The Swans and Hawks will open the AFL season at the SCG. Follow along for all the major moments and post game reactions.
The Swans and Hawks will open the AFL season at the SCG. Follow along for all the major moments and post game reactions.
As we eagerly await the opening bounce of the season, Jake Niall – The Age’s chief footy writer – previews the season ahead.
It is the perfect evening for the first game of the AFL in Sydney. Low twenties with a hint of a breeze and the crowds are already filling in decked out in red and white.
The great thing about sport is that there is always next year and we are looking at a healthy crowd tonight at the SCG.
Two hours before the opening bounce Jake Lloyd was seen walking in from the carpark ahead of his 250th game and walked through a crowd of well-wishers.
During the week I asked forward Will Hayward was the grand final like Voldemort in Harry Potter, that it cannot be spoken about.
He didn’t get the reference, but it is safe to say that the grand final still looms large.
Can the Swans recover against an exciting Hawthorn team that have their own finals ambitions?
Time will tell whether the new voice of Dean Cox as coach will help the Swans to shake off their bad memories of the MCG.
It was a bold decision by Channel Seven to put Kane Cornes and Dale Thomas in the same commentary booth. Under the new $4.5 billion seven-year rights agreement, the network has lured big names as part of their expanded coverage, bringing in Cornes from Channel Nine.
Media pundit Cornes took a swipe at Thomas in 2023 when he said if he employed the former Magpie and Blue, or another media identity in Tony Shaw, “I’d want my money back.”
“I’m sick of AFL figures having opinions off the back of other AFL figures,” Cornes said on Nine two years ago.
“For the likes of Daisy Thomas and Tony Shaw, who work part-time and they don’t have to do a lot of on-air time, for their big opinions this week to be something that I said 12 months ago on SEN SA is embarrassing.
“So, get up early, watch the games, work hard and stop having opinions off other people’s opinions.
“If I employed these people, I’d want my money back.”
Thomas had a whack back at Cornes last year, responding to some criticism the former Port Adelaide player made about current Power star Zak Butters.
“If [Cornes] was sitting direct to me at any stage in front of a microphone or in front of me at the pub, I’d tell him that is the dumbest thing I’ve heard for a long while,” Thomas said on Triple M.
The two former AFL players have reportedly broken bread in the time since. But bring your popcorn for the TV coverage tonight…
From Hawthorn media:
Club debutants – Tom Barrass & Josh Battle
Tom Barrass and Josh Battle will don the brown and gold for the first time tonight. Barrass arrived at the club via the 2024 Trade Period following a 10-year stint with the West Coast Eagles, which included a premiership (2018) and a club best and fairest (2022). Battle, who was a childhood Hawthorn supporter, joined the Hawks in October last year as a restricted free agent following 123 games for St Kilda.
Former Hawthorn Captain Chris Langford, along with fellow premiership Hawk David Polkinghorne will present the guernseys.
Hawks to wear Heritage Clash Guernsey
In nod to the past, Hawthorn will be wearing its Heritage Clash Guernsey to kick off the 2025 season. The predominantly brown garment features the traditional ‘V’ on the front, in addition to club’s 100-year commemorative logo. The Hawks will be wearing a different one-off 100-year commemorative guernsey in their centenary match in Round 8 later this year.
Tom Hanily (Swans ) and Sam Frost (Hawks) are the subs.
Tonight we will be trying to show the differences, if any, between the two commentary teams working for Seven and Fox Footy as it is the first time Fox has had the chance to put their own commentary over Seven matches.
Those who follow the NRL will be used to this as Fox NRL and Nine have used their own teams for years.
Scott Spits will be keeping an eye on Seven and I’ll be monitoring Fox Footy.
Seven have made a lot of changes to their team while Fox have brought in some big guns of their own.
Given he’s proving himself and doing things his way, coach Sam Mitchell is hardly about to pay heed to expectations outside Hawthorn.
The Hawks start the season as one of the AFL’s most exciting and talked-about teams, having lasy year returned to the finals for the first time since 2018.
His players dubbed their aggressive style of play “HokBall” and, after a 0-5 start, it propelled them all the way to a narrow semi-final loss.
One of the major questions for this season, which opens on Friday night when Sydney host Hawthorn at the SCG, is whether the Hawks are the real deal.
Entering his fourth year as coach, Mitchell wryly recalls the prophecies of doom when Hawthorn finished well down the ladder in 2022 and ’23.
“Expectation is a funny thing – if you get caught up or start talking about inside, you can get off-track,” he said.
“A couple of years ago, we’d gutted the list and we were tanking – we didn’t listen to the outside world when that was the narrative.
“It would be a bit hypocritical of us now, really, to talk about ,‘This is what the world thinks, this is what we should do’.
“Every coach would be the same – you listen to your internal expectations. If you live up to that, the outside world will handle itself.”
But for all Hawthorn’s confidence, and the inclusion of big-name recruits Tom Barrass and Josh Battle to bolster their defence, Mitchell acknowledges no-one quite knows what is coming.
Given Sydney’s lengthy casualty list, topped by Errol Gulden and Callum Mills, the Hawks will start favourites on Friday night.
With new coach Dean Cox in charge, and coming off last year’s grand final humiliation, the Swans are hard to assess.
“Every team is a bit of a unknown into a new season. Obviously they’ve had a coaching handover, but Coxy has been there for a long time,” Mitchell said.
“I worked with Coxy for a year over in the west. He’s a really professional operator.
“The majority of preparation for just about every team is what you’ve worked on as an club … making sure you can put forward your best foot.
“Hopefully they’re asking questions of us as well.”
Cyclone Alfred, and the cancellation of the two Queensland games, means Friday night now opens the AFL’s round zero in the northern states.
Sydney’s mid-year rookie draft recruit Tom Hanily will make his AFL debut, while former St Kilda defender Ben Paton will play his first game for the Swans.
As Barrass and Battle start life as Hawks, one of their main assignments will be Sydney key position player Tom McCartin, who impressed in the pre-season when he was switched from defence to attack.
AAP
There is a lot of attention around the raft of new AFL-themed TV shows this season along with the boost to the commentary teams for both Fox Footy and Seven.
Nick Riewoldt is among the AFL figures joining the fray as a TV pundit, with Seven, but he isn’t trying to take things too seriously when talking about his competitors.
“Some of it I find quite fun and good-natured banter between networks; some of it I find a bit juvenile. Like, c’mon, we’re talking about footy,” Riewoldt said during an appearance on Triple M’s Mick in the Morning show on Friday.
G’day everyone and welcome to the 2025 AFL season. I’m Roy Ward and along with Scott Spits, we will be taking you through all the action as Hawthorn and Sydney face off at the SCG.
The season was meant to start last night in Brisbane but Cyclone Alfred ended that dream and forced the league to postpone its Queensland matches this weekend.
We will be doing all the usual in-game and post game coverage with tonight’s blog but we will also be keeping a keen eye and ear on the new TV commentary teams at both Fox Sports and Seven but more on that later.
First bounce is due at 7.40pm AEDT. Please enjoy the hours to come.