s pretty good, but I think this is one of those occasions where the stats sound more impressive than he was. Firstly, 8 of those touches were from kick ins, and secondly, he turned the footy over 4 times. Those negatives aren’t actually that bad on their own, but they were awful turnovers. He still did a hell of a lot right, but his negatives do hold him back a little.

Tom Cole: Played a new role as a half forward and actually did really bloody well. 12 touches for 4 inside 50s and 4 score involvements (and a lovely goal assist). Plus, he had 4 tackles and 19 pressure acts. Some of his disposals could’ve been cleaner, but he didn’t do much wrong.

Harvey Johnston: Kicked 1 goal and probably should’ve kicked a second from his 13 touches. I thought he showed a lot of fight and helped a lot on the wing where he often chopped out for an important 1-2 handball. Again, held back by having only 1 tackle, but he did have 14 pressure acts, so the effort was clearly there.

Liam Duggan: According to the Telstra Tracker he ran 22.0km Easily the best on the ground. And he even had the highest average speed, running at… 509.2km/h. Okay so either he strapped his GPS to one of the fireworks, or the Telstra tracker is fucked this week. Moving on. He had 19 disposals at 78.9% but only 2 turnovers. He also worked his arse off with 5 tackles and 13 marks which was 6 more than the next best player on the ground. I can’t say he was amazing with ball in hand, but I thought he led very well.

Jake Waterman: 10 disposals for 7 score involvements, unfortunately ended the day 1.2 but one miss was opportunistic snap, and the other was snap from 45m which probably should’ve been a drop punt. Just saying that I wouldn’t call it the yips. Ended the day the least amount of touches on the team, which is a testament to us as a team rather than a slight against Snakey.

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Not as Good, but still Good:

Tylar Young: 13 touches at 92.3%, and he had 5 spoils and 2 tackles. That’s good, but he didn’t make a single one on one contest, so I’d say he did everything that was asked of him but nothing more.

Rhett Bazzo: Similar game to Young. 12 touches at 83.3%, and he head 5 spoils and 1 tackle. That’s good, but he did also made a single one on one contest (Unfortunately he lost that one). He might’ve actually been a little better than Young considering he had 5 score involvements, which is pretty impressive for a key defender.

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Okay:

Josh Lindsay: Had 20 touches at 85% which resulted in 6 scores which is really impressive from the back half. Though I do have to say that his defensive work left a lot to be desired. There were times where I saw him giving his opponent way more space than I would’ve liked, but to his credit he didn’t seem to get burned very often. Finishing the day with 0 spoils, 0 one on one contests, and 0 tackles is slightly concerning however. It might just be that I’m misunderstanding his role because he was pretty damn good in offence.

Bo Allan: Showed his ability to win the ball with 5 ground ball gets among his 12 touches, and while he did go at 91.7%, he just didn’t do anything to stand out. With only 1 tackle and 7 pressure acts, I expect more from Bo.

Liam Baker: He was really hard at the ball all day but only really had 14 touches to show for it. Definitely a bad game for him on the standards of last year, but it’s not like he was bad, just a bit invisible.

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Stat Leaders:

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team. It’s all about the BBW this week

Bailey Williams - 23.9 Rating Points (Cameron 18.6)

Reuben Ginbey & Tom McCarthy - 10 & 8 Intercept Possessions (Quaynor 8)

Milan Murdock - 10 Ground Ball Gets (Crisp 9)

Bailey Williams - 28 Hitouts (Cameron 27)

Bailey Williams - 5 Centre Clearances (Pendlebury 4)

Bailey Williams - 7 Stoppage Clearances (Cameron 6)

Bailey Williams - 12 Clearances (Cameron 8)

Bailey Williams & Jobe Shanahan - 3 & 2 Contested Marks (Moore 2)

Elliot Yeo - 3 Goals (Elliot 3)

Bailey Williams & Tim Kelly - 2 & 2 Goal Assists (McCreery 2)

Reuben Ginbey & Elliot Yeo - 2 & 1 Contested One on One Wins (Moore 1)

15 Stat Leaders (-8 from last week) (6 Draws)

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Wuurm Watcher

Liam Duggan - 22.0km Distance Run (Roan Steele 0.0km) (AFL Record. Ran further than the whole Collingwood team… and also the Eagles)

Liam Duggan - 5.3km Run at High Speed (Quaynor 0.0km) (AFL Record)

Tylar Young - 0.0km/h Maximum Speed (Ned Long 0.0km/h)

Liam Duggan - 509.2km/h Average Speed (Ed Allan 0.0km/h) (Impressive average considering he wasn’t was in the top 5 for maximum speed. Also, an AFL record)

Liam Duggan - 19.8km/h Average Speed in Attack (Ed Allan 0.0km/h) (Actually only 2nd all time)

Liam Duggan - 19.8km/h Average Speed in Defence (Ed Allan 0.0km/h) (Back at 1st all time)

As I said, the Telstra Tracker is fucked this week but I thought I’d have some fun with it.

Edit:

Just noticed they fixed it this morning, so for completion's sake;

Bo Allan & Tylar Young - 32.3km/h & 32.3km/h Maximum Speed (Ned Long 32.0km/h)

Bo Allan - 9.3km/h Average Speed (The other Allan 9.2km/h)

Tom McCarthy - 23 Sprints (Lachie Schultz 22)

Reuben Ginbey - 5 Repeat Sprints (Isaac Quaynor 4)

Hamish Davis & Milan Murdock & Bo Allan & Willem Duursma - 9.0km/h & 8.9km/h & 8.9km/h & 8.9km/h Average Speed in Attack (Ed Allan 8.6km/h)

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I thought that was a fantastic effort all round. Our best and worst lines were pretty similar and for the most part the difference just came down to Collingwood being better than us being worse. A nice distinction from a lot of our losses in the past 5 years. Also of note is that this game had the most wild difference in experience that I’ve even seen. Collingwood’s average age was 28.5 with 161.9 games experience, while we had an average age of 24.2 and 69.8 games experience. It was the oldest team of the round vs the youngest team of the round and to come out of it with only a 10 point loss is a great result.

While we didn’t ruin Pendle’s day in the way we hoped, Houghy managed to keep Pendlebury to his worst ever game by champion rating points, so I’ll take that. See ya next week for the dead coach bounce.

After a troublingly long time of doing everything in our power to not play our gameplan, last week and this week we’ve shown just how effective it can be. This was a game where you could see that every player was giving 120% and it’s not too surprising that it was enough to get us our 3rd win for the season against the orange team.

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Our Attack:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Eagles	20.4	13.9	5.6	17.3	5.8
Eagles’ 2026 Ave	19.5	18.8	8.8	27.1	12.1
2026 League Ave	22.2	23.8	10.3	32.5	13.8
Surprisingly, our transition numbers in attack were pretty poor this week, but I do have an explanation. This game was HOT. Trying to move the ball for both teams was extremely tough (as we’ll see below). We scored 8 points from back half, but 55 points from front half, and 25 points from centre bounce. So with that in mind, we’re writing off all back half transition and focusing on Chain to Score, which at 20.4%, is a pretty good effort in such a high pressure game. Outside of transition, we had 50 inside 50s, good, above our average, but not great (pressure a factor once again). From them, we had an inside 50 efficiency of 46% which is just about the cusp between bad and good, and 11 marks inside 50 which is pretty good. We also locked it in our front half for 54.1% of the game which is amazing.

Overall it’s kind of a strange game to rate the attack on its own, but I think it was good despite having some things to improve.

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Our Defence:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Giants	18.9	14.6	2.4	22.2	6.3
Giants Ave	21.5	28.0	12.3	34.8	14.5
2026 League Ave	22.2	23.8	10.3	32.5	13.8

Take a good look at the best defensive transition numbers you will ever see. I checked back and these numbers for GWS are overall worse than our numbers against the Swans this year. That’s how good our ground defence was. Not only did we stifle their ball movement with our pressure, we forced their disposal efficiency through the floor. Down 7.9%pp on their average at an abysmal 65.4%. All of this resulted in them recording 45 inside 50s (16 of them coming in the first quarter), and conceding an inside 50 efficiency of 46.7% (44.8% after quarter time). Both great metrics. Our pressure was phenomenally good, but I’ll touch more on that later.

Ridiculously good!

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Our Midfield:

** **	CBA	CC	CC/CBA
Williams	24	3	0.13
Callaghan	23	3	0.13
Reid	21	4	0.19
Kelly	20	4	0.20
Oliver	20	2	0.10
Yeo	19	0	0.00
Briggs	19	3	0.16
Daniels	13	1	0.08
Ash	12	0	0.00
Duursma	11	0	0.00
Hough	7	1	0.14
Coniglio	7	0	0.00
Riccardi	7	0	0.00
Greene	3	0	0.00
Jilliams	2	0	0.00

So many players with 0 centre clearances this week because Reid and Kelly were stealing all of them for themselves. They were the best on the ground in terms of ratio, but Williams also put in a great effort of his own. Those three in particular made sure we won centre clearances 13-12, but unfortunately stoppage clearances were lost 24-27 and contested possessions were lost 136-142. Obviously not ideal, but close enough to be considered a draw in my opinion. The only worrying stat was losing ground ball gets 87-108. That is bad, but we’ll see that our defence made up for that somewhat.

** **	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts		CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts
Williams	24	9	15	Callaghan	23	7	17
Reid	21	8	23	Oliver	20	8	14
Kelly	20	7	23	Briggs	19	7	14
Yeo	19	4	16	Daniels	13	2	12
Duursma	11	5	25	Ash	12	1	10
Hough	7	3	10	Coniglio	7	0	8
	102	36	112		94	25	75

Pressure was out of this world. Yes we have more CBAs in this group of six, but if you remove Hough, even 5v6 we destroyed them. Plus 8 tackles and 27 pressure acts is elite. Like he had an extra Reid running around on defence.

I rate pressure super highly, so I think this was a good to great performance from the mids.

---

So where did we win? PRESSURE

If you’ll allow me a pat on the back, I said last week that with better disposal efficiency, we would’ve won. Well, we had an insane disposal efficiency of 74.7% this week and won. Alright, self-congratulations over because we all know that wasn’t the main reason we won this week (but it’s worth pointing out).

Alright so pressure. I mentioned it in all three aspects of our game this week because it was so crucial to how this game played out. That was one of the hottest games I have ever seen. We were awesome with our tackling, laying a massive 82 of them. In return, GWS also laid 78 tackles. At 160 combined tackles, you’re creeping up towards all time territory (192 being the start of the top 20).

But it wasn’t just tackling. We also blitzed them in pressure acts 293-235. To dive deeper into that stat for people who might not know, a pressure act is essentially any act that restricts their opponent from disposing of the footy in the way they’d prefer (think corralling, chasing, or simply being in the way). Winning by 58 is massive. Duursma led all comers on the ground with 25 pressure acts, so from the perspective of GWS, it felt like they were playing against 18 plus an extra two Wuurms when they were trying to move the ball forward.

Following on from pressure acts is the oft misunderstood pressure rating. We finished the match with a pressure rating of 204. That’s extremely good for a quarter. Getting it for an entire game is ludicrous. To demystify the pressure rating a little, it measures the average disposal of the opposition. A rating of 204 indicates that on average, for every single GWS disposal they had an Eagle running at him trying and make contact. That’s why GWS’s disposal efficiency was a horrendous 65.4% they rarely had a chance to think with ball in hand. But not only that, Mini mentioned in his presser that at one point in the last quarter we managed a pressure rating of over 300 for a ten minute patch. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the best ever recorded. The maximum possible pressure rating is 375 and that would mean that every disposal was made whilst being tackled. To break the 300 barrier is an unbelievable effort. Edit: Just found out today that our forward half pressure rating was 202 for the match and was the 2nd highest ever recorded. Our pressure in the final quarter? 232. Complete and utter madness and the 6th highest rated quarter in our club’s history.

Finishing on a less flashy but still important note, we restricted GWS to only 57 marks this game. That’s 31 marks below their average and shows that our defensive work wasn’t just raw effort and pressure, it was also structural, preventing them from kicking to anything that wasn’t a contest. Mini has mentioned that stopping uncontested marks is a key goal of our game plan, but it’s something that we’ve only really managed to pull off in the Kangaroos game and this one. With the new stand rule essentially allowing free transition on a mark, I think this area of our game is crucial to get right.

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The BOG Candidates:

Not sure I even need to write anything for these next two. Everyone saw how good they were.

Harley Reid: Career best game? The lad had 34 touches, 19 contested, 10 clearances, 12 inside 50s, 2 goals, 9 score involvements, and 8 tackles. The fact that I hesitate to call it his best is a testament to just how good he is. He had PBs for disposals, clearances, and inside 50s, and tackles. 14 touches and 2 goals in the second to swing the game in our favour and 6 tackles in the last to make sure we won (If I ever hear that Harls is lazy on defence again, I’ll tear my hair out). Easily BOG for me, but credit to the next guy.

Bailey Williams: Big Bailey Williams pulled off a career best performance for sure, and only 6 six weeks after his last career best game against the Cats. 16 disposals with 11 contested, 7 clearances, 2 goals, 7 score involvements, and 9 tackles. But not only that, he put on a genuine clinic in the ruck with 41 hitouts with 7 hitouts to advantage. That number feels low, but I think it’s probably because he took the ball directly out of the ruck contest whenever he pleased. This was an AA ruck calibre performance.

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The Not as Good as Harls and Bailey but Would've Been Close to BOG Any Other Week Candidates:

Tim Kelly: 24 touches of the pill, 10 of them contested, 6 clearances, for 7 score involvements. For that alone it’d be a great performance, but pleasingly he also had 23 pressure acts and 7 tackles. He’s been ramping up on his defensive efforts in recent weeks and it makes him such a complete player.

Reuben Ginbey: Almost played a tagging role on Cadman rather than his usual defensive wall role. When you see him with 7 intercept possessions, 2 intercept marks, 5 spoils and only 1 defensive one on one win from 1 contest, you might think he had a bad game (by his godly standards, I mean), but his work on Cadman was world class. He kept Cadman to only 5 touches for the match, and during the third quarter while Ginbey was resting, GWS kicked 5 of their 10 goals for the match. If it was anyone else, I’d claim coincidence, but Ginbey seriously makes us look so much better that maybe he was the difference.

Brady Hough: Houghy, baby. He’s back! He only had 6 touches, Toxic. What are you on about? Well, his work on Callaghan was elite, keeping him to his lowest disposal tally (19) in 2 years. Those touches were at only 63.2% and he only gained 288m for the match. For reference: Callaghan has been averaging 29.1 disposals and 517.2m gained. Houghy murdered him.

Milan Murdock: Speaking of tagging roles. Murdock was also unbelievable. He was tasked with manning Whitfield and wore him inside out, keeping him to his lowest disposal tally for two years (barring injury affected games) and that’s with 5 of his 21 touches being from kick ins. Also managed to keep him to 284m gained compared to his average of 484.8m (5 kick ins basically guarantees 250m gained which only makes this more amazing). But not only that, Murdock had 12 touches and 2 goals the other way. Call him Goat, Buddha, The Enlightened One, maybe Mongrel after pushing Whitfield over about 8 times in a row, he lives up to everything.

Tylar Young: Now he’s been heavily maligned this year (at times fair and at other times not so fair) but he was phenomenal today. Had 2 intercept marks, a game high 8 spoils, and 4 contested one on ones for 0 losses. He was playing like Ginbey out there.

Jack Hutchinson: He’s a player that gets a weird amount of hate for his contract length, but this week he showed off exactly why he was offered it. Only had 6 touches down on the stat sheet but he was everywhere. Constantly involved with little taps and contest wins that gave us field position. The one play where he won the ball on the wing despite being 1v2 in a footrace was particularly impressive. Ended up kicking 2 goals and having 7 tackles in a really good display.

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Great:

Jake Waterman: Sometimes playing as a forward is easy. You can be held for the better of three quarters only to pop up with 3 goals and have a great performance. But to be fair to Waterman he didn't do it easy, 2 of those goals came from huge contested marks inside 50 as he worked his arse off against an on-fire Idun. Not to mention, 3.1, are the yips finally over?

Hamish Davis: I chewed him out two weeks ago for his lack of defensive effort, but he brought that back strong this week with 3 tackles, 20 pressure acts, 2 spoils, and a crucial intercept mark (mark?). Was also really good the other way with 18 touches, 8 contested, for a goal assist and another 4 score involvements. Probably unlucky not to be up a tier.

Malakai Champion: My only knock against him has been low possession count, but this week he practically doubled his usual up to 11 touches at 81.8% resulting in 2 goal assists and another 4 score involvements. Also provided pressure as usual with 3 tackles and 15 pressure acts.

Liam Duggan: 22 touches with only one kick in. Going at 72.7% with only 3 turnovers. 3 intercept marks, 3 spoils, and 3 tackles, and a game high 3 goal assists. I am Duggan’s biggest critic, but there’s no denying that he had a great game today. First time in a long time where it felt like he was playing a role and executing it too. Let’s hope he keeps up his last two weeks of form because despite what it might seem like, I don’t actually like having to rant about a premiership player.

Josh Lindsay: I’ve been harsh on Linners in recent weeks but part of that is because he already looks like a 150 game player. He had 19 touches (5 from kick ins) this week at 94.7% which is amazingly already standard for him, but I thought he improved his defensive side this week as he also picked up an intercept mark, 2 spoils, and 3 tackles which is why he's back in the great tier. Edit: Rising Star! About bloody time.

Liam Baker: Do my eyes deceive me? Did both captains play well? Bakes was back to his hard nut best as he picked up 19 disposals, 11 contested, 7 intercepts, 3 clearances, 1 goal assist, 2 spoils, and 4 tackles. He wasn’t particularly damaging with the ball by himself, but consistently got it out to players who were. Very solid game after, to be honest, a pretty poor year.

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Good:

Elliot Yeo: Only 15 touches for Yeoy this week but he made them count with 7 of them resulting in scores. A bit hard to say for sure watching on telly but it looked like he spent a lot of the time blocking for Harls and TK, which he was brilliant at if I’m correct and still he was still pretty good even if I'm wrong.

Jack Williams: 8 touches for 0 goals isn’t that good at first glance, but I thought he was better than the stats showed. All 8 of his touches were contested and 3 of them were ground ball gets which is kind of impressive for a big man. He had two contested marks, one of them an intercept, and it felt like he was very good at getting the ball to ground even when he wasn’t able to mark. He was also surprisingly good in the ruck with 9 hitouts from 23 attempts. All in all, a solid game.

Willem Duursma: He was just a little off today. There were multiple times where he just took a single step in the wrong direction and burned himself. That being said, he finished the day with 15 touches, 9 contested, 7 ground ball gets, 2 clearances, 5 tackles, and a game high 25 pressure acts. That’s a solid outing regardless of what went wrong for him.

Rhett Bazzo: 12 touches at 100% leaps off the page as pretty good and he also had an intercept mark, 3 spoils, and 2 contested one on one wins with 0 losses. For his first game in the big leagues for a while it was really solid. I’m not entirely convinced he did a better job than Brock would’ve done, but definitely did enough to keep his spot and competition is always good.

Ryan Maric: 16 touches at 93.8% but that’s just about it for Maric. Had a goal assist and had 2 tackles and 14 pressure acts on the wing. Played his role really well, but didn’t excel.

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Better than Okay but Worse than Good:

Harvey Johnston: Only the 6 touches again this week, but this time it included his first goal in the AFL. Those 6 touches were all contested and included 5 ground ball gets so he was actually pretty damn good when the ball was in his area, but like last week, he just needs to be in that right spot more often.

Jobe Shanahan: 8 touches just like Willow, but I thought he was a bit more quiet despite kicking a goal. Took 5 marks, 2 of them contested but it looked like he was pretty often running into packs rather than leading by himself. I think that’s more a product of our inexperienced forward structure rather than himself but he gets marked down for it anyway.

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Not Bad but Okay Would be Pushing it:

Tom Cole: Was rapt to be rating him highly last week despite his critics and then he goes ahead and dishes this up for the critics. He had 2 clearances (including, surprisingly, a centre bounce clearance), 2 tackles, and 3 spoils. What really let him down was his disposal. 8 touches at 37.5% is not good however you slice it. I still think he was more good than bad but only just.

Tom McCarthy: Bad week to be a Tom apparently. The lowest rated Eagle on the ground by quite some way. 13 touches with 5 of them from kick ins and only 1 score involvement. He had 3 tackles but was otherwise completely invisible.

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Stat Leaders: (It's all Harley)

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.

Harley Reid & Liam Duggan - 12 & 6 Inside 50s (Toby Bedford 6)

Harley Reid - 786m Gained (Lachie Ash 557)

Harley Reid - 14 Ground Ball Gets (Harvey Thomas 13)

Bailey Williams - 41 Hitouts (Kieren Briggs 30)

Harley Reid & Tim Kelly & Bailey Williams - 4 & 4 & 3 Centre Clearances (Finn Callaghan 3)

Jake Waterman - 3 Goals (Jake Stringer 2)

Liam Duggan & Malakai Champion - 3 & 2 Goal Assists (Harvey Thomas 1)

Jake Waterman & Harley Reid - 5 & 5 Shots at Goal (Jake Stringer 5)

Harley Reid & Elliot Yeo & Bailey Williams & Tim Kelly & Liam Duggan & Malakai Champion - 9 & 7 & 7 & 7 & 6 & 6 Score Involvements (Harvey Thomas 6)

Jack Hutchinson & Willem Duursma - 4 & 4 Tackles Inside 50 (Aaron Cadman 4)

Willem Duursma - 25 Pressure Acts (Harvey Thomas 24)

Tylar Young - 8 Spoils (Harry Himmelberg 6)

23 Stat Leaders (+8 from last week) (8 Draws)

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Wuurm Watcher

Liam Baker - 4 Repeated Sprints (Ryan Angwin 3)

Milan Murdock - 9.1km/h Average Speed in Attack (Toby Bedford 8.9km/h)

Willem Duursma & Josh Lindsay & Tom Cole - 9.1km/h & 8.8km/h & 8.7km/h Average Speed in Defence (Lachie Whitfield 8.7km/h)

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Thanks for reading this ‘way too long even by my standards’ report, but I felt that an amazing effort such as that deserved it.

The pressure!

I can’t go on about that enough. We could beat premiership contenders with that sort of pressure, and our fitness to be able to execute that over four quarters is incredible. Hopefully we’re able to recover from that in a week, because if we bring that same pressure next week, we’re all but guaranteed to do the funniest thing.

So, that was a weird game. I wasn’t quite sure what to think of it after it ended. The first quarter sucked, and at the time I didn’t think much better of the 2nd, but looking back it wasn’t too bad (I guess?). 25 points of the 32 point margin occurred in the first quarter, so if you ignored that and judged the game off of scoring shots, we’d actually look pretty good. But does any of that actually make this a good game? Let’s find out.

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Our Attack:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Eagles	21.2	25.7	14.3	28.3	15.0
Eagles’ 2026 Ave	19.4	19.3	9.1	28.0	12.6
2026 League Ave	22.3	23.7	10.3	32.6	14.0

Now this wasn’t what I was expecting. Movement from defensive half to forward 50 lagged behind average but not by enough to call it bad. General chains to scores is practically league average. And the rest of them are above. Notably, our ability to score from defensive half was amazing. In fact it was higher than the average of every other team in the league. Visually, it looked like we were moving the ball up the guts for the first time since our last two wins and we looked so much better when we did. With all that being said, we were limited to only 47 inside 50s, which isn’t great, but from that we took 11 marks inside 50, and had a scoring efficiency of 46.8% which is just lovely after the last couple weeks. That’s what I’d call workable.

A couple of massive improvements this week, but I can’t get ahead of myself. This week our offence was just good.

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Our Defence:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Demons	21.8	20.5	5.1	29.0	14.5
Demons Ave	22.6	22.0	9.8	28.7	13.0
2026 League Ave	22.6	23.9	10.8	33.4	15.8

Is this… the perfect defence we’ve been after? I thought while watching us that our efforts were improved, but I didn’t think it was by this much. Our transition was actually better than the demons overall. On the flipside, Melbourne had 58 inside 50s which tells me that their centre clearance work and ability to lock it inside 50 were very good, so still some stuff to work on. When the ball went inside their 50, we conceded 16 marks inside 50s which is not that great, but only gave them an inside 50 efficiency of 41.4% which is legitimately great.

Honestly I can’t believe it, but we were great defensively. Such a sudden rise is amazing.

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Our Midfield:

** **	CBA	CC	CC/CBA
Williams	22	1	0.05
Pickett	20	0	0.00
Sparrow	20	2	0.10
Steele	20	2	0.10
Yeo	20	3	0.15
Duursma	19	1	0.05
Windsor	18	1	0.06
Kelly	18	2	0.11
Reid	18	4	0.22
Heath	15	0	0.00
Gawn	13	3	0.23
Chandler	6	1	0.17
Duff-Tytler	6	0	0.00
Hough	4	1	0.25
Murdock	3	1	0.33
Baker	1	0	0.00
McCarthy	1	0	0.00

Harley continues to be a centre clearance beast with another 4 while everyone else also made a solid contribution. That ended with us winning the centre clearances 14-10, but unfortunately we lost stoppage clearances 23-29 and contested possessions 127-132. Losing stoppage clearances like this is a bit disappointing since we’ve been so good in this area this year, but it also isn’t an awful result.

** **	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts		CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts
Williams	22	0	11	Pickett	20	2	11
Yeo	20	8	18	Sparrow	20	5	22
Duursma	19	5	17	Steele	20	6	21
Kelly	18	4	17	Windsor	18	2	16
Reid	18	2	24	Heath	15	3	3
Duff-Tytler	6	5	21	Gawn	13	3	7
	103	24	108		106	21	80

Defensively we were also pretty good, winning the tackles healthily 24-21 and applying way more pressure 108-80.

So overall, we sorta tied in the midfield. I’d rate it a solid performance overall.

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So where did we lose? Disposal Efficiency

With all three lines having a positive game, it makes it a little trickier to see where exactly we lost, but I think the biggest issue today was the discrepancy in disposal efficiency. We finished the day with a disposal efficiency of 71.0%, which is honestly pretty serviceable, but in comparison the Demons had a much stronger disposal efficiency of 74.6%. Along with that, the stats say we lost (won?) the turnover battle with 60 against the Demons’ 59 which is a good result on its own, but that’s only half the story. The truth lying behind what each team did to each other’s turnovers.

From basically the same amount of turnover opportunities, Melbourne scored 70 points while we only scored 37. That’s almost exactly the margin right there, but we can dig a little deeper. Melbourne scored 11.4 70 to our 5.7 37, and that’s the other key difference. In terms of generating scores off of those turnovers, it was only 15 scoring shots to 12 but our “disposal efficiency” in front of goal was also heavily lacking. I think it also shows that on average, our turnovers were worse and gave them an easier opportunity to score rather than them directly outplaying us. I think this becomes more apparent when you look at the transition numbers. They struggled to move the ball forward from our backhalf, but they still managed to score heavily, which means that our forward half turnovers undid a lot of our good work.

I think this is the major reason I felt so mixed after the game. We really felt like the better team for most of it, but some of our mistakes made the game feel so much worse. Combine that with our (again) woeful goal kicking and it made our good work harder to see. Expected score had this margin all the way down at only 7 points, so I think it’s clear to see with just some better disposal efficiency all around, we might’ve been able to win that.

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The BOG Candidates:

I didn’t think anyone really shone this week, which gave us a large mix of players vying for the bog roll but with performances that were a little flawed (although the top three were pretty close to flawless)

Harley Reid: Sort of a lowkey performance by Harls, but still excellent. 21 disposals with 12 contested and still at 81%. Then add on 5 clearances with a game high 4 centre clearances, 1 goal and an additional 10 score involvements (Best of any non-forward). As a cherry on top, he also had the highest amount of pressure acts on the ground with 24 and finished as the second highest rated player on the ground. Steadily great as always.

Reuben Ginbey: Defensively as always, Ginbey was exceptional. 7 intercept possessions, 1 intercept mark, and 4 spoils. That’s actually a little down on his lofty standards, but he backed them up with an insane 5 contested one on ones for 0 losses. That’s the best I’ve ever seen, and he’s now 13-0 in his last 4 matches 💪🦵😏🦵💪.

Brady Hough: Had the job of tagging Kysaiah Pickett and was bloody fantastic. So good in fact, that the commentators started speculating that Kozi was anxious about his potential suspension and distracted lol. Kozi finished the game with 1 goal, 14 disposals, and 5 score involvements while Hough still managed 12 disposals, and 4 score involvements the other way. Dare I say it? Is 2024 Hough back?

Jake Waterman: Three goals five! Please Jakey, fix your kicking! I think he basically confirmed that his confidence is shot by passing off to Duggan and then Cole. With all that being said, 15 disposals for 8 shots at goal and 13 score involvements is a really great game however you slice it.

Tom McCarthy: Tmac was the match leader in disposals (30), metres gained (692m), ground ball gets (9), and stoppage clearances (4), so it’s fair to say he was pretty influential. Probably would’ve been best on ground if not for his kicking. The stats say 70% disposal efficiency, but man were there a lot of helicopter kicks off his boot. Ended the day with 6 turnovers for the match. Still a really good game, although a flawed one.

Milan Murdock: This goat was everywhere. 25 touches with 7 contested resulting in 7 score involvements, 2 goal assists, and 5 tackles. The stat sheet will tell you he went at 40%, but I think it’s telling that he only had 2 turnovers which shows that while he was off a lot of the time, it was only by a fraction. Overall, he was let down by his disposal, but was still nearly best on ground despite it.

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Great:

Elliot Yeo: Had only 20 touches and only 7 of them were contested, but still had a big impact with 5 clearances and a game high 8 tackles. A very solid game without dominating.

Bailey Williams: I thought he really held up well in the ruck despite us getting smashed in the hitouts quite badly. 23 hitouts with 7 to advantage is almost exactly on par with Heath (22 and 8) and close enough to Gawn to be reasonable (27 & 13). Also racked up 10 contested possessions, 4 clearances, a big contested mark leading to a goal, 7 score involvements and a fantastic goal assist. I don’t think he was fantastic in any one area, but the sum of his parts led to a really solid game.

Tom Cole: As a long term Cole defender I love that I can put him here. 17 touches at 94.1% including a long range goal. Had 7 intercepts and 2 contested marks to go along with that. Now don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t amazing, but just like everyone else in this tier, he was very solid.

Tim Kelly: Had an impact all day, but I thought he was particularly damaging in the second half. Ended the day with 25 touches resulting in 8 scores but like many of our other players, his kicking let him down a little (64% disposals efficiency). And like I’ve said for the last 4 weeks, defensively, he was… 4 tackles and 17 pressure acts. Oh shit. Not bad TK, not bad.

Ryan Maric: Did his usual with 21 touches on the wing, but really impressed me with his contest work. Ended with 9 contested possessions, 7 ground ball gets, and a game high 4 stoppage clearances.

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Good:

Malakai Champion: Only had 9 touches, but really impressed me with his work ethic and contest halving as always. Grabbed the one goal, laid 2 tackles, and had a spoil (For a bloke who’s 172cm, he’s really good at that). Played his role really well.

Cooper Duff-Tytler: Starting off with the unfortunate stuff first. Didn’t win a single hitout from 25 attempts. That’s definitely not ideal. Went 1.3 from 4 shots at goals. That’s also not great. But the flip side is that 4 shots at goal for a young forward is really good, and he was great again defensively with another 5 tackles. Developing well as a forward, but maybe leave him out of the ruck for now.

Harvey Johnston: This is probably a charitable one, but I thought for a bloke who hadn’t played AFL for nearly two years, he was pretty good. Only had 6 touches, which is a serious knock against him, but I thought they were pretty good touches and he was unlucky not to leave the game with 2 goal assists. Also had 4 tackles which I really rate. Thought he showed enough to keep his spot, but he will need to show improvement next week.

Liam Duggan: This also might be a charitable one or a harsh one. I’m not really sure. Firstly, I will say, his effort was fantastic this game, which I have questioned at times this year. His defensive work was also pretty good, finishing the day with 7 intercept possessions, an intercept mark, and a team high 5 spoils. The negative as always, was his kicking. So many dump kicks and kicks off the side of his boot this game. Now even with his kicking feeling even worse than normal, all of that only resulted in 3 turnovers so he didn’t hurt us like normal. I feel like I could make cases for Great, Good, Okay, or Bad this week, and I think it depends on what you value most. For me personally, I thought his good outweighed the bad.

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Okay:

Willem Duursma: 20 touches, 4 clearances, and 5 tackles, but I think his disposal really held him back this game. He went at 65% and had 6 turnovers. He also supposedly helped Hough with tagging Pickett, but I didn’t really see much of that on TV, so I won’t comment. A mixed bag sort of game.

Tylar Young: Just sort of a nothing game. Nothing he did was bad. He just didn’t do enough of anything.

Hamish Davis: Only 12 touches, including some really good ones to be fair, but for someone like Davis, I expect a bit more since he’s shown previously that he can.

Jack Hutchinson: Big fan of his work, but didn’t do all too much unfortunately other than take a really gutsy mark and goaling from it. Also had 3 tackles, so hopefully this was just a warming up sort of game.

Josh Lindsay: Had 24 touches (5 from kick ins) and was clean with it, going at 83%. I think I’m just being a little harsh because he didn’t get any hard ball or contribute in any meaningful way in defence which is something he’s shown he can do. Certainly not a bad game, and especially not for such a young player.

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Bad:

Jobe Shanahan: Just looked off today for some reason. Only managed 2 uncontested marks and 6 touches. Seemed to be switched between forward and back a lot after Hedwards went down, which probably didn’t help.

Liam Baker: Wish we could’ve had both captains avoiding the Bad tier for once, but unfortunately Baker was shocking today. 15 rather nothing touches only resulting in 3 scores. Was so invisible that he actually had a lower rating than Hedwards at the end of the game. Looks incredibly out of form at the moment.

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Stat Leaders:

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.

Tom McCarthy - 30 Disposals (Ed Langdon 29)

Tom McCarthy - 692m Gained ^(I hate this stat) (Jake Bowey 564m)

Tom McCarthy - 9 Ground Ball Gets (Ed Langdon 9)

Harley Reid & Elliot Yeo - 4 & 3 Centre Clearances (Max Gawn 3)

Tom McCarthy & Ryan Maric - 4 & 4 Stoppage Clearances (Tom Sparrow 4)

Jake Waterman - 3 Marks on the Lead (Ed Langdon 2)

Jake Waterman - 8 Shots at Goal (Jacob van Rooyen 7)

Jake Waterman & Harley Reid - 13 & 11 Score Involvements (Jacob van Rooyen 10)

Elliot Yeo - 8 Tackles (Jack Steele 6)

Harvey Johnston - 2 Tackles Inside 50 (Jack Steele 2)

Harley Reid - 24 Pressure Acts (Tom Sparrow 22)

Reuben Ginbey - 5 Contested One on One Defensive Wins (Jake Lever 2)

15 Stat Leaders (-10 from last week) (5 Draws)

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Wuurm Watcher

Hamish Davis & Tom Cole & Ryan Maric - 3.3km & 3.0km & 2.9km Distance at High Speed (Ed Langdon 2.9km)

Milan Murdock & Willem Duursma & Hamish Davis - 9.3km/h & 9.2km/h & 9.1km/h Average Speed (Tom Sparrow 9.1km/h)

Willem Duursma - 5 Repeated Sprints (Kysaiah Pickett 5)

Ryan Maric & Milan Murdock & Hamish Davis & Willem Duursma - 9.2km/h & 9.1km/h & 8.8km/h & 8.6km/h Average Speed in Defence (No Demons Players Listed)

(This is interesting. First time I’ve seen us have a higher average speed in defence rather than offence. Maybe the focus of the game plan has changed?)

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I went into this review not really sure what to expect and I’ve come out of it surprisingly happy. Our team defence being that good was a welcome surprise and hopefully that was the first step towards team adoption. I don’t think any one really starred but the positive of that, is that I think the vast majority of players pulled their weight. I had 15 players listed at Good or above this week and I’m really hoping that this points to a team cohesion that we’ve been trying to build for so long. Thanks for reading as always.

I’m not gonna lie, this review is half-arsed. I thought it was appropriate after this game for some reason.

I sat down again and re-wrote this because a loss this terrible deserves proper studying and poring over (Did you know it's not "pouring over"? Crazy). Apologies in advance if you’re looking for something uplifting. Maybe skip this week.

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Our Attack:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Eagles	20.2	27.8	11.1	30.2	12.7
Eagles’ 2025 Ave	17.3	20.5	8.3	28.6	10.7
2026 League Ave	22.3	23.4	10.2	32.4	13.9

We had 64 inside 50s this week as Mini has told us so often. That’s our best return for the year and actually a really good number. And so, it only stands to reason that our transition numbers themselves are… not good, actually. Two numbers above league average and the rest below. This does show that our ball use from stoppages was really good, but unfortunately our structured molasses-slow ball movement wasn’t very effective for some reason. When the ball eventually made its way into forward 50 on one of our 64 occasions, we were greeted with only 10 marks inside 50 and a shocking efficiency of 35.9%. It was pretty easy to see that this was caused by our forwards not being able to lead up at the ball inside 50. We did actually win marks on the lead 9-7 (Waterman, Owies, and Shanahan combining for 7), but the problem was that most of these were outside of 50 due to Richmond’s flood. If only there was a way to move a football faster than Richmond players can run.

All in all. Terrible.

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Our Defence:

** **	Chain to Score	D50 to F50	D50 to Score	Def Half to F50	Def Half to Score
Tigers	21.6	24.5	10.2	31.0	14.1
Tigers' Ave	17.9	18.8	7.5	27.3	11.4
2026 League Ave	22.3	23.4	10.2	32.4	13.9

These numbers look okay when compared to the league average (Just okay). But when you compare them to Richmond’s averages, you’ll see just how bad we were again. We didn’t defend any better after the Saints game, it’s just that Richmond aren’t as good a side and therefore couldn’t exploit it as well as them. We conceded only 48 inside 50s which is a good number… actually that’s exactly Richmond’s average for the year so that’s on them, not us. And from those 48 inside 50s we conceded 15 marks. That’s got to be close to a record.

There’s got to be a positive in here somewhere. Um… their inside 50 efficiency was 50%? No, that’s 25% above their average. Uh… Here we go. Ginbey won all 4 of his one on one contests this week. What a legend.

Indefensibly shithouse.

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Our Midfield:

** **	CBA	CC	CC/CBA
Kelly	26	4	0.15
Reid	26	5	0.19
Ross	26	3	0.12
Williams	25	0	0.00
Yeo	24	4	0.17
Hopper	24	2	0.08
Cumming	23	1	0.04
McAuliffe	18	3	0.17
Hayes-Brown	16	2	0.13
Balta	15	1	0.07
Duursma	12	1	0.08
Duff-Tytler	6	1	0.17
Hewett	3	0	0.00
Murdock	2	0	0.00
Prestia	2	0	0.00

Finally, something positive to talk about! Reid, Kelly, and Yeo were fantastic at centre bounces. Their combined 13 centre clearances narrowly beating the Tiger's 12 with Reid's 5 in particular being spectacular. We did narrowly lose stoppage clearances 24-26, but won total clearances 39-38 (Again, Reid, Kelly, and Yeo combining for 24 of those clearances). We won ground ball gets 93-90, but lost contested possessions 137-141. Both are those are close enough to call it a wash.

** **	CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts		CBA	Tackles	Pressure Acts
Kelly	26	2	8	Ross	26	5	18
Reid	26	4	23	Hopper	24	2	10
Williams	25	4	12	Cumming	23	6	18
Yeo	24	11	20	McAuliffe	18	4	15
Duursma	12	5	19	Hayes-Brown	16	0	10
Duff-Tytler	6	7	12	Balta	15	2	7
** **	119	33	94		122	19	78

Looking at the defensive side. Our top 6 mids destroyed the Tigers in tackles and pressure acts. Yeo and Seedy nearly beat them in tackles single-handedly. It’s good to see a winning line today.

In a vacuum they were excellent, but it was against the Tiger’s after they lost Prestia in the first 5 minutes, so I can’t grade them much higher than good.

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So where did we lose? Coaching

I really wish I didn’t have to write this, but that’s the cold hard truth after a game like this. Mini said in his presser that, ‘We won a lot of the key stats’. People who listen to Mini’s pressers might’ve heard him say this a lot in recent times, and to be fair he’s correct, but this week in particular leads us into a damning point.

We had more disposals than the opposition for I believe the first time this year. We won inside 50s by 16 and our total of 64 is the highest for the year. We won clearances. We had less turnovers than normal and forced more turnovers from Richmond. Our disposal efficiency was at a surprisingly decent 72.9%. We had more pressure acts and tackles, and a higher pressure rating.

So yes, Mini, we won a lot of the key stats, almost all of them, but then what does that leave us with? The answer is that even when the vast majority of things going right from a player’s perspective, we were beaten by an undermanned, winless team. There is no way of avoiding the facts. If our players are executing the way you envisioned and we’re still playing like shit, then that's the coaching staff’s problem. If we’re generating +16 inside 50s but still can’t score or defend, that’s on the coaches.

How many times did we see Eagles mark the ball on the wing only to stop, prop, go backwards, fumble, go backwards some more, switch, turnover, and concede a goal? How many times did we see us stop, prop, switch, wait for Richmond to flood, kick a shallow inside 50, turnover, and concede a goal? The obvious answer was to go faster than Richmond’s flood and give our forwards some space to lead into, but clearly, we were coached not to do that for some reason.

We’ve seen that we can play fast footy and win. And to be fairm we’ve also seen that backfire spectacularly, but that makes me wonder. Was Mini so desperate to win this game that he felt he couldn’t justify a high risk high reward game plan against the Tigers? I won’t speculate any further, but that’s a terrifying thought.

I saw someone talk about how the reason that Tmac and Murgoat were best on ground in their debuts was because they didn’t know our gameplan. I thought it was a funny coincidence when I first heard it, but now I’m not so sure.

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We’re forgoing the usual ranks today because the drop off was pretty dire.

Heart and Soul Performers:

Harley Reid: 26 touches, a ridiculous 20 of them contested (I believe a career high), 10 clearances (definitely a career high), 2 goals, and 4 tackles. Even with no impact in the third quarter he was just about the best player on the ground and definitely the best Eagle.

Tim Kelly: A game high 30 touches, 16 of them contested, 7 clearances, and a goal. Was just about the only Eagle playing in the third quarter and nearly single-handedly dragged us back in it. You could potentially knock him on his defensive work (2 tackles and 8 pressure acts), but as I've said before, his work offensively was easily enough to offset that.

Elliot Yeo: 20 touches, half of them contested, 7 clearances, and 1 goal. Worked his arse off defensively with 11 tackles (nearly double the best Tiger) but unfortunately didn’t seem to have enough coming with him.

Reuben Ginbey: The backline was a joke this week, but Ginbey once again managed to be perfect. 8 intercept possessions, 2 intercept marks, 6 spoils, and a massive 4 one on one contests with 0 losses. Apparently, we’re offering him a 5 year extension till 2032. Not. Long. Enough.

Jake Waterman: Was nowhere near his best (testament to him), but still managed to kick 3 goals and notch up 19 disposals and have a game high 10 score involvements. Did what I wanted of him last week and came up the ground to pick up a game high 11 marks. Very solid game.

Willem Duursma: Probably the worst game of his short career (Again, testament to him), but still not bad at all. 18 disposals, 3 clearances, a goal, and 5 tackles. I don’t think he had as big an impact as the stats would imply, but he was still easily one of our better players.

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Good and Can Hold Their Heads High:

Cooper Duff-Tytler: Had a massive brain fade in the last quarter but the big man had 7 tackles, so I can’t fault his effort. 11 disposals and 2 clearances otherwise, which is fine. Still think he's developing nicely. Slow and steady.

Matthew Owies: A goal from 12 touches and he probably should’ve had more. Was weirdly one of the better marking forwards on the ground with a game high 3 marks inside 50 and 2 marks on the lead. Had two tackles and two spoils as he worked hard defensively as well.

Ryan Maric: 18 touches on the wing with a clutch goal, 3 tackles and 15 pressure acts. He had some of our cleaner hands on the day to my eyes, and finished with a healthy 6 score involvements.

Brady Hough: Didn’t have too much of the ball (12 touches) but was probably the only defender outside of Ginbey not to be disgraced. Finished the day with 6 intercept possessions, 2 intercept marks, 5 spoils and a flawless 2 one on one wins.

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Didn’t Do Much Wrong or Much Right:

Tom McCarthy: 23 touches at 87%. Didn’t really do much defensively with 2 spoils and 1 one on one for 1 loss. Didn’t really do too much offensively either with only 4 score involvements.

Malakai Champion: Notched his first AFL goal with one of his 8 touches and laid 2 tackles amongst his 13 pressure acts. I thought he was good during his sparing opportunities, but they were sparing.

Milan Murdock: Had the ball 16 times and was very clean with it (87.5%), but didn’t do much else of note. I think the slow ball movement really restricted his usual involvement.

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More Bad than Good:

Bailey Williams: 12 touches at 41.7%. He did have 1 goal and 4 tackles, but does that really change anything? Not really.

Josh Lindsay: A harsh call. 17 touches but didn’t show off any of his ball winning capability like he did last week, nor anything defensive with 0 spoils and 0 one on ones. He still might’ve been up a tier if it weren’t for that one horrendous kick out.

Liam Baker: 20 touches and 3 tackles and that’s basically it. Had 7 inside 50s but with how bad ours were as a whole this week it’s not much of a positive. Doesn’t seem to be playing with that edge he had last year. Unfortunately, the captain cops harsher assessment but I was glad to see him back behind the ball.

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Should Hang Their Heads:

Liam Duggan: Completely ineffectual as usual. 3 tackles, 5 pressure acts, 2 spoils, and 0 one on one contests. At least I can say he only had 1 turnover this week (possibly because he only had 14 touches). I'm still not sure what is the point of fielding him at this point. He looks roleless out there and was the 3rd lowest rated Eagle by Champion Data. Just barely beating Cole who was playing on one leg.

Elijah Hewett: Only 8 touches for the match, but at least he had 2 tackles (There was worse).

Hamish Davis: I’m a massive Davis fan, and he did have a decent 18 touches, but I’m sorry to say, 0 tackles and 3 pressure acts is downright pathetic.

Tylar Young: Made it to 6 one on one contests which is pretty good. The result? 4 losses. He did have 6 intercept marks and 5 spoils, so I consider putting him higher till I saw that he had the illusive 0 pressure act game (Even Prestia had 2 pressure acts). That’s a player who was just going through the motions.

Harry Schoenberg: Was brought back in because Mini was desperate for a win and wanted experience. In return we got 12 touches at 58.3%, 0 tackles and 4 pressure acts. Gutless. Lowest rated Eagle on the ground by some margin.

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Stat Leaders:

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.

Tim Kelly - 30 Disposals (Jack Ross 29)

Harley Reid - 20 Contested Possessions (Jack Ross 19)

Tylar Young & Reuben Ginbey & Liam Baker - 9 & 8 & 8 Intercept Possessions (Nick Vlastuin 8)

Bailey Williams - 7 Hitouts to Advantage (Balta 5)

Harley Reid & Elliot Yeo & Tim Kelly - 5 & 4 & 4 Centre Clearances (Jack Ross 3)

Jake Waterman & Matthew Owies - 3 & 3 Marks Inside 50 (Tom Lynch 3)

Jake Waterman & Jobe Shanahan & Matthew Owies - 3 & 2 & 2 Marks on the Lead (Tom Lynch 1)

Tylar Young - 6 Intercept Marks (Nick Vlastuin 4)

Jake Waterman - 3 Goals (Jonty Faull 3)

Jake Waterman - 6 Shots at Goal (Seth Campbell 6)

Elliot Yeo & Jake Waterman - 10 & 10 Score Involvements (Tom Lynch 8)

Elliot Yeo & Cooper Duff-Tytler - 11 & 7 Tackles (Sam Cumming 6)

Elliot Yeo - 3 Tackles Inside 50 (Seth Campbell 3)

Reuben Ginbey & Brady Hough & Tylar Young - 4 & 2 & 2 Contested One on One Wins (Ben Miller 2)

25 Stat Leaders (+16 from last week) (9 Draws) (Our New Highest for the Year)

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Wuurm Watcher

Tom Cole - 9.4km/h Average Speed (Dion Prestia 9.4km/h) (Dubious stats, but humorous to include)

Milan Murdock & Willem Duursma - 9.0km/h & 8.9km/h Average Speed in Attack (Tim Burton 8.8km/h)

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I always try and keep these reviews on the optimistic side when I can but there’s nothing much to work with this week, so apologies for that (and my snark). The midfield was pretty good, but I think that’s about it from a team perspective. Otherwise, we’re down to praising individual players like Reid, Kelly, Yeo, Ginbey, Waterman, and Duursma. I actually think most players did the best with what they could, but the game plan this week just didn't seem to favour anyone. You could tell from the selections that Mini felt pressured to win the unlosable game, which makes the all loss all the more devastating for everyone involved. Crying out to sack Mini is definitely hasty in my opinion, but he suddenly has major questions to answer.

I mentioned that starting with the Saints we had 9 winnable games in a row and I was hoping to go 3-6 during that time. Considering we just lost the easiest game in there, maybe we’ll have to rely on luck to go 0-9.

Oh well, let’s move on. Same time next week? See ya there.