Carlton’s season is alive again, and an unheralded hero has helped resuscitate it

Source : ABC NEWS

An unheralded player helps Carlton continue its resurgence, Lachie Neale gets back to his best, Jack Gunston turns up the heat, and two Bulldogs midfielders continue to come up big when it matters.

Here’s what we learned from round seven of the AFL season.

George Hewett has Carlton’s engine room humming

Any discussion about Carlton’s midfield over the last five years has been centred around its All-Australian duo of Patrick Cripps and Sam Walsh.

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Too often, too much work has been left to the skipper and his right-hand man in the middle of the ground, but this season a teammate has stepped up in a big way.

Carlton’s decision to let Matt Kennedy walk at the end of last season was heavily questioned after its 0-4 start to the campaign, but the club has strung together three in a row to revive its season and one of the key men in the resurgence has been a player who was essentially chosen over Kennedy, veteran midfielder George Hewett.

Sunday’s win over Geelong was by far the most impressive of the three Carlton victories this season, and came via another dominant midfield display. The Blues won the stoppage clearance battle by seven and the contested possession count by nine against the Cats.

With the likes of Cripps, Walsh and star ruckman Tom De Koning in the middle of the ground, Hewett can often be overlooked, but the ex-Swan is putting together his best season yet.

Hewett has averaged 30.1 disposals and 7.7 clearances a game through seven matches, smashing his previous career-averages by a wide margin. He has also lifted his tackle average from 4.6 last season to 7.4.

He ranks sixth in the league for contested possessions and fifth in the league for centre clearances, an area where the Blues have seen a major uptick in the last month, going from ninth on the season to third in the last five matches.

The Blues face a big test coming up this week against the Crows in Adelaide, but they go into the match having gained back some of their midfield mojo.

Lachie Neale slices up the Saints

After a disappointing loss to Collingwood in round six, it was important for the reigning premiers to bounce back straight away, and they did so handsomely against the Saints.

Brisbane has been guilty of some slow starts this season, but came out of the gates like a team possessed and amassed eight scoring shots before the Saints registered one, and should have been further ahead if not for some poor kicking.

Poor kicking can often seem contagious on a football field, but Brisbane’s best player, Lachie Neale, seemed to be immune to all the errant ball use with a sublime individual performance.

Discussions about the game’s best kicks often don’t include Neale, but he’s proven to be one of the most efficient midfielders by foot throughout his career. His kicking is less about distance, but more about being incisive. A fourth-quarter kick inside 50 to find Hugh McCluggage typified exactly how Neale cuts teams apart by foot.

Neale has blown hot and cold to start the year. Saturday’s 31-disposal performance is just his third game of 30 or more touches for the season, but he was back at his best against the Saints.

The two-time Brownlow Medal winner racked up 493 metres and registered two goal assists to go along with three majors of his own in arguably his most damaging performance of the season.

After being held to 10 touches and 20 touches in two of the first three games this season, Neale has tallied at least 25 disposals in each of his last four outings, and you get the sense the 32-year-old is slowly working his way into the season.

In one of the most bizarre stats you’ll likely see this season, St Kilda had the two leading clearance-winners on the ground in Jack Macrae and Jack Steele, but somehow still lost the clearance battle by 18 to the Lions.

Jack Gunston, bringing the heat and the goals

Hawthorn snapped a run of two straight losses with a comfortable 50-point win over West Coast, with Jack Gunston leading the way yet again with another four goals.

Gunston, having kicked 17 goals in five appearances, is now tied with last year’s Coleman Medal winner Jesse Hogan for seventh on the AFL’s goalkicking list, something the Hawks would not have envisioned coming into the season.

The 33-year-old is one of two holdovers from Hawthorn’s triple-premiership team alongside Luke Breust, and his nous has proved invaluable in a forward line that is otherwise still relatively inexperienced.

The forward line is arguably the weakest area of the ground for Hawthorn, and is why the team has been linked with a move for West Coast skipper Oscar Allen, but Gunston has proven himself to be an excellent focal point this season.

Hawthorn leads the league in pressure acts with over 290 a game, and Gunston’s ability to buy into this has been what has kept him on the field this season after initially starting as a sub against Carlton in round two.

Of the AFL’s top 10 goalkickers this season, Gunston’s 11.6 pressure acts a game ranks him behind only St Kilda’s Jack Higgins (14.7) and North Melbourne’s Paul Curtis (13.6). He is by far the leading pressure player among key forwards.

Gunston’s pressure is right up among Hawthorn’s mosquito fleet of forwards as well. He averages more pressure acts a game than both Nick Watson and Blake Hardwick, and plays a major role in helping the Hawks lock the ball in their forward 50 when it gets inside there.

A team with Gunston as its forward line focal point probably isn’t winning it all in 2025, but if he continues to keep up this level of play, he’ll make a case to keep his spot even when key forward duo Calsher Dear and Mitch Lewis make their respective returns from injury later in the year.

New-look midfield helps Bulldogs into the top eight

The Bulldogs have been impressive to start the season, but claimed perhaps their biggest scalp at the weekend with a 32-point win over the GWS Giants.

The Dogs overwhelmed the Giants in the middle of the ground as they won the clearance battle by a whopping 22 and scored 25 more points from clearances than the Giants.

Luke Beveridge, in the final year of his current contract, has turned in a masterful coaching job through the first portion of the season to keep the Bulldogs afloat with some big names out.

Starting the season with Marcus Bontempelli and Adam Treloar sidelined resulted in the Bulldogs trusting lesser names such as Ed Richards, off-season addition Matt Kennedy and teenager Joel Freijah in the middle, and it’s provided instant dividends.

The trio was excellent against the high-powered Giants midfield, combining for 26 clearances with Richards and Freijah having a game-high nine each.

Freijah, taken 45th overall in the 2023 draft, has been one of the finds of the season. Standing at 191cm, he is a prototypical tall modern-day midfielder, and has gone from averaging 0.2 clearances in 13 games last season to four a game so far this year.

Richards has been around the block for a little longer, but has come into his own as a fully-fledged midfielder this season after operating around the periphery of the Dogs’ engine room in seasons past. He is currently averaging 25.7 disposals and 5.7 clearances per game.

Bontempelli is back and Treloar, having put up a near career-best year last year, is around the corner. Good luck going up against the Bulldogs midfield in the next month.