Fremantle have shaken off the straight sets pressure to bounce back from their shock qualifying loss to Hawthorn, defeating Geelong by 14 points in a see-sawing AFL semifinal at Optus Stadium in Perth on Friday.
Luke Jackson's influence spread far and wide, while Geelong's future remains bright despite ageing veterans. But the AFL's score review system still doesn't work.
Here's what we learned from the game.
Luke Jackson can take over a final
There are plenty of good AFL players. Plenty of very good ones, too. There aren't many, though, who can simply grab hold of a final and change it. Luke Jackson can.
Fremantle needed someone to impose themselves against Geelong on Friday night and Jackson duly obliged, producing one of those games which makes all the debate about what position he actually plays seem a little beside the point.
Ruckman? Yes. Midfielder? Yes. Forward? Also yes.
That's what makes Jackson such a nightmare. He doesn't just beat you one way. He can hurt you at stoppage, follow up at ground level, drift forward and become a marking target, then suddenly pop up somewhere else entirely.
Against Geelong, he was everywhere that mattered.
He helped Fremantle establish control around the contest early, but his biggest moments came when the Cats mounted their inevitable third-quarter charge. That's when Jackson went from very good to decisive.
Two goals in the term, the second after the siren, were enormous. Geelong had wrested back momentum and turned the game on its head with five of the first six goals of the quarter, the Cats leading by eight points with three minutes left on the clock.
Jackson effectively turned it back again, kicking two and having a massive hand via his ruckwork in the other two of four the Dockers kicked in that period, heading to the last break with a 16-point lead restored.
We've seen this level from him before, including against Geelong earlier this season. But there's a fairly significant difference between doing it in June and doing it when defeat means your season is over.
Fremantle has no shortage of stars. But if the Dockers are going to win the flag from here, Jackson might just be the bloke capable of doing the most damage.
And the scary bit? He's still only 24.
The score review system is still failing the game
Ollie Dempsey kicked a goal, arguably the best we've seen all season. Everyone could see it. The replay showed it. And yet, somehow, after the AFL's score review system had been called upon to sort it out, Geelong was still awarded a behind.
It was an appalling decision, and the outrage about it was entirely justified.
Dempsey's extraordinary third-quarter effort was initially ruled touched and sent upstairs for review. But the replay appeared to show the ball had come cleanly off his boot. That should have been enough. Let alone the obvious physical impossibility of the ball having rebounded several metres from a Fremantle defender's forearm.
Instead, because the reviewer apparently didn't believe there was sufficient evidence to overturn the goal umpire's original call, the behind stood. And this is exactly why confidence in the system continues to erode.
What is the point of having a score review system if it can look at an obvious mistake from multiple angles and still fail to correct it?
Nobody expects every decision to be straightforward. Some touched calls are genuinely impossible to determine. Some camera angles are useless. Some incidents will always remain inconclusive. But this wasn't one of them.
The frustration is not just with one bad decision, either. It is with a system which too often seems more concerned with protecting the original call than getting the final decision right. That defeats the entire purpose.
Indeed, Dempsey was denied similarly in the Cats' narrow loss to Carlton at the MCG in May. And when it happens in a final, with a season on the line, the scrutiny only becomes greater. That it didn't end up altering the result is beside the point.
The AFL introduced score reviews to remove obvious errors from the game. This was an obvious error. And if the system still can't fix those, then dissatisfaction with the whole process is only going to grow.
Cats will keep on keeping on
You know the drill with Geelong by now. Every time their seasons close come the predictions that this must finally be the end. But I think it's less likely this time even than usual.
Yes, Patrick Dangerfield is nearing the end, Jeremy Cameron won't be around forever and Tom Stewart isn't getting any younger. There will inevitably be some changing of the guard.
But one of the encouraging aspects of Friday night's loss was how much of Geelong's resistance came from players who should still be major parts of the next version of this team.
Ollie Henry was superb with five goals. Lawson Humphries again looked completely at home at the level, Shannon Neale continued to show why Geelong is so bullish about his future, while Max Holmes and Bailey Smith are already established stars and still only entering their prime.
Then there's what could happen over the next month off the field, the Cats now a favourite to land Rowan Marshall and Toby Greene. While they've missed out on Zak Butters, adding the aforementioned duo to the mix and the narrative still changes considerably.
Marshall is the ruck experience for which the Cats yearn to support Mitch Edwards, and Greene remains precisely the sort of matchwinner who could make a massive difference in September.
Add even one of them to the younger talent already on display and this hardly looks like a club heading towards the cliff.
Geelong has spent most of the past 15 years being told the end is nigh. One day everyone making that prediction will finally be right. But don't expect it to be 2027.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.
