First qualifying final

SYDNEY SWANS v GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY, ANZ Stadium

Promoter's dream, No.1. The big boys against the upstarts down the road. Look for plenty of 'great for footy in New South Wales' talk in the lead-up to this one, but this is a blood feud, make no mistake.

• Full finals fixture and ticketing information

Should the Swans be annoyed at not playing at the SCG? Maybe. By our reckoning, up to half a dozen of the Swans won't have played at ANZ Stadium and it negates the home ground advantage a touch. Do the long wings of the Olympic Stadium suit the Giants? Perhaps. 

But the spin out of the Giants is excellent. "The why not us?" talk speaks of a team with big ambitions and goes into this game knowing it has beaten the Swans as comprehensively as any team has all year. 


The key to the Giants win that day was their run from half-back and a midfield, which for the first time in the brief history of the Sydney derbies, wasn't pushed around by the bigger bodies of the Swans. 

This time around they'll need to put the clamps on Lance Franklin and as the storylines for this game are thrown at us, his spurning of the Giants to play for the Swans deserves to be re-told. 

Other storylines? How about Aliir Aliir keeping Ted Richards out of the Swans side? Tom Mitchell, supposedly mulling over a big offer to join the Hawthorn? And what of Mr September himself, Steve Johnson, who might have thought his days of finals football were over when the Cats eased him out the door at the end of last year. 

Finals football is fun. Every single moment of it. But some are more fun than others and this one fits that description.

Second qualifying final

GEELONG v HAWTHORN, MCG

Promoter's dream No.2. Yet another installment of footy's greatest modern rivalry.

The Hawks look too old and too slow, yet there they are, finishing top four and keeping their bid for the four-peat alive. They'll want to play much better than they did against Collingwood on Sunday, conceding 17 goals and allowing the Pies, led by Adam Treloar, to waltz their way through the midfield as they did repeatedly in the final quarter.

If you think it seems an eternity since the Cats and Hawks have played, that's because it is. Thanks to the AFL's 'six-six-six' fixture, the two clubs played their season opener on Easter Monday and have been circling each other ever since.

The round one game served as Patrick Dangerfield's first game for Geelong and he put in a masterclass, with a career-high 43 touches and a mark of the year contender. Dangerfield had played well against the Hawks plenty of times for Adelaide without hurting them on the scoreboard but in the blue-and-white hoops, it was a different affair. He destroyed Hawthorn and what to do this time around will be the biggest question for Alastair Clarkson to deal with in the lead-up. 

The Cats have played well over the last month, but the issue for Chris Scott will be the major step up in class the Hawks will offer, after a milquetoast run-in to the finals against Essendon, Richmond, the Brisbane Lions and Melbourne.

The Cats owe the Hawks for a couple of recent finals defeats, most notably the epic 2013 preliminary final. And they should start favourites. But there's a reason why they were hoping the Magpies could spring a boilover on Sunday and knock the Hawks out of the top four. 

And that's because the Hawks are the September specialists. And if there's a goal in it late in the final quarter of this qualifying final, who's your money going to be on?

• Nine things we learned from round 23

First elimination final

ADELAIDE v NORTH MELBOURNE, Adelaide Oval

The sports psychologists will have a field day ahead of this one. Adelaide crumbled on Friday night against West Coast, with everything to play for. 

Was it a choke? Most likely it was.

The gilt-edged path to the Grand Final is gone, and they'll need to beat North at home then three on the road to win the flag. Rory Sloane and Brodie Smith will be huge inclusions for a team that forgot how to run against the Eagles, but the Crows need to take the game on again. It has been their hallmark all year.

The shrinks will have their work cut for them at Arden Street as well. No team since Melbourne in 2004 has come into the finals on the back of four straight defeats. Or three wins from their last 13 games. The last three-and-a-half months have shown that North isn't at the level to win a flag, but they are the elimination finals specialists, having won in 2014 and 2015 and making preliminary finals both times.

That's the message Brad Scott will be reinforcing for the next two weeks. They head to Adelaide under no pressure whatsoever. Playing at home and supposedly with their premiership window wide open, all the question marks will be hanging over the Crows.

Second elimination final

WEST COAST v WESTERN BULLDOGS, Domain Stadium 

Right now, who would want to play West Coast? The Eagles enter the finals in brilliant touch, with consecutive wins against the Giants, Hawks and Crows, two of them on the road. They've lost just once since the bye. 

West Coast's backline is back to its miserly best and the midfield has been outstanding. Andrew Gaff and Luke Shuey have picked the best time to be in career-best touch and Matt Priddis still goes pretty well. 

And sitting at the end of it all is the Coleman medallist, Josh Kennedy. 

• Who staked their finals claim in this weekend's state leagues? 

They're the form team of the competition and if ever a team is going to win a flag from outside the top four, the Eagles might be it. They're scared of nobody. 

The Dogs will be traveling to Perth for the second time in two weeks. The wind was deflated from their sails even before the Freo match on Sunday once it was clear they couldn't be budged from seventh. Self-preservation mode? Probably and perhaps understandably. 

But here's what is sobering for the Dogs. Since kicking 107 points against Gold Coast in round 17, they have kicked just 78, 61, 95, 93 and 49 points.

Jake Stringer has been left in the reserves the last two weeks and it seems incredulous they would leave him out again in a fortnight. At his best, he is capable of the miraculous, and the Bulldogs will need plenty of that to claim the unlikeliest of finals wins.

• Missed the finals? Here's your club's first item of business