HPN

Look, we’ve been trying to keep this on the down low at HPN, but recently we contributed to a book called Footballistics. A fair amount of our contributions related to the draft and trade period, and with Carlton’s 2018 trade intentions in the news, we thought we’d provide some unsolicited

Football players aren’t machines. Not every player wants to play until their body can take no more, until their body is a sinewy mess. Not every football player feels compelled to make football their only focus, which is a great thing in our honest opinions. Most players study or undertake

With the 2018 AFL season entering its final third (or so), attention has turned to the winners of the year end awards. This week, the AFL Rising Star Award has grabbed much of the attention in the media, especially around the form of Jaidyn Stephenson. We thought it would be

Football is often quite narrow in its current manifestation. Whereas in the past players would be planted across the ground, such a usage now would be considered to be a wasted resource. Wings are that for the barest of seconds before the bounce, forwards often condense up the ground. This

Last week we looked at half the teams in the league in no real order at all, and their season to date. This week, we discuss the other half of the league. North Melbourne – Still a surprise After round 5 we wrote about North Melbourne’s intriguing tactical schemes and

Usually in pissing contests about national pride there are many ideas on what the most Australian thing is. HPN won’t indulge in that debate, but there is little doubt that the humble suburban football club is one of the key markers of 20th century Australia. For the past two years,

Although this is coming a couple of weeks later than a bunch of the other mid-year sides, HPN thought we’d look at who is spat up by Player Approximate Value (PAV) as being in AA contention so far this year now that the byes have finished and every team has played

So, how about that football season? It’s roughly half over, so it’s a good time to cast an eye back and see how the teams are sitting and what’s happened so far. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve displayed the HPN Team Ratings in full, so let’s have a

HPN Chat is definitely the second in a series of pieces where HPN chats about the big and small issues of the day. This week, we talk about when games are played, the role of football in the cultural fabric of Australian society and Chris Judd’s ghostwriter. Cody Atkinson (cody), Sean

Every year there are a near–constant series of calls for the good old days of State of Origin football, usually on Wednesday nights or Thursday mornings after the NRL equivalent. The reasons that it isn’t currently on the AFL schedule are plentiful. They include overscheduling, injury concerns, a likely competitive imbalance and