Source : the age
Lachie Neale has continued his post premiership victory lap on Instagram.
Neale recently added the courtroom style sketch from his tribunal appearance last Tuesday night where he was suspended for the grand final, only to have that ban overturned on appeal on Thursday night.
He attached Akon’s track Locked Up to play in the background.
Earlier today, Neale had a humour exchange with Jack Ginnivan, the Hawks star whom Neale gut punched to earn the initial ban.
Fremantle players and fans weren’t the only people let down on grand final weekend.
Saturday auctions took their annual footy haircut with the total number of scheduled auctions down to 291 on Saturday, that’s less than a third of the 918 scheduled the previous weekend.
Domain still recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 52 per cent from 178 reported results while 29 auctions were withdrawn.
Wes Mountain reports that:
Kylie Minogue made her keenly anticipated and much-awaited AFL grand final debut on Saturday. And with a strong Australian audience, coupled with the adoration of fans in her home-town stadium, it meant her set as the feature part of the pre-match entertainment was a clear winner.
And, just quietly, Kylie trumped Snoop Dogg, too.
Channel Seven is reporting that the Australian starlet and Mike Brady, who belted out his famous footy track Up There Cazaly, reached an audience of 4.35 million with a total TV audience of 1.83 million – up 20 per cent on last year when controversial American Snoop Dogg was the main attraction.
It was a bumper day for the free-to-air network and long-time AFL rights holder.
In the wake of Will Ashcroft winning another premiership and, almost, claiming a third Norm Smith Medal, it’s worth reading this Good Weekend profile on him from earlier in the season.
It didn’t look too bad on the telly. There was young Will Ashcroft, chasing the ball into a pack, as he is prone to do, surrounded by players much bigger than his 182-centimetre, 82-kilogram self. Suddenly he was on the ground, sandwiched between two Geelong Cats players, his right leg planted in one direction as the ball bounced off in another. So par-for-the-course did it seem for Aussie rules that the camera moved on, following the ball down the field. It took a few beats for the cameraman to realise something was happening behind play and to pan back. There, lying on the ground, holding his knee, was the Brisbane Lions midfielder. Moments later the physios swooped in, and a few moments after that Ashcroft hobbled off the ground, pain etched across his face. It was July 22, 2023, midway through the fourth quarter of a round-19 AFL match at the Gabba, the Lions’ home turf. The day Will Ashcroft ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament. The worst day of his then-19-year life.
You might say this means Will Ashcroft has had a pretty blessed life, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Eldest child of former Lions triple premiership player Marcus Ashcroft and PE teacher Bekky, Ashcroft has been marinated in sport his whole life. Indeed, been a star his whole life: winning at school swimming and athletics, captaining his Gold Coast school’s rugby union team, moving south in year 10 to Melbourne’s Brighton Grammar, where two years later he was footy co-captain and best-and-fairest. Leading the U18s Aussie rules team, the Sandringham Dragons, to grand final victory in 2022, captaining the U18 All-Australian team that year.
Drafted to his father’s old club, the Brisbane Lions, for a hotly anticipated 2023 debut, playing every match in the first half of that season, gunning for the 2023 Rising Star award. Then: a fleeting moment of bad luck, one necessitating a knee reconstruction and the best part of a year off footy.
Even Jonathan Brown, a magnetic figure of Brisbane’s first premiership three-peat in the early 2000s, is in awe of Chris Fagan.
A warrior for the Lions, Brown experienced glory as a teenager in 2001.
But after losing the 2004 grand final – his fourth premiership decider in his first five years in the AFL – Brown played in just two more finals in the last 10 seasons of his glittering career.
The hulking forward is proud and astonished with how Fagan, famously appointed as a 55-year-old without ever playing in the AFL, has transformed the club he grew up supporting and then became an icon at.
The gold knee-high boots Kylie Minogue spun around the MCG in on Saturday afternoon could outshine her iconic gold hot pants in the fashion stakes after one of the most memorable AFL grand final performances of all time.
Though Minogue wore three custom outfits from Dolce & Gabbana during her celebrated pre-game performance, it was her choice of boots from the Melbourne label Bared Footwear that we can’t get out of our heads.
Like her clothing choices, Minogue’s boots were custom-made. Bared founder Anna Baird travelled to her factory in China and personally brought them back for the big event.
When the grand final performance was announced, Baird, who founded the footwear label 18 years ago, contacted Minogue’s stylist, Frank Strachan, to see if they could work with the Grammy winner.
“She was really happy to be in an Australian brand,” Baird said. “We ended up getting her seven different pairs and I brought them back myself from the factory.”
Two police officers were assaulted in Fremantle, leaving one with a cut to her head that required hospitalisation, and more than two dozen people were arrested as thousands converged on the port city on Saturday to watch the Dockers clash with the Lions for the AFL grand final.
Several violent incidents marred an otherwise peaceful day, as disappointed Fremantle supporters had their hopes of a maiden premiership dashed in the dying minutes of the game.
Vision posted to social media showed two WA Police officers contenting with an angry crowd as they attempted to arrest a man on Essex Street, just off Fremantle’s main strip.
One woman can allegedly be seen hitting the officers, while at one point another man rushed in and bowled them over as they had the man they were trying to arrest on the ground.
While the sides from yesterday’s decider continue their celebrations or commiserations, both Fremantle and Brisbane’s AFLW sides are playing today.
The Dockers had 25-point win over the Crows in Adelaide with Kiera Bowers finishing with 30 disposals and Eden Zanker kicking two goals.
The Lions women are on the field now playing Sydney Swans in Sydney with the match still in the first quarter.
Melbourne Airport and the city’s hotels recorded bumper figures due to the AFL grand final at the MCG on Saturday.
The two interstate sides and Kylie Minogue’s pregame performance led to extra need for planes and rooms as the 100,023 strong crowd and those who travelled in for the vibes arrived in Victoria.
The school holidays would have also influenced the rise in travellers.
Major Events minister Anthony Carbines said Melbourne Airport welcomed 243,000 passengers on Thursday and Friday while 52 additional Perth return flights went through the airport compared to the same week last year.
It was one of the greatest grand finals of modern times, and possibly among the greatest ever. And an Australia-wide TV audience agreed, tuning in to witness the most-watched AFL season-decider in history.
Channel Seven is reporting that Saturday’s gripping clash between Brisbane and Fremantle was the most watched program this year, with a national total TV audience of 4.52 million and an audience reach of 6.5 million. That’s up eight per cent on the previous year.
Southern Cross Media’s director of sport Chris Jones was basking in the success of Saturday’s thrilling drama in which the match hung in the balance the entire game.
“From the opening moments of our coverage outside the MCG, through Kylie Minogue’s show-stopping pre-game performance, an unforgettable match and the premiership celebrations, Australians were with us every step of the way,” Jones said.
