HOBART – The moment arrived early in the third quarter, with Brisbane three points ahead and the question still genuinely open. Will Ashcroft gathered a handball from Josh Dunkley at the boundary, spun, and rolled the ball along the turf from the fence line. It dribbled through from an angle that made no sense, and Ninja Stadium’s 10,200 spectators exhaled in unison. The game, for practical purposes, was over.
Brisbane won by 35 points, 17.13 (115) to 12.8 (80), but the margin does not capture what Sunday’s Round 14 contest in Hobart revealed about the dual premiers and the team they are trying not to become. Heading into the bye, Chris Fagan’s side sit at 8 wins and 6 losses – respectable enough, not yet convincing enough. Richmond, sitting second-last at 2-11 and rebuilding with a roster that debuted a former plumber on Sunday, made things uncomfortable for half a game. That they could not sustain the challenge says something about where Brisbane still resides in the competition’s hierarchy. That it was even a challenge at all is a question that will persist through the fortnight.
The Lions face Sydney and Geelong in consecutive weeks after the bye. The shape of this performance – hard-won, dependent on individual brilliance, not yet the kind of efficiency that won back-to-back flags – will be closely read by both opponents.
Ashcroft finished with 38 disposals, his best tally of the season, along with two goals and eight clearances. He is 22 years old, won the Norm Smith Medal in last year’s grand final, and has spent much of 2026 carrying the expectation that comes with being anointed a generational player before the evidence is complete. On Sunday, the evidence was fairly complete. His dribble goal from the boundary was the kind of shot that earns a Coles Goal of the Year nomination and, more importantly, breaks a defensive structure that had kept Brisbane in check for 70 minutes. The second goal came quickly after – two in quick succession from the man who needed to be Brisbane’s best, at the moment Brisbane needed him most.
Lachie Neale found his rhythm at the same time, adding his stamp in the third quarter after spending much of the first half in a clearance battle with Tim Taranto. Harris Andrews, in his 250th game, took nine marks. These are established Lions doing established Lions things. None of it quite explains why it took until the third term for the weight of Brisbane’s quality to tell.
Richmond, to their credit, gave Fagan’s side something to think about. Taranto collected 29 disposals, six clearances and two goals, and was the reason the Tigers held a lead heading into half-time – or very nearly held one; Josh Dunkley’s goal in the final minute of the second quarter, a bounce off his boot that kissed through from close range, put Brisbane back in front 42-39. Adem Yze had spoken before the match about his side needing to match Brisbane’s midfield intensity. For a quarter and a half, they more than matched it.
Jasper Alger kicked four goals for the Tigers, a career-high, and gave the small forward line some genuine spark in a season that has otherwise offered Richmond supporters limited cause for encouragement. The 2-11 record is brutal, but there are mornings-after where you can identify what the club is building toward. This was, intermittently, one of those mornings.
The story Brisbane told themselves about Sunday was the return of Eric Hipwood. Nine months after surgery to address a partial ACL tear – discovered during what was supposed to be a short-term calf injury layoff – Hipwood played his 200th AFL game. He kicked two goals. His teammates ran the full length of the ground to celebrate with him after the first, a moment that did not appear in any statistical summary of the match but will be remembered by everyone who watched it. Hipwood had already missed the first of Brisbane’s consecutive premierships through ACL reconstruction in 2021. Missing the second, in 2025, while managing what he thought was a minor complaint, carried a different kind of weight. He got two goals in his return and his side won by 35 points. The Lions go into the bye at 8-6, and he is back.
Logan Morris kicked three goals, Zac Bailey two – including a banana from the boundary line that he walked to the edge of before finishing with a kick that was, as in much of the AFL’s Round 13 the week prior, more improvised than designed. The Lions finished the game kicking 11 of the 17 second-half goals. What the first half suggested about Richmond’s capacity to disrupt and what the second half confirmed about Brisbane’s capacity to overwhelm is the more interesting question. The scoreline says blowout. The first two quarters said something else.
Kye Annand made his AFL debut for Richmond. He is 23, worked as a licensed plumber three weeks ago, and was named by Yze as a player who’d slotted immediately into the back six. These are the details that get lost in a loss by 35 points but will matter to Annand and to Richmond considerably more than the final margin. First-game debutants in losing sides do not typically receive much editorial attention. He played. That is not nothing.
Richmond’s Tasmanian home game – the club’s first in Hobart – drew a crowd that was present and engaged through all four quarters. Yze had spoken of the club’s connections to the state, the tactical value of Sam Banks and Seth Campbell knowing the ground and its wind patterns. Whether those insights translated into anything useful in a 35-point loss is difficult to measure, but the pregame framing was, at least, honest about what Richmond needed: energy, and a rectification of the Sydney loss from the week before. They got the energy. The rectification will need to wait.
Brisbane has the bye. Then Sydney at home, then Geelong. The AFL landscape in the back half of 2026 carries enough uncertainty that 8-6 is not comfortable and the next fortnight is not a formality. What Sunday established is that Ashcroft, when the game is in the balance, can be the player who settles it. Whether Brisbane need him to do that in September, or whether the system absorbs that burden more evenly by then, is the question that remains open.
RICHMOND 4.1 6.3 9.4 12.8 (80)
BRISBANE 4.4 6.6 13.10 17.13 (115)
Goals – Richmond: Alger 4, Fawcett 2, Taranto 2, Cumming, Green, Sonsie, Trezise. Brisbane: Morris 3, Ashcroft 2, Bailey 2, Hipwood 2, McKenna 2, Cameron, Dunkley, Fort, Lohmann, Neale, Reville.
Best – Richmond: Taranto, Prestia, Sonsie, Alger, Hopper. Brisbane: Ashcroft, Wilmot, Neale, Dunkley, Draper, Andrews.
