Early Tackle: Josh Barnes’ likes and dislikes from Round 16 so far
While Carlton wades through its crisis, Melbourne has quietly sunk into comfortable mediocrity. Josh Barnes names his early likes and dislikes from round 16 here.
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There’s no shortage of talking points in round 16 so far, with another rout of Carlton on Thursday night and a thriller at the SCG before a full suite of Saturday games were the Dees and Roos disappointed.
See Josh Barnes’ likes and dislikes here.
DISLIKES
CLARKO’S SOS
North Melbourne needs defensive support and it must be a recruiting priority this offseason.
The back six wasn’t the only problem but one of many as the Roos dropped a stink bomb to lose to Hawthorn by 85 on the eve of the club’s marquee 100th year celebration on Thursday.
We know the Roos made a play for Brayden Maynard this year and came up short, and list boss Brady Rawlings has to go to market again and find an experienced head who can marshall the defence.
Can the Roos get in front of Magpies leader Jeremy Howe, or dropped Demons interceptor Jake Lever?
Brisbane is desperate to keep Brandon Starcevich, but could the Roos blow the Lions’ offer out of the water?
A level below, reliable Geelong stopper Jake Kolodjashnij has missed much of this year through injury but he has fallen down the pecking order and could be an option, or Dog Liam Jones could hold down full back.
The Roos just need someone with experience to hold things together.
On Saturday, Hawthorn’s midfield dominance put the North Melbourne defence under pressure, and it wilted, with the Hawks running through the defence like a fast bowler against the Australian Test team’s top order.
The rejuvenated Jack Gunston set a career-high with seven goals in game 272 and Mabior Chol cashed in and equalled his career mark with five goals.
Seventh heaven for Jack Gunston, a new career high 🔥🔥
— Fox Footy (@FOXFOOTY) June 28, 2025
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Remember when Gunston played for the Lions?
He is enjoying a remarkable Indian summer in his 16th season.
Hawthorn racked up 21 shots on 36 forward entries in the first half, it was too easy.
That tally ended up at 35 shots on 63 entries, again, just too easy.
Saturday was the 31st time North Melbourne has conceded triple figures in 50 games under Clarkson, which is clearly far too many, and now four of those 31 were 150 points or more.
And another pressing concern will be hard nut George Wardlaw’s latest concussion.
Wardlaw went off in the second quarter and was subbed.
Last year he was concussed in a training mishap, then missed two further games in August after reporting delayed symptoms to a seperate knock.
He has had soft tissue injuries,, but the head knocks are clearly the biggest worry.
ME-DEE-OCRITY
While Carlton wades through its crisis, Melbourne has quietly sunk into comfortable mediocrity.
Nobody was surprised the Dees were never truly in the contest on the Gold Coast, a team Melbourne beat by 54 points at the same venue in round 23 last year.
And is anybody surprised the Demons are destined to finish well into the teens on the ladder this year?
This time last year Melbourne was in chaos as its premiership window closed.
That window has long been boarded up and now the Dees are just meh.
Clayton Oliver, battling on with bandages all over his face? Meh.
Hopeful young talents who have stalled this year in Trent Rivers and Tom Sparrow? Meh.
Bayley Fritsch, once the most feared medium forward in the game? Meh.
There have been some steps forward, with Daniel Turner a good backman, Harvey Langford a talent and Jake Bowey vaulting into the conversation of the best half-backs in the game.
Christian Petracca has put in this year, even if his kicking was off on Saturday, Jake Melksham remains a workhorse and Kysiah Pickett is simply deadly within 60m of goal.
But all of it adds up to a club stuck in a thick middle of the ladder.
Simon Goodwin made a statement at selection and dropped Jake Lever, but nobody else appeared to hear that statement, as the Dees were so sluggish in the first quarter Ben Dixon pondered on Fox Footy if they were “playing like they are going on a footy trip tomorrow”.
When Koltyn Tholstrup’s lazy kick across half back that was intercepted by Jed Walter at the 20 minute mark of the first term, and then Langford turned it into a goal with a 50m penalty, the game was over.
Max Gawn had to drag his players in and give them a spray at quarter-time with his team down by 36 points.
It would have been worse if the Suns didn’t kick 5.7 in that opening term.
Melbourne tried with an undermanned team and a 19-point loss may look like an OK result, all things considered.
And considering that a decent result sums up how quickly the Demons have fallen off from the serious sides.
THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS
The talk about wildcard games and fixture additions has already begun and strap yourself in for plenty more with the clearest-cut split on the ladder we have seen in some time as we turn for home on the regular season.
Really, only nine teams can play finals.
That even split between haves and have nots leaves us with 73 games to come after this weekend, 17 of which will feature two sides in the finals hunt and 17 others featuring two of the other nine clubs.
Next weekend, the round is perfectly split so every game will be between a top half side and a bottom.
With half the comp out of the running for September, that leaves a massive chunk of the ladder playing for next year already, which just can’t be good for the competition.
Simon Goodwin put on the agenda this week his interest in conferences and wildcard rounds.
The merit with conferences would come in its help to the fixture - every team plays all 17 other sides once, then their other five conference teams again, leaving us with 22 rounds.
But how on earth would we break up those conferences evenly when clubs bank on playing certain sides twice for off field reasons?
And Goodwin’s thought we would celebrate conference winners is a furphy.
Any team that raises a conference banner in U.S. sport is an instant laughing stock.
For the record, I am a fan of the wildcard concept, but only a single game, fit neatly in the bye week, between eighth and ninth to make the finals.
Opening it up further for a second wildcard game too early is too big of a risk when we don’t yet know the ramifications.
As for the idea floated in some corners for an in-season tournament, that is not a winner.
The NBA’s mid-season tournament may have brought some extra dollars to an already flush sport, but it means nothing outside of blindingly bright courts.
The Milwaukee Bucks won this past season and then crashed out of the real playoffs in the first round, and now enter a dismal off-season without any good memories of winning a cup in Las Vegas.
These ideas make for great fodder, but won’t help us this year, when we sit through more empty games and more splits between the haves and have nots than we have seen in some time over the next eight weeks to September.
GRASS FARCE
There is no way around it, the turf at the Paddington end of the SCG was not up to AFL standard on Friday night.
Jonathan Brown didn’t mince words, when he said it was worse than the old sandy Colonial Stadium, a surface so farcical it was nicknamed ‘Death Valley’.
“Should we be allowed to play on this surface? This is as bad as I’ve seen,” Brown said on Fox Footy.
The Brisbane great later pondered whether games should be shifted off the ground going forward.
The AFL should explain if a proper inspection was held pre-match and what it found that convinced staff the ground was fit for action.
Defenders chasing to tackle ran on tip toes like they were barefoot on bitumen after a day at the beach, and others slid around like their boots were Tom Cruise’s white socks in Risky Business.
It's been 85 days since the Andrea Bocelli concert at the SCG.
— Lachlan McKirdy (@LMcKirdy7) June 27, 2025
It's beyond unacceptable the state of the SCG turf at the Paddington End. #AFLSwansDogs
The excuse floated that the ground hadn’t recovered from an Andrea Bocelli concert on April 3 just doesn’t fly: that was 85 days before the Swans and Dogs met.
It was also the first game on the ground since round 12, so long ago it was the first of the never-ending bye weeks.
Sydney hosts Fremantle next Sunday, and the AFL should consider Brown’s suggestion and look for alternative options if there isn’t improvement.
BYE BYE BYES
Thank goodness this is our last weekend of the elongated bye rounds.
Stretched over five weeks, the bye period has felt like it has gone on longer than a mushroom murder trial.
There has to be a better solution in 2026.
Whether that is reducing it to one marquee game on a weekend where other teams are off, hosting a mid-year Northern Round in Queensland and New South Wales to replace Opening Round as coined by Jonathan Brown, or even a complete week off, all those options are better than what we have now.
The fixture for this weekend was particularly uninspiring and it leaves us all a little bit grumpy in the middle of the season.
BLUES NO CLUES
There have already been thousands of damning words written about the Blues, so let’s keep this one short.
Perhaps most alarming from a horrible night in Adelaide was the fact Carlton fielded it’s oldest side since 1944 – a season so far back that the MCG was still being used by the military for World War 2.
That ageing team even included two debutants, and you almost had to feel sorry for Billy Wilson and Flynn Young for being thrown in to the Port Adelaide avalanche.
Carlton clearly is right in the middle of its flag window and floundering so badly that the window is shutting week by week.
Before we know it, the superstars of this Blues era will be out of their primes and what will be left to show for it then?
LIKES
RETURN OF THE HOK
That was more like it.
Hawthorn was back in full Hok Ball mode in Launceston on Saturday, bringing back the pure, free flowing style that overwhelmed much of the competition in the back end of last year.
The Hawks played the beautiful game last year, squeezing opponents when they didn’t have the ball and slicing them up by foot when they won it back.
That was back in a big way from the opening bounce against North Melbourne.
They had 23 more inside-50s, 42 more disposals, 14 more clearances and 17 more marks.
It was a thrashing.
The tackle, the kick ... AND the celebration! 🔥🔥
— Fox Footy (@FOXFOOTY) June 28, 2025
Mabior Chol, what a play.
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The Hawks’ best score in a full match in their last four outings was 81 points against the Western Bulldogs and halfway through on Saturday they had 86 on the board.
They won the game with ease on the outside, and the Hawks won it on the inside too.
North Melbourne backs its midfield as competitive with any other but Jai Newcombe almost outplayed all of the rival engine room himself with a dominant first half, racking up 19 disposals, two goal assists and six clearances to essentially end the contest.
The Poowong powerhouse had polled Brownlow votes in previous four games against the Roos, including two best-on-ground efforts last year, but if Alastair Clarkson had a plan to stop him this time, it didn’t go close to working.
The Hok return brutalised the Roos and put Sam Mitchell’s team back in the top four at the final siren, and if the style is back for good, the rest of the competition will be nervous.
EVEN SUNS
Damien Hardwick was shaking his head late in the fourth quarter as his side threatened another fourth quarter fade out, but he would have been smiling when he read the stat sheet after the 19-point win over Melbourne.
Where Gold Coast have leaned perhaps too heavily on its stars in the past, this was a notably even performance.
Sure, Matt Rowell cleaned up around the clearances with his 12 well more than anybody else not he ground.
But otherwise the lead was spread, with John Noble (29 disposals) continuing his strong year, Sam Flanders (28 disposals) returning to his ball winning ways, and others like Ben Long, Bailey Humphrey, Wil Powell and Bodhi Upland all playing roles.
The Suns have a draw that means they will surely make the eight.
Should they tick off a win against Essendon next week, the Suns then face Collingwood, Adelaide and Brisbane in the next three weeks, which will decide if they make the top four.
Well played @FOXFOOTY 🤠@hardwick_damienpic.twitter.com/crLazZFuQ5
— Gold Coast Suns (@GoldCoastSUNS) June 28, 2025
WELL PLAYED
A quick hat tip to Fox Footy, who donated $2000 to charity RizeUp on Saturday, to even out the fine Suns coach Damien Hardwick copped for his middle finger salute.
The finger gesture from last week’s game only went public because it was shown on AFL 360, even if it was a poor move from Hardwick, and the subsequent $2000 fine from the AFL was justified.
Gold Coast shared on social media a check written out to RizeUp, which provides support and raises awareness of the scourge that is domestic violence, and was the reason the Suns wore blue socks against the Demons on Saturday.
In the end, the bird did some good.
DUAL DOG DELIGHT
It took a mini Bont and a forgotten Hawk for the Dogs to hold off Isaac Heeney and the wayward Swans.
Joel Freijah looks and moves like a star and his three goal third term held off Heeney’s premiership quarter explosion.
Freijah finished his work in front of the sticks and he read the play as smoothly as he kicked, collecting six intercept possessions, no mean feat when playing as a half-forward flanker.
And he never looked like missing with his four shots at goal.
They call him a mini Bont at Whitten Oval and he outshone his skipper Marcus Bontempelli on a milestone night.
No player taken in the past two drafts has really gone near the consistent output of Freijah, the 45th pick in 2023.
As Heeney bagged four goals in the sensational third term, Lachie Bramble saved just as many, with a 15 disposal quarter.
Bramble was bizarrely jettisoned by Hawthorn and hasn’t missed a single match since arriving at his second club, another masterstroke for the Dogs recruiting staff.
Where most were on ice skates at one end of the SCG, Bramble moved like Torvill and Dean through traffic and rebounded at will.
It was a beauty on Friday night, with Heeney joined by a fully returned Errol Gulden and a resurgent Brodie Grundy in pushing the Swans close to a classic win.
They will look back with plenty of regrets on this season, the Swans, and one of those regrets will be kicking 4.10 from set shots on Friday night.
The Dogs are a serious outfit and in the space of a few weeks clubs that saw easy wins on the run home against Sydney now know it won’t come that easy, even if Dean Cox’s side is resigned to missing the eight.
ESAVA’S ARRIVAL
Only once in 106 AFL games – most of which were up forward – had Esava Ratugolea collected 10 intercept possessions before his last four matches.
Starting with round 13’s meeting with the Giants, the Power defender has reeled off 12, 12, 11 and 11 intercepts, and taken 23 intercept marks in that span.
The big fella is getting in the way more than a puppy at your feet in the kitchen.
Perhaps it is no coincidence Port Adelaide has won three of those four games.
This is the player Hawthorn competed with Port Adelaide to get.
Brandon Zerk-Thatcher had some iffy moments against Carlton, but the Ratugolea-Aliir Aliir pairing looks one that can be set-and-forget for new coach Josh Carr next year.
Great to see a player finding career best form less than a month out from his 27th birthday.
Hok yeah: Roos pulverised — and there’s more dominance to come
North Melbourne have been dominated by Hawthorn at their home away from home in Tasmania. And even when the Devils enter the AFL in 2028, don’t expect the Hawks to step aside.
May’s swinging arm to come under scrutiny, Swan cops ban
Melbourne will be sweating on the availability of Steven May after his arm collected Ben Ainsworth in the head. Plus a Swan has been banned after Friday night’s fiery contest.