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.
