Who: Melbourne Demons vs Brisbane Lions
Where: Casey Fields
When: Saturday 7th September at 11:05am (local)
Gates Open: 10am, check your ticket for your entry gate.

Weekly Notices → None at the moment, check back later! 

Tickets → On sale here!

Venue → Located at the entry of the venue, The Paddock will include face painting, kids zone & food trucks! Chill out at the Hertz Cafe zone, with chairs and umbrellas available to watch the game from the best seats in the house.

Address → 160 Berwick-Cranbourne Rd, Cranbourne East VIC 3977

Buses → Bus routes include 796, 897 and 981. Patrons are encouraged to visit Public Transport Victoria website to plan their trip.

Car → Parking is available on-site.

Watch → Free to air on Channel 7Mate or stream on Fox Footy or Kayo. Broadcast kicking off at 11:00am. 

Listen → Tune in to WHARF Radio or Casey Radio stations from 10:35am.

Week 2 of the AFLW sees Brisbane face the team against which we’ve had the least success, which just means more chances to make history. Continuing our 2024 deep dive into the stats and data that make this week’s match-up.

Brisbane’s bogey team?

The only team that has the better of Brisbane in its head-to-head AFLW record is Melbourne with 6 wins to 3. But then, Melbourne has a positive win-loss record against every AFLW team except Adelaide (5-all) so it’s not as though they have a special hold over the Lions.

Where the Dees have particularly haunted the Lions is in close matches. Five of the nine matches between the powerhouses have been decided by a margin of six points or fewer - and Melbourne has won all of them. Apart from one blowout at Hickey Park in 2019, the Demons’ winning margins against the Lions have been 6, 2, 3, 4 and 4. The first three of those can be brushed off relatively easily as they didn’t affect Brisbane’s premiership chances. Not so with the last two. The MCG Preliminary Final and the Brighton Homes Arena Grand Final are Lions horror stories.

Winds of change

The Lions have won two of their last three matches against the Demons, most recently the cathartic 25-point victory last November which, in purely football terms, was the highlight of Brisbane’s 2023 premiership. Ellie Hampson was scoring from long range, Jen Dunne kept Eden Zanker goalless, Sophie Conway was pulling out Dakota Davidson’s goal celebrations, and Jade Ellenger played the finest game of her career to date pushing the Lions forward at every opportunity.

Just as relevant to Saturday’s match is that Brisbane has a 2-all record at Casey Fields; and yes, that includes the famous inaugural Lions’ match in 2017 with, and you just know that every commentator is going to bring this up, Shannon Campbell kicking Brisbane’s first ever AFLW goal.

That first-up win in 2017 was played in 35 km/h winds and interrupted by a thunderstorm. When the Lions next won at Casey in 2022 with three unanswered final term goals, the winds reached 17 km/h. Conversely, the two times the Lions went down at Casey, the top wind speeds were a gentle 7 and 6 km/h. The forecast for Cranbourne East on Saturday morning is for northerlies at 14 km/h. Common wisdom suggests those conditions won’t suit the Lions; history says they just might.

Win the morning, win the day

For only the third time in the AFLW, Brisbane will begin a match before midday. The Lions played the earliest match in AFLW history back in season 1; their 7-point victory over the Western Bulldogs at the South Pine Sports Complex beginning at 10:05 am. Brisbane’s game against Richmond on AFL Grand Final day two years ago began at the slightly more civilised time of 11:10 am. The 4-point loss was Brisbane’s only defeat of the home-and-away season.

One possible alarm bell is that, in those two games, Brisbane kicked 2.11 and 1.8. If you’re a Lions fan who is not a morning person, you now know your heroes aren’t so different from you. The Lions players and coaches, however, will want to ensure that what is currently just an odd stat doesn’t become a recurring pattern.

Thinker Taylor Soldiers By

Taylor Smith’s journey to 50 AFLW games has been a study in persistence. Some players begin their careers with a bang, others have a breakout game to which people point as the moment where they ‘made it’. Smith, however, seems to play every single game one percent better than she played her previous game.

The stats reinforce the tale of Smith’s steady improvement. Her disposal efficiency in 2021 was 55%; over the next three seasons, it rose to 57%, then 62% then 64%. Her tackles per match figure was 1.6 in 2021, 1.8 in 2022, and 2.0 in 2023. Goals per match rose from 0.45 to 0.54 to 0.75. The pattern is as consistent as Smith’s growth.

Where Smith had room for improvement was putting together several of her skills in the one game. There were very few games in which Smith both scored a goal and registered good numbers in other columns. Last week in a tough game against North Melbourne, Smith scored a goal on a narrow angle, completed three tackles (which is above her career average), and set a new personal best for hit-outs with 11. There is no reason to suspect that Smith’s improvement graph is flattening any time soon, especially if she’s tracking it all on a colour-coded spreadsheet (see this week’s Between the Lions).

Eleanor-mous

Eleanor Hartill will become the equal third tallest AFLW player for Brisbane. The 185cm basketballer from Busselton is the same height as former Lion Jesse Wardlaw and shorter only than early-era rucks Jessy Keeffe (186cm) and Lauren Bella (188cm). Hartill’s addition to the list of Lions AFLW players pushes Courtney Hodder (152cm) into 74th place on the “Tallest Lion” list.

Tackling your demons, the Cathy Svarc way

In the AFLW, the team most known for its tackling is the Lions. In the Lions, the player most known for her tackling is Cathy Svarc. Going into Round 2, Svarc the Elder has 455 career tackles at 8.1 per match, third overall in AFLW history on both measures.

That goes into overdrive when Cathy lines up against Melbourne. Her first match against the Dees was at Casey Fields in 2021. To that point, Svarc had gained a reputation as a strong tagger who would lay maybe five or six tackles a match. On that day, she made 21. TWENTY-ONE. The men’s all-time record for tackles in a match is only 17 which, incidentally, was Svarc’s tally at the MCG in that Preliminary Final we don’t talk about, followed by 16 in the Grand Final we don’t talk about.

Svarc’s AFLW record has since been equalled by Adelaide’s Ebony Marinoff and broken by Fremantle’s Kiara Bowers, the two players ahead of her in both total and average tackles. In matches against Melbourne, Svarc has them covered, averaging 13.3 tackles per outing.

Brisbane has bounced back in style, beating Melbourne by 18 points at the Demons' home deck on Saturday afternoon.

Dakota Davidson stood tall in a low-scoring game with three goals in the 5.3 (33) to 2.3 (15) win at Casey Fields.

Ally Anderson was absolutely everywhere, recording an equal-AFLW record 42 disposals, to go along with eight clearances. She regularly found space and time, with Melbourne only sending defensive midfielder Shelley Heath to run with her in the final quarter.

After Brisbane was opened up by North Melbourne last week, it was focused on using run and carry outside the contest to create similar problems for the Demons.

The visitors effectively used the full width of the large Casey Fields deck, changing lanes to move the ball towards goals in a way that was particularly difficult to defend.

Jade Ellenger's work from half-back challenged the run of Melbourne's forwards, recording 17 disposals and 345m gained, as did Sophie Conway (16 disposals, 10 tackles) and Orla O'Dwyer (13 disposals, 341m gained) on the wings.

Meanwhile Lions captain Breanna Koenen shut down her Melbourne counterpart Kate Hore, keeping the Demon to just 10 disposals and a late goal.

It was ultimately a battle of defences, with both backlines doing a mountain of work deep. Melbourne was up against it, living dangerously on the last line, but stood up reasonably well thanks to the work of Gab Colvin (five tackles, five intercepts), and Maeve Chaplin (10 disposals, seven intercepts).

But while they tried hard as stoppers, moving the ball out of defence was a trickier prospect as the Lions set up beautifully to trap the ball in the front half.

Poppy Boltz was impressive in the air down back, taking two strong intercept marks in the first half to hem the Demons in, while Jen Dunne's relentlessness in Brisbane's defence caused some problems for Melbourne's forwards.

Debutant Alyssia Pisano got the Demons going late in the third with the side's first goal for the game, leading impressively at the footy and going back to kick truly. It sparked her side after they had been blanketed by the Lions right across the field.

But it wasn't quite enough, as Brisbane put the foot down in the last quarter, never really allowing the Dees to take advantage of that momentum.

Smith goes bang
In career game No.50 Taylor Smith added to her highlight reel. After a strong tackle 55m from goal landed her a free kick, she looked up to see Dakota Davidson sitting close to goal and screaming for the footy. Smith did the right thing and sent the ball long to her teammate, but fortuitously it bounced over the one-on-one's head and went through for a goal.

Ally Anderson's leather poisoning
By half time Ally Anderson had gathered 21 disposals, halfway toward the AFLW record held by North Melbourne star Ash Riddell. The space she was afforded across the field was remarkable, and after coming within one of the clearance record last week, she equalled Riddell's disposal record of 42.

Next up
Melbourne is back at Casey Fields to take on an impressive North Melbourne outfit on Sunday afternoon, while Brisbane returns home to Brighton Homes Arena for a marquee Friday night fixture against Collingwood.

MELBOURNE              0.2    0.3    1.3   2.3 (15)
BRISBANE                  2.0    2.0    3.3   5.3 (33)

GOALS 
Melbourne: Pisano, Hore
Brisbane: Davidson 3, Smith, R.Svarc

BEST 
Melbourne: Hanks, Mackin, Goldrick, Paxman
Brisbane: Anderson, Boltz, Koenen, Davidson, Dawes

INJURIES 
Melbourne: Zanker (right elbow)
Brisbane: Nil

LATE CHANGES
Melbourne: Lauren Pearce (wrist) replaced in selected side by Alyssia Pisano
Brisbane: Nil

Crowd: 1534 at Casey Fields