Jonathan Horn - Guardian Australia Sports Columnist (23.06.2026)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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On June 26th, Supergirl arrives in theaters.

**Mark Duffield** (0:33)
Let's go.
Your powers are gonna take in now. This is very impressive.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:40)
Get ready for a movie event unlike any other. Superman sees the good in everyone. And I see the truth. Get your tickets now for the most fun. Krypto!

**Jonathan Horn** (0:49)
And fresh movie of the summer.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:50)
What are you going to do? Something stupid. No, it's a party.
DC's Supergirl only in theaters June 26th.

**Jonathan Horn** (0:57)
Get tickets now. Ready to be 13 It may be inappropriate for children under 13

**SPEAKER_1** (1:02)
Here he is again, the horny one.

**Mark Duffield** (1:07)
Welcome back to the SCNWA studio. And of course, that music means we have the Guardians, Jonathon Horn on the line chatting about football generally. Jonathon, welcome.

**Jonathan Horn** (1:19)
Hello, Duff. I can't believe that Scotty Waters gets the magnificent Seventeen song, mate. And I get that. Incredible stuff.
Incredible.

**Mark Duffield** (1:29)
What can I say? It's hard to go past Dwayne Russell when he's on form, talking about Jason Horn Francis. Hey, got to ask you this question before we get on to AFL. Do you have any World Cup interest?

**Jonathan Horn** (1:43)
I do. I've got a lot of FOMO at the moment, Duff, to be honest.
Seen all my Guardian colleagues over there in America at the moment. It's a long tournament, but yeah, I'm certainly keeping an interest, and I think the time zone, the way it's sort of beamed into Australia, helps this time around for sort of soccer, you know, soccer, not exactly experts like myself.

**Mark Duffield** (2:08)
Yeah, I'm definitely not an expert, but I am fascinated by the ability to create the impression that you're doing well when really you're not doing any better, which I suspect is a bit like the AFL's wild card round. So the 48-team format means that, and the knockout stages involving 32 teams, means that if we get as far as we have gotten in previous World Cups by basically just making the tournament, we'll feel like we're succeeding beyond our wildest dreams, because we'll be in the knockout phases. It's quite fascinating.
A bit of sleight of hand there by the tournament organizers, I think.

**Jonathan Horn** (2:47)
And a lot of parallels with the AFL dusk. But content is king.

**Mark Duffield** (2:51)
Yes, content is absolutely king. Hey, off the top of the show, I talked about the fixture models being considered or being proposed by the AFL when the Tasmanian devils enter the competition.
Do you have any thoughts on any or all of them?

**Jonathan Horn** (3:09)
I listened to you before and I agreed with what you said about, I think that's the third option. Is it the one that you wanted?

**Mark Duffield** (3:15)
Yeah, the group stage option.

**Jonathan Horn** (3:17)
The group stage, I thought that the first two are just too safe and sort of too similar to what we have now, which is essentially just a nonsensical fixture, really.
But I think that the third option, if done properly and if explained properly, could work. And I'm actually, I don't know what it is, but I'm actually, it's taken me a long time, but I'm almost coming around to the idea of the fourth option and the idea that less is actually more in terms of the actual 20 game season, which I think is the ideal scenario. Of course, the complication there is how could you actually make a mid-season tournament mean anything other than content for the TV broadcasters? I think if they could pull that off, that that would actually be the best way to do it because the actual 20 season, the 20 game season itself is sort of what we're all striving for and what in an ideal scenario we're all craving. It's just what do we do with those other four or five weeks? And I'm not sure I fully trust the AFL to do that properly.

**Mark Duffield** (4:34)
To me, the mid-season tournament has AFL light written all over it because if it counts towards Premiership points, then I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to have compressed sort of format, shortened games that still get played for Premiership points. That doesn't work for me.