2025 ROUND 0/Opening Round/Round A/Pre Round 1 AFL Preview

Round 0 Addendum
FYI, the Opening Matches Brisbane vs Geelong and Gold Coast vs Essendon have been postponed until later in the season due to Cyclone Alfred bearing down on the Queensland Coast.
 
From a viewers perspective, this is unfulfilling.  I mean it’s only 700mm of rain and category 2 winds.  I for one would have liked to see a kick-in go for a goal and the tactics the coaches would have employed.  It would be a good opportunity to get a Water Polo coach in to teach the players how to effectively apply a testicle snapping wedgie.
 
I don’t know what this means for your tipping competition, but Opening Round is now a Dud.  They should have held it in Vegas, like the NRL.
 

But seriously, if you’re in Queensland, take care.  Cyclones are serious business.

Last Week           0/0           Season Total      0/0

The off season just whizzed on by didn’t it.  I guess that happens when you keep busy.  At the time of writing, we’ve been able to see a few of the pre-season games (well I watched a few minutes of the Richmond vs Collingwood one) and the thing I noticed most was just how much ink has gone into the Collingwood forward line.  Double-Sleeve Tattooed Tim Membrey has joined other double-sleevers in Bobby Hill, Jamie Elliott and Beau McCreery signaling perhaps a pre-requisite for admission into the Pies forward structure.  If you add other traditional sleevists (Crisp, DeGoey and Howe) you have enough ink for an entire school of squid to evade a sperm whale.  So, there you go kids…if you’re reading this and all your heart desires is to play for Collingwood, get Mum and Dad to pay for a stunning set of sleeve tattoos.  It’s a relief for me as I just figured I wasn’t good enough, but it turns out I’m plenty good at footy, just no ink.

 During the off-season I did sit down and watch the draft…for about a minute.  In what world is that riveting television!?  And it got dragged out over a couple of days.  One day the names will be important, I’m sure.  TV rights have also been a hot topic as ‘7 Live’ bought the rights, therefore ensuring most of it won’t be Live.  This will drive fans to pay for it, which is just what we need in a cost of living crisis.  Maybe it will help with interest rates (that’s rates of interest on money, not the rate of interest in the footy…or is it?).

This year promises to be a belter with almost all of the teams being viable options for Premiership glory…at least when you’re looking at it this far out.  We’ll re-assess after round 1.  So, lets dive straight into the games on display in The AFL’s soft opening.

Brisbane vs Geelong      Gabba   Thursday Night

This time last year, Brisbane appeared to have a bout of apathy after falling at the final hurdle the year before.  They’d be keen to get this season off to a better start, but this time round they might be nursing a hangover.  They look like a bunch do-good tee-totallers though so expect them to come out swinging (swinging in the punches form, not the keys in a bowl form – but hey, footy would be pretty enthralling if that was the kind of swinging teams approached a match with).  Geelong on the other hand approaches every season the same way and that’s what makes them such a consistent performer year on year.  They’ll be looking to provide their youth with much needed experience while unleashing the old battle-hardened berserker (Dangerfield) for short and impactful bursts as sparsely as possible.  The first game of the season is always a tough pick.  Will the unfurling flag get in the eyes of the Brisbane players?  Will the Cats pull one of their trademark upsets?  Geelong is surprisingly patchy in first round encounters so maybe not.  Fun fact, this is the first time Geelong has ever played Brisbane in Round 0 of a season.  Maybe that’s the telling factor?  Maybe it isn’t?  I’m stalling.  Brisbane by 13 points.

Sydney vs Hawthorn      SCG        Friday Night

It would have been a tough pre-season for Sydney.  Losing your umpteenth Grand Final in that same manner can really affect the psyche.  Fresh blood comes in with Horse making way for Big Cox.  There’s a line there but I won’t use it..Nah, why not?  What is it at Sydney with coaches penis size double entendre’s?  Are they compensating?  Old blood moved out with Parker joining a bunch of other old-timers down at North.  I believe they are the first club to have a doctor who specialises in Geriatric Medicine.  Hawthorn flew a bit under the radar over the off season and with surprising wins last season, it will be interesting to see if they can sustain it now that other teams will put more work into them.  They were playing high risk football last year and when opponents aren’t ready for it, it comes up Trumps.  If it comes unstuck though, it looks a bit more JD Vance.  I think the extra preparation time will help Hawthorn here, but I can’t be certain.  Guldon going down with a nasty ankle fracture resulting surgery means an uncertain future and return date which might be back half of the year, and it looks like a stiff start for Big Cox…oh dear.  Hawthorn by 7 points.

Gold Coast vs Essendon                                Carrara                 Saturday Afternoon

It goes without saying that Gold Coast is the AFL’s special project.  They want success there, they’ve put almost everything into it with the hopes of premiership glory and raising average attendances at their home games from 12,000 to 12,100 for 6 matches afterwards.  Essendon was, for a while, a special project of another kind.  A project to see just how much kicking a team can take when they’re down?  There is 40 years of quantum computing data analysis to be done as the collected data is so large.  Gold Coast developed themselves a bit of a fortress up at Carrara last year with no one beating them there until Brisbane later in the year.  But Essendon did get close, coming within 12 points.  Not a lot changed listwise for the Bombers, the biggest being Stringer moving on to GWS.  Gold Coast let go Lukocious to get Noble in that tangle of a swap with Collingwood and Port Adelaide, but with Mac Andrew limping off early in the pre-season match that is perhaps the biggest factor in this game.  It’s too early in the season to start making sense though.  Gold Coast by 21 points.

GWS vs Collingwood     GIANTS Stadium              Sunday Afternoon

The heavily inked Pies made minced meat of Richmond who had, by the looks, thrown some jumpers on the Auskick kids to see how they’d go.  You can’t read much from that and I wouldn’t get too excited if I was a Pies supporter.  Collingwood had to field close to a full strength side given their first match was a week away while the Tigers are still working out a system to develop their plethora of youth.  However, Collingwood did kick 20 goals straight before kicking a behind (their 1 point was rushed) which could be ominous signs for the league given their capacity to attack the goals.  They’ll still be missing some key players for this one and the Dan Houston / Tim Membrey experiment will need some time to get traction.  GWS will have some experiments of their own trying to manage Stringer and Hogan in the forward line.  It’s a combination untried yet as Stringer has been unavailable for senior action.  They got a fair Walloping by Carlton in their pre-season tune up and would want to be better than that to start the season.  But if last year was anything to go by, it is possible to recover from a slow start.  GWS by 12 points.