AFL Round 20 Predictions Show
The AFL Today Show is here for all your Round 20 preview needs, covering every single game with teams, stats, debates and tips for some blockbusters including a huge rivalry round with the Adelaide vs Port Adelaide Showdown, QClash, Battle of the Bridge and Caleb Serong looking for another Western Derby medal!
What is the best rivalry in footy?
Are the Crows a real premiership threat?
Can the Blues lift for Sam Docherty?
Can Caleb Serong break the Glendinning-Allan medal record?
Will Jeremy Cameron reach 100 goals including finals?
Does Kysaiah Pickett deserve an All-Australian jacket?
The AFL Today Show full of banter, chat about their locks of the week, big calls & key match-ups, including a big debate on who should be All-Australian and the in form Lions!
The Stats Guy breaks down must win games for Hawthorn & Brisbane with tough fixtures ahead, Marcus attempts to fire up Essendon, through his reverse jinx segment and Leo talks up Freo's incredible run, plus he rollercoaster month for Gold Coast.
Get around the AFL Today Show brought to you by panelists Liam 'Stats Guy' McAllion, Leo Mullaly and Marcus Bazzano as they talk out all things footy for the 2025 of AFL season!
Rowan Marshall of the Saints and Max Gawn of the Demons compete in the match between the Melbourne and St Kilda. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images
FOLLOW AFL TODAY SHOW CONTENT
The AFL Today Show is your ultimate footy companion, covering every single team equally and in depth! We break down each game and round of the 2025 season with three shows a week, expert tips, social posts galore, in-depth analysis, debates, interviews with players and top journalists, as well as plenty of banter—chatting about all the things that make AFL great!
Two shows every week, including a round preview show and a round wrap on every game!
YouTube:youtube.com/@afltoday
Instagram:instagram.com/afltodayau/
TikTok:tiktok.com/afltodayau
Facebook:facebook.com/profile.php?id=61562760043477
X:x.com/afltodayau
Originally published as WATCH AFL Round 20 Predictions: Showdown & Western Derby Rivalry | AFL Today Show
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Age
26 minutes ago
- The Age
Injury fears for superstar forward; Dogs' bite matches their bark as they rip Giants apart
Go to latest Pinned post from yesterday 1.25am Kingsley laments the Giants' worst game in his time as coach Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge has lauded his team's dominant 88-point thumping of the Giants that his counterpart Adam Kingsley conceded was their worst display in his three-year tenure. A sizzling six-goals-to-one opening quarter set up the landslide victory against a sloppy Greater Western Sydney, who lost Toby Greene, Josh Kelly and Jack Buckley from last week's comeback win over Sydney, but had plenty enough talent to perform better than they did. Making matters worse for the Giants, reigning Coleman medallist Jesse Hogan struggled with a foot injury throughout the match and is in doubt for next week's clash with North Melbourne. The Bulldogs had 37 scoring shots to GWS's 14, in a go-to-whoa thrashing that spiked their already-mighty percentage to 137.3, which trails only Adelaide's 146. Twin towers Aaron Naughton and Sam Darcy feasted with five goals apiece – after combining for 13 last week – while skipper Marcus Bontempelli (27 disposals) and Tom Liberatore (26) excelled in the midfield and ruckman Tim English starred in the ruck and helped kick-start the demolition with two first-quarter goals. '[There was] absolutely nothing to be unhappy about tonight,' Beveridge said after his 250th game in charge. 'I think we've been pretty honest [this year]. Our players keep fronting up and giving their all. We understand the criticism around not necessarily being able to eke our way further up the ladder and beat some teams above us – we've just got to own up to all of that. 'Tonight was another one that the application was there, right across the 23 players, and obviously, a terrific start, but the cold, hard facts say that we need to keep winning, so it's one down and then a handful to go.' The Dogs provisionally leapfrog Gold Coast to move into eighth spot ahead of the Suns hosting Richmond on Saturday afternoon. They end the season against Melbourne (MCG), West Coast (Marvel Stadium) and Fremantle (Marvel Stadium). Beveridge bemoaned the Dogs' inconsistent defensive effort in their narrow loss to Adelaide three weeks ago, but they poured the pressure on the Giants from the outset and had five goals off turnover by quarter-time. 'Our back six or seven have been beaten up a bit with the critique of them and the emerging players, and the evolution of that line alone,' he said. 'But, we all take ownership of that because ultimately, you need your midfield group and your forward group to contribute to your defensive system, and I think everyone stepped that up a little bit. 'There are some levers we're pulling to make sure we tighten it up a bit. Some of that's simply decision-making off-ball, and how much we value that phase of the game, and I think tonight, we were pretty good at it … to keep a pretty threatening forward line to that score [44 points], but also to limit our exposure there.' The Bulldogs improved to 2-8 against the current top eight, although both wins were over GWS, including a 32-point win in Canberra in round seven. But their record is not as bad as it reads, given six of those losses were by 16 points or fewer, and the other two were by 21 and 22. There was a seven-minute stretch in the second term when the Dogs kicked three goals and won 32 disposals without the Giants touching the Sherrin. Thirteen GWS players, including Jesse Hogan, Sam Taylor, ex-Dog Jake Stringer and Aaron Cadman, had won four disposals or fewer midway through that quarter in an insipid display not befitting a team with premiership aspirations. The Giants' percentage sunk from 118.4 pre-match to 113 after a match they lost the contested possession battle by 51 and ended a six-match winning streak. 'We got belted in the contest, plain and simple. I think maybe minus-51 in the end, and you can't really compete when you're getting belted like that,' Kingsley said. 'You're always trying [to turn things around]. Problem is, it's never one thing that's the issue while you're losing contest – it's usually a handful, if not more, and you're trying to sort of feed that into the players, and we were just off tonight. I don't know why. 'The Bulldogs are clearly playing for their season, and it just felt like we weren't, and so that's disappointing, from our perspective. 'Obviously, they were really strong, and they've been like that against us in the past, for a number of times that we've played them. They're a bit of a hump that we haven't been able to get over in the last couple of years.' Kingsley said they would 'move on quickly' from the Dogs defeat and had the chance to respond against the Kangaroos, but there is no certainty that star spearhead Hogan would play. 'Hogan's a bit sore with his foot. He couldn't really move around throughout the game,' he said. 'We thought it'd be a little bit better than that, but he got a little bit of a knock early in the game, when he tried to launch, and it sort of flared up a little bit for him. He did his best to manage that, but it was a pretty tough night for him from a pain perspective.' Toby McMullin was subbed out in the second quarter with a suspected ankle syndesmosis injury. yesterday 1.25am Kingsley laments the Giants' worst game in his time as coach Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge has lauded his team's dominant 88-point thumping of the Giants that his counterpart Adam Kingsley conceded was their worst display in his three-year tenure. A sizzling six-goals-to-one opening quarter set up the landslide victory against a sloppy Greater Western Sydney, who lost Toby Greene, Josh Kelly and Jack Buckley from last week's comeback win over Sydney, but had plenty enough talent to perform better than they did. Making matters worse for the Giants, reigning Coleman medallist Jesse Hogan struggled with a foot injury throughout the match and is in doubt for next week's clash with North Melbourne. The Bulldogs had 37 scoring shots to GWS's 14, in a go-to-whoa thrashing that spiked their already-mighty percentage to 137.3, which trails only Adelaide's 146. Twin towers Aaron Naughton and Sam Darcy feasted with five goals apiece – after combining for 13 last week – while skipper Marcus Bontempelli (27 disposals) and Tom Liberatore (26) excelled in the midfield and ruckman Tim English starred in the ruck and helped kick-start the demolition with two first-quarter goals. '[There was] absolutely nothing to be unhappy about tonight,' Beveridge said after his 250th game in charge. 'I think we've been pretty honest [this year]. Our players keep fronting up and giving their all. We understand the criticism around not necessarily being able to eke our way further up the ladder and beat some teams above us – we've just got to own up to all of that. 'Tonight was another one that the application was there, right across the 23 players, and obviously, a terrific start, but the cold, hard facts say that we need to keep winning, so it's one down and then a handful to go.' The Dogs provisionally leapfrog Gold Coast to move into eighth spot ahead of the Suns hosting Richmond on Saturday afternoon. They end the season against Melbourne (MCG), West Coast (Marvel Stadium) and Fremantle (Marvel Stadium). Beveridge bemoaned the Dogs' inconsistent defensive effort in their narrow loss to Adelaide three weeks ago, but they poured the pressure on the Giants from the outset and had five goals off turnover by quarter-time. 'Our back six or seven have been beaten up a bit with the critique of them and the emerging players, and the evolution of that line alone,' he said. 'But, we all take ownership of that because ultimately, you need your midfield group and your forward group to contribute to your defensive system, and I think everyone stepped that up a little bit. 'There are some levers we're pulling to make sure we tighten it up a bit. Some of that's simply decision-making off-ball, and how much we value that phase of the game, and I think tonight, we were pretty good at it … to keep a pretty threatening forward line to that score [44 points], but also to limit our exposure there.' The Bulldogs improved to 2-8 against the current top eight, although both wins were over GWS, including a 32-point win in Canberra in round seven. But their record is not as bad as it reads, given six of those losses were by 16 points or fewer, and the other two were by 21 and 22. There was a seven-minute stretch in the second term when the Dogs kicked three goals and won 32 disposals without the Giants touching the Sherrin. Thirteen GWS players, including Jesse Hogan, Sam Taylor, ex-Dog Jake Stringer and Aaron Cadman, had won four disposals or fewer midway through that quarter in an insipid display not befitting a team with premiership aspirations. The Giants' percentage sunk from 118.4 pre-match to 113 after a match they lost the contested possession battle by 51 and ended a six-match winning streak. 'We got belted in the contest, plain and simple. I think maybe minus-51 in the end, and you can't really compete when you're getting belted like that,' Kingsley said. 'You're always trying [to turn things around]. Problem is, it's never one thing that's the issue while you're losing contest – it's usually a handful, if not more, and you're trying to sort of feed that into the players, and we were just off tonight. I don't know why. 'The Bulldogs are clearly playing for their season, and it just felt like we weren't, and so that's disappointing, from our perspective. 'Obviously, they were really strong, and they've been like that against us in the past, for a number of times that we've played them. They're a bit of a hump that we haven't been able to get over in the last couple of years.' Kingsley said they would 'move on quickly' from the Dogs defeat and had the chance to respond against the Kangaroos, but there is no certainty that star spearhead Hogan would play. 'Hogan's a bit sore with his foot. He couldn't really move around throughout the game,' he said. 'We thought it'd be a little bit better than that, but he got a little bit of a knock early in the game, when he tried to launch, and it sort of flared up a little bit for him. He did his best to manage that, but it was a pretty tough night for him from a pain perspective.' Toby McMullin was subbed out in the second quarter with a suspected ankle syndesmosis injury.
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
AFLW stars on being role models, dealing with setbacks and the future of the league: ‘The game has evolved'
Posing on set for Stellar's shoot in Sydney's eastern suburbs is worlds away from the footy field, yet Chloe Molloy – co-captain of Sydney Swans' AFLW team – embraces being out of her comfort zone. 'I can respect what models do,' Molloy tells Stellar with a laugh. 'I get so awkward – I'm not camera shy but then … I am slightly camera shy.' Molloy, who grew up in the Victorian town of Whittlesea, made her AFLW debut in 2017 – and won the AFLW Rising Star Award, was named All-Australian three times, and nabbed a Best and Fairest at her former club Collingwood, before signing with the Swans in 2023. Ahead of the start of the 2025 AFLW season – marking the league's tenth overall (two seasons were played in 2022) – Molloy and her cohorts, Brisbane Lions dual premiership player Ally Anderson and Melbourne captain Kate Hore – reflect on how the league has changed since its inception in 2017. 'The game has evolved a lot,' Molloy says. As for what she would like to see in its future? 'I'd love for there to be more analysis [of matches]. I'd love more camera angles [during broadcasts]. I think you can get caught up with what we don't have … and forget how far we have come.' The trio is hopeful that, like them, more AFLW players will be able to earn a full-time salary from playing in the coming years – an ambition shared by the AFL. '[The AFL] is committed to us being full-time,' Molloy notes. 'When that is, hopefully sooner rather than later. There's growth in the game that's happening and still needs to happen. Salaries not only for the players but salaries around [for support staff]. Hopefully in the next few years [there will be] full time wages not just for the players, but for everyone around us.' Molloy, 26, is on track to make her return to the Swans after an Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury ruled her out of last season. 'It was very hard to process that I had even done it,' Molloy says. 'And you just know straight away that you are on the sidelines for so long. I didn't realise how mentally taxing it would be: 10, 11 months. One that I wouldn't wish upon anybody. It is a rehab beast – at times, it definitely defeated me. Now, I look ahead and everything that I have been through. It kind of makes me think, I just want to play football. I don't have a return date set. Fingers crossed [for a round one return].' Brisbane Lions midfielder Anderson, who played in two premierships with the club and is a three-time AFLW All-Australian, is firmly focused on avenging the Lions crushing Grand Final loss to North Melbourne last season. 'It was super devastating and a bit emotional,' Brisbane-born Anderson – a proud Gangulu / Wakka Wakka woman – tells Stellar. 'And it wasn't the first Grand Final that we'd lost,' the 31-year-old adds. 'I have been on both sides and it never gets any easier. You sort of have a really big break in the off-season away from footy. 'As a team, we have worked together. The position we have put ourselves in throughout the whole pre-season to … get back to what we were and do one better. 'We all want to redeem ourselves.' Like Molloy, Anderson made her AFLW debut in 2017 and she adds: 'I've played every game since'. The winner of the 2022 AFL Women's best and fairest award, Anderson notes: 'I'm one of the lucky ones – for the past 3-4 years, I've been able to dedicate myself to footy. I've been able to work on my fitness and I have had a lot of improvement over the past few years. I never thought I'd be a full-time professional athlete.' Ahead of the new season, Hore says she is more aware than ever about being a role model to the next generation 'It definitely took me a bit of time for it to sink in,' the 30-year-old says. 'My idols in footy growing up were all male, so for young girls to now have AFLW athletes to look up to is pretty cool. 'The saying 'you can't be what you can't see' resonates with me.' Hore, a three-time All-Australian player, Best & Fairest winner, and the league's leading goalkicker in 2023, is in a relationship with Corey Maynard, a former footballer who now works in player development at North Melbourne – and the couple share their Melbourne home with a Golden Retriever puppy, Benny. 'Footy is obviously a big part of our lives but we love getting out of the footy bubble whenever we can,' Hore says. 'We are both very competitive, so when either of our teams lose we're probably not much fun to be around. He's incredibly supportive of my footy career.' The 2025 NAB AFLW Premiership season starts on Thursday, August 14. See
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
The unassuming 71-year-old ‘ketamine queen' who changed Australia's drug scene forever
Kerrin Hofstrand used to have a foolproof ritual every time a package of ecstasy would arrive from the US. She'd head to a bar on Sydney's Oxford street, play the song California Dreamin', drink a Stoli and drop half a pill. If she wasn't high as a kite in 15 minutes, she'd know the drugs were no good. And if you think that's the most shocking thing you'll hear out of the mouth of a kindly-looking 71-year-old, you're in for a surprise. Known as the woman who introduced ketamine to Australia in the 1990s, Kerrin's life has been colourful enough to fill several books, and in this week's episode of Gary Jubelin's I Catch Killers podcast, she weaves a fascinating tale spanning decades - including stories of her time working as a stripper, selling cocaine in Hawaii, managing a brothel and taking LSD at the age of 12. 'It was just what we did in my group,' she explains candidly, referring to her childhood dalliance with LSD. 'I did acid before I ever even smoked a joint. It was very strange.' Despite the early indoctrination, Kerrin says her true 'drug days' didn't begin until she moved to the United States. An international move and an introduction to criminal life Kerrin's father, Gordon Stephen Piper was a household name in Australia. An actor, he was best known for playing Bob the plumber on the long-running television show A Country Practice. At 19, Kerrin's dad organised an opportunity for her to study at a prestigious New York acting school, a move she bankrolled with an inheritance she'd received from a great aunt the year prior. 'A girlfriend of mine, Sandra, was going to Hawaii,' she explains. 'She'd already been there, and she'd met this guy named Mark. She was in love with him. And I said, 'oh, well, I'll stop off in Hawaii with you' [en route to New York].' Mark, a semi-pro surfer with long blonde hair, lived in the penthouse of a 1930s building locals called 'the Hippie Hilton' in Hawaii. And as soon as Kerrin arrived, she fell for him. The pair quickly struck up a long-distance love affair between Hawaii and Sydney. 'Sandra went home after a month, I never went to acting school, and I ended up marrying Mark back here two years later,' she says. Once the pair moved together permanently to Hawaii, Kerrin began studying nursing by day, and working in a strip club by night, where she quickly progressed from cocktail waitress to fully fledged dancer. 'I was a tall leggy, good-looking person,' she explains. 'I was a size six on a 5'11 frame. I passed the audition.' Over the next few years, Kerrin achieved her nursing degree and made an extraordinary amount of money. In the process, she also developed a cocaine and quaaludes habit. Eventually, Kerrin's relationship with Mark ended, and she had to move temporarily back to Australia to nurse her mother, who died of cancer on Mother's Day in 1981. Cocaine, cruise ships and ecstasy Over the following decade, what Kerrin describes as her 'unusual' lifestyle took her through a career working on cruise ships around Hawaii (during which time she sold cocaine to 'everyone onboard, from the Captain down') to her eventual firing (because a guest saw her exit the bathroom without washing her hands, none the wiser that she'd actually been doing drugs), to her return to Australia, determined to detox. And it was here, in 1990, that Kerrin's role as a key player in Sydney's drug scene took off. During a night out on Oxford Street, a friend visiting from the States had suggested he begin sending her ecstasy from overseas. 'He said to me, 'Kerrin, if I sent you over 300 ecstasy a week, would you send me the money back?' I was like, 'yeah, sure, of course I will!' I was high as a kite! At the time, I just thought it was post-Mardi Gras, ecstasy talk.' 'About a week later, I get a phone call from the United States. And he goes, 'OK, so I need you to go to Bondi post office, you're going to take this letter saying you are who you are, and you have the authority to pick this up, and there's going to be six macadamia nut canisters'.' And so it began. Soon, Kerrin was doing a roaring trade. 'Every couple of weeks I'd send him back $9,999 from a different bank each time, to keep it under that $10,000 mark [which would flag suspicion].' Swimming in cash, she was soon able to move from her one-bedroom apartment to a fancy three-bedroom house in Paddington. Asked whether she worried about the potential harm she was doing through selling drugs, Kerrin is decisive. 'I was not standing at a kindergarten gate selling heroin,' she says simply. 'I felt absolutely no remorse about selling ecstasy because it wasn't a bad drug in those days,' Kerrin continues. 'In those days, you couldn't get anything more pure as a party drug. You only had to do a half to have eight hours of fun with no alcohol, a Chupa-Chup in your mouth, and a lemonade.' 'Special K' One day, a few months into Kerrin's ecstasy-dealing career, her American contact got in touch to tell her he was sending something different in the post. It would arrive in liquid form, in contact lens containers. It was ketamine - a previously unknown drug on the Australian scene. Kerrin began cooking it up and selling it for $200 per half-gram. Because she was the only person supplying it, Kerrin made 'an insane amount of money', but in the back of her mind, she knew she could be found out at any moment. In June 1991, that's exactly what happened. Unbeknownst to Kerrin, she'd been under police surveillance for a month before they decided to arrest her. 'They came in at 7.30am, and I was up in the top bathroom,' she recalls. 'I lived with three guys, and I thought it was one of them wanting to use the bathroom. I was in my pink flamingo pajamas, and they knocked at the door, and they said, 'get out now'. And I said, 'just hold on a minute, guys'. And they said, 'it's the police'. And I was like, 'OK, I still gotta clean my teeth anyway.'' As police searched her house, seizing drugs and other evidence, they eventually came to the oven, where Kerrin had left a batch of 'Special K' (ketamine) she'd cooked the night before. It was worth $10,000. 'They said to me, 'what's that?'' she recalls, 'and I said, 'it's Special K'. And they said, 'what? Like the Corn Flakes?' I said, 'no, like the ketamine that you give horses, it's a dance party drug, yeah?' So I was the first person in Australia to be busted with ketamine, and they changed the law to make ketamine illegal.' Because the drug had not been on the list of prohibited substances at the time of Kerrin's arrest, she wasn't charged for the ketamine they found. She was, however, charged for the 300 ecstasy pills, 2000 hits of LSD and $100,000 worth of cash that police found. She was eventually sentenced to three years and two months in Mulawa Correctional Centre - an experience she describes as 'hell on earth.' Life after drugs These days, Kerrin lives life on the law-abiding side of the street, exploring a passion for French cuisine, caring for her adopted Maltese Terrier, Bowie, and making videos about her adventures on TikTok for her fascinated followers. And in spite of her former money-making activities, she says that these days, the stakes are too high when it comes to drugs. 'It's a war on quality,' she explains. 'If the drugs were the quality of what I was dealing with when the ecstasy I sold was around, when the Coke was around, when all the drugs were around in those days and nobody was stamping on it 100 times, then you could feel safe about people taking them now.' 'I wouldn't, wouldn't trust anything on the streets these days,' she says. 'And anybody who gets involved with ice is just a goddamn idiot. I see the effects of that every single day.'
