The numbers that matter
The big winners of Opening Round
It's almost impossible to go past Gold Coast Suns for such a clinical victory over Geelong, a team who kept them to just 37 points in their only head-to-head of 2025.
Christian Petracca arrived on the strip amidst a lot of fanfare and hope that he would get back to the footballer who won a Norm Smith Medal and four All-Australian selections amongst other honours, and it took him only one round to put in one of the finest performances of his entire career.
He simply shredded Geelong in a midfield unit missing Brownlow Medallist Matt Rowell, ably assisted by captain Noah Anderson, Wil Powell and newcomer Bailey Humphrey, who also announced himself to Suns supporters at the first time of asking.
Leo Lombard won himself a Rising Star nomination with a brilliant performance in his fifth game.
We rarely see the kind of errors and absence of pressure from any Chris Scott team that we saw at the weekend, but that was what the Suns forced upon them with a display as red-hot as their guernsey.
The big losers of Opening Round
Brisbane Lions were left to rue a couple of lost one-percenters as they went down by just five points to the Western Bulldogs, but it's the casualty list to emerge from the game that will be especially costly.
Co-captain and key midfielder Hugh McCluggage was diagnosed with a low-grade calf strain following scans and has already been ruled out of their Round 1 trip to the SCG, whilst on Sunday three other players were slapped with bans by the Match Review Officer (MRO).
A one-game ban for Zac Bailey was accepted by the club on Monday, who are spending hefty amounts of money to defend a one-game suspension for Darcy Gardiner and three-game ban for co-captain and star defender Harris Andrews.
Gardiner doesn't appear to have much of a case to get out of his medium impact strike, given he appeared to have swung deliberately, whilst some pundits believe Andrews was lucky to get away with three games. All will be revealed on Tuesday evening when the tribunal completes its deliberations.
What the head coaches said
Michael Voss (Carlton Blues): "Our intensity dropped significantly. They absolutely dialled up their pressure around the ball. We lost some pretty important territory in our stoppages. Their centre bounces were too good, their best players got going, and had a significant influence on the second half. When we kicked the first two goals after half-time, we thought the game was in pretty good shape, and for the next 20-odd minutes it was watching the ball go through the opposition's goals. No matter what we did, we couldn't stop it."
Sam Mitchell (Hawthorn Hawks): "We got what we deserved. I thought they outworked us from the very start of the game. I think we gave up 35 marks in the second quarter and we just weren't able to slow the game down and get things on our terms. They made the most of their chances and took things away from us pretty quickly. I hope it was Round 1 rustiness. We have no excuses to put in that sort of work rate. We thought we were much more prepared and better equipped to handle what they produced than we were."
Chris Scott (Geelong Cats): "We're pretty calm, I think. It's obviously a really difficult night, but the most important thing for us is to take what we need to out of it and move forward. We won't be overreacting to one performance. We knew we had some problems going in and were really wary of what the opposition could do. We probably needed them to be off and they were the opposite. There's obviously some work to do, but we've got to be careful not to make it bigger than it is."
Click here to read comments from all head coaches who spoke at the weekend.
Goal of the Week
Mark of the Week
Next week's fixtures
