Mark Duffield - The Editorial (09.06.2026)

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**Mark Duffield** (1:00)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the ESPN WA radio studio.
We're out here at Optus Stadium. It is a Tuesday morning in Perth. It's a chilly one, and it has been a wet one already. It is 13.9 degrees outside at the moment, building to a top of 17 degrees later in the day. Made in WA for WA, this is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.
So, Big Freeze 12, the first in the absence of the late great Neil Danaher, was the biggest yet. There was a sea of blue, both on the walk down from Federation Square to the G, and in the hallowed grounds stands. More than 88,000 at the game. There was a very close clash between Melbourne and Collingwood. Must be said, there were a few errors made in it, but it was a great contest. The crowd watched the sliders defy the icy cold water. They watched rugby league star and freshly diagnosed MND patient Jai Arrow start his fight against the disease Danaher dubbed the beast. Of course, Jai tossed the coin. And then they watched superstars Cozzie Pickett and Nick Dacos spearhead their teams in a stunning head-to-head midfield battle. So Pickett started it with two early goals. Dacos responded with a goal of the year contender from the pocket, and then Pickett finished it 30 seconds from the end of the game when he kicked the goal that put the Ds more than a kick clear with less than enough time for the pies to bridge the gap.
Whatever else we say about footy, about the vagaries of rules, about the unfairness of fixtures, about looming scandals about to unfold, no one can deny that the great drama of our game endures, and the Big Freeze concluded an extraordinary weekend of drama that underlined that. There were eight games played this weekend. Six of those games were decided by eight points or less, amid high drama, five by a kick or less. Our game is at its best when it's like this, and it's at its best when the stars step up to decide the matches. When Jordan Dawson takes the brilliant contested Mark and kicks the goal from beyond 50, that takes the crows past the cats. When Marcus Bontempelli hits the stunning kick from deep inside defence of 50, back inside the corridor, and splits Hawthorne team defence in half, which in turn leads to the Tim English Mark and goal that puts the dogs a goal clear of Hawthorne at the end, after being 4.5 goals behind. When Isaac Heaney caps a brilliant final quarter by sliding clear of tagger Marcus Windhager at a stoppage and feeds the ball to Jai Sarong, who then kicks the goal off his left foot that puts Sydney in front of a brave St Kilda with 14 seconds left on the clock. And when Jason Horn-Francis has three goals as a mid-forward lift Port Adelaide clear of West Coast. We don't understand some of the game's new rules or the reasons for them. The modified stand rule claims a victim or two every round and leaves fans fuming. The cross the line rule in Centre Square or the ruck jewels has been described accurately by SEN's Peter Bell as the hokey pokey and is just silly. Holding the ball, can anyone explain holding the ball and prior opportunity? I'm not even sure that the umpires can with any certainty.
But what we can say is that the game's silkiest players, the smooth movers and the playmakers are the ones determining outcomes. And that is great for the game and many of the outcomes are balanced on a knife edge. Also great for the game. So the only outlier games this round were Freemantle's brutal 124 point route of a North Melbourne team absent without leaving Bumbri. The Dockers were brilliant, the Roos were pitiful, and then there was a resurgent Brisbane dismissal of an underwhelming Gold Coast in the Q clash. Logan Morris kick seven, Sons coach Damian Hardwick left us with a brutal assessment of his team, his team which was tipped to be a flag contender, and he said the Sons are just a middling team at the moment.