Carlton have struck a double blow on their AFL rivals with one round left in the season, all but ending Collingwood’s premiership defence and confirming Essendon’s collapse from the top four.
The Blues put West Coast to the sword on Sunday night with a 14.15 (99) to 4.10 (34) win that had serious ramifications on the finals.
Carlton are now back in the top eight and control their own destiny, needing a win over St Kilda next week to seal their return to September action.
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The Magpies will need to beat Melbourne while overturning a deficit of 10 percentage points in the process of that match and other favourable results.
The Bombers, meanwhile, are now six premiership points out of the eight and their season will end with a dead rubber against Brisbane.
Carlton, Essendon and Collingwood sat second, third and fourth on the ladder in June, with the latter pair forced to confront the off-season with different perspectives.
The Dons remain without a finals win and seemingly an answer, but the Pies at least know their flag defence was not helped by a slow start and key injuries.
Elsewhere, Fremantle can still realistically hope to play finals footy despite a three-game losing streak.
They do, however, need another unlikely win from the Saints, who stunned Geelong on Saturday night, while beating Port Adelaide themselves in the very last game of the home-and-away season.
“Everyone’s flat, but they know we’re not far away,” Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir said after Saturday’s loss to GWS.
“The prospects of (our finals) being over? Maybe, but it’s not.
“We’ll front up like we did today. You can’t sit back and look at our footy the last three weeks and say we haven’t had a crack.
“The message to players after the game was that I was proud of their efforts.”
Essendon coach Brad Scott insists the Bombers are better placed than 12 months ago despite their season fading out in familiar fashion.
The Bombers sat in the top four just six weeks ago, but Friday night’s 39-point defeat to Sydney — their sixth loss in their last eight games — means they will miss finals for a third straight season.
In 2023, Scott’s first season in charge, the Bombers looked poised to finish inside the top eight, only to lose seven of their last 10 matches, including their final two by a combined margin of 196 points.
Scott said he “got the correlation” between this season and last but believed Essendon had made strides this year.
“The foundation of what we’re doing is is really solid,” he said.
“We were incapable of of competing against the best when it mattered last year, if you want the comparison right now.
“It’s a bit of polish, a bit of system, a bit of class, that is the difference between us and the best. It’s not the effort in the contest.”
– with AAP