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AFLW Grand Final: A Rivalry That Defines This Era
Rana Hussain • November 28th, 2025 4:09 pm
On Saturday night at Ikon Park, North Melbourne and Brisbane will meet in an AFLW Grand Final for the third straight year — something no one would have dared predict when this competition began, and yet somehow feels exactly right. They’re the two sides whose paths were always going to keep crossing. One built slowly and deliberately; the other patchworked together through sheer resilience. Together, they’ve shaped what AFLW football looks like in this moment.
North arrive looking as inevitable as a storm front. Undefeated all season, on a win streak that stretches back into last year, and playing with such systemised clarity that most sides are beaten long before the final siren. They’ve become the team everyone else measures themselves against. A midfield that seems to expand and multiply at stoppage. Wings that open the game up like a cracked window. A forward line that punishes half-chances with cold precision.
The Roos don’t play fast so much as they play certain. Their uncontested ball movement — the same feature that tore Brisbane apart early last season — has only sharpened. When they click into those chains, you can almost hear the opposition coaches groan. It’s the kind of footy that drains belief out of teams, slowly but completely.
But if there’s a club that refuses to accept what the numbers tell them, it’s Brisbane.
The Lions aren’t North’s opposite so much as their shadow — the one team that keeps reappearing in the doorway, refusing to be pushed out of the frame. Their season wasn’t perfect, but perfection’s never really been Brisbane’s currency. They trade in stubbornness, adaptability, and the grit that gets built only through years of having to prove people wrong.
Their ability to lose key players, regenerate, tighten the screws and still make Grand Finals is something close to outrageous. And they do it without fuss. No tantrums. No panic. Just a steady, unshakeable belief in what they are capable of on the right night.
That’s what makes this match-up so fascinating. North operate like a Swiss watch; Brisbane like a rubber band that somehow never snaps.
Around the ball, it becomes a series of miniature duels with huge consequences. Riddell and Anderson turning stoppages into tiny battles of wills. Koenen trying to hold Brisbane’s defensive shape together while North shift and rotate and surge. Dakota Davidson looming as Brisbane’s spark — not just a forward, but an emotional barometer who can tilt momentum with a single contest. And there’s Courtney Hodder, whose best is fast and creative.
North have been the best team all season. Brisbane have been the most annoying team to play for six years straight. It’s a perfect kind of tension.
And over all of it hangs the question of legacy.
If North win, they don’t just go back-to-back — they plant a flag in the league’s history books. They become the standard. The team future generations point to.
If Brisbane win, they steal the crowning moment out from under the Roos and reassert themselves as the AFLW’s most durable force. They smash the narrative before it can harden into fact.
Last year’s Record preview said it best: Grand Finals are decided in little moments — the ones you barely notice in real time but talk about for years after.
A missed tackle, a fingertip spoil, a centre clearance with twenty seconds left on the clock.
A missed tackle, a fingertip spoil, a centre clearance with twenty seconds left on the clock.
North deserve to be favourites. Everything about their season leans that way. But Brisbane don’t live in the world of what should happen. They’re built for nights like this — messy, emotional, stubborn nights where belief matters as much as system.
Either way, the AFLW gets exactly what it deserves: the two teams who’ve defined this era walking out onto the same patch of grass again, determined not to blink first.
