The good, the bad, the ugly: The 17 minutes that will haunt Hawthorn after AFLW finals disaster

A history-making weekend of AFLW semi-finals action has been run and won, with perennial contenders Adelaide joined in the last four by SA rivals Port Adelaide.

The Power’s monumental comeback win was epic but now Hawthorn, and Fremantle after their loss to the Crows, are left to lick their wounds as the season continues without them.

Scroll down for the good, the bad and the ugly from the second week of the AFLW finals.

The good

Offensive, fast footy: not only good for the game but good for a record-breaking win!

Saturday night’s semi-final clash between Hawthorn and Port Adelaide at Ikon Park is one that will be remembered for a long time, no matter which team you support.

At three-quarter time, Lauren Arnell’s Port were down by a margin of 22 points and were behind in practically every other statistic, however they completely flipped the game on its head in the fourth term and pulled off a dramatic one-point victory.

The win sends Port Adelaide into a preliminary final during their first ever finals campaign in their short three-year history in the AFLW.

Hawthorn completely controlled the first three-quarters of the game, having a mammoth 46 inside 50s to 13 and 17 scoring shots to five, but like the previous week (in the loss to Brisbane), their inaccuracy had cost them from being even further in front having kicked five goals and 12 behinds from those 17 scoring shots. (More on the Hawks later.)

It was clear watching the game that the fourth quarter was a case of a group who had nothing to lose and had built their game around all-out attack, against an opposition who had not had a whole lot of experience in changing gears and simply ‘killing the game’.

As a coach Arnell has made no secret of wanting to implement an attacking game plan. “I have been talking pretty bullishly for the last three years about building offence and to put able to play an offensive game and that is the style of footy we should be seeing in AFLW,” she said.

Arnell has also been open that in previous seasons they have lost games because of prioritising their attack but felt they were building towards playing a complete game as they did against Richmond in the first week of finals.

The victory on Saturday night feels like a well-deserved reward for the Port Adelaide coaching group, who have helped to grow the game by trying to score heavily always and putting the best football on display. The Power effectively didn’t need to dramatically change their game plan to give themselves a chance to win the game, as scoring as many goals as possible and attacking first is their mindset regardless.

It comes, too, on the back of some games this season where the overly defensive tactics of coaches have been questioned. There have been multiple coaches in the league who have had “defend first” priorities to their game plans, which often involves flooding their backline with spare players to concede as few goals as possible.

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While coaches are well within their right to implement whatever tactics they feel will get their team the best outcome, it is at times at the cost of playing attractive, free-flowing football.

It is perhaps no surprise that some of the most attacking teams have had coaches or players who have come out of programs coached by Craig Starcevich, who has been a huge campaigner of coaches implementing game plans that promote playing attacking and attractive football, to continue to help grow the game of AFLW.

It is also no surprise that the two coaches who are still at the helm of their teams and have been since the first AFLW season are Starcevich at Brisbane and Mick Stinear at Melbourne. Stinear is also another strong advocate for teams and coaches to be positive with their tactics and approach to the football they play.

The Power will now be riding the wave of momentum into the preliminary finals back at Ikon Park again on Saturday afternoon.

Their opponent: an undefeated North Melbourne side who have been flawless this season. One thing is for sure, if they give North Melbourne 17 scoring shots in the first three quarters, the margin at three-quarter time might be slightly more than 22 points.

But momentum in sport is a crazy thing. You can’t help but feel if Saturday night was anything to go by, if anyone can do it then could it be the ‘never say die/tear us apart’ Port Adelaide Power?

The bad

Seventeen minutes that will haunt the Hawks

So where did it all go wrong in the fourth quarter for the brown and gold?

The Hawks were dominated around the contest in the final term, losing the contested possession count by 20 and inside 50s by 11 as they conceded the first 12 clearances of the quarter.

While a lot had been spoken about in the lead-up to finals around the difficulty of Hawthorn’s fixture in the home-and-away season, they can ultimately only play the teams they are fixtured. I believe they showed throughout the season they were well and truly a deserving finals team. Their development from last year to this season has been remarkable and their game plan was exciting to watch and will continue to grow under a full off-season under Daniel Webster, who wasn’t appointed until February 2024.

Watch at the top of the page: Kate McCarthy breaks down Port Adelaide’s comeback and Hawthorn’s collapse.

I do, however, believe their fixture didn’t allow them to learn the lessons that other teams were afforded until it was a little too late. Their only loss in the home-and-away season came in Round 3 where they went down to the Adelaide Crows by 26 points. They competed with the Crows across three quarters and ultimately the one quarter the Crows got on top, they were too dominant for the Hawks. Their second loss was then last week against Brisbane in the first week of finals.

It is through losses that you learn the most about how your game style stacks up, players’ mindsets in the most important moments and how your football program is operating overall. Yes, all games are reviewed. But you can guarantee losses, particularly close losses, are critiqued in far more detail than wins. It is human nature to take more learnings out of disappointment.

You can’t help but wonder how much further Hawthorn may have been able to go if they had learnt a few more ‘tough’ lessons in the home-and-away rounds to set them up to better handle the pressure you are under as a group in the dying minutes of finals games.

I feel you would be a brave person to predict, after the disappointment of two close finals losses plus another off-season and pre-season under Webster, that the Hawks will do anything but improve in 2025.

The ugly

AFL says 30 is enough, but history disagrees

The AFL has said that list sizes will not be increased for the 2025 season, meaning the size will stay at 30 players on the primary list. In the 2024 season, a record one-third of clubs used top-up players.

The rules dictate clubs can access top-up players when they have fewer than 24 primary-list players — the number required to name 21 players and three emergencies for games — available for selection. Top-up players come from a pool of ‘train-on’ players who are selected by each club to train with the group for one session per week.

In 2024 alone, three top-up players were used to play games with Collingwood’s Jordi Ivey playing six matches, Sarah Ingram (also Collingwood) playing two matches and Sarah D’Arcy (Melbourne) playing two matches. Even more train-on players were named as emergencies throughout the season and, in the final round, every Geelong emergency was a top-up.

This year is not the only time top-up players have been required — it has been a regular occurrence in previous seasons.

But the issue with adding top-up players is these players are only training with the AFLW group once a week meaning if they do come in and are required to play games, they are disadvantaged in their knowledge of game plan and high-performance coaching as well as general connection within the group.

Beyond that, clubs have no opportunity to re-sign top-up players or elevate them to the primary list if they are called upon and play well. They simply go back into the draft to be picked up by anyone.

While most top-ups who played a game are former full-time AFLW players, any team thinking of giving a chance to a young top-up could then lose that same player to a rival club.

Clearly increasing list sizes would mean having to pay more players but the impact extends to needing a larger soft cap to hire more staff for medical, welfare and coaching.

Still, next year, the fixture will increase to 12 rounds and, as history tells us, you can almost guarantee at least one club will need a top-up player with list sizes staying at 30 players.

Kate McCarthy is an AFLW All Australian and Channel 7 commentator. Follow her on social media @kateemac9.