Well yes it has? But of course you need the right structures in place for the more talented players to achieve their potential.
Giving those lesser performing teams first choice at your talent etc gives them that chance to rise up and beat the better performing teams.
But it’s never worked.
Going high in the draft has never been a guarantee of success or ongoing talent, especially in years where the talent pool is shallow. With priority picks, father-son and northern academies, it’s also highly gamed.
Brisbane have been the most consistent team in the AFLW’s short history and this will already be their seventh Grand Final (only failed to reach the decider in 2019, 2020 and S6 2022).
At the other end of the scale, the two Sydney clubs have historically performed poorly, the Giants and Swans both winning a wooden spoon in their inaugural seasons (and in the latter’s case enduring a winless season in S7 2022) and also finishing among the bottom teams in S7 2022 and 2024.
Both sides also missed the finals this season.
Further, there has never been an AFLW final played in Sydney where fans were permitted to attend (GWS vs Melbourne in 2020 was played behind closed doors, due to COVID).
North Melbourne’s Ash Riddell has won the AFLW’s Best and Fairest Award for 2025, with 23 votes; controversially, however, she didn’t receive any votes for that record-breaking 45-disposal performance against Sydney in round eight.
Other award winners include Montana Ham (Goal of the Year), Sarah Hosking (Mark of the Year) and Zippy Fish (AFLW Rising Star).
There were 15 debutants in this year’s AFLW All-Australian Team.
North Melbourne captain Jasmine Garner has been voted AFL Players Association MVP for the third time.
This needs to be said.
#YippeeForZippy
Swans fan here, Zippy was such a star this year and brightened up every game
Quite a boring Grand Final we’ve ended up with though. If North Melbourne win that’s entirely predictable as they’ve won every single game against everyone apparently since the beginning of time. If Brisbane win it means Brisbane won something else again. Neither outcome is that thrilling
It would see Brisbane well and truly become the sporting capital of Australia:
If the Lions win, what’ll be next - Brisbane Roar winning the A-League men’s and women’s championships?
Don’t forget the (looks up the name of Brisbane’s NBL team)… Bullets!
And the Brisbane Heat as well. Can’t forget them.
Speaking of, they won their match tonight. And are sitting 2nd 
No, Brisbane are not getting any more titles, screw them. We give you the pox that is Jesse Southwell to deny you any further titles in anything. 
Peking Duk as opening act. Why? I feel like I could have gone on Triple J Unearthed for 15 minutes and found a female act that would be more appropriate, better at entertaining this crowd and who needs more of a leg-up. Sometimes I feel like the AFLW does such stupid things that leave them wide open to criticism in such obvious ways
At the half, NM leads 5.0 to 1.2.
This margin is still overturnable. Whether it will be is a question the Lions will try to solve.
It was a frenetic first half, with both teams playing end-to-end attacking football. North Melbourne’s defence stood firm and kept the Lions to one point in the second quarter. Brisbane will need a miraculous comeback.
The AFLW got ARIA award-winning artist Keli Holiday and his band Peking Duk to hype fans up but it couldn’t have gone much worse.
Peking Duk’s pre-game act at the AFLW grand final has quickly turned into a nightmare, with fans in the stadium turning to their phones for entertainment and those at home turning off their TVs.
Almost seems like another pre-prepared article
Meat Loaf - Peking Duk - surely there’s a food pun in there somewhere 
All but one score.
At 9.24pm AEDT, North Melbourne has won the AFLW premiership and denied Queensland the chance at an unprecedented “quad footy flag”.
The Roos also apparently forget what a behind means.
