Saints Scrape In As Essendon, Suns and Port Keep Climbing
Ninety seconds. That’s how close St Kilda came to a genuine footy horror story this weekend, and even though they escaped it, nobody at Saints HQ should be feeling good about where this season is heading. Meanwhile Essendon finally cracked the win column, and the Suns and Port Adelaide kept doing the quiet, steady stuff that actually wins you finals footy in the long run.
Let’s get into it, because there’s legit a lot to unpack from this round and not all of it is doom and gloom.
St Kilda’s near-miss that says it all
So the Saints were literally 90 seconds away from failing to register a single score against the Western Bulldogs. Think about that for a second. In a sport where scoring is meant to be the whole point, St Kilda nearly went an entire four quarters without troubling the scoreboard attendant at all. They got there in the end, which I guess is something, but let’s not pretend that’s a line worth celebrating.
The result leaves St Kilda as the only winless team left in the competition, and honestly it’s been coming. This isn’t a one-off bad night, it’s the continuation of a trend that’s been building for a while now. The forward line has looked toothless most weeks, the ball movement through the middle has been clunky, and when you’re that close to a scoreless game against a side that isn’t even flying this year themselves, you’ve got some serious questions to answer at board and footy department level.
I’m not here to pile on individual players because that’s not fair and honestly most of them are competing their backsides off in a system that isn’t giving them much to work with. But as a footy watcher, when a club is this far off the pace, it’s worth asking out loud whether the list build and game plan are actually aligned. Because right now it doesn’t look like it.
Essendon’s monkey finally off the back
Credit where it’s due though, Essendon’s first win of the season is a genuinely good news story and one worth sitting with for a minute. It’s easy to forget how brutal winless streaks are on a playing group mentally. You start pressing, decisions get rushed, confidence drains out of the side collectivly and it becomes this horrible snowball. So seeing the Bombers break through is a weight off, and you could see it in the way they played in the back half of that game, way more freedom, way more willingness to back themselves on the outside.
It doesn’t fix everything overnight. One win doesn’t suddenly solve list issues or fitness depth or whatever else has been holding Essendon back this year. But it does give the group something to build belief around heading into the back half of the season, and in a competition this tight, belief is honestly half the battle.
The Suns keep doing Suns things, and I’m here for it
As a Lions fan I’m contractually required to side-eye anything good happening at Gold Coast, but credit where it’s due, the Suns have been genuinely impressive this AFLW season and their latest win backs that up. They’re building something real up there and it’s brilliant for footy in this state, even if it means Queensland now has two AFLW outfits worth watching instead of just the one I obviously prefer.
What I like about the Suns at the moment is they’re not just winning on raw talent, they’re winning on structure. Their pressure around stoppages has been one of the most underrated parts of their game all year, and it’s translating into cheap turnovers that their forward line is cashing in on. That’s not luck, that’s coaching and buy-in from the players, and it deserves recognition even from a Brisbane die-hard like me.
Port Adelaide quietly building something real
Port’s win this round might not grab the headlines the way the Saints story will, but don’t sleep on what’s happening down at Alberton. They’ve been one of the more consistent improvers in the competition this year, and when you look at their list on paper there’s genuine depth coming through, not just one or two star names carrying the load.
This is exactly the kind of win that doesn’t show up on a highlight reel but matters heaps for a club’s trajectory. Beating teams you’re supposed to beat, doing it with some style, and banking the four points without needing a miracle finish. That’s the stuff finals contenders are made of, and Port look like they’re trending that direction even if nobody outside Adelaide is talking about it yet.
What this round actually tells us about the ladder
Zoom out and this round is a genuinely useful snapshot of where the competition sits right now. You’ve got St Kilda stuck at the bottom with some serious structural questions to answer, Essendon starting to find their feet after a tough start, and the Suns and Port both building quiet momentum that could make them real headaches come finals time.
The gap between the top sides and the bottom sides in AFLW is still bigger than anyone wants it to be, and St Kilda’s near-scoreless afternoon is proof of that. But the flip side is competitions grow through exactly these kind of moments. Essendon climbing out of the cellar shows it’s not a permanent state, it just takes time, patience and a club actually backing its system.
No notes on the growth of this competition
Look, I’ll bang this drum every single week because I genuinely believe it: AFLW deserves to be covered with the same seriousness as the men’s comp, warts and all. That means calling out St Kilda’s struggles honestly instead of softening it, and it means giving proper credit to clubs like the Suns and Port who are doing unglamorous, genuine development work.
This round had a bit of everything, a cautionary tale, a feel-good redemption story and two quiet achievers putting the league on notice. That’s a healthy competition doing exactly what it should be doing, and as someone who wants to see this game keep growing in Queensland and everywhere else, that’s about as good a sign as any.
