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The Brisbane Lions have needed to do it the arduous manner, however they’re AFLW champions once more.
Listed below are 5 fast hits from a grand remaining win over North Melbourne to recollect.
No Bates, no Wardlaw, no worries?
Ask any Brisbane Lions fan and so they’ll inform you their AFLW facet is criminally underrated. Of seven accomplished AFLW seasons, the Lions have featured in 5 deciders, however had managed to win simply the one premiership till at this time.
Final season, they topped the ladder and hosted the grand remaining on their house deck in Springfield, earlier than falling to the Demons by simply 4 factors. The gamers have been shattered, and few backed them to return to the decider after they misplaced greatest and fairest winner Emily Bates to Hawthorn, and spearhead Jesse Wardlaw to St Kilda.
The circumstances of the membership’s 2023 premiership mirrors their first in 2021, once they took down the highly-favoured Adelaide Crows regardless of an exodus of gamers to rival Queensland membership Gold Coast, in addition to 4 key gamers to the Kangaroos, together with Tahlia Randall, who performed within the shedding North Melbourne facet on Sunday.
The Lions’ motto in 2019 was simply as becoming then as at this time: A champion group will all the time beat a group of champions.
Jas Garner underlines standing as competitors’s greatest
What extra does Jas Garner need to do to show she’s one of the best participant within the AFLW? It is a query that shall be requested once more after a stand-out efficiency within the AFLW grand remaining, the place she booted two essential targets and assisted one other (which led to Kate Shierlaw’s excellent contested seize within the third quarter) to go together with her 24 disposals, together with 17 contested possessions, six clearances and 4 inside 50s.
Regardless of her dominance throughout seven seasons, the Kangaroos star is but to be awarded the competitors’s greatest and fairest award, this 12 months missed for Richmond midfielder Mon Conti. That is regardless of her choosing up her third AFL Coaches’ Affiliation Award (and second in two seasons), whereas she was voted the competitors’s most dear participant by her friends for a second time.
Garner completed second in one of the best on floor depend to Lions’ captain Bre Koenen, however the numbers arguably would’ve been reversed if the outcome had gone the opposite manner.
Dakota Davidson recovers from harm to ship on the most important stage
What a distinction every week makes in soccer. After injuring her knee within the membership’s gritty preliminary remaining win over Geelong, the ahead was left in tears, and seemed extremely unlikely to participate within the greatest sport of the season.
By three-quarter time, she had had simply three touches and little affect on the competition, however stood up within the remaining quarter to ship two result-changing, and premiership-winning targets.
Interviewed on TV after the sport, Davidson stated it had been a “scary” 24 hours as she waited for scans on her knee to get the all-clear to play.
“I did every thing I may to make it at this time, and I am so glad I did,” Davidson advised Nat Edwards on Channel Seven.
“Each youngster goals of taking part in in a premiership … it is an unbelievable feeling.”
Most brave leads Lions’ tackling clinic
Courtney Hodder could be higher recognized by followers for her flashy, goal-kicking brilliance, however her friends know a ferocious competitor once they see one.
Hodder was voted most brave by the AFLW taking part in cohort in 2023, and confirmed why with a staggering 18 tackles within the greatest sport of the season.
She wasn’t the one Lion to deliver the tackling strain, with captain and greatest on floor Bre Koenen laying 11 of her personal, to go together with former AFLW greatest and fairest Ally Anderson’s 12 and Bella Dawes’ 11.
On the conclusion of the sport, Brisbane out-tackled North Melbourne 110-76, one of many few group stats they received.
Offered-out Princes Park raises extra questions than solutions
Due to the dominance of the Adelaide Crows and Brisbane Lions, this 12 months’s AFLW grand remaining was simply the second to be held in Melbourne. Followers turned out accordingly, with a sold-out Princes Park delivering an environment worthy of the event.
However the query stays whether or not Princes Park (with a capability of roughly 13,000) was the suitable venue for the decider, given the sport offered out in hours and followers of both facet have been locked out from the event.
The AFL will — and has — argued that it was higher to promote out Princes Park than have empty seats at a much bigger stadium like Docklands. But it surely’s exactly that angle that has been an issue for the competitors from the start, with head workplace too typically promoting its personal product quick.
There have been 53,034 at Adelaide’s defeat of Carlton in 2019 on the Adelaide Oval, and there is no purpose that many would not present as much as a grand remaining in Australian Guidelines heartland. For that, nevertheless, the AFL arguably wants to point out extra perception and creativeness.
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