The sole bye for the VFLW season is next week on King’s Birthday weekend.
Then we go interstate.
They’ve beaten the Cats and Norf recently, and we haven’t. But we beat top-of-the-ladder Saints, and they couldn’t.
The Cats differential mostly relates to the inclusion, or not, of AFLW players.
OK, had my week off, back to work. Here’s our record against Casey.
| Year-Game | For | Against | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-07 | 21 | 47 | -26 |
| 2019-01 | 32 | 35 | -3 |
| 2021-02 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| 2021-EF | 35 | 32 | 3 |
| 2022-14 | 27 | 21 | 6 |
| 2022-SF | 76 | 9 | 67 |
| 2023-04 | 37 | 35 | 2 |
They’ve been close, except when they weren’t.
Note this is our third game vs Casey this year: in the pre-season we also won by 2 points (33-31).
Stats Leaders (leaders, us, Casey, maybe a few others).
Apart from goals, the numbers below are averages… but the rankings are sorted by totals.
Disposals
1 - Jess Bates (Pies) 27.5
Goals
1 - Sarah Cameron (Willy) 14
2 - 2 players including DeMatteeeeeeeoooooo 11
5 - 2 players including Ciara Burke (Casey) 10
7 - 3 players including Niamh O’Neill (Casey) 9
10 - MIA-RAE CLIFFORD 8
Marks
1 - Maddie Boyd (Hawks) 5.5
Tackles
1 - GRACE DICKER 11.1
Kicks
1 - Angelica Gogos (Darebin) 17.2
Handballs
1 - Jess Bates (Pies) 11.8
Hit-outs
1 - Jorja Borg (Dogs) - 30.1
2 - Leah Swain (Casey) 35.9
We can not play Ure vs the huge Swain. Russell+Ryan did enough to cancel her earlier this year.
What happened in the 2018-07 game?
(Note: it was game 7, not round 7)
It’s a miserable wet Crazyburn, up against the likes of Alyssa Newman, Bloody Jakobsson (OK, correct initial but not actually her first name; I’m traumatised, OK), Cat Phillips, Liz Zanker, Kate Hore, and Maddie Shevlin.
I’m crushing on Mackrill, who gets reported for tackling too hard. When she gets gang-tackled, I label the Casey players "four lionesses hanging off the hippo”.
@jackie_mihocek, La Presidenta, and @Tombob join me in the booth.
Danielle Porter kicks two goals in the third quarter to get us close, but Casey run away in the last.
Most importantly, Radio 3DJR is yet to establish the “yobbo” line of commentary.
What happened in the 2019-01 game?
We start with a Tiwi full-forward line of Moreen and Stassi.
We lead 13-0 in the second quarter.
Hey, this gimmick was here earlier than I remembered:
DeMatttteeeeeeeoooooooooo goals!
DeMatttteeeeeeeoooooooooo goals again!
We lead 32-15 with 16 minutes left.
We kick sideways and mess it up.
Bloody Jakobsson bombs one with the wind behind her from inside the centre square.
UMP KICKS THE FINAL GOAL IN THE FINAL MINUTE, and we lose.
This was two games in 15 hours where we lost by dodgy ump call on the siren: the night before was RampeGate.
Oh yeah, and some hockey player debuted.
What happened in 2020?
Nothing. Der.
What happened in the 2021-02 game?
Fede Frew is named in the middle vs Mel Fitzsimon.
Grace Dicker and Tamsin Crook debut 
Their first ruck is Maggie Caris: we drop Moss and play Stepnell and Cornish vs her (and ex-Bomber Bridie Winbanks). We lose the hit-outs 4-52… but I’d legit call it a draw, because neither of the Caris sisters has ever made a hit-out to advantage, and both of our rucks play as a ground-fighting fourth mid.
We lay 105 tackles and that is a huge part of this win. 17 of them were by The Honey Badger — disgustingly both she and Mietta Kendall are not named in the bests for their respective teams, despite being the clear best two players for the day (G had 25 disposals, 10 ahead of our next best).
@Soulnet makes his VFLW debut, and brings a big camera to capture Kendall (with normal hair) just failing to catch Jess Davies in time:
What happened in the 2021 Elimination Final?
WE WON!!!
But before that…
Casey literally earn a home final on the basis of a single point across 14 rounds giving them a better percentage than us.
We have the best batch of U18 girls ever this year, most notably including Georgie Prespakis and Tahlia Gillard.
Kicking into the wind, we have 9 of the first 10 inside fifties. But we score just 3 points vs their 1 goal.
In the second quarter we go BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG, and lead 29-6 at half-time.
The Georgie & Georgia Show is dominating in the middle.
Casey get yelled at, and come out and get (at least) the first seven inside fifties. It’s back to 29-25 at the final break. Our pressure is still there (30 tackles for the quarter).
Late in the last quarter, they seagull out the back and we trail 29-32… we have just four inside fifties in the second half of the game! Saving us are 106 tackles for the game (some of them were even paid!)
But history says Ahrens marks their rebound, a dopey Demon runs through the mark TWICE, and Lauren converts after the fifty is paid.
Nanscawen has 28 disposals and isn’t listed in our bests 
Nice ground-level footage amidst the interview:
2022 onwards tomorrow night…
Ha ha.
What happened in the 2022-14 game?
2022 had four epic teams: us, the Hawks, the Saints, and Casey. And that was our opponents in rounds 12-14 (we had also met and drew the Saints earlier in the year).
And this would be the toughest of them all. We get spanked in the midfield: Eliza West has 32 disposals, Sam Johnson 27, with Barba third-best on the ground with 17. Inside fifties go 24-40 against us.
But we lay 97 tackles, and Casey repeatedly shoot from the boundary or fifty out. Their final score of 2.9.21 is not just luck, it’s inevitable (see: current discussion of AFLM 2023).
The top three rucks are Sim Nalder (41), Steph Wales (26), and Dani Marshall (9). Oh well… two out of three ain’t bad.
REESE SUTTON RAN OUT WITH THE TEAM FOR HER DEBUT. Except then she doesn’t. FFS.
Courtney Ugle steals my photos from Blitz for use on Instagram.
What happened in the 2023-04 game?
2022 was undefeated.
At this point 2023 was half-a-win from three games. Two weeks earlier Casey had beaten Darebin 130-8 (the highest score in the modern VFLW).
We respond by making 8 changes, the equal-greatest in our VFLW history (ignoring the first round of each season). That include El Chaston and Ash van Loon debuting for our (VFLW) team.
For the first time ever, an EFC sister and brother play for us on the same day (Reese and Jake Sutton).
Paige Scott finishes the first quarter with 1.3 and a goal shepherd, kicks two more goals later, and starts the last quarter by getting knocked out and taken to hospital.
We lead 21-0 at one point, and the inside fifties end 39-17 our way… but it goes right to the end before we fall over the line 4.13.37-5.5.35.
Oh wait, I skipped the prelim final vs Casey.
@Hoffy gets COVID, they drop a lot of key AFLW players, and we smash them 76-9 
They actually out-played us in the first quarter, and then we kicked 6 straight goals in a 14:30 stretch in the second (including three goals and a goal assist for Fede, plus the first goals for the year by Nanscawen and Radford). The timeframe above of course includes a lot of wasted time getting the ball back to the middle; and Casey were actually playing decently in that period, and Clifford was in defence.
<< goes off to watch that quarter again >>
I was not a happy camper to miss that game.
“Get down to the NEC Hangar this Saturday from 9:00am to 12:30pm for open training. Come and see both the men’s and women’s teams for your chance to grab a photo and signature from your favourite players.”
Hmmm, well.
11am, after watching Ashes… Hmmm.
The queues to grab a photo or signature from your favourite player will be shorter at Casey…
I’ve never been brave enough to open my mouth to talk to anyone yet alone ask for a signature!
Forecast says cool (not cold) with intermittent sun… and a 30km/h wind to right of screen.
You forgot to mention how burnt I was post game!
