AFL Finals 2023 Brisbane v Carlton: All the news, action and fallout from preliminary final
For 30 minutes it was on – the Carlton-Collingwood blockbuster at the MCG. But then, in a sudden rush, the dream vanished. What happened? Who failed to stand up? Find out here.
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For 30 minutes it was on. The Grand Final everyone, in particular the AFL, were dreaming of was going to happen.
Carlton had just produced their best quarter of football for the season and were 23-points up on Brisbane at quarter-time.
The Gabba crowd were stunned. The Lions’ players were stunned. And everyone else was thinking about the same thing – Carlton playing Collingwood in the big one.
It would be the first all-Victorian Grand Final at the MCG since 2011 and can you imagine the city of Melbourne? Nuts, bananas, crazy.
The only problem with all of that was the fact there were still three quarters to be played.
And there was another small issue about how Brisbane hadn’t been beaten at the Gabba all year and were clearly a five goal better side on their home deck.
Also, as good as the Blues had been, the Lions were going to awaken from their slumber at some stage. It happened in the second quarter and it came with a rush.
All those wonderful dreams of Collingwood playing Carlton had evaporated by half-time with Brisbane leading by three points after kicking five of the six goals in the second quarter.
Now the conversation was all about if the Blues had fired all their shots early?
Two minutes into the third quarter it was apparent they had.
Carlton captain Patrick Cripps was having a dirty night – he only had six touches for the first half – and it got decidedly worse when he mistakenly booted the ball out of the centre square after a free-kick had been paid to Brisbane ruckman Oscar McInerney.
He was confused, thought the free had gone Carlton’s way but it was still a massive error which handed the Lions the crucial opening goal of the term.
Two minutes later Charlie Curnow, who’d also been struggling with just one goal from two touches in the first half, found himself with a set shot from 40m out. He kicked it out on the full.
The ball quickly went down the other end where Charlie Cameron, who’d been hardly sighted and didn’t even touch the ball in the opening quarter, ran into an easy goal.
The Lions then kicked the next two goals of the game to make it seven-in-a-row and a 27-point lead four minutes into the final term.
To Carlton’s credit, it kicked two goals in as many minutes through Cripps and Harry McKay to reduce the margin to 16 points with eight minutes remaining.
Suddenly that GF dream might have had a pulse again. Not for long.
Five minutes later, Linc McCarthy marked a Darcy Gardiner long bomb in the goal square to officially end it.
Brisbane would be playing Collingwood in the GF which was the best result for the purists given they’d clearly been the best two teams for the season.
Unfortunately, Michael Voss couldn’t keep his perfect record in preliminary finals at the Gabba alive. He won four as a player and would have thought he might have been keeping that clean sheet with what he saw in the opening term.
The Blues kicked the first five goals of the game and their pressure rating was off the charts with Brisbane not kicking their first goal until 90 seconds before the quarter-time siren through a Eric Hipwood set shot.
It had been an extraordinary display of pressure football and started in the opening minute when Matthew Cottrelll got out the back, took one bounce and ran into an open goal.
The damage was being done around the ball by the Blues with 5-1 centre clearances and 22-11 inside 50s.
If it wasn’t for full-back Harris Andrews the Lions would have been eight goals down at the first break as he single-handedly repelled a number of Carlton advances.
While the crowd, which strangely had a large and loud Carlton contingent, were stunned at the first break, the smiles were back on their faces at half-time.
Everything had returned to normal Gabba programming in the second quarter with the Lions executing their slingshot offence from the half-back line which is a trademark on their home deck.
Irishman Conor McKenna was in everything, including kicking a brilliant snap from 45m at the 22-minute mark but that was trumped a couple of minutes later when fellow defender Ryan Lester kicked his second goal in six years.
When things like that start happening, you know something is up. It was.
The Blues had too many big guns down with Cripps the poster boy for that. He looked like a man who’d given everything the previous two weeks and simply had nothing left.
While Sam Walsh continued to enhance his reputation with a game-high 34 possessions, other finals heroes like Blake Acres and Sam Docherty were banged up and cooked.
It had been one hell of a journey, one no-one saw coming three months ago but sadly in the end they couldn’t deliver the dream GF.
Scoreboard
LIONS 1.2 (8) 6.6 (42) 9.9 (63) 11.13 (79)
BLUES 5.1 (31) 6.3 (39) 6.7 (43) 9.9 (63)
GOALS:
Lions: Daniher 2, McInerney 2, McCarthy 2, Hipwood, McKenna, Lester, Cameron, Ah Chee
Blues: Cripps 2, McKay 2, Martin 2, Cottrell, Docherty, Curnow
MARCO MONTEVERDE’S BEST:
Lions: Coleman, Dunkley, McInerney, Zorko, Neale
Blues: Walsh, Newman, Weitering, McGovern, Marchbank
Crowd: 36,012
VOSS: GUTTED BLUES WILL GO AGAIN
Carlton coach Michael Voss says the Blues are “extremely disappointed” to have fallen short of the grand final by one week despite the club’s memorable run to September.
Bidding for a 12th win in 13 matches to secure a spot in next Saturday’s decider, the Blues were beaten 11.13 (79) to 9.9 (63) by the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba on Saturday night.
Perhaps making the defeat harder to stomach was the Blues’ effort to kick the first five goals of the match and lead 31-8 at quarter-time.
“We’ve come up here with a real goal to get this job done, and we’ve fallen short, so we’re extremely disappointed,” Voss said after Carlton’s first preliminary final since 2000.
“We came up here thinking our best was good enough, (but) credit to Brisbane. They bounced after the first quarter.
“(They’re) a side who’s probably been at this for a little longer than us in terms of opportunities like this. They were able to correct themselves, steady themselves and were able to turn the game around.
“For a first shot at it, it’s obviously good, but the goal was clear for us and we’ve fallen short of it.”
Voss, who captained the Lions to a hat-trick of premierships from 2001 to 2003, said it was important for the Blues to learn from the defeat, and stressed the importance of his team “having all these really great experiences together”.
“We’ve had a lot of these great moments where we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and I’ve talked a lot about adapting and overcoming, and we’ve certainly done that,” he said.
“To see how that’s transpired across the year has been incredibly impressive to watch, and it’s why I’m loath to share my own story because I think our story is well and truly enough.
“No matter what story I tell, and no matter what experience I can share, feeling the hurt, feeling like you’re close and feeling like you’re getting an opportunity and having that ripped away from you, there’s no better experience than that.
“What I hope it turns into is that we’re a hungry football club, and we’re a hungry football team, and we want to figure at this end of the season more often to give ourselves that chance.”
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