Author: Sean

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

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

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

After a number of disappointing years, and with the departure of their marquee star, the Gold Coast Suns have been the epitome of an off-Broadway show in 2018. Due to the Commonwealth Games happening on the Gold Coast (remember that? We barely do), the Suns have hosted games at four

In round five at the SCG, in front of a television audience of more than a million people, two extraordinary passages of football unfolded in quick succession. After intercepting a wayward kick from Adelaide defender Rory Laird near the middle of the ground, Sydney’s Lance Franklin weighed up his options.

The Giants in 2018 have been hobbled by injury, but they have shown some creativity and originality in how they’ve tried to play footy given this reality. GWS have nothing if not top end talent at their disposal, and some of the quirks of the Giants 2018 methods suggest Leon

The always excellent James Coventry called up Cody from HPN to have a chat about the then-upcoming Showdown between Port and Adelaide for ABC Grandstand. We collaborated with James alongside a cast of other excellent people on the upcoming book Footballistics, which you can buy via presale now (with a $5