FOX FOOTY PodcastsAFL 360 - 'Round 1 HORRORS': Coaching trio under-fire after big losses & Collingwoods bounce back | 17/03/25
Catch up on all the footy news from AFL 360, Monday the 17th of March with Gerard Whateley and Garry Lyon.
AFL 360 hosts Gerard Whateley and Garry Lyon take a comprehensive look back at the first full round of footy for 2025. The pressure that is already on a number of coaches, with Hinkley, Longmuir and Voss all in the firing line and some hefty suspensions have been handed down as the AFL shows it’s serious about contact to the head.
For more of the show tune in on Fox Footy & KAYO
The full nine games has us bursting with footy from all angles, scas, storylines everywhere.
Unbelievable start Jared, there are coaches that are a bit nervous. We don't want to be knee jerk hard not to be on the back of three performances. In particular, I love the kids. I love the kids from Sam Lull and the Murphy Reeds, A Zaida.
Lindsay, Isaac Caaco.
They just step into football these days. There's no sort of easing into it. They just grab a scalp and off they go.
The game's capacity to replenish, but of this generation, the readiness not only how they carry themselves publicly, but the readiness to go in and make an impact immediately.
So you've got recruiters and you've got list managers have had great days on the weekend, so they've identified talent, they've got them into the club. They've made a difference, and they've gone and picked the eyes out of the young talent and they've just stepped up and went hate, I'm not waiting around.
I'm ready to go. From game one, I loved it, Yeah, no, joy quite like it.
All Right, here's what we've got lined up for you on three sixty tonight our coaches, Loop Beverage and Sam Mitchell. So the Hawks are two and zero and the Dogs have such a big week of celebration ahead of Friday nights encounter with Collingwood. Then on the Couch, Jack Revolt leads the team Jordi, Brownie and Bucks with the big opinions out of round one. Tomorrow night's Players Night, Travis Boke is about to break a beautiful milestone at Port Adelaide, so for all the tumult around the club, there's a glorious note as well. And Nick Blakey, who's been such a talking point through a couple of weeks, We've got it all lined up for Raiser's Edge, including the deliberate rush behind which people have been in a friends about. And it's the return of David Zita with a full suite at the Tribes. And then Wednesday Night Horse and Simmo fresh Eyes out of the coach's box and making his return to the desk. Bob Murphy, who spent so long with us in his playing days as the Bulldogs reached this one hundred year marker. Every Monday Night is going to start with the votes. The GVP votes the most valuable players from the rounds in the estimation of our Soul Judge Gary Lyon, and the player who has the most votes at the end of the year will find themselves behind the wheel of the GT Fastback Iconic Design, Unreal Performance fively be eight Engine thanks to our friends at.
Four ninety three grands worth, no correspond correspondence will be entered into. Let's go to Bailey Smith for vote one. Who was just astonishing and I wait this on the basis that there's a huge build up. He puts an enormous amount of pressure on himself. His position in the game not questioned, but we needed to be reminded.
And did we get the reminder?
He was absolutely superb yet thirty two touches seven clearances, but just took the enormity of first game at a new club and made it his own.
So well done. I love seeing that. I love this.
I think Thursday Night still remains one of the great upsets I've ever seen. Toby Nang curvis led the way and if you're going to get across the line, you need someone to put their big.
Chest up and say I'll be that man. His two goals I thought he was.
His physical presence was great at a team that would have gone in with a little doubt, no doubt, they would have gone in with doubts about their capacity to compete. They're forty one points down. What happens he stands up, They come away with a famous victory and the pressure goes to Carlton.
And then the three for me was Toby Green. Yesterday, they don't win. That's as simple as that.
They just don't win without Toby Green, who was creating Havy cup Ford. He was back to his busy self. He was in everything. He was hitting the school board. And then the area of the ground that they couldn't get on top of was through the middle. Finn Callahan was okay, it was better than okay.
It was great.
Tom Green was great, but Maxican was having an absolute picnic.
So he said, put me in the middle.
He went in the middle of eleven touches in the last quarter to kick the goal, four clearances and said.
Get on my back.
Yes, I'll take you to the promised Land and in time it might become.
It was one. They probably didn't deserve.
It in the end, but they got it, and that's a sign of a good side, sign of a great leader.
All right.
So here we are with the four GVP three to Santata, three to Toby Green, two to Finn Callahans so they didn't have the slider vutage. The Giants are played twice with the rounds and Toby man Curvis. We want the differentiation from the coaches Player of the Year, but Finn Callahan has led the way with Toby Green as well, and Bailey Smith bobs up karl Ai Mons.
Early in the middle, early days, early days, great start.
All right, let's get into the agenda and at the top of it the teams who suffered the horrors in round one, Carlton, Fremantle and Port Adelaide for all the planning and the associated hope what happens when it all goes so terribly wrong.
I'm not going to sit there and spin dreams. It's not not the way operate. I tell the truth, the facts. Where we were beating badly tonight. It's not the brand Foy we want to be playing.
I was pretty disappointing.
Yeah, I'm not going to shootcat.
It sacks the coach, sack everyone.
They've done the VFL side.
We lost you pass has got to go.
This is a serious waste of talent.
I've gotta be honest, I'm genuinely stunned.
I've never seen a team panic and as fluster as Carton worked from that way.
It was one of the worst performances I've seen from that scene. There's got enough experience out there. They got some soul searching to do the blues. This loss would haunt them later on in the even Well, this is what the slow goodbye looks like. Make a decision, you rip the vandaid off and you move on. Look at what this one's done with John Longmi.
There are other ways to still treat the ex coach or the former coach with respect. I just asked the question, why why prolong it for another twelve months.
And one that goes up a level and we're ready for that.
And then they turn up today and defensively looked inept, and there's Eb scratching his head thinking what's happening here?
Where are we?
And we've got ahead of ourselves as a group. If this loss questions everything at footy club.
You do not want to be soul searching after one game of footy. But that's the lot of three clubs, in particular, so port Adelaide right at the forefront of this gas on our first night together.
This was the concern that you aired.
What is the dynamic of the coaching succession plan and how does it impact? You never really know until it's team comes out and play.
And the question we asked then was who's the boss here?
Is it the boss for now who the board have already made a decision on and said he's not the boss going forward, or is it Josh Carr who's not the boss now but has been anointed by the board.
So what are you going to this game? And all the speculation.
About how it was going to impact on the footy club was well founded until so you've got to go, Okay, let's see how this plays out. And the response is this, What answer did the players give? They are on the bottom of the ladder with a percentage of thirty three, that's their answer. So my question is who's backing Ken? Who's backing Ken?
Right now? The board aren't back and Ken. They're saying, you know, we'll let you coach a year out.
Yeah, we've got one more year, Ken, But guess what, we don't see you as the long term coach, and then you go, okay, well we're told the players are right behind him, and okay, so you go on back Ken on the MCG against Collingwood, who are coming off a bit of a belting as well. And their answer to all of this speculation is bottom of the ladder, biggest feet and Ken's tenure thirty three percent, and all sorts of questions are throwing up was he smiling post? Yeah, should he be smiling? Well, he probably has been doing that for his whole career. But when you throw this into the melting pot, this coaching succession plan announced before the season even starts, well they get bigger than they normally would be. So ninety one point loss is the response from the playing group, and that to me, he doesn't say that they're backing Ken.
So my fear is that the decision making of the club has actually stripped Ken of his superpower. And here's superpower throughout his whole reign has been his capacity to galvanize his team, to make them classically more than the some of their parts.
Well, on Saturday night they just look.
Like the parts and the parts are a bit run down. So once you fracture the unity of that. So we're all in this together. Well, we're not really all in this together anymore. The board's already said you're out. Is it's designed to relieve the pressure and to provide a path forward.
I fear that.
What it's actually done is just strip the of his armory.
And that's not to suggest that he's being anything other than he's always being passionate and loves it and invested in doing all the work Monday to Friday. But this is, this is what it opens the door to, right. I don't know if any of the players were affected by it, or all of them are affected by it, but I'm suggesting on the back of the performance that there's a large percentage of them whose mind wandered during that game. The mind wandered Jared during the game, okay, in round one. And that's not to say that, you know, the best players' minds don't want it. They just stay at the contest where it five down, five up, whatever the case may be. But there would be someone within that side, and maybe more than one, and maybe if it's a majority, they're in all sorts of trouble. Whose mind went to why not Josh is thinking of this, and you know we've got to I've got to get through Ken or will they make it? All those issues, and so we need to see response. And the bottom line is I'm looking at this Port Adelaide side and they're the port nice guys, Dixon Gone, the hardest man's butters who's not playing, and maybe maybe the one you wouldn't want to run into in the Ali Sam pel Pepper. Apart from that, I looked through that group a nice bunch. They looked to me like the nice bunch of fellas. So who's going to dig in on behalf of Ken and show some sort of response?
So response has been the thing that he's always been able to conjure. So it does sit as a big unanswered question as to what happens next. There's the spiritual and then there's the strategic and the tactical and the way that the game plan unfiled on.
Travis Spoke's going to join us tomorrow. He'd be a great chat because he did give. He kept giving. Well, this was a little unfold So this pricked your is.
Now it's hard to be anything positive around the way we played. Other than that we're in transition. We're in a space of playing a slightly different game style and clearly we've got a lot to learn.
You can't be in transition in your last like you're coming off a pre limb. You can't be saying we was taking six months of pre season and we're still in transition and we've got a slightly different game plan.
Therefore we're still learning it.
You can't be you haven't got that time for a start, Kenny, and you're coming off a prelimb. This is a team who was supposed to be in the absolute window. So it was a disaster in every way.
You look at it, and a lot so this is the chosen direction of the management of the club, So they have to own a lot of this and can't just leave your coach or your coaches swinging in the breeze at the moment.
One game and that's this is what happens.
It's one game, and we're going to talk about two other clubs that well, one of them's on a coaching contract now, so that's also going to raise twenty of issues. And I'll tell you what, if Michael Voss was in that situation, it'll be not there for him all.
Right the fremattle side of things. So I was in Geelong on Saturday for a team that is being touted as the time is now and the rise to the top four and start to challenge. It was unflattering in the extreme. They didn't meet the absolute basics of competitiveness and being fully dialed in. They played like it was ten thirty in the morning, which on Perth time it was. They wouldn't be very good test cricketers on that front, but when you don't apply yourself to that minimum standard, then everything else falls a putch along. Players ran straight past the freemantle opponents and did as they pleased. Really, the longer that the first half went and there was no cohesion and unity in what they were trying to do, and then it left the defense utterly defenseless and not much was done to try to support them either. So this was a given that you spend your whole time counting down to one game and this was a chance to march into the most difficult terrain in footy and plant your flag.
They have been good in Geelong in.
Recent times, so there was no need to fear it.
Show us what you got. Shit, I want to have more than this, So.
They looked like they weren't ready for the season, which, as you said, is mind blowing, particularly given they won their last two games down there. They rallied for period of time in the third quarter on the back of midfield to midfield presence.
Yep, dominated the center square, got the entries and then the kid went.
Crazy and short lived and then just folded again, which is almost worse. Almost compounds things that makes it worse. So they can't get they can't get much worse for them the Freemount of Footy club, and the pressure is absolutely just and reasonable to be placed feeling squarely at their feet. Now they've got Sydney coming up on the back of two losses.
So what a week. What a week for Justin Lomia and the Freemantle Footy Club.
You don't want your first press conference postgame to be we weren't tough enough, and then how do you take that back to the players?
Well, this is there's only one answer for that, and that is that they smacked Sydney right between the nose, right between the eyes, not literally, but with fierce aggression and all the sort of things that they hope that they've got because if they don't, then those questions will.
Linger and continue to linger.
So two under massive pressure already, and that's that's the game we're in.
I didn't think anyone could be exposed after what Carlen did on Thursday night. I thought everyone can go about their losing and operate under the cover of navy blue darkness.
Has this got a way on the back of you tell me this?
I was a I've caught up as much as I can, so freemo, just lamentable, and then you got put outlaid lamentable. Is this been lost a little bit in the process of just what happened here?
Maybe the first forty eight hours until next consequential footy was played.
It was.
A wonder to behold the way that that team froze. So one of the markers in the hard rise of Carlton this has been a hard rise is they would suffer under the threat of consequence. Everything carried such consequence. Michael Voss progressively broke that nexus in the back half of twenty twenty three, and by the final series they played for the possibility, not the consequence.
This was regression.
On Thursday night, the last two outings they failed to score in a big final and that game was over and done with, and that was embarrassing that performed. They're forty one points ahead of a side that we all suspect to go and are in a huge transition and the transitional turn bullied them into submission and they looked like they were fearful in the end and from their inability to execute fundamental stuff. And that's I still think this is. Of all those big results over the weekend.
This is the one that resonated with me of the most.
Carlton is combustible. It's a combustible community and Brian Cook talks with a sense of lament around that is get too high and too low. So the risk is for a club like Carlton is what does this do to them? Can it stimy the first six weeks of their season or can they isolate it, shake it off, solver and then hope that there aren't severe fault lines in their actual game. But if they can solve the mental side of it, they can get back to pushing. This is training tonight and Charlie Kerno is there and that's going to be seen as the panacea.
But it's a throwback. That's a trap and that is a trap.
They come back and the savior mentality, the hero mentality that's existed at that football club for a long period of time.
Someone don't come a fix, Charlie will come and fix us.
And their opponent is absolutely probably the last team that you want to be playing coming up. So no, I just think that that was enormously disappointing. Cuteosit Richmond, and credit to them, and credit to their coach who's able to get that out of that group when they are staring at the abyss of forty one points, the easiest thing in the world would have been pack up. That speaks of a group that looked at the coach and have got some belief in him. So fantastic to the Richmond footy club. But they're lamentable.
Do you think there are deep seated problems in their game?
Well, until they prove that they're not there, that inability to execute when someon hate came their way, it just lingers over them. Now that lingers over them until they put together a performance where we all can sit back and look and go, that's the furnace, that's the hottest.
Of hot footballs.
And they stood up and they executed and they.
Didn't double grab.
Right now, they're just a fumbly nervous football side and that's their reputation on the back of giving up a forty one point lead to this year Richmond's side and the manner in which they did it fumble fumble, Now, I don't want the foot he turn.
It over, hand it back goal, out of the way.
That's your lot to live with until you change it. You can change it against Hawthorne and Carlton fans. I don't think they've got to hell a lot of faith.
That will happen.
But you know, this is a long, long season. We said all the time, don't need jerk. Last week we said it and said, don't need jerk on Collinwood. Don't need jerk on them. But that is their lot. They've earned that monika right now of the fumbly nervous Blues until they can change it.
Yeah, so you've got to go and put it right straight away. And Collingwood's the good reference point for all that they looked against the Giants. They rectified so new players all made impacts right from the very start. Dan Houston, you referenced on Wednesday night, he came in and transformed them instantly.
They didn't look old and slow. They looked dynamic.
So that's it. That is the options you've got as a football club.
Right.
You can take the pressure and take the criticism that came their way and that it was all justified.
Don't worry the coast.
Marks around where they sat in the age bracket. No one or you should never have been writing him off. But those questions were raised because of the way they got beaten. And your options are to live with that for the next however.
Long or fix it. And they fixed it.
So there's your lesson and learnings for Carlton, for Port Adelaide and for Freemantle.
Fix it and then we'll sit here or whoever will be here next week and you go, okay.
For a long year they were ordinary and awful, but they've squared it up.
A couple of tribunal incidents and one really big test case O at the start of the season comes out of a second in collision from the North Melbourne Western Bulldogs game which you will have well seen.
Luke Cleary is.
The fundamental question as to how he is and we'll talk to Luke Beveridge about that. But things seem to be Okay, what level of culpabilities does Jackson Archer wear in this collision and is it worthy of the charge and the three week suspension.
My flint reaction when I saw this not so long ago was it's a free kick to Jackson Archer.
That's the way I first saw it.
What level of culpability when you're asking players to slow up and try to compute in your own mind while this game's going on and you're running hard at the footy about what you can and can't do, then it's their instance. Is there split seconds? Could he have slowed up and sort of hovered to some degree? Well, if he was at the board and had his head down and was still moving forward, then that's an argument that I could see being made. But this to me looked instantaneous. Looks to me like the young fella like went to ground to get the footy, where Jackson at that stage is reasonable enough to say, Okay, you weren't down at that and I'm the criticism would be the velocity, but the tough game.
Yeah yeah, So the Kamakazi approaches what will be used against him tomorrow night and whether he actually had a legitimate play at the ball and if he didn't, then what was his presence there? But I was like you in live action, I was thinking, he he's going to get a free kick for that, for the blow that before you realize the damage that had been done.
Yeah.
And then the one extrapolation that I would be raising at the tribuneal tomorrow right to be tested, is what if Archer has his leg cut clean in half in that collision, which is what the rule was brought in for. Now, Cleary didn't mean to go to ground. There's a whole lot going on in this instance, which is why you're entitled us. Was it just a really unfortunate accident or is that approach to the ball opening up?
No one's in control of it.
If you're going to come in like that.
It was umpired that way on the weekend. I thought it was umpired free kick on the weekend.
When you look at these incidents, it will show now and then then none of them is at the saying speed, and that'll be the criticism of Jackson Archer. But these are all free kicks. That's a free kick to Petty rolling onto the footy. San Taylor takes Petty's legs out he gets the free kick is the free kick to Zaga Lindsay. So it's umpired and had. Well, that's the way I saw these incidents. This is the game that you saw in its entirety. So you go back and you go, okay, then that's the way that would be. But he's got a three And the galling part is it's a three game, so it's all or nothing. So of course they're going to go and they'll appeal it and then we'll wait and see what the AFL deemed to be appropriate.
So how fast you're allowed to.
Run you have to sit in the debate of guilty or not guilty. You can't get clouded by the number of weeks because there is a concussion as a result, and that sat in the Justin McInerney case. So the Swans folded their tent on this and accepted. So this is a bump laded strict liability head clash whiplash you are responsible for. So McInerney hasn't done anything egregious or overly aggressive.
The only option would have been to go at the ball. So the option there is there's the ball, So go to the ball and not make the head contact.
No question, he chooses to bump.
Yeah, so he has an option there and then you suffer the consequences.
Now, the worry part is for.
Starcevich's history, which is not taking the consideration. Concerned about that young man and hope that he's going to be okay. But I don't have an issue with that one so much, so I'm not surprised they're not challenging that.
Yeah, so there'll be three cases for us at the Tribune or tomorrow nights. Shall we just revel in the last play from the Giants revels and interesting probably played better in some households than others.
They were great that have a.
Plan to win the game at the end and give yourself the best possibility of it. And it led to Lockie Keith, who Dwayne quite rightly called one of the great survivors in the game, to finally have his moment. See Kelly doesn't flush this kick, but everybody knows what they're doing and the ball is to go back into the middle at all costs. Yeah, so Clayton's and Ward comes down knowing as well.
Yeah, I mean that's this will be reviewed to within an inch of its life. From a Melbourne point of view, there's a whole heap of positioning issues there, Clayton giving away the coronor for Finn Callahan at that stage. And the irony of this is that Aidan Johnson had the exact same shot a minute earlier from the exact same part of the ground at the opposite end and just pushed it wide and Lucky Keith.
Was good enough to go back and drill it.
And as I said, good sides fighting away when they probably outplayed to be perfectly honest for most.
Of the day.
But this sort of speaks to where they're at as a footy club when you can go to the mcg not get it all your own. I thought Melbourne defended their run and there if you want to call it, really well, but look at that they get the win.
Yes, there was a bit of this is us this season and the Giants Melbourne were very good, a better.
Yeah, they looked fresh, they looked different. As a Melbourne fan, at least it was different.
Six. I thought the selections were bold.
Six new faces in there and they tried some different stuff and they were willing, and Christian was back and the kids look all right, so they probably deserved.
The wind but they didn't, and they'll be looking for their first win next week.
