GEORGIE PARKER: AFL should not crack down on handballing and why Hawthorn will be unloved in 2025

The AFL might pretend that footy was back last week, but this weekend it really was. Here are five things from round one that caught my eye.

1. Pretty obvious I know but round zero needs to go.

Soft launching a footy season doesn’t make sense and forgetting that the fans don’t like it, what about the actual footy?

Look at the stark contrast we saw from Collingwood last week to this week, and although Essendon’s match was one of the cancelled ones in round zero the premise still stands of teams getting an unfair advantage by playing in the first weekend.

Hawthorn sliced the ball through the midfield like a team that had played a competitive match as they notched up their second win before other teams hadn’t even played a single match.

It is already an unfair fixture, and that won’t change any time soon, so unnecessarily making it more unfair for minimal gain is a mind blowing mistake to me.

2. On Hawthorn, don’t they play an exciting brand of footy?

Watching them transports you to the Hawks from a decade ago when they are fast and attacking - a welcome relief from teams who are often trying to not lose rather than trying to win.

But, while the Hawks are exciting to watch, I’ll bank on them not being well-liked by the end of the season.

Playing for free kicks, the TikTok generation style of celebrating and being lippy doesn’t win you mates.

However, you don’t care if you’re liked if you’re winning, in fact you thrive on it. Play on.

3. It’s the year of the small forwards.

I do feel I say that most years, but the excitement the smalls are offering is off the charts.

Think of players like Dockers debutant Murphy Reid, Zac Bailey, Dylan Moore, Nick “The Wizard” Watson and Jack Ginnivan who are able to do some serious damage upfront.

Ten of Hawthorn’s 17 goals against the Bombers came from their smalls, and while we would all want a Jeremy Cameron in our team, the small forward stars are definitely punching above their weight.

4. Handball or throw?

Tough for umpires but handballs are being less and less fist to ball and the players are getting very good at masking it.

Do I have a problem with it? Probably not as it moves the ball on rather than staying in congestion, but where is the line of when they call it and when they don’t?

You’d hate the headline to be “controversial throw call” in a match that matters.

5. Freo, as usual, gets the stiff end of the stick when it comes to the fixture, and a trip to Geelong in the first round is as hard as it gets.

Give them a mulligan - their third quarter shows they have something there.

They were always going to have to travel to Geelong so might as well get it out of the way in the first round of the year and then not see that place for a while than to play there in the middle of the year and potentially lose momentum with a soul-destroying loss like the one the suffered on Saturday.

Fremantle face a 0-2 Sydney at home on Sunday and a chance to kick-start their season against a high-profile opponent who is also struggling to get going early in the piece.